With Christmas now less than two weeks away I wanted to do a post on ideas you can still get for anyone who you have forgotten. I Have Stuck under £10 though most of the gift Ideas come in under £5, if your like me, your strapped for cash. Two of these may not arrive in time for Christmas as they are on ebay, but still great ideas for gifts either for next year or for birthdays.

I (personally) can not give enough credit to the whole experience of ordering a wedding dress online. The dress I ordered (even with my Uhum Larger than normal size) came to £120 with P&P. I was wondering how it can be made so cheap, but in china material is pennies. I think they get away with free P&p because its marked as gift and for some reason for international shipping that is cheaper. Also as your actually getting it direct from seller and not shop, so there isn't a 500% mark up. Also, as sad as it is to say, but its prob made in a sweat shop, but they prob make more from selling this way than via Primark who pay them pittence!

TBH the quality wasn't quite as great as in a shop but where as shop quality is say 100% i'd still give my dress 90-95%. the only problem I had was the bust on the dress, as I Was only asked for the measurements of the largest part of my boobs and not the top part I ended up with it in a straight line instead of curved and form fitting, I had to have it taken in a little bit, but then again, i do have some large assets! lol.

I also had a lot of beading on mine and I did notice that a few strands had started to come loose at the end of the day (not trying to put you off, just being honest). For me it did not matter as I wanted my wedding dress but refused to pay £500-£1000 for something I was going to wear for a few hours (it costs at least £150 to hire a dress for the day, and this way you get to keep it). My mother had a seamstress friend who did my alteration for free, and she said that if she had made the dress, or if you bought it in a shop it wouild have cost £600-£700, so all in all, if you willing to sacrifice a tiny bit of quality I'd say do it.

If you do it order one of ebay (or any site), just a few pieces of advice;

1) give plently of time. (mine said to allow 6-10 week, I had it within 4, but when I ordered it, it was 14 weeks to the wedding meaning I had time to sort something else out if things did go wrong, or they could double speed to make a new one) you can pay more (I think £40) to gurantee you'll get it in 6 weeks.

2) As you have to do the measurements youself, measure everything at least 4/5 times to make sure you have it correct. It will cost a lot more to get it altered here than to have it made right, be especially careful with length from hip to floor, make sure you are wearing a pair of heels similar to the height of wedding shoes you intend to wear. (if like me you wanted heels for ceremony and flats for night, I look the measurement with heels and minused half the heel height. I had a little dragging on the floor in the night, but as I was in a hall it did not bother me). However if the length wasn't right to make alterations to lengh is somthing stupid like £130, other alterations are cheap enough, but better to try and get it right.

3) Try a similar shape dress on in a store to make sure that its the style for you, wouldn't want you to spend that money and then find the dress is not what you thought it would look like.

4) Always check feedback, not only looking at the stars, actually go through and see comments and look at people (if any) have been unsatisfied and if so why. I think the one I ordered from had about 50 ok's out of thousands of feedback and only maybe 10 bad's. (Can't beat odd like that)

5) Just a warning really, it's all vacume packed so when you recieve it, it will be crinkled to hell! You may know someone who has a steam iron, all it takes is a good steam ironing and it's fine. I had a friend who did mine so I can't tell you cost.

6) weigh up the pros and cons, yes its cheaper, but a lot of shop dresses do ateration free. you also have to get is steam ironed and there is no guarantee that you will love it. however when it turns out right it turns out right! I have a friend who ordered her dress via e-bay as well and she loved it too.

As long as your careful about the seller and take as many precautions as you can to ensure it's right for you, then its a great way to have a lovely dress, for the perfect day, for a fraction of the price.

happy hunting!