Have you preserved your wedding dress?
When I ask friends and family this question, I’m usually met with the same reaction: embarrassed guilt.
(looks away) “Oh yeah, I need to do that…
“You mean that white box thing?” (looks confused)
“I never even got mine cleaned – and wine spilled on it!”
“We’ve been married twenty years and it’s still just hanging in my closet.” (looks embarrassed)
Does any of this sound familiar?
Whether you’ve been married five days or 50+ years, it’s never too late to preserve your wedding dress. And the level to which you want to preserve your dress is completely up to you.
This article from Brides.com by has a lot of good advice about dress preservation, focusing heavily on the cleaning process. If you have a stain you need to address, be sure to check it out. But many of the brides I’ve spoken with don’t want to or can’t spend $$$ on storing their wedding dress and because of this, many of the brides I know have waited for years – or even decades – to do anything at all.
The professional talking points all encourage you to store your wedding dress right away. Have your mom clean your dress while you’re on your honeymoon. Add dress preservation to your budget. Get it all done within just a few weeks.
But many new brides:
· Don’t have money left to budget for preservation.
· Don’t have a loved one available to do it for them.
· Don’t consider it a priority.
· Don’t know what dress preservation was.
And many married women:
· Feel guilty that they never preserved their dress.
· Have their gown floating around their house, from closet to closet.
· Want to do something with their dress but they’re not sure what.
Well Hangerbee is here to change that. There shall be no more wedding dress preservation guilt!
First I want to spell out a few things that will make you feel better about yourself. Then I’m going to tell you how move forward.
1. Your wedding dress is your wedding dress. What you do (or don’t do) with it is your business. Don’t feel bad because your dress is still hanging in the closet! All is not lost!
2. Unless your dress is vintage, very fragile or heavy, or being kept in poor conditions, it’s probably still in decent shape. Whew. There’s still plenty of time to act.
3. You don’t need to become the curator of your very own historic clothing museum just to keep your dress safe. If you don’t want to give it the “white glove treatment”, then don’t.
4. You can keep your dress safe and not have to seal it away in a box forever. Your dress should be accessible so it can be enjoyed. Your dress is not a time capsule.
5. Preserving your wedding dress does not have to break the bank!
Feeling better yet?
What would could possibly make you feel even better? How about a quick and easy upgrade to your current situation?
My focus on textile preservation over at Hangerbee is because I worked in and with a lot of museums with less-than-ideal storage situations and it really gave me a new perspective about how to care for material culture (aka stuff). Our padded hangers are an easy way for museums – and everyone – to easily and affordably preserve clothing. Now, after speaking with many brides, we have developed our own wedding dress preservation kit! “Save the Dress” is an easy, DIY preservation solution for brides who want to keep it real but still care for their gown. In as little as five minutes, you can preserve your dress the way that museums around the country do. Our kit includes everything you will need to safely hang your wedding dress for years to come – even if your dress is strappy or strapless!
