Questions to Ask Your Dry Cleaners Before Preserving Your Wedding Gown

​You have a lot invested in your wedding gown and you want to be sure the dry cleaners you chose to preserve your gown will invest as much care in your wedding dress as you have. Here is a list of questions to ask the dry cleaner before leaving your gown to be preserved.

Where is my gown going to be processed? Who is going to be the one to actually clean and preserve my wedding gown?

Many dry cleaners send the wedding gowns to somebody else to process. You want to look for a dry cleaners who does all of the work themselves.

Can I inspect my wedding gown after you clean it?

If a dry cleaners is unwilling or unable to allow you view your wedding gown after it is clean and before it is placed in the preservation chest, how will you know what is in the box? Yes, there may be a window in the box, but that doesn’t show the whole picture. If you are not able to view and inspect you wedding gown after it is clean, you have to ask yourself, what is the drycleaners trying to hide?

What is the preservation box made of? What about the tissue paper and everything else used to preserve my wedding gown?

The wedding gown preservation box should be fully acid free (not just pH neutral), if there is a window it should NOT be made of plastic and all materials such as tissue paper used in the box should also be fully acid free.

What precautions will be made to protect the beads, sequins, flowers and other delicate features on my wedding dress?

Wedding gowns are not the same as normal dry cleaned items and they shouldn’t be treated that way. The dry cleaners should not clean your wedding dress with any other items and should take special precautions to protect your wedding gown from damage during the cleaning process. Ask to see before and after pictures if you have a couture wedding gown or if your dress is particularly ornate.

What is your guarantee?

If you preserve your wedding gown, it should come with a guarantee. Ask what the guarantee covers, how long it’s good for, what happens if you open the box, and anything else you can think of to make sure the guarantee is legit. Here’s our wedding gown preservation guarantee.