Heritage Garment Preservation uses wedding dress preservation techniques recommended by professional museum conservators and are similar to heirloom garment storage used in fine museums worldwide.

Our quality box is acid and lignin free and made of the highest quality preservation materials. We use the same preservation boxes that fine museums use worldwide for storing heirloom garments.

There are no windows in our boxes, as they are not sealed and can be opened at any time for inspection. Museum conservators recommend refolding boxed textiles every 3-5 years to prevent permanent creases. We include archival intercept at the bottom of each preservation box to keep contaminants in the air from damaging your precious garments. We also include a pair of cotton gloves so that you may safely handle your gown any time you would like to.

More Benefits of our Wedding Gown Cleaning and Boxed Preservation

1. Your gown will be individually wet cleaned by hand or dry-cleaned in virgin solvent.
2. We hand press all garments for the best finish.
3. Our larger box means less folding of your gown and fits under a standard bed.
4. Our museum quality buffered boxes provide extra acid-free protection for most garments.
5. Our preservation box is made of the highest quality materials and is unsurpassed in it's preservation qualities.
6. Our un-buffered boxes protect silk and wool better.
7. Unsealed box means that your dress can be inspected to ensure that it is cleaned to your satisfaction and refolded periodically to reduce creasing risks.
8. Archival Intercept keeps the air inside your box pure.

Individually Cleaned Wedding Gowns

The first step in our museum quality preservation is careful cleaning of your gown, with either wet processing by hand, or hand prespotting, followed by dry-cleaning. We prefer to wet clean garments whenever possible as we can more throughly remove stains, perspiration, food spills, etc. We always use virgin solvent for our dry-cleaning when this option is chosen.

Virgin Solvent is either fresh (new) or newly distilled solvent. Because of ecological regulations and expense, solvents are recycled. Filters are used to clean impurities in between cleaning loads. Impurities that are not filtered out of used solvent can be re-deposited onto garments. Periodically used solvent should be distilled, which returns it to a fresh, like new, state. Garments cleaned in dirty solvent will have a "dry clean" solvent odor. Garments cleaned in virgin solvent will have no noticeable odor at all.

Hand Pressed Wedding Gowns

Your gown will be carefully hand pressed and packed in our archival quality acid free box using acid free tissue to pad all folds.

Larger and Wider Boxes

Your dress has less risk of permanent creases with our superior preservation because our boxes are longer and wider than most preservation boxes which means your gown will be folded less. We also have several sizes of preservation boxes for the best fit. Our standard buffered wedding gown preservation box is 35" x 22" x 5". Our extra large buffered box is 48" x 32" x 6". Our un-buffered boxes come in two sizes: 36" x 24" x 8" and 30" x 18" x 6". Each of our preservation boxes fit under a standard bed.

Museum Quality Buffered Boxes for Most Fabrics

Polyester wedding gowns, cotton and rayon garments should be stored in acid free, buffered boxes with an 8.5 pH. Buffered boxes give extra protection against acid migration to garments and should be utilized when possible.

Our acid-free buffered preservation box is not a cheap box with an acid free coating (as many companies offer) but is sulfur free and lignin free throughout with a minimum pH of 8.5 and 3% calcium carbonate buffer. TAPPI accelerated aging tests show our buffered box will prevent acid migration for up to five centuries! Specifications for our preservation box exceed those used by the United States National Archives and Records Administration.

Manufactured by one of the most respected names in museum conservation, our boxes are used in major museums, archives and historical societies worldwide. Some historic items which have been stored in these boxes are the baseball uniforms of Babe Ruth, military uniforms of Dwight Eisenhower, gowns of Dolly Madison, and the space suits of the original Mercury astronauts.

Un-buffered Boxes for Silk and Wool Fabrics

Silk gowns and wool garments should be stored in a neutral pH environment. However, the buffering agents useful to preservation can harm natural animal fibers such as silk and wool, therefore an unbuffered box is used for these fibers. Heritage Garment Preservation¡¦s neutral pH boxes are made of inert polypropylene with no additives to achieve complete chemical stability.

Un-Sealed Wedding Dress Preservation

Museum conservators discourage sealing any garment in any container for three reasons:

1. Fabric weakens where it is folded. Fabric weakens in the same way that paper weakens where it is folded, so that creases from the folds may become permanent.
2. Inspection is critical. Periodic inspection ensures that the garment does not develop permanent damage from oxidizing stains or any other problems. The sooner problems are discovered, the more likely they can be remedied.
3. Sealing promotes mold and mildew. If the textile can breathe, then the humidity remains constant around the garment. If any moisture were to condense inside a storage container, it would likely develop mildew.

Museum conservators recommend keeping heirloom garments: clean, cool, dry and wrinkle-free.

Archival Intercept

At Heritage Garment Preservation, we utilize the latest technology to keep your garments in the best condition. At the bottom of our preservation box is a 6 mil high density polyethylene Archival Intercept sheet. In the Intercept sheet, copper is covalently reacted into the polymer matrix of the polyethylene. The copper backbone allows the Intercept sheet to react with and neutralize potentially harmful oxidizing gases which are present in normal atmospheric environments. Common pollutants such as chlorine and sulphur compounds and ozone are permanently bonded and neutralized by Archival Intercept.

Testing done at DuPont and AT&T Labs show the following results: A 6 mil sheet of Archival Intercept when fully exposed to the open circulating environment will bond and neutralize the common polluting gases in normal atmospheric conditions for more than 60 years. The Archival Intercept sheet will neutralize gases for a much longer period in a closed box.

Our museum quality garment preservation boxes with the Archival Intercept gives the same protection as a permanently sealed container while still allowing the box to be opened on regular occasions without compromising the protection of the gown.

We also offer an alternative hanging garment preservation called Museum Method wedding dress preservation.

Get a free Estimate or Call 866-268-4696 for more information. OR Browse our catalog to buy our Do-it-yourself preservation kits.