Big Deposit, No Return : Weddings: What’s an almost-bride to do with that expensive dress when the big event is a no-go? Some try selling them in the classifieds.

Months of planning have gone into the wedding. It’s going to be picture-perfect. Then, at the 11th hour, either the bride or bridegroom ducks out of the picture.

What happens to the wedding gown? All that silk and lace? All that money?

In the case of actors Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland, who said “we don’t” only three days before last Friday’s planned “I do’s,” a Los Angeles shop is storing one surplus gown.

“It was ready for a final fitting,” says Michelle Trafficante, a partner in Tyler Trafficante. Now, “everything’s just sort of on hold.” But, she adds: “She’s a good client and a friend, and we’re not concerned at this point. I mean, I’m concerned for her. I’m sure it’s difficult.”

Trafficante says she and the designer, Richard Tyler, were told what everyone else was told: “Basically, that the wedding has been postponed. We know they’re being honest with us.”

Trafficante is divulging no details of the gown that Roberts did not wear when she did not walk down the aisle. She just says she’s waiting to hear when the wedding will be.

When that wedding march comes to a screeching halt, less-famous brides try to salvage something by recycling their gowns, either by advertising them for sale or by putting them on consignment at a resale shop. Bridal stores, recognizing that love is not always forever, typically have a no-return policy. Stores cannot unload wedding gowns at white sales.

Brides “can’t take them back, and they can’t do anything with them. The bridal stores are not going to touch them,” says Shoshana Maler, proprietor of Deja Vu Bridal Boutique in Venice. So, by the dozens, never-worn gowns find their way to resale shops such as hers, as do once-worn gowns brought in by women who may be very practical--or who may be getting a divorce.

If a prospective buyer asks if a gown has, er, bad vibes, Maler admits: “I don’t always say.”

Recently, newspaper classifieds included this under Furs/Clothing:

* Wed Gown Size 10 GORGEOUS! Lace & Pearls. Never worn. Cost $2K sell $750. . . .

The ad was placed by Marion, a Beverly Hills woman who had called off her June, 1990, wedding a week before the event.

She explains: “I got mixed up with a character who took me to the cleaners financially. . . . I thought I would recoup some of my losses” by selling them. There was no buyer, but she did get several calls from interested transvestites.

Although it was to have been her second trip to the altar, she says “this gown looks like something Princess Di would have worn. My fiance insisted. He said he’d never had a great big wedding. But he figured I’d pick up the tab. When I saw the bills were coming in and he had no money. . . .”

Like many other would-be brides, Marion--who asked that her last name not be used--ran into a no-return policy on the gown, even though it was bought off the rack in La Jolla and needed no alterations. The tags were still on it, she says, but she was stuck: “And I had paid cash.”

Marion, a onetime real estate agent who now publishes a series of foreign-language tapes, is ambivalent about selling the gown. “I’m very attached to it,” she says. “And who knows? I might use it.”

Her daughter is to be married soon, but, she says, “I can imagine she’d like something like Madonna would wear.”

As for herself, she says she’s “just lucky to be out” of the relationship. “The last thing I heard, the FBI was looking for him.”

* WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE Dress & Veil $1,000 cash only. Must sell. . . .

She had planned to marry last month, says “Sarah” (she asked that her real name not be used) and had ordered the $1,000 gown----a “mermaid” style in embroidered satin and lace--about a year ago from a San Fernando Valley bridal shop.

But the wedding never took place--”It was a mutual thing.” During a yearlong engagement, she explains, they had premarital counseling, “just to clarify our expectations.” What they found was that “there are issues you’re unable to resolve as quickly as you may think.”

So, the wedding just kept being postponed. And postponed.

Sarah, an insurance company claims assistant, and her fiance, a financial planner, still see each other, and, she says, “there’s a chance it’ll still happen.”

The gown has not been sold.

