For example, this this dress...
I saw this dress a couple of months back and fell in love with it. It's cute, it's dressed up, it's comfy, and it's semi-casual. A perfect Friday dress for a office with a "no jeans" policy. The only problem? The price. I've done my best to edit out the website info, but the place I first saw it was here:
I did not want to pay $130. I love the dress. Were I not trying hard to budget, I would have paid it. But I just couldn't in good conscious.
Before you pay full price for something like that, check google. I'm serious. I googled the designer and the name of the dress, and look what came up!
Factor in that Macys.com also typically has coupon codes on the front page, I got another 25% off on top of this lower $103 price. Not to mention there's usually a free shipping or similar deal. Macy's has got your back, man!
So a dress that cost $130, I got for $77.25. I felt much better about that. And I get compliments on the dress every time I wear it. I had to let the hem down a bit. But even the $5 investment in thread and hem tape didn't come anywhere near the price from the other seller. Which would also have to have been hemmed.*
I did the same thing when I got married ... 11 1/2 years ago? YIKES! My dear friend found the perfect shoes for me (wish I had a pic, but I'm geographically separated from them right now), but they cost over $200. At that time, there was no way I could afford a $200 pair of shoes period, let alone a pair I'd only wear once. But I googled! Took sifting through 8 pages of results before I found a good hit, and snagged them for $98 bucks. With search engine optimization, and people realizing you can virtually bargain hunt so lowering their prices more often, that kind of thing is way easier today, thank goodness. Still... If never hurts to take some time to really hunt for that deal, okay?
Now go forth and find great stuff at more acceptable prices!
*Google is also handy for those websites that don't list the hem length. If you can find the dress on another site, you might just find more about how the dress fits, hem length, etc. So the original website had the hem length, while Macy's didn't. I still knew what I was in for with that short of a hem, though, and that I'd need to add an inch. For that, though, be sure you know how that designer usually works. I know that Michael Kors includes a lot of leeway in its hems, so I knew I could add an inch without a problem so long as I added some hem tape. Had I been unsure of the designer, I wouldn't have chanced receiving a dress with a 1/2 hem that I couldn't extend.
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