Woman Thrifts $6,000 Galia Lahav Wedding Gown for $25 — and She's Not Even Engaged
Published Dec. 15 2023, 2:52 p.m. ET
A wedding dress can be one of the most expensive costs of getting married, especially if you want a designer-brand dress. Thus, one of the most reasonable (and sustainable!) options to shop wedding dresses is to check out the local thrift stores. So imagine how excited one Alabama woman was to find a Galia Lahav wedding dress being sold secondhand at Goodwill.
Emmali Osterhoudt showed off her Goodwill find in a September 2023 TikTok video that reached over 5 million viewers by December. Here are more details on the Galia Lahav wedding dress found at Goodwill and what happened after Osterhoudt’s TikTok video went viral.
Designer Galia Lahav with her wedding dress designs.
Woman finds Galia Lahav wedding dress for $25 on Goodwill's website
In the viral TikTok video, Osterhoudt (@emmalifaith) models the gorgeous Galia Lahav wedding dress she bought for just $25 on Goodwill’s website. The dress typically retails for about $6,200, Osterhoudt said.
The lucky shopper said the dress fits her “like of glove” and doesn’t need any alterations. She shows an up-close view of the dress material. “It is just stunning. It’s a mixture of pearls and rhinestones,” Osterhoudt added.
Osterhoudt admits she won’t be wearing the dress anytime soon because she is not getting married or even engaged yet. “Im so freaking excited about this find, i may not even use it when it comes to the day because im not getting engaged or married for awhile but maybe its fate,” she writes in the video caption.
Commenters to the video shared in Osterhoudt’s excitement, and some said they might run out to see what they could find on the racks at Goodwill. “I’m not even engaged but now i wanna go thrifting for a wedding dress,” said one person. “I’m a bridal stylist, and let me tell you.. YOU HIT THE JACKPOT,” said another. Even the dress designer Galia Lahav commented on Osterhoudt’s video, “damn gurllllll.”
Galia Lahav wedding dress prices are in the thousands.
If you were to shop for a wedding dress on Galia Lahav’s website, you would have a hard time finding any dresses under $1,000, even among those that are on sale. The gowns range from about $1,700 to over $4,000.
The luxury brand is popular with celebrities and has been worn by Paris Hilton, Beyoncé, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jennifer Lopez.
The viral video prompted Galia Lahav to donate more dresses to Goodwill.
Are you envious of Osterhoudt’s Goodwill find? Well, you could get just as lucky. After seeing the viral video and the response it got, wedding dress designer Galia Lahav donated between five and 10 dresses to Goodwill stores across the country, People reports.
"We thought it would be an exciting idea to play fairy godmother and donate a few dresses ourselves to Goodwill for more Cinderella moments," Yael Friedman, spokesperson for Galia Lahav, told People.
It shows that sustainable shopping might pay off in more ways than one. If you're a bride-to-be, maybe check out Goodwill the next time you're hunting down that perfect dress!
