Buy international option or one that hasn't been cleaned?

Also, would the potential cost of duty/customs make the US dress a better option?

I bought my dress from stillwhite and she happened to be in the uk also. To be honest with you, I will never buy a dress or anything like that overseas. It was so frustrating. Mine ended up getting stuck in customs and the girl didnt think it was serious. I would contact her and she would tell me she would take care of it, wrong! After fedex kept trying to get ahold of her, they just ended up sending it back. Well I had to repay to get it shipped. If you do get it overseas, make sure they go through usps. There packages dont get stuck in customs, fedex and ups go through customs and fo get their packages open. But if you have any questions, let me know.

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Thank you so much for sharing how your dress buying experience went! That sounds super stressful, so I definitely don't want that. Plus the amount the seller quoted me for estimated shipping seemed kinda low and she's unsure about how to ship to the US. It may just be easier for both of us if I don't buy it from her.

I think I'm also getting more worried about paying for customs and how much that may end up being. I found a calculator online and it looks like it can be 12-16% of the value, which is a major add-on.

Really depends on the amount the person puts how much the item is worth. I read somewhere it it's less than 1000 there wouldnt be any taxes. I was worried cause she put the actual amount of the dress which was way over 1000. But that i dont know if it really was.
Also she was quoting me very cheap on shipping. My dress weighed 8 pounds. I thought it was a little low until she told me how much it was. It ended up being 169 dollars. she would give me the whole "it's this much, you want it yes or no cause I'm leaving the post office." It was very annoying.
Another thing about stillwhite is you have to pay any extra cost. So PayPal alone was close to 60 dollars. Also if something happens, stillwhite goes more with the buyer. When I wrote to them telling them that she didn't care and I have emails proving it, they wrote back and didn't care. I mean it was her fault it all got shipped back.
Also I realize that one main reason it got stuck in customs was cause ththiththis girl duck tape the whole package. No wonder it looked suspicious lol.

I'd skip buying a dress overseas. I ended up finding a number of dresses I loved on StillWhite but the cost of shipping and customs really cut into the savings of buying a used dress. Plus if I had a dispute I imagine it would have been a bit more difficult to resolve.

I switched my StillWhite searches to USA only and found a dress I love. It ended up being misrepresented (had alterations done to it that I wasn't told about, even though I specifically asked about alterations in my communication with the seller) but the alterations were easy to undo myself and it worked really well for me anyway so I decided to keep it because it was a good value and I liked it better than the dozen or so dresses I had tried on at a bridal boutique. If I hadn't liked the dress, I would have ended up filing a dispute and trying to return it so I wouldn't have had the hassle of trying to resell a dress that had more alterations than the seller had advertised. I'm not sure how that would have worked, but I can only imagine it would have been a lot more difficult if it had been an international sale.

I ended up buying the one in the US. It's been delivered to my parents' house because my apartment complex doesn't have am office and I didn't want it just sitting on my doorstep. Can't wait till I can visit them to try it on!!!