Wedding Dress From Ebay?

OK......So we had finally decided to set the date and get hitched after 8 years of loving each other. I was so excited and immediately started looking around for a dress. Because of the economy and seeing that I had just gotten laid off in December, I knew it would have to be a great bargain dress. As I began to scour the internet, I saw that dresses were not very cheap. Then I had a light bulb go off in my head. Ebay! The place I had gotten so many bargains from in the past....why not a wedding dress?
I found a beautiful ballerina-style dress from a store in China. I breezed through the feedback of this seller, and everything seemed to be ok. So for $68, free shipping and a beautiful custom made dress (replica, of course), I thought, what the heck? After all, through Paypal I had full purchase price protection. Definitely worth the gamble at such a bargain price. Besides, I had heard that many bridal dresses come from China anyway, so it seemed plausible that this offer wasn't THAT good to be true. It made sense to me. So I did it!
3 weeks later, I wrote the seller asking if my dress would be shipping out by May 31st, which was the timeline he had given for making and shipping the dress. I never received a response. I went back to his feedback....which I had been doing in between time anyway, and saw a recent negative feedback for him. Hmmmmm...I thought. I watched daily as the negative feedbacks rolled in. One after another. I wrote him again, telling him my concerns because of his non-response and negative feedbacks. Still no email.
I finally filed a claim through Paypal and am currently waiting to see where that goes. Lesson learned. I actually learned a lot about the whole feedback thing. Did you know that with some sort of program, they can actually put up FAKE feedback? I always do a lot of researching on the internet, and learned SO much on this subject. There are ways to tell that's it's fake, but that's a whole other blog!
After all this chaos I decided to look for a dress the conventional way. I got in my car and drove my butt to David's Bridal where the staff was more than helpful. After trying on eight dresses, number nine was "the one". I absolutely LOVE it! I have a little over a year to lose a few pounds so that the dress can look like it should on me. lol
Thus far, for my wedding attire, I've purchased my dress(David's), my veil(ebay), my petticoat(ebay), my tiara(ebay) and my shoes. I still need jewelry and I'm still contemplating on gloves(but probably not) and putting some straps or sheer 3/4 sleeves on dress.