Sarah Caitlin Hall, who once worked in the formalwear industry, believes the dress she wore in her wedding may originally have been priced as high as $2,000.

Sarah purchased it for $35 at the Goodwill Gown Sale last March.

“I knew that I loved the dress as soon as I spotted it that morning,” the 22-year-old Nashville resident said. “It was perfect. It fit me almost perfectly, and it was beautiful.”

The former Sarah Martin married her longtime friend, Robin Hall, on Oct. 18, 2018, in a quiet little pavilion at Edwin Warner Park in Nashville’s Bellevue community.

“It was the most special moment of my life,” she recalls.

Sarah is one of many brides-to-be, bridesmaids and prom-goers who have walked away from a Goodwill Gown Sale with a beautiful dress for an amazingly low price.

Lenea Lemons, formerly Lenea Lawrence, also bought her wedding gown at last year’s sale.

“A friend of mine told me about the sale. She was like, ‘We need to go.’ But I said, ‘I’m not going to find a dress there.’ I always run into problems with finding my size.”

Lenea agreed to go anyway, hoping that she might at least find some accessories for her wedding.

“We got there way early, but after the wait and going in, it became a madhouse — there were a lot of people there, and everybody was picking and picking and picking,” she recalls, laughing. “I was like, ‘Wow!’ and just standing there watching everybody, and then I realized I needed to get looking!”

Lenea quickly found two dresses she liked — a red one with rhinestones and a white one with a heart shaped design on the bodice. The red one did not fit, but the white one was very close. She decided to take a chance on it.

Her father had come along to help her pay for the dress, but his assistance was not needed.

“I only gave $49 for the wedding dress,” Lenea says. “It was a miracle. I was expecting to spend $300 to $400. It was such a blessing.”

Lenea’s dream had always been to have a purple-and-white wedding gown. For another $100, she had the dress altered to add a purple corset.

She and her husband Greg were married on Oct. 25 at Cedars of Lebanon State Park in front of about 200 guests.

Greg cried when he first saw her in he wedding dress.

“Everybody was saying I looked like a princess,” Lenea recalls. “The dress … was beautiful. More than breathtaking.”