Recently Priscilla of Boston closed their doors for good. Days after closing, their store in Minnesota came under fire when some of their soon-to-be former employees were seen spray painting dresses and throwing them in dumpsters. Their statement was that the dresses were old and they didn’t feel they were worth selling, but some of the people who saw them said the dresses seemed to be in great condition, including one Vera Wang dress that goes for around $6,000.

Of course without being there it’s hard to determine what the real truth is, but it prompted us to think about other things that could be done with used wedding dresses, whether it’s corporations or individuals that have decided they won’t want or need their wedding dresses anymore. Here are some ideas better than spray painting them:

1. Donate them to a good cause. There are lots of good causes out there; military brides, brides without money, the Salvation Army, an auction for charity, etc. Everyone’s looking for quality items that could help them raise money, and most of the time all it takes is looking in the newspaper to see what’s going on around your own town where someone’s trying to raise funds.

2. Sell it at a consignment shop. Maybe you can get some money from your dress by going to a consignment shop and sharing in the profit from selling it. Consignment shops can be dicey because if an item doesn’t sell you don’t get anything for it, plus the owners of these shops get to set the price. Still, if it sells you could do well.

3. Sell it yourself. You could advertise in the newspaper or on a site like Craigslist and get to keep all the profits. Of course, this will involve your feeling comfortable enough for people to come to your home since it might be unrealistic carting a wedding dress all around town for people to see it.

4. Contact a wedding outlet store to see if they’d be interested. If you have a designer gown that looks pretty good, it’s possible that an outlet store would be interested and offer you a fair price, knowing that the resell value for such a gown would be high once they cleaned it up a bit.

Aren’t these options much better than spray painting?