A bride bought a $200 dupe of her wedding dress online, and it looked nothing like her actual gown

• Toni Norton wore a custom Alonuko wedding dress to her May 2023 wedding.
• In October, she discovered that a $200 dupe of her gown was being sold on AliExpress.

Toni Norton married her husband Miles in May 2023, just over three years after they met on Twitter.

For her big day, the content creator decided to get a custom dress from Alonuko, a brand that specializes in illusion wedding gowns for Black women. She told Business Insider in May that the sheer look appealed to her.

"I really love the illusion of looking almost naked," she said.

Her gown was covered in intricate, floral lace with sparkly beading on the bodice and neckline, while the base and long sleeves were made of a tulle so transparent that it looked like her skin.

The gown also hugged Norton's figure before flowing into a textured train.

The dress was truly one of a kind — as Norton would discover when a dupe of the gown appeared on AliExpress.

Norton decided to order a dupe of her wedding dress

In October, one of Norton's followers informed her that a dupe of her wedding dress was being advertised on AliExpress — an online, international retailer that sells everything from electronics to clothes — using photos of her in her gown.

Business Insider was able to review the product listing, where AliExpress described the gown as a "modern mermaid wedding dress." The listing didn't include any photos of the actual product. Instead, the seller used two photos of Norton on her wedding day.

It was previously available to purchase in a variety of colors and sizes for $225.76. However, on Thursday, the listing for the product was removed after BI reached out to AliExpress for comment on this story.

"AliExpress is committed to safeguarding the lawful rights and interests of intellectual property owners and we do not tolerate any infringement of such rights and interests," a spokesperson for the company said in a statement to BI. "We have strict policies in place to deal with sellers who violate our product listing rules, and strive to uphold the integrity of our platform through technology and collaborations with rights holders and other stakeholders. Based on the product listing link you provided, we have immediately removed the product listing in question and taken the relevant enforcement action against the seller."

Norton told BI it didn't bother her that AliExpress was using photos of her on its site — but she did think it would be a fun experiment to order the dupe herself.

"I just thought it would be really funny to get it," she said. "I know what the real one looks like, so let's just see what the mail-order one is giving."

The website said the dress could be ordered in custom sizing, but Norton said she wasn't given the option to provide her measurements and ended up ordering the dress in a standard size. Though the dress was available in multiple colors, Norton bought it in white to match her original wedding gown.

Norton said she ordered the dress in October, and it took about five weeks to arrive.

The dress didn't end up looking anything like Norton's gown

Norton said she was somewhat hopeful the dress would look at least a little similar to her Alonuko gown, as she often sees great dupes of expensive items on TikTok.

"I'm on this app that is constantly telling me I can get the life I want, I can get all the material things I want, and I only have to pay a fraction of the cost," she said.

But Norton said the dupe of her wedding gown looked nothing like her original dress, even after she got it tailored to fit her frame.

Norton said she could tell the dress wasn't right as soon as she took it out of the packaging.

"There was no individual beading, while my dress took 2,000 hours to make with individual hand-beading," she said. "They just sewed a piece of fabric onto another piece of fabric."

The sheer fabric, which was a huge reason why Norton loved her actual wedding dress, also didn't look right on the dupe, she said.

"I knew that mesh color was just not gonna work with my skin tone," she added.

And when she put the dress on, Norton spotted the biggest difference between her gown and the imitation: the sexy silhouette.

"The first thing that I told my designer at Alonuko was 'I want to look naked,'" Norton said, adding that she wanted the gown to be sexy.

"I had traditional pieces with a high-neck collar and long arms and beautiful beading on the bodice and all that stuff. However, I still looked naked with this dress," she went on to say of her wedding gown.

But in the dupe, Norton said she didn't feel sexy both because of the high neckline and the heavy lace.

"I just felt super covered up, like a tablecloth was thrown around me," she said.

Norton said she wouldn't have recommended the dress to anyone, even if the $200 price point was appealing.

"I could have gotten a beautiful, high-quality dress for $200," she said. "I could have felt sexy. I could have felt all the things that I actually wanted to feel."