Showing posts with label practical stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label practical stuff. Show all posts

Monday, February 15, 2010

Dresses for Less......formals on a Budget

A stag dance.
Her other dresses

Last summer I was on a mission to find some formals for Natalie as I garage sale shopped. I ended up with finding 6. I then found 4 at a thrift store. A manufacturer had donated their old inventory and all the dresses still had the tags on them. Some of these had original price tags of $200. The thrift store sold each of them for $35.00. It was always a risk when I purchased these at the yard sale, because Natalie usually was not with me, but I figured I could always alter them or or resale them. I think only two of the dresses will not work. One, Natalie does not like and the other requires too many complicated alterations to make it work. Here is what I spent;

garage sales:

black dress 8.00
red dress with shawl 15.00
short green dress 5.00
light blue dress 8.00
light blue dress (one she doesn't like) 3.00
red dress (too many alterations) 40.00

thrift store
light blue sparkly 35.00
royal blue 35.00
magenta 35.00
princess blue one 35.00

TOTAL: 196.00

That seems like a lot, but I figured she has 8 dresses she will wear and it works out to be about $26 a dress. I told her earlier that I would buy her one dress a year, so this year for the price of one she has 8. I do need to work on my sewing ability, though. The top light blue dress, she is wearing above, I had to take in and altered the sleeves. When she gave her date a hug goodnight her right sleeve ripped off. hahahah :)