I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what I was going to write for today’s Save Money Monday. I asked my wife for advice and she suggested that I write about how to save money on a wedding dress. Despite the photo here, it’s not all that common for men to buy wedding dresses. I love a challenge, but I’m not crazy. I’ve enlisted my wife to help me come up with ideas. Here’s what we came up with:

• David’s Bridal – This is where my wife ended up getting the dress she actually wore at our wedding. (She decided that she looked better in this than the Ebay one.) She found it on a $99 sale. It was a situation where she was at the right place at the right time.
• A Simple White Dress – Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t necessarily need all the poof of traditional wedding dresses. My wife suggests J. Crew or Ann Taylor – something that you can at the mall. It’s good enough for Carrie Bradshaw… Simple can be great… and cheap.
• Best Places to Pick up a Cheap Designer Dress – The media has manipulated people extolled the virtues of getting a designer wedding dress. You too can get a dress by Vera Wang (or a bunch of French-sounding designers whose names have significantly more than the 8 letters that I can’t remember) for around 10% of the retail price.
• Search Ebay for Wedding Dresses – My wife fell in love with a wedding dress on her search. There was just one small problem – the price tag. It was priced at $4400. Sorry, that’s just not on our agenda for something that is worn one day. However, via Ebay, she found and bought the same dress for around $500.
• Filene’s Basement Running of the Brides – Where I come from, Boston, there’s an annual stampede of women sale of wedding dresses at Filene’s Basement, a department store with a long history in Boston. The sale has gotten such large recognition that it’s very much like a Black Friday event – thousands of women line up for it. Some even travel a great distance to be a part of it. Last week it was time for another running. Just to give you an idea of the mayhem, here’s a clip.

• Have a Naked Wedding – We used to joke that we were going to do this. Preparing clothing for a wedding is just a huge hassle. The bridesmaids complained about any and every choice (you can’t make 6 people happy in the same dress). Why not just avoid the whole issue? You’ll be one step closer to consummating the marriage.

Check out Money Smart Life for more tips on how to save money on wedding dresses.