Bridesmaid dress ses have no resale value

Closets are often cluttered with dresses that will never be worn again.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Most women of a certain age have a clot of polyester/acetate in the back of their closets, a frilly parade of dresses in shades with strippers' names -- Ice Pink, Moon Lavender, Hot Emerald.
They're the dresses that your friend, the big liar in the white veil, promised you could wear again after her wedding.
"No one knows what to do with them," said Heather Craig of Revente, which emphatically will not take a bridesmaid dress for resale, unless it's a Vera Wang or something very formal and cocktail-ish; a bridesmaid dress that has fully renounced its lowly origins and gone over to the other side.
"Otherwise, they look very bridesmaid-y," Craig said. "The styles are boring, and they're usually lavender or pale pink.
"If someone calls, and the conversation starts with, 'I have a bridesmaid's dress...' we say 'no' and tell people to donate to theaters."
"Or the Cinderella Project," said Craig's co-worker, Janie McDowell, referring to a charity that provides gently used formal wear for young women who lack the financial resources to buy gowns for their high-school proms. In Columbia, the S.C. Bar Young Lawyers Division sponsors the project.
McDowell had another idea.
"You could make a cool quilt out of them," she said.
One place for a bridesmaid dress to embark on a second life is at Goodwill. One local Goodwill has all manner of colors, from fuchsia pink to shiny grape to what can only be described as honkin' red. (One brand is called, plaintively, "Do You Love Me?")
Most dresses go for $9.99 unless they were expensive to begin with, in which case the price is $39.99. (You can tell which ones were expensive originally, since the wearers didn't bother to remove the tags.)
For party people
Goodwill gets a pretty steady influx of these dresses in the spring.
"College kids rework them all the time for costume parties and plays," said sales associate Tanya Corley.
HipWaZee, a vintage-clothing and costume store, has many bridesmaid dresses from the 1970s and '80s. They are adventures in pink, studies in how many places enormous bows can go.
"We rent them out," said employee Kelly Rego. "They're popular as Southern belle costumes for Halloween."
Other options for the bridesmaid dress:
UUse the material to hand-sew some delicate throw-pillow covers. Hey, you're Amish, right?
UGive it to your neighbor's kid who likes to play dress-up. His father will thank you.
UHigh-fashion cat bedding.
UMulch.
UKeep it in the trunk of your car in case someone goes into labor on the freeway.
UIf your dress is red, take it to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Toro! Toro! Toro!
UThis Halloween, go as The Scary Bridesmaid Who Went Insane After Too Many Discussions of the Merits of Soft Petal Pink Versus Rosy Champagne.
UNothing says frugal couture like a reinvented bridesmaid's gown -- bleach it and wear it to your own wedding!
UThree words: gigantic head wrap.