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Want To Preserve Your Beautiful Wedding Dress?  Dry Cleaning Method

Your wedding dress was there for you in all it’s sparkling white glory on your most amazing day. Now, you want to return the favor. If you want to know the best possibly way to clean and preserve your wedding dress so it can last decades longer, then read on...

You’ll first want to find a qualified wedding dress preservationist (one with a good track record and a warranty as well). These are the people that are highly trained in cleaning and preserving wedding dresses.

To promote long-term preservation of your wedding dress, it is a very good idea to have it preserved as soon after the wedding as possible. Perspiration, food, errant drops of champagne or wine all result in darkened stains over time.

Don’t be so quick to grab the moist wipes just yet…these stains can be removed by a professional easier and better than doing it yourself.

There are a few popular ways to clean dresses these days. One of the most popular today is the dry cleaning method.  This is the preferred method and the one used by ALL professional wedding gown preservation companies.

This basically means they pretreat the stains and place the garment in a dry-cleaning machine. They use solvents (rather than water) such as perchloroethylene, or perc for short.  It isn’t “dry” cleaning after all, but just means the cleaning fluid used is not water. But beware! For wedding gowns with sequins and beads, perc can sometimes damage cheap ones of them. It can also dissolve the glue that attaches some sequins and beads to the dress, if that is the way yours were attached.  Better quality dresses do not use glue.  It's easy for you to examine your gown and you'll be able to clearly see if they are sewn on or glued on.

Some local dry cleaners may instead decide to use a petroleum-based cleanser instead of perc (because it is not as aggressive). Be aware that it is not as powerful either! However, the high oil content in the petroleum based cleanser does nourish certain fabrics and gives it a lovely sheen. That is definitely a nice side effect, don’t you think?

There are a few advantages of using the dry cleaning method (versus the wet cleaning for example):
Advantage # 1: It is powerful at getting stains out. The dry cleaning method uses chemicals that are GREAT at getting nasty grass, mud, dirt, cake, or other stains out quickly and easily.

Advantage #2: It’s used by all professional wedding gown preservation companies.

Advantage #3: The dry cleaning method is usually the safest method of cleaning for most wedding dress fabrics available.  Be sure to read the fabric care label inside of your dress. The manufacturer may state to “dry clean only”. You would definitely want to follow their instructions, since they know all about the fabric used to make the dress.

Therefore, if you’re thinking of preserving your wedding dress, definitely look into using a dry cleaning method as a fantastic option.  It may be exactly what you’re looking for in your long term wedding dress preservation goals!

Article by Don Clifton owner "Celestial Selections Bridal"

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