You did it!! You have said I Do and have taken the wonderful step into marriage. Congratulations! Now, the food has been eaten, the top of the cake has been frozenbut what do you do with your wedding dress? Do you just box it up? Hang it in your closet? Wear it around the house? Although we think the last option is perfectly acceptable, we have some suggestions on what you can do to safely preserve your beautiful wedding gown for many years to come!
Option 1: Gown Preservation
Probably the most popular choice for wedding dresses after the wedding is to have them professionally preserved. In the past, this meant that your wedding dress was sealed up in a box, never to be opened again. But!! Ellens has partnered with a company that preserves your gown while still allowing you to open the box and handle your dress! How awesome is that?!
Association of Wedding Gown Specialists has an eco-friendly procedure for preserving your wedding gown. It starts with a hand cleaning of your gown through a special process using a solvent bath. This removes visible stains and helps your gown recover from all the wedding day celebrations. They use a unique, anti-sugar stain treatment while maintaining an environmentally-pure process. Their procedure is museum quality! If there is any damage to your gown from the wedding, they will send you a quote for repairs and you can choose to have the gown repaired before it is preserved.
How do you sign up?? Schedule an appointment with us at Ellens to drop off your gown. We take full responsibility from that point on and ship your gown to their facility. A wedding gown takes approximately 10-12 weeks to preserve. When it is done, it is shipped back to Ellens. This is beneficial because someone must be present to accept and sign for the gown when it is dropped offso we will handle that for you! Then we give you a call, and you come and pick it up!
What does it look like? Scroll on to see!
Your gown will be folded into a large white box and wrapped in acid-free tissue. An acid-free polypropylene window is just inside the cover for you to view the contents. White gloves are provided for you in case you ever want to handle the gown. This ensures that your gown remains free of fingerprints!
Having your gown professionally preserved is a wonderful option. It costs approximately $265-$285 depending on the details and silhouette of the gown. You can also add a veil and a belt if you worse those items on your wedding day!
Option 2: Frame Your Wedding Dress
If you want to be able to see your wedding dress easily, framing your wedding dress is a beautiful and fun option. You can fold the dress into a shadow box, or perhaps you could find a framing company to create a custom frame large enough for your full-length gown! This will probably cost a pretty penny, but would be so fun hanging in your closet! If you choose this route, the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists can still clean your gown and offer repairs if needed. Shoutout to Pinterest for this idea! See how other brides have done this below! (First image https://pin.it/wl7afz5pya2vpi; Second image https://pin.it/qagyyouzrryzsu).
No matter what you choose to do with your wedding dress after the wedding, if you want to have it for years to come, it is important to preserve it and kept in a safe place. If wedding gowns are exposed to light, over the years they will start to turn yellow. Additionally, it is easy to snag a wedding gown or to get it dirty if it is just hanging in your closet.
We love the ideas of professional preservation or framing your wedding dress, but we know there are more ideas out there! What have you seen brides do with their wedding dress after the wedding? Comment below with your ideas!
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