After each event, my daughter’s dress definitely needed attention. Fortunately for her, my business is cleaning wedding dresses, so I handled everything from spot cleaning food spills, hemline cleaning after the first event, to a complete cleaning after the first reception and before the second reception. Wow, a lot of work for just one garment.

What about you?  I am dying to know how everyone else handles their wedding gown between events.

• Did you take your dress to the cleaners between events?
• Were you impeccably clean and careful so you made no messes?
• Or did your Aunt Betsy jump in and touch up the messes?

Please tell us what kind of care your wedding dress received between events and I will send you an coupon for $25 off your wedding gown preservation.   I’m dying to know how you did it!

Robyn after wedding Great photos by M Portraits	What a mess! Hemline after Virginia reception

While 75% of wedding dresses are made of synthetic fabrics which are easier to clean and care for (some exceptions), that other 25% of silk wedding gowns require skill and experience for proper care. Many workers at dry-cleaning shops are just minimum wage staff, with little training on specific fabrics and stain removal. Buyer beware! Catastrophes can occur.

We received an email this past week from a very unhappy bride. She took her beautiful wedding gown to her local dry-cleaner the Wednesday after her wedding last month. But when she picked it up a few days later, she found that the previously white gown fabric had changed to a yellowish color and the satin had lost it’s sheen as well. She wrote to us asking if we could fix the problems.

I suggested that the first thing she do is contact the Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute who provides a service of testing the dress to determine what had transpired. The DLI looked at the gown and confirmed my suspicions, that the dress had been cleaned in water with improper chemicals (probably alkaline). The color can be restored (acidic treatment) but the sheen cannot. This bride discovered the hard way that not all wedding gown cleaners are alike.

Before Cleaning	After Cleaning

Do your research before taking your wedding gown to your local cleaner. Please read more about proper wedding gown cleaning and screening your local dry cleaner by reading our Wedding Gown Cleaning and Preservation Guide.

Gravity – it’s very useful for keeping us all on the ground, but not very helpful for storing textiles. If you are like most people, you have probably had a sweater or two ruined by hanging on wire hangers. Which is why you now always hang sweaters from padded hangers. Padded hangers protect our sweaters by distributing the weight of the sweater on a broader, rounder, less angled surface.

We use this same principle by distributing the weight of your wedding gown with cotton twill tape straps that we sew into to your strapless gown. We generally utilize the original straps attached by the gown manufacturer to hang the dress (usually found on the sides of the dress.) But we add at least four more straps that we sew into your wedding gown bodice lining. Two straps are sewn in the front, and two in the back, making six points of weight distribution. Additional straps may be sewn into waistlines for exceptionally heavy dresses. The cotton straps can be easily removed with a seam ripper if the dress is to be worn again.

The extra straps distribute the weight of the wedding gown evenly around the gown so that no area is distorted. Also, wedding gown trains are rolled in acid-free tissue and rolled up and sit at the bottom of our preservation bag. This also helps to reduce the weight of the gown on the upper portion of the gown.

Cotton straps are stitched into lining of strapless gowns for support for Museum Method™ wedding gown preservation	Acid-free tissue covers the straps before the gown is placed in our preservation bag

Wedding gown restoration is a service that we have been perfecting for about 8 years. During those years, we have taken professional training classes and we have performed numerous wedding gown restorations and gained a tremendous knowledge with that experience. We have learned that successful wedding gown restoration is a combination of Art and Science.

The science part is the knowledge of the various chemicals we can use to whiten aged wedding gowns. For instance, we have learned whether to use an alkaline or an acidic chemical and what temperature the chemicals will work best.

While the science portion is critical, I believe the Art portion of wedding gown restoration may be more important. This Art is really the understanding of the chemicals and how specific fabrics, in different conditions, and at various ages will respond to those chemicals. With each wedding gown restoration, our knowledge continues to grow and gives us greater confidence as we work on individual gowns.

Our goal is to restore each wedding gown to the best condition possible. Some gowns can be made almost white again, while others a soft ivory may be the best possible outcome, without risking damage to the gown. The oldest gowns we have worked on have been over 100 years old. But it is not uncommon for us to restore wedding gowns that are only 30 years old. So the conditions of the wedding gowns really do vary tremendously.

With each gown, we analyze the fabric content and the condition of the gown and then make a determination of which chemical to use, what temperature to use it at, and how long to soak the gown. It is really exciting to see the transformation that can occur. Occasionally, we will utilize more than one chemical in hopes of achieving the best results.

We restored the wedding gown below this past week, and utilized two different chemicals to whiten the gown as well as possible. A third chemical was used on the veil. We are really excited about the end result and I am kicking myself because I forgot to take the “before” pictures! Nevertheless, please enjoy the “after” pictures.

