Nearly Newlywed: Sell Lightly Used Wedding Wear

What is Nearly Newlywed?

Nearly Newlywed is a peer-to-peer sales site that specializes in wedding dresses and accessories, both worn and unused.

How it works

Nearly Newlywed takes a hands-on approach to selling your wedding gown and wedding accessories, including jewelry, shoes and purses.

But it’s also the most costly of the four wedding dress sales sites reviewed on SideHusl. And since the extra cost does not necessarily translate into a better experience for buyers or sellers, it also gets the lowest Husl$core in this group.

Cost

You pay $20 upfront to list, fill in your name, email and some details and photos of your dress. That goes to the Nearly Newlywed team, who will need to approve your listing. When the listing is approved, usually within 24 to 48 hours of receipt, your advertisement is posted and you can go in and provide more details, including the price you want.

Unlike the other sites, where you can communicate and negotiate with potential buyers via text message, Nearly Newlywed does that for you. You have no real contact with the buyer. You’ll only be notified if the dress sells and you need to ship it.

When a dress sells

When your dress sells, Nearly Newlywed will contact you about payment, shipping and insurance. You’ll get a pre-paid shipping label from the site. Box up your gown for shipping and then bring it to a UPS store to ship.

Buyers get five days from receipt to decide whether the dress will work or not. If not, they return it (paying $50 in return shipping) and the dress remains listed for sale.

If the buyer keeps it, Nearly Newlywed collects payment and pays you 70% of the purchase price via PayPal.

Good and bad

The good thing about this site’s process is that buyers may be more comfortable knowing that they can try the dress on and send it back, if it doesn’t work, without paying a fortune for the attempt. (They do pay $50 for return shipping.) That could speed the sales process.

But, the inability to communicate with your buyers is a detriment, in our view. Direct communication between a buyer and seller may be able to clear up any uncertainties about the dress, before the actual purchase.

Moreover, paying a 30% commission on an expensive item like a wedding dress is a steep cost. This site will cost you roughly $600 more to sell a wedding dress than Still White or Once Wed.

Recommendations

We think your chance of selling a wedding dress on Still White and Once Wed is just as good as it is here — and it will cost you dramatically less. You can find Nearly Newlywed here.

What their users say: (From Wedding Wire)

“My dress sold in 24 hours. This far exceeded my expectations. Patty answered all my questions promptly, even after hours and on weekends. She was very helpful throughout the process which was very simple. I listed my dress on other sites and had no luck. With the reputation and following, I highly recommend nearly newlywed.”

Easy process

Nearly Newlywed made the process of selling my dress so easy. The website looks great and is very professional from a shopper’s perspective, which is I think why I was able to sell my dress within a couple of weeks. Patti was easy to work with when it came to coordinating and shipping my dress. However, Nearly Newlywed does take a decent cut off the selling price.

“I sold my dress on this website and they made it super easy! I was able to pack up my dress in the smallest box possible, send it to them for cleaning and pressing and a few weeks later I had money in the back. If you are looking for an easy way to sell your dress, this is the place to go!”

Like the return policy

As far as I know Nearly Newlywed is still the only used dress platform with a return policy, so I wouldn’t buy from anywhere else. Shipping costs $25 each way, but it is great to have your worst-case loss be $50 instead of $100s or $1000s. I also like that each listing includes all the measurement details (bust, waist, hips, height, etc.) – tag sizes are basically meaningless so this is essential practical information, but it’s also nice to get an idea of whether your proportions are similar to the bride in the photos when you’re trying to figure out which dresses will be flattering on your figure.”

On those other pre-owned wedding dress websites I thought there were a lot of great options, but once you buy its yours, whether you like the dress in real life or not.Then I discovered Nearly Newlywed and was excited to see that the stress of buying a dress online was eliminated since I would be able to return it and just pay for shipping, no big deal. Losing $50 in total shipping cost was way better of an option than getting stuck with $1000+ dress you don’t like when you try it on. I would highly recommend other brides-to-be shop for their dress here. The only suggestion I would make is that they change their try on policy from 5 days to 10 days, as it would give more time for someone to compare options.”

Almost too good to be true

“I finally picked a designer gown with an original price of $5500, which was listed for $400 and in nearly perfect condition. Almost seemed too good to be true. I was a bit skeptical about communicating through the site rather than directly with the seller, but Patti usually got me a direct, helpful answer within a day or so! Impressive. I also went to a shop to try to find something similar to try on to make sure I liked the style. The dress arrived in about 8 days, and Patti sent a nice message to ask if I wanted to keep it, and confirming that I was happy with it. I couldn’t be more satisfied with the experience or the end result.”

Updated 2/9/2023