First steps to wedding dress preservation - wedding dress drycleaning

The first step to preserving your wedding dress is, obviously, getting it cleaned. When you go to get your wedding dress cleaned, keep in mind there are many ways that cleaners can go about getting your dress sparkly and new looking.

The first way we are going to look at is wet-cleaning. Wet cleaning, as implied, uses water to clean your dress. Depending on the fabric of your dress and what possible stains it may have, this is one of the best ways to go about cleaning your dress. It is definitely the best way to clean sugar stains, most food stains, and dirty hems. Another advantage to wet-cleaning is that it leaves no chemicals on the dress if properly rinsed.

With dry-cleaning, there are three main solvents that are currently used.

• Perchloroethylene, also known as perc, is the most commonly used. It is best for degreasing, and is excellent if your wedding dress is extremely dirty or made of rayon or silk. It unfortunately can damage beading or sequins, especially if they are glued on.


• Petroleum based solvents are harder to find, but some wedding dresses state that they should only be dry-cleaned with these solvents. Stoddard and Exxon DF-2000 (also called Hydro-carbon) solvents are both petroleum based, but are harder to find. These solvents are better for beadwork and sequins, but they do not degrease your wedding dress as well.


• Greenearth is a new type of solvent that also does not melt beadwork (or the glue holding the beads on). Again, it does not degrease quite as well, but it is much more environmentally friendly. There are also much fewer government restrictions on Greenearth solvent.

There are some major questions you will want to ask your drycleaner before you get your wedding dress cleaned and preserved.

• First, you will want to make sure you know who is actually doing the dry cleaning. Some dry-cleaners may send your dress somewhere else to get done. Make sure you know whether yours does this or not.



• Make sure to ask if they will be doing dry-cleaning or wet-cleaning, and what type of solvent they use.



• Ask the expertise level of the person that will be doing the cleaning. Wedding dress preservation can be a difficult task; make sure your cleaner is up to it.

Lastly, you want to make sure you check the label of your dress carefully. Make sure you know the material and any cleaning suggestions it has. Take into account when talking to a cleaner the beadwork and how dirty the dress is.