Dallas-based Snag My Wedding gives wedding items a second life, while helping brides create more cost-effective weddings.

After serving as her cousin’s matron-of-honor, founder Tammy Bowser was surprised to learn there wasn’t a simple way to pass on wedding odds and ends, such as table decorations. 

“I was thinking, ‘This is a lot of stuff, what are you going to do with this?’ and the brides don’t always think that far ahead to figure out what they are going to do with all of the wedding items,” Bowser told Dallas Innovates. “And it made me think that there has got to be a way to purchase someone’s entire wedding. She only used these items for a couple of hours, this stuff is practically new.”

So she founded Snag My Wedding in 2012, which provides an online platform for brides to sell and shop for wedding-related items. With Snag My Wedding, brides can search for items, such as bridesmaid dresses and glassware, all in one color scheme or items from a specific wedding.

[Photo: Courtesy Snag My Wedding]

“Brides can put their entire wedding out for one price, or they can put it out in pieces, like only the dress or only the centerpiece,” says Bowser. “And since you can search by color or the city you’re in, you can find a wedding that fits your theme close to you. Doing this, I was able to cut down on shipping, since some of these items can be rather big, so you can go pick the stuff up.”

Bowser initially had a difficult time creating Snag My Wedding, but soon learned that she could solve her problems through a company closer to home.

“I found someone online in New York to build my website—that didn’t work. It is hard to translate what you really want over the phone,” says Bowser. “So the second time around, I wanted to find someone in Dallas. And luckily, I found this company that was a great women-owned business, and she was able to take my vision and make it into a website. If you’re not technical, it’s important to find someone who understands your vision.”

Tammy Bowser is the brains behind the resell platform. [Photo: Courtesy Snag My Wedding]

Since then, the company has come a long way with Bowser being featured in Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch last year, a show similar to Shark Tank that gives entrepreneurs 60 seconds to interest a group of judges to invest in them. During their pitch, the entrepreneurs are literally going up an elevator while the judges are watching via livestream. Once the 60 seconds are over, the judges vote on whether to open the elevator doors or send the entrepreneur back down.

Although the judges didn’t choose to invest in Bowser’s company, she told Dallas Innovates via email, “It was such a great experience and Snag My Wedding is gaining lots of traction after being on the show. We are at over 11K registered users on the site, featured in Forbes and quickly gaining the attention of more brides as they look at how they can have a more sustainable wedding, with less waste.”

Whether it be through Pinterest or the floor of a bridal expo, brides can find wedding items up for sale that they can shop on Snag My Wedding, which is meant to help make wedding planning easier and more cost-effective.

“I knew my idea was different, but I also knew that if I could get them to come over and listen for one second, I would have their attention,” says Bowser. “When you’re in a Bridal Showroom with everyone doing the same thing, and you’re in a stand-alone booth saying ‘resell,’ you have their attention.”

Shawna Strayhorn and Johnny Duverseau’s wedding was featured on the Snag My Wedding website. [Photo: Aimlee Photography]

Brides are not the only ones intrigued by the prospect of buying or selling their weddings through Bowser’s resell platform, many of the brides’ fathers have also hopped on the Snag My Wedding website.

“Instead of renting everything like people used to do in the past, with websites like Amazon, you can now purchase things for cheaper, instead of renting it,” says Bowser. “My best friend was that way. She went into her wedding saying, ‘I’ll rent some things, and buy some things, and she found that purchasing was cheaper, and because of that, she was able to make $3,000 in one day by reselling her items from her wedding.”

Pre-selling is also an option for brides on Snag My Wedding, which allows them to have their wedding items ready to be sold before they even say ‘I do.’ All a bride has to do is send in the photos of the items she wants to sell and Snag My Wedding will take of the rest. Once an item sells, there is a 10 percent transaction fee taken by Snag My Wedding, with all payments going through PayPal.

Bowser already has her eyes set on the future with plans for both the front and backends of the website, all in the hopes of making it even easier to plan and resell a wedding.

“They’re plugging into Pinterest and creating their boards and planning their weddings before they’re even engaged, so my goal for 2020 is that they can do all of that on the Snag My Wedding website,” says Bowser.

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