Rent the Runway Review

Dress - Rent the Runway / Bag - Kate Spade / Necklace - JCrew Factory / Booties - Adrienne Vittadini

This weekend I used Rent the Runway for the first time to rent a dress for my high school reunion! I was weirdly nervous about it - relying on a dress you've never seen or tried on before for a special event is a little stressful! So I wanted to share my experience in case you're thinking of using the service.

After looking through literally every dress on the site, reading reviews, and creeping on all of the pictures posted by other renters, I settled on this pretty pink number. Everyone had posted that it was really flattering so I thought it was a no brainer. I placed the order for four days, from Thursday to Sunday, and thought I was good to go. Well, Thursday night when I got home from work to find the dress on my doorstep, I was really excited and immediately tried it on. Well surprise surprise, but it was NOT so flattering on me - instead it made me look super lumpy and bumpy. Not good. I freaked out and tried on every dress in my closet to see if I could find something else that would work. Nope. So I went to the Rent the Runway website, where I saw that I could request a new dress for an extra $12 bucks. Done. I found two more that I thought would work, emailed Rent the Runway with my choices & sizes, and called it a night.

On Friday I got a note confirming my order and that the new dresses would be on my doorstep by noon on Saturday. Since they hadn't arrived yet I think I packed two pairs of shoes, tights, a belt, every fancy necklace I own, and three bags, as well as two of the most promising dresses from my closet. The dresses showed up right before noon as we were about to leave, so I threw them in the car and we headed up to my parents house.

I tried on all the dresses, including the two that were my own, for my mom and sister (and Jeff, but he took the dude position of saying I looked great in all of them). The first dress I picked was a little black dress with some faux cutouts, and while it was cute I felt like it wasn't quite right. The second dress, however, was gorgeous (the one pictured above) - I loved the pattern and shine, and the fit was right. Of course, I couldn't raise my arms above my head and it was a leeeeettle on the short side, but nothing a pair of tights couldn't fix. I steamed out a wrinkle, added some accessories and was good to go.

Returning the dresses was easy too, I just popped them back in their original bags, added the pre-paid shipping label, and dropped them in a UPS box on my way to work. Bing bang boom.

Considering using Rent the Runway? If it's for a Saturday event, I definitely recommend choosing a Thursday-Sunday rental so that there's enough time for you to get another dress in time for your event. The Sunday end date is also nice because they actually say you don't have to make the return until Monday if you can't find an open UPS store. You can also rent a backup dress if you want to be safe for an extra $40, or if there's a store in your town, go in to the brick and mortar store to try on things ahead of time.

This post is not sponsored by Rent the Runway, I just wanted to share my experience. Have you used Rent the Runway before?

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