When we received a wedding invitation this week I immediately decided that I would be shopping for a new dress. It’s been absolutely ages since I’ve bought one or had a good reason to. The wedding isn’t until next spring so I have plenty of time to find the right one, but just for fun, I decided to do a quick search of a few of my favourite fashion retailers to see what was out there.
At this point, I don’t have a specific style, colour, or fabric in mind. All I know for sure is that the dress needs to be suitable for a wedding, I want to feel fabulous in it, and I want to be able to wear it for other occasions in the future. In my initial search, I only found two that stood out to me, both from Laura Canada.
As I said, I wasn’t looking for a particular colour, but it’s obvious that Marine, as Laura calls the dark navy, appeals to me! I wonder though, is it too dark for a spring wedding? It does have the advantage of also being suitable for winter occasions.
Of course, as soon as I started looking at dresses online, ads began showing up everywhere… on my Facebook feed and even when I was trying to read the news. Right now, while I’m just browsing and considering what I might want to buy, that’s not a bad thing as it gives me lots of possibilities to think about.
I actually fell in love with the look of this one that popped up almost immediately.
If I was an impulsive shopper, I might have ordered it, but I’m not and I won’t. The seller was one I’d never heard of and the website was pretty sketchy looking which is why I’m not sharing a link with you. There were just too many red flags.
- prices that were too good to be true
- “sale ends today” pressure to buy immediately
- lack of information about the company
- lack of a phone number, physical address, or live chat option
- no independent reviews of the company or their products
- lack of detailed information about the product such as what kind of fabric the dress is made of
If that wasn’t enough, I knew that something was very wrong when the identical picture showed up the next day on a similar looking website with an entirely different name! The internet is definitely buyer beware territory and when I do buy my dress, it will probably be in person.
Following Augustine 