A man says he recently sold his ex-wife’s wedding dress on eBay after she left it in his parents’ closet for years following their divorce, according to a Reddit post by u/Eddie_Bernays in r/confession. The dress reportedly sat in the house long after their five-year marriage ended, and his mother eventually asked him to remove it as the garment apparently brought back bad memories for her.
The man apparently decided to sell the expensive item for extra cash. He used photos from his old wedding album to list the dress, but said he placed a black box over his ex-wife’s face in the pictures to hide her identity. A nursing student in North Carolina reportedly bought it at a discount.
According to his account, the buyer was so pleased with the designer gown that she sent him a thank-you note. However, things took a strange turn about two months after the sale when the ex-wife reached out via email. She reportedly told him she was getting married again and wanted to come over to pick up her original wedding dress.
He apparently told her a roof leak destroyed the dress
The dress had been stored away for years after the man and his ex-wife left it at his parents’ house on the night of their own wedding. They had stopped by the house to change before heading to the airport for their honeymoon. While they were away, his sister boxed the wedding dress up and put it in a closet.
Faced with the fact that the item was long gone, the man says he lied to her. According to the Redditor, he told her that a roof leak had ruined the wedding dress and that it had already been thrown away.
Secondhand fashion appears to be a growing focus for eBay. The company recently completed its roughly $1.2 billion acquisition of the resale app Depop from Etsy, according to The Industry. eBay said its fashion business already generates more than $10 billion in annual gross merchandise volume.
The post reportedly drew thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments. One commenter questioned why a divorced bride would want to reuse her wedding dress, saying, “Why on earth would a bride who got divorced want to re-use her wedding dress?!” Another person pointed out that superstition stops some people from wearing a gown twice, saying, “so weird that she wanted to reuse the jinxed dress tbh.”
A third commenter argued the ex-wife seemed to treat his mother’s house like a storage unit. “That dress wasn’t important to her enough to take it when you two split,” the commenter wrote. Several others said the man was likely within his rights to sell an item that had sat untouched for years.
Published: Oct 30, 2026 02:30 pm