Guide
Rent the Runway, HURR, By Rotation, or one of your own: how to dress for a wedding
Bazin · 15 November 2026
A guest with a calendar full of dates has more than one sensible option, and this page would be a worse advertisement if it said otherwise. The three routes below are not ranked; they answer different questions.
Renting
Rent the Runway, HURR and By Rotation are rental: the garment stays with its owner and comes back. That is the right answer when the occasion is once, the size is unstable, or the look you want is one you would never wear twice. The trade is ownership and, for a West African wedding, something sharper: the rental catalogues of those platforms are built around western eveningwear and designer dresses. A gele that has to match the family's aso-oke, an iro and buba, a full agbada — the rental shelf is thin to empty in exactly those categories, because the pieces are not in the wardrobes its owners are drawing from.
Buying new
ASOS and the high street answer a different need: nothing about the piece is a surprise, because nobody has worn it. The cost is that occasionwear is bought for four days a year and then stored, and the cloth you actually want — hand-woven aso-oke, a beaded kaftan, real kente — is not on a fast-fashion shelf. Where it is made by hand, it is on Etsy: a marketplace for handmade and vintage goods, where a piece may well be sewn to your measurements by the person who sells it, and where what you are buying is a commission with its own making time rather than a dress already in a warehouse.
Buying pre-owned
A piece bought second-hand is owned, is usually a real cloth rather than a print of one, and costs the seller's price rather than a rental window. It is the route that needs the most information, because the garment has a history: it has been worn, washed and stored somewhere you were not. That is precisely why the listing on this platform has to declare condition in words, list what is missing, publish at least one flat measurement and name the country it ships from. The second-hand question is never “is this dress nice in a photograph”. It is “is this the dress in the photograph, in this size, on this date”.
One question decides it
Will I wear this again?
If yes, renting is paying twice for the same item and the piece should be bought. If no, and the cut is a western evening gown, a rental is the cheaper and lower-risk answer. If the answer is “yes, but only in this cloth and this colour”, you are buying aso-oke, and the shelf to search is the one where sellers are asked about the cloth.