BOSTON - As the clock ticked closer to 8 a.m., over 200 soon-to-be brides and their teams of supporters got ready to run towards a sea of white, hoping to find the dresses of their dreams… at a bargain.
Friday morning was the annual “running of the brides” wedding dress sale at Filene’s Basement in Downtown Crossing. The chain’s flagship store has held the event since 1947.
Each year, special staff members collect thousands of designer gowns, originally priced between $800 and $9000, and the store sells most of them for between $249 and $499 and a few couture dresses for up to $699. Hundreds of people line up outside the store hours before it opens, hoping to be the first to grab the best selections.
Chris Chazen, 30, a doctoral student from Brookline, had been in line since 6am.
She said she expected pandemonium, but came anyway, “because the dresses are really cheap!”
Karen Hughes, a 22-year-old Dartmouth student who showed up at 6:40am to help a friend who will tie the knot this summer, came with a plan. “We’re just going to grab as many dresses as we can, and bring them to the bride,” she said. “We’re going to give her a balloon to keep track of where she is, and place balloons at the other places where we find dresses we like. We also have matching hats.”
“It’s going to be crazy,” Hughes said, “but we’re ok with that.”
The balloons were not the only strategy the bridal teams had to keep track of each other. The line outside the store was filled with neon t-shirts, bunny ears, headbands, and many other creative ideas. In fact, the store’s website recommends that the participants “identify their teams” in it’s ten rules for successful dress shopping.
Other suggestions include wearing comfortable shoes and non-revealing undergarments (the store gets so crowded that many women change in the aisles) and to be open-minded but decisive, because the dresses are not returnable.
Perhaps the most important suggestion on the list was to bring helpers. Moms, best friends, maids of honor, and even a few fiancés turned into dressers, gatherers, traders, and even guards to watch over piles of possible choices and valuable trades.
Jennifer Romano a 27-year-old projects manager from Revere, had her strategy mapped out. “My mom is going to find a spot for us to set up – we brought a mirror – and then me, my fiancé, and my best friend are gonna grab as many dresses as we can and we’re going to meet back up with my mom. We have walkie-talkies so that we can communicate to find out where she is. And then I’m gonna start trying on dresses with my mom and my fiancé and my best
friend are gonna be my traders and trade dresses with other people for me.”
Romano and her team, outfitted in rainbow clown wigs, were lucky enough to be at the front of the line; while she showed up at 7 a.m., her fiancé came hours earlier to wait. Though she is not getting married until 2009, she said she wanted to come to a sale before the Boston store temporarily closes for renovation.
As soon as the clock struck eight, hundreds of people ran into the store and grabbed as many dresses as they could carry. The racks were virtually bare within minutes.
After each bride tried on her first selections, the trading began, and women prowled the store looking for new possibilities. Some had signs on their backs calling for certain sizes and styles, while others resorted simply to calling out things like, “Looking for size eight to ten! Eight to ten, ivory, strapless!”
Twenty-seven year old after-school director Casey Thomas took only 42 minutes to find the dress of her dreams. “I didn’t expect to find one this quickly,” she said. “I didn’t at all.”
Thomas and her sister, who will be her maid of honor, decided to forgo the crazy costumes. “We saw the headbands, the bunny ears… but we were fine just how we came in,” she said. “We grabbed a bunch of dresses, traded amongst the people in our little area, and I got my dress on the third try.”
Caitlin Jeter, a student at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, was second in line at the cash register. “I didn’t expect this at all,” she said. “I actually didn’t expect to find [a dress] at all today… this was just a bonding experience for the girls.”
Jeter, 21, who is getting married next February, said that she expected the event to be crazier than it was. “It was actually better organized than I thought,” she said. “I expected there
to be a lot more cat fighting. People were kind cranky but the staff was amazing.”
Patricia Boudrot, a public relations representative for the store, said she had seen some of that insanity in her years watching the sale. “Some people will grab... there’re so many team members that they’ll actually grab tons [of dresses], and then they’ll lie on them, and hoard them and keep them from other girls,” she said.
“But there’s crowd justice that prevails. People stare them down.”
The only fight Boudrot saw this year was not even among the brides. “Actually,” she said, “there was a fight today between the Channel 7 photographer and the Tonight Show photographer, getting in each others’ shots. That’s what goes here.”
While the first few minutes are always tense, she said, things lighten up. “You see the worst in female shoppers in the beginning… it’s so competitive, and they’re overtired and all that… but within an hour you see the best in female shoppers. Everybody’s bonding, everybody’s hugging, everybody’s helping everybody else.”
“People told me stories about people being rude but nobody was,” said Chelsea resident Glenda Connor, 25, a Boston Public Schools teacher who took the morning off to come shopping.
Unlike Connor and others, not everyone waited in line for hours.
Cassandra Sachs, a 24-year-old corporate treasury analyst from Waltham, saw no reason to wake up at the crack of dawn. “We weren’t the crazy people,” she said. “We were hear at a quarter of eight… and to be honest with you, the first dress I tried on, the first one that my mom picked out… I think I’m buying it.”
Gabi Walter, 29, a doctor from Boston, found luck when she stopped by in the evening after work. “I think it’s insane to come early because there’s lots of stuff left at 6:45,” she said.
“Without the crowds, it’s more organized. Everything’s back on the racks.”
Sarah Ferris, 25, an administrative assistant from Quincy, wasn’t as happy when she came late. “I got here at 9:30 and a lot of people had found their dresses already… I was at a bit of a disadvantage. I wish I had come earlier and with people – it’s hard to carry stuff around yourself and fight people. People get territorial over the dresses and if you watch them, they yell at you.”
Abigail Pizarro, 21, a home health aide from Tauton, felt the same way when she came in the evening. “I feel like I got slim pickings… I don’t think I look good in anything. I should have come with someone… I’m going to keep trying, but I might just give up and go get it tailored and pay the few thousand… I don’t care.”
Boudrot said she urged people to not give up. “We counted about 200 brides out there in the crowd, and we have 2,630 dresses, so… it looks very competitive but it’s not. You could come [late] and find your dream dress. The most we can sell is the number of brides that show up.”
Annual sales also take place at the Filene’s Basement stores in New York, Atlanta, Cleveland, and Columbus, Ohio.
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