Given the size and delicacy of most wedding gowns, even the high price tags aren't usually enough to make them targets for thieves. It seems like it would be hard to smuggle one out of the store. But if you just go for the gown closest to the door, you might get lucky. A rare designer gown was stolen from an Alderley Edge bridal shop in the U.K. when they left the door open on a warm day.

The cream-colored tulle gown was made by Italian design house Toi Creazioni and embellished with gold lace, roses and ribbons and flares into a fishtail skirt. It is valued at £2,665 (about $5,000), but because the dress is so distinctive -- only one other shop in the country stocks it - and so very few like it are sold, the shop hopes to recover it. The shop owner said "it seems a very peculiar way to start married life in a stolen dress."

Most wedding dresses, in all their white, frilly glory, are worn one time, no matter how much they cost to begin with. They are then resold or relegated to the back of a closet. Renee Zellweger didn’t want her dress to meet the same fate and now that her marriage to country star Kenny Chesney is over, she has reinvented it as a party dress. Renee dyed the Carolina Herrera dress sapphire blue and had it shortened to just above the knee. Given that most celebrities are content to wear a dress only once, it must be a testament either to the designer or to Renee's lack of sentimentality.