Howard wedding gown after restoration	Howard wedding veils after restoration

Nevertheless, there are many brides whose budgets just don’t have a dollar to spare. We understand. That is why we also offer do-it-yourself kits. Our kits come complete with everything you need to preserve your clean gown. We offer both Museum Method and Heritage Box kits. Our Museum Method bag is made of 100% acid-free cotton, the hanger is padded with acid-free batting and covered with natural cotton. Our box is a top of the line, museum quality preservation box (you will not find this quality at your neighborhood dry-cleaners.)

If your wedding gown is polyester (look at the tag) you could even save even more by hand cleaning your gown yourself.

Museum Method preservation kit	Heritage Box preservation kit

But if it do-it-yourself gown care scares you too much, there are several ways to save money or make paying for our professional wedding gown care services easier.

1. Visit our Discounts page for current promotions
2. Join our Promotional Newsletter (for monthly updates on our discounts.)
3. Save $20 when you take our survey
4. Utilize our Payment Plan (think of it like a lay-away plan.)

Whatever you do, don’t procrastinate your wedding dress cleaning, as the perspiration, body oils, beverage spills, good stains, hemline dirt, etc.. become more difficult to remove as they get older. And above all else, you will want to store your gown in an acid-free environment to prevent yellowing.

Scary!

This real life nightmare can happen even when you have the best intentions. Recently one of our customers sent us her wedding gown with some “scary” stains on it. Five years slipped by and by the time she discovered the oxidized stains she worried that they were now set permanently. Fortunately for her, Jennifer, one of our talented staff was able to remove the stains.

Thank goodness this absolutely beautiful wedding gown is beautiful once more.

Hemline Before Cleaning	Hemline After Cleaning
Oxidized Stains on Gown	Gown After Cleaning

The word “preservation” can be confusing. For instance, one definition common in the English language is the term used for the preservation of food. To preserve a can of peaches the oxygen is removed allowing the fruit to be edible for much longer. But “preservation” is also the word used to describe the efforts of conservationists to protect the environment, a completely different process.

Some wedding gown preservation companies focus their efforts on the first definition. They may even attempt to remove the oxygen from the wedding gown preservation. Perhaps they do not understand that it is nearly impossible to make the preservation box air tight with cellophane wrap. And in their attempts to do so, they make the wedding gown inaccessible to inspection or maintenance, and increase its exposure to plastic (the cellophane and the plastic window of the boxes.) This is not helpful as most plastics are an enemy to textile preservation.

Museum conservators, and most of the higher end wedding gown preservation companies focus their wedding gown preservation efforts on the latter definition. Their desire is to keep the wedding gown in the very best possible condition overall. In fact, a better phrase for this type of “preservation” might be “optimal storage.”

This is why hanging preservation is our recommended gown preservation method whenever possible. We know that the folding and creasing of a wedding gown that is required for box preservation, is less than ideal for long term storage. We encourage our customers who do select box preservation to follow museum conservators’ recommendations to refold their boxed gowns every few years into a different position in order to minimize the risk of permanent creases from developing.

If you do not have the closet space and need to utilize box wedding gown preservation, be sure that your preservation box is acid and lignin free solid. Some boxes are acid-free on the outside only, but interior layers of the box are not acid-free. Others are acid-free, but not lignin free. Neither of these boxes will protect a wedding gown sufficiently. Our boxes at HGP are the finest available.

In summary, hanging your wedding gown or heirloom garment with acid-free materials will keep it in the best possible condition. Hanging preservation minimizes folds and creases, is easiest to inspect and requires no periodic refolding. Our bridal gown care experts can clean your wedding gown to perfection and preserve it to museum standards. And for those wishing to save some money, our Museum Method preservation kits have everything you need to preserve your wedding gown, formal dress, professor or pastoral robes, etc. in “optimal storage” conditions.

We recently restored a beautiful 1940′s era wedding gown that had severe rust damage. All of the buttons down the back of the gown had rusted through and left severe rust stains on the back of the gown as well. I wasn’t sure that we would be able to remove the stains.

But to my surprise, with a little skill from our staff and the wonderful assistance of excellent chemicals, the stains did come out and this once beautiful gown is beautiful once again. Now we just need to find some buttons….

Rust stains on vintage wedding gown	Rust stains are gone!

We recently received a beautiful wedding gown from Linda Mumford of Salt Lake City. She had an outdoor wedding and her gown was definitely impacted. But fortunately her dress was made primarily of polyester fabrics which definitely helped us return her dress to it’s original beauty.

Polyester Fabrics have come a long way over the years. Some look so similar to silk gowns that an expert eye or lab testing is required to tell the difference. But polyester fabrics are less delicate than silk and we can be more aggressive with it while cleaning. This is why we heartily recommend polyester dresses for outdoor weddings.

Although Linda’s dress had serious hemline soiling, our skilled staff was able to clean it thoroughly. We were thrilled with the results and so was Linda. A wedding dress is just too valuable, both in costs as well as sentiment, to be disposable. Some young woman in the future will be able to wear her gown. If not, it will always be a treasured memento to Linda of her special day.

Hemline Before Cleaning	Hemline After Cleaning (click photo for a closer view