Saturday, January 5, 2008

Adventures in Bridesmaid Dress Shopping Part II



I did end up buying one thing at the store, an Ann Cares Card. We bought the dresses in October which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Ann Taylor sells the Ann Cares Card for $25 and $20 goes towards breast cancer research. The benefit of the card is that it gave us free shipping on orders over $125 and an additional 15% everything including sale items -- double score! We drove home and called the one remaining bridesmaid I hadn’t asked yet (she lives far away and I wanted to do it in person but cheap dresses won me over.) After the excitement and tears she told me her dress size and I was off to order. My one last challenge was deciding if I should order 5 dresses or 6. I have one maid of honor, my mother, and 5 bridesmaids. My mother hadn’t decided if she wanted to wear a mother of the bride dress or a dress like the other girls. In the end I ordered a dress for her just in case since it was a cheap insurance policy in my opinion.

The one thing I do before buying anything on-line is check to see if the vendor is listed with Ebates. Ebates is a site the shares the commission they get from directing your business to another businesses site. They give 3% cash back at Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Bluefly, Brooks Brothers and tons more. Some sites offer more, as much as 25%, but the standard I’ve seen is between 2-6%. When you’re buying $400 worth of bridesmaid dresses it really pays off.

So as a re-cap:

Dress - $198
On Sale - $99.44
25% off Sale - $74.58
15% off Ann Cares Card - $63.39
3% cash back with Ebates - $61.49
Add the cost of the sash - $68
Shipping - Free with Ann Cares Card
Total Cost of Dress with Sash (shipped) = $68


The day the dresses arrived!:




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