Holly Remy, a Riverside journalist, has in her wardrobe one never-worn, midcalf-length lace wedding dress. “I’ve thought about giving it away or trying to sell it,” she says. “I just wish I could convince somebody to throw a garden party. But I’m not sure I could zip it anymore. I think it’s a 10, and I’m not.”

Remy remembers well the night in 1983 when she became engaged to a newspaper photographer: “It was Christmas Eve, and my boyfriend reached in his back pocket for my present and there was his mother’s engagement ring. I was thrilled. We’d been dating for about four years. I thought it was about time. . . .”

She bought the dress and, she says, they talked endlessly about wedding plans, right down to “the margarita fountains” at the reception. But, she says: “We never got around to setting a date.”

Last summer, she moved to Riverside from Phoenix. He didn’t. Absence did not make hearts grow fonder. “I think he’s over it,” she says, “and I think I am, too.”

Remy, 36, was a college student when she wed the first time, in 1975--”the heart of the age of polyester.” So she marched down the aisle in a “bulletproof” white, polyester, double-knit number she’d bought “from someone who was about a foot shorter than me. I put lace on the bottom to make it look longer.”

After the marriage broke up, she tried vainly to resell the dress: “I ended up leaving that dress in a night deposit box at a Salvation Army. I didn’t want to take it out in daylight.”

One way not to get stuck with a wedding gown is to rent it. One Night Affair in West Los Angeles rents hundreds of designer gowns. “We go from Size 2 to 26,” says partner Jeff Gates. “Often, we’ll do the wedding gown, the bridesmaids, the mother of the bride and some guests.”

Gowns that retail for $1,200 to $6,000 rent for $150 to $350. The average gown makes five trips down the aisle--with dry cleaning in between, of course--before it is a little tired. “We don’t like to keep the gown in the store more than one year,” Gates says. “We want to keep our styles current.”

Alterations are done by hand to avoid stitch marks. Should there be a few telltale marks, they can be disguised with more beading before the next bride rents.

What kind of a woman rents her wedding gown? All kinds. Gates reasons: “God willing, you’ll only be getting married once”--why spend all that money? “In today’s (recessionary) economy, we are extremely busy.”

He acknowledges that very young brides tend to be appalled at the idea of a rent-a-gown: “I think it’s that fairy tale image.”

How do bridal shops handle the problem of wedding day blues?

At Emily’s in Torrance, brides-to-be are required to put 50% down on their orders and are asked to read and sign a statement of policy that “in the event of a cancellation,” they are responsible for the balance.

If the order has not yet been placed with the manufacturer, says manager Sheila Ackerson, Emily’s charges only a 15% service charge. Off-the-rack purchases can sometimes be returned for store credit or for something more versatile--say, a cocktail dress.

Wedding cancellations “happen all the time,” says Lois Higgins, manager of Susan Lane’s Country Elegance in North Hollywood. But they are the exception; the vast majority go on as scheduled.

Frequently, she says, a wedding escalates from small and intimate to an extravaganza and “gets to be too much. They say, ‘Wait a minute. This is not what I wanted.’ They’ll postpone the wedding until they’re more able to cope with it. And they start all over again.”

The shop, which has its own line of Victorian through 1920s-inspired styles, has a firm policy: No refunds on special orders once cutting has begun.

A few years back, Higgins recalls, one bride cancelled her wedding about a week beforehand. Her gown, and those of her bridesmaids, had all been ordered. “The bride and groom were under so much pressure from the whole family, they eloped and went to Las Vegas. I don’t think she even picked up the gowns. She just forfeited everything.”

Bridal shops would go out of business if they started giving people their money back every time couples changed their minds, says Tim Parmelee, partner with his wife, Mely, in Special Moments in Pacific Palisades. “Once I’ve ordered (a gown), I have to buy it. I can’t give it back to the company.”

But a cancelled wedding is more than a business headache, he says: “It’s sad, the problem between the two people. That’s worse than anything else.”