{"id":737019,"date":"2026-06-15T00:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T00:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/737019\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T00:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T00:25:12","slug":"woman-ditches-custom-wedding-gown-for-90-dream-dress-from-op-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/737019\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman ditches custom wedding gown for $90 dream dress from op shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of months out from her big day, Kaila Scally-Chadwick discovered her dream wedding dress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It wasn’t in a pricey fashion house, but rather in her local op shop in Donnybrook, 201 kilometres south of Perth, for just $90.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She tried it on and, in that moment, decided to do away with the made-to-order gown she had already purchased for the wedding.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kaila Scally-Chadwick\u00a0found the gown while searching for winter clothes for her baby. (ABC South West: Jonathon Daly)<\/p>\n

Cinderella moment<\/p>\n

Ms Scally-Chadwick said she had gone to the op shop in search of some warm clothes for her eight-month-old daughter.<\/p>\n

“I was literally just about to walk out the door, turned towards the front room and saw the back of this beautiful gown,” she said.<\/p>\n

“And I thought, ‘Oh, hold on, this might be something,'” she said.<\/p>\n

She tried the dress but was struggling to see how she looked in it in the small op shop fitting room.<\/p>\n

“One of the other customers took my phone and took a photo of it so I could see what it looked like,” Ms Scally-Chadwick said.<\/p>\n

“I walked up to the front desk and I said, ‘Listen, I think this is it’, \u2026 I could not have dreamed of anything better.<\/p>\n

“It fit like a glove and to me that was a sign that this was the dress I was meant to wear.”\"Baby<\/p>\n

Kaila Scally-Chadwick\u00a0hopes to hand down her dream dress to her daughter. (ABC South West: Jonathon Daly)<\/p>\n

Ms Scally-Chadwick said finding the dress felt like it was meant to be.<\/p>\n

“The theme for our wedding was western and the details on the lace of this dress — you could not have envisioned anything more perfect,” she said.<\/p>\n

“You don’t often put a dress on and it fits like a glove.<\/p>\n

“I was on the phone to my mum saying, ‘I’ve just found a dress!'”\"A<\/p>\n

Kaila Scally-Chadwick said the op shop dress fit her “like a glove”.\u00a0 (Supplied: Kaihlia Scally-Chadwick)<\/p>\n

And as for her original wedding dress, Ms Scally Chadwick said she planned to “pay it forward”.<\/p>\n

“I’m going to donate it probably to the same ladies at Donnybrook,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I feel like it’s a good full-circle moment.”<\/p>\n

Treasure-trove find<\/p>\n

Hannah Fox was volunteering at the Donnybrook Op Shop the day Ms Scally-Chadwick fell in love with the wedding dress on display at the front of the shop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms Fox said the dress was different from the usual donations the shop received.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We tend to get a lot of vintage, very plain wedding dresses, but when this came in, it was quite spectacular,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We begged her please if you can come back and share photos with us. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe made our day coming back and sharing that moment with her \u2026 the photos were stunning.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Hannah Fox works at the Donnybrook Op Shop. (ABC South West: Jonathon Daly)<\/p>\n

The Donnybrook Op Shop shared the wedding photos and the story of the dress on their social media page.<\/p>\n

“People have been sharing stories saying that they’ve also found their dress in our op shop, so that was pretty special,” Ms Fox said.<\/p>\n

“But [Ms Scally-Chadwick’s] dress was a very certain fit, so I just think it was actually meant to be.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Hannah Fox was working at the op shop when the bride-to-be stumbled upon her dream dress. (ABC South West: Jonathon Daly)<\/p>\n

Ms Fox says she believes the purchase is indicative of a larger societal change when it comes to the cost of weddings.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s become a lot more trendy,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Fifteen odd years ago, you wouldn’t say, ‘It’s from an op shop’, whereas now people are proud to say this is from an op shop.<\/p>\n

“And I think people realise the sensibility of that, the cost involved and everything.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just a couple of months out from her big day, Kaila Scally-Chadwick discovered her dream wedding dress.\u00a0 It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,356073,356072,44,356070,356071,356074,356075,356076,356077],"class_list":["post-737019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-best-op-shops-in-wa","tag-donnybrook-op-shop","tag-news","tag-op-shop-wedding-dress","tag-second-hand-wedding-dress","tag-south-west-op-shop","tag-thrift-store-south-west","tag-thrifted-wedding-dress","tag-thrifty-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}