My dress available online. Would it be worth the hassle?

Found a dress today that I love and want to order. It's €990 in the shop and I could buy it online from jays bridal for €630, so a difference of €360. My mom thinks I should order it here as the alterations would be done in the shop(at an extra cost) whereas If i buy it online I'd have to find someone who'd do the alterations. My brother lives in the States so I could get it sent to him and get him to bring it home at Christmas so hopefully wouldn't have to worry about customs. What do you think?

I would say go for it if you are 150% sure of the US Size!!.. Especially as you are not hit by customs...

tbh i would agree with your mother, i actually wouldn't think its worth it, unless you know a good seamstress for the alterations, and realistically once you add the possible hit by customs is it worth the extra hassle..

I would agree with your mam and be safe and order here. I ordered bridesmaids dresses from the U.S. but unfortunately i ordered wrong size and lost out It is very hard to judge sizes. With it being your vwedding dress i would say be safe and order here Goodluck with your choice

I have to disagree, i think you should look into a dress maker, show them the dress and see if they could alter if it is needed. This is only a question and shouldn't cost u anything. At the end of the day the savings u are making is a third of the price. Plus as you stated, your brother is coming home, so you wouldn't get done for customs. I am sure you could use that money that u are saving elsewhere

TBH theres not a huge difference in the dress price and I would do with whatever you want. My dress is going to be about 700 and thats if it gets hit with customs, there is a lot of the time when it gets through without being hit for both customs and VAT. I tried my dress on in a bridal shop in Ireland and it was gonna be 1500 + alterations. So I snapped up the chance and will be spending my hard earned cash on something else for the wedding. At the min debating on whther or not I should do it for bridesmaid dresses.

Thanks everyone for your input. Am still undecided. Spent hours on here last night reading varying reports of people who bought online and it worked great and then people buying online and disasters with sizing and alterations. Funny I would have always answered a thread like this saying to go for it but now that it's me I just can't decide

If it were me, I'd print out the info from the web, take it into the dress shop and say " Look, I want to shop local, but this is a BIG difference in price, what can you do for me?" when you see that shops can discount certain lines hugely, there's a fairly comfortable markup in general, i'd say. even if you get aklterations thrown in, or whatever, that's value added, if you knwo what i mean? Good luck anyways!

Well girls, I got brave and ordered online. Was humming and haaing and just decided to hell with it. Got an email from them with a discount code for 12% off so for a finish the dress that was 1050 here(including extra length) was €609 when I ordered it from the states. Fingers crossed all goes ok. Thanks for all the advice.

I would get measured here first by a good tailor/seamstress and you should get the correct size from that. Most of those sites have a sizing chart to help. Definitely don't assume your size... I am getting my BMs dresses online and even with custom and VAT at 33.5% I'm saving about €200....