If you procrastinated shopping for a homecoming dress, don’t worry – you aren’t the first and you certainly won’t be the last. Would you love to find a glamorous dress, but don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend? Sure, there are some amazing dresses out there for nearly a thousand dollars (anyone who has watched endless marathons of “Say Yes to the Dress” knows that much), but you can find one just as beautiful for a tenth of the cost (or less!). Let’s dig into your options.
1) Online Bargains – We all know that retail stores often have items deeply discounted online, but not in the store. The bottom line is that stores have to pay employees to present the clothing, clean the store, and work the till. They also have to pay rent for the retail space and all of the shipping to the stores. Naturally these costs get passed on to you. Instead, take your laptop out and surf the web for a while. There might just be an amazing dress on clearance for you to put in your virtual cart!

2) Classifieds – When classifieds used to be in the newspaper (you know those things that were like really thin iPhones all folded together), the only description you would get was “nice dress for sale, pink with lace”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’m picturing that dress very well! Being a chicka back then must have been pretty tough! Today, you can find a variety of online classified ads with pictures and descriptions, and at incredibly cheap prices because many homecoming dresses were worn once (that’s right, we all have those dresses that we wore out for “one special night” and now we’ll either never fit into them again, or we wondering what the heck we were thinking when we bought that thing 3 years ago – but someone else’s “used to be” could be your “can do without”).
3) Second Hand Stores – I know – the stigma of just reading this is creeping you out – but seriously, it’s not as if you have to wear a neon sign that reveals where you got it! There are most likely a few second hand stores in your neighborhood. Pop your head in there for a couple of minutes and see what they have. I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Often times, very nice dresses can be found for less than $20 and they still look brand new. If you can’t find any nice dresses in your neighborhood, head to the second hand store in the high-class neighborhood. They typically have more quality donations from the more wealthy residents. We used to go to several second hand places to get Halloween costumes, and then we would all secretly end up looking at the clothes once we got there – even though we would never admit to going back and purchasing other stuff later.