What came in this month

Three this month. A Jenny Packham “Eden” in silk satin under beaded tulle, worn for eight hours at a village church in Oxfordshire and danced in for most of them. A Suzanne Neville “Cabianca”, organza over a corseted foundation, from a walled garden in Sussex in a heatwave nobody had planned for. And a Rime Arodaky “Wilson”, which has no lace, no train to speak of and no ceremony about it at all.

Ellie Gillard photographed two of the weddings on this site and has agreed we can use her work on both listings. Every image is credited to her, with a live link, on the gown page and in every post that uses it.

This is the part we care most about getting right. The bride does not own her wedding photographs. Her photographer does. So we ask, every time, and we say plainly what we are asking for and what we are not. Ellie has a page in our directory, which is the least we can do in return.

Whether a dress that has been worn is worth less than one that has not.

The market thinks so. We do not entirely agree. A gown worn once for a single day and professionally cleaned is, in condition terms, difficult to tell apart from a sample that forty brides have pulled over their heads in a shop. The difference is that we can tell you precisely what happened to this one, and a sample rail cannot tell you anything at all.

Worn once is a provenance, not a defect.