Cleaning and Preserving Your Wedding Dress

We get a lot of questions from brides about cleaning and preserving their wedding dresses. Many don’t know where to take their dress or what to look for in a cleaner. The most important thing is to take your dress to a professional cleaner specializing in bridal gown cleaning and preservation. Do not take it to your local cleaners with the rest of your dry cleaning! The sooner you have your wedding dress cleaned, the easier it is to successfully remove all the cake, lipstick, champagne, and floor dirt that you picked up the day of the wedding.

At Your Dream Dress, we have worked with and recommended Orange Restoration Labs in Connecticut for cleaning and preserving wedding dresses. Their quality of service, professional expertise and personal care are exceptional. They have some great tips on their website for cleaning and preserving your wedding dress. These are their top 10 things for preserving your gown:

1. Look for someone who specializes in cleaning and preserving wedding gowns. When it comes to wedding gowns, most cleaners do not do the work themselves. They send wedding dresses off to someone else, often someone else in another state. Not good. You want a cleaner who takes responsibility for your wedding gown.
2. Ask if the cleaner has been specially trained and if the cleaner is a member of an Association. The last thing you need is someone who is going to practice or “learn on the job” with your beautiful bridal gown.
3. How many years has the cleaner been in business? The cleaner may be very well trained, but years of experience count. The longer he or she has been in business the more likely he or she has seen a wedding gown similar to yours and knows how to handle a wedding gown as special as yours.
4. What kind of solvent is the cleaner going to use on your bridal gown? A Specialist knows that some solvents are more gentle than others and will use the solvent best for your bridal gown’s fragile beading and other decorations.
5. Does the cleaner handle solvents responsibly? Some cleaners can even offer you carbon-free wedding gown cleaning and wedding gown preservation because they make donations to a non-profit organization that provides carbon offsets and climate solutions. See Zero Carbon Weddings.
6. What kind of guarantee does the cleaner provide? Today or twenty-five years from today, who is going to honor the guarantee that your bridal gown will still be in pristine, ready-to-wear condition?
7. Will completely acid-free tissue be used to buffer the folds of your wedding gown when it is packed and will the container be completely acid-free? Do not settle for pH-neutral materials that can re-acidify over time—especially if a wedding gown is stored in a damp area where humidity can dissolve the neutralizer in the packing materials.
8. Does the container allow the fabric to “breathe” and allow the fibers to expand and contract with changes in heat and humidity? Shrink-wrapping can trap moisture that may cause mildew and create an electrostatic charge that sets creases which no amount of pressing can remove.
9. What precautions does the cleaner take to protect your bridal gown during the cleaning process? During the packing process? Prongs, for example, around the beads on your wedding gown can snag the fabric during the cleaning process. When your wedding gown is packed, puffy bows or flowers should be stuffed or protected with a nest of tissue. Bust pads should also be removed because they emit off-gases that will yellow your wedding gown.
10. Is your wedding dress going to be clean? Will the cleaner remove all stains and “floor dirt” around the hem of your wedding gown? Does the cleaner guard against latent stains? Stains such as wine or ginger ale contain sugar and can dry clear. Over the years the sugar in latent stains caramelizes and turns brown. Such stains do not automatically dissolve during the cleaning process and require special care.

Believe it or not, cleaning is the most important part of the wedding gown preservation process so look for a Specialist who will allow you to personally inspect your bridal gown before it is packed in an acid-free wedding chest. And then look carefully to be sure your bridal gown will be as lovely years from now as it was the day you wore your very special gown.

For more information on cleaning and preserving your wedding dress check out these articles on Orange Restoration Lab’s website:

Bag Versus Box: Which is Best for Your Bridal Gown

True or False: Five Myths About Wedding Gown Cleaning and Wedding Gown Preservation

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