Whenever I wear a dress from Rent The Runway I get a ton of questions about it, so I figured I’d cave and write a post about it. (You can view one of my previous rentals here!) I wore this pretty appliquéd number to my blogger friend turned bestie Caroline’s (The Caro Love) wedding and I have to admit, I did get compliments all night on it!
Caro’s wedding was at the Mayflower with the ceremony at Saint John’s in Georgetown and it was such a fun night full of love, laughter, and happy tears. I’m so excited for you and Kendo, Caro! If you’ve never walked through the lobby of the Mayflower, do it — it’s an absolutely stunning hotel.
Now, onto the post. Rent The Runway is a bit of a catch 22. On one hand, you get to wear a gorgeous designer dress that you probably never would have purchased, on the other, you could have bought a dress off ASOS or LuLu’s for the price you rented the dress for. I think it’s really fun to treat yourself to a rental for a special occasion, but I do see that it isn’t always the most economical choice!
Read on for the pros and cons of using the rental service.
PROS
- You get to wear a fancy, expensive dress you likely couldn’t afford at full price
- You can easily browse their online selection by filtering by occasion, color, length, or all three!
- You don’t have to worry about dry cleaning it — the rental fee takes care of that
- You won’t be caught wearing the same outfit twice
- You can experiment with a style that might be out of your comfort zone without having to keep it
- You can try on dresses in-store at one of their locations, as well as ship your dress to the store so you can swap it out when you pick it up if it doesn’t fit
- You also get to order two different sizes for your order, which helps taking the guessing out of online shopping!
- There are a ton of candid reviews for each dress, featuring women of all different shapes and sizes — and they’re usually all spot on
CONS
- You’re paying for a dress for just a one-time use, and the rentals can get a little pricey, especially once they tack on the additional $10 rental fee
- Lines at the Georgetown store can be incredibly long — when I picked up this dress there was a 25 minute wait to try on so I just took it home, hoping it would fit
- Your dress choice might never make it to you — I had reserved a different dress back in January for Caro’s wedding, and a week before it was supposed to arrive they told me they no longer had it, so I had to scramble to pick a last-minute option, luckily the one I wore worked out!
- I’ve heard some mixed reviews about this one, but while the dresses are clean when you get them, they aren’t always in dry-cleaned shape because they’re shipped to you. I’ve received dresses that needed to be pressed and this particular dress had a mesh hoop under the lace skirt that was nearly impossible to straighten out and bothered me all night (to be fair, the reviews did mention this!)
- You must go to a UPS store or Dropbox to return it. If you have a car, this likely isn’t an issue, but in the city it’s a bit harder to navigate to specific postal providers and dropping it in USPS box around the corner would have been much more convenient than lugging it halfway around the city
All in all, Rent the Runway is a fun experience and I think everyone should try it at least once! Shop my dress and accessories below.
District Damsel 