I’m always in awe of the amazing creative talent on Etsy. No wonder so many brides shop on Etsy for unique wedding items.

If you’re new to Etsy, however, it can take a little while to understand how the site works. I thought I’d give a little info to help potential Skully brides and grooms with successful etsy shopping trips:

When you arrive at Etsy, you probably have a fair idea of what your looking for – a necklace, corset, garter, invitation, favor bags, flower girl dress, etc. You know roughly what style of wedding you want – gothic, punk, rockabilly, etc, and you might have an idea about possible colours. Your first stop should be the search engine.

Etsy have just revamped their search to incorporate more advanced settings. Items are categorized by their listing date. For example, when you type in  ’gothic wedding’ you come up with around 50 pages. The items on the first page have just been posted, and the items on the last page might have been posted a few months ago.

You can further refine your searches and use the minus key to cancel out words. Ie, typing: goth wedding -garter -corset will give you all the goth wedding items that aren’t garters or corsets, in theory, at least.

In reality, becuase of the way Etsy’s search works, it can be difficult to find items you need. Etsy sellers ‘tag’ their items with up to 14 keywords, and Etsy uses the keywords to locate the items, so if the keyword isn’t in an item, it won’t show up. Many sellers also abuse the keyword, adding words for items that don’t have anything to do with that item – eg, labelling an apron a ‘dress’.

As you browse the categories you may see items you like. Clicking on the item takes you to the description of that item – you can see a few more photos, read more about the item (it’s measurements, colour choices, etc) and find out the shipping cost.

If you’re still interested in the item, check out the seller’s shop policies page. Their policies should tell you how long your item will take to arrive (useful to know if your wedding date fast approaches), their refund and returns policies, how they ship, and any other information they need to know.

For International Buyers: many sellers only list US shipping in their item description, but actually provide international shipping if you convo them and ask for a quote. This information should be on their policy page.

Next, read through some of the seller’s feedback. Even if the seller has 100% positive feedback, they could still have several neutrals or negatives (the system only counts neutrals/negatives if they become more than a certian percentage of the sales). Read the comments on ANY neutrals/negatives and decide for yourself if you think the buyer or seller was in the right. Remember you can click through to the ‘feedback left for others’ page and read what sellers have said to other buyers.

No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes – you shouldn’t NOT buy from a seller just because they have negative feedback. But if you feel the feedback might represent ongoing problems with the sellers products or service, you could look elsewhere.

If you’ve decided to purchase the item, place it in your cart and follow Etsy’s checkout system. Make sure you type in a CORRECT address, as often paypal struggles to update your address and you could have an old address written in your paypal account (even if you’ve changed it). Sellers know to use the Etsy address.

At the end of the checkout you’ll notice a button that says ‘commit to buy’. Etsy is NOT integrated with paypal so you need to click this button to enter paypal yourself and complete the transaction. Sometimes, this screws up – contact the seller if you weren’t able to pay via the paypal button and they will send you an updated paypal invoice.

If you’re paying by another method, check the sellers policy page and ‘note to buyer’ for instructions. You can use the paypal shopping cart to pay by credit card even if you don’t have a paypal account.

You should always leave feedback after recieving your item. If your item arrives late (or doesn’t arrive at all) contact the seller (via Etsy’s convo system or email) and inform them before placing feedback – chances are they’ll be happy to help you right the problem.

I hope that’s given everyone a great rundown on what to expect when buying on Etsy. If anyone else has any tips, tricks or advices, post them in the comments below!