How to care for your wedding dress before the wedding

How to care for your wedding dress before the wedding!

Before the wedding it’s easy, there’s only a couple of things to be aware of: the bridal boutique will normally keep your wedding dress safe until you are ready to take your precious gown home. Once home, your wedding dress will be kept clean in a bag, it will already be steamed and ready to wear. All you have to do now is keep your dress in a cool dry place where there is no dampness.

Transporting your wedding dress from your house to the venue

Keep the dress in the bag and make sure it’s zipped all the way up. From here you just need to carefully fold the dress into 3 so the train and hem fold onto the knee area and the bodice folds onto that. From here the dress is easily picked up and moved from place to place without unnecessary creasing.

Prepping your wedding dress at the venue

Once at the destination, hang up straight away and take the dress out of the bag. Allow the train to sit nicely on the floor so it’s not bunched up.

Tip: The morning of the wedding or the night before, get your dress out of the bag and hang it in the bathroom. Close the door and turn the shower on hot so the bathroom starts to steam up.  The dress is in the bathroom with the steam will allow those little creases to fall out.

Now take the dress out of the bathroom and hang it in a room with a bit of airflow so it can breathe.

Getting ready to put on your wedding dress

When it’s time to put this gorgeous gown of yours on, stepping into it is better.  This is so you don’t get any makeup on the wedding dress and don’t ruin your hair that you’ve just spent hours getting done.

You will need help getting into it. Even two people. This is what your bridesmaids are for.  They will open the dress up for you, you’ll step in finding the floor as you do this. Having no shoes on to get into the dress is ideal, you wouldn’t want to fall and put a stiletto hole in your dress that you haven’t even worn yet!

Once in, your girls will zip, button or lace you into your wedding dress. This is such an exciting part of the day, you’re actually in this dress that you’ve spent hours thinking, fantasizing and dreaming about, it’s been in the bridal shop for months when all you’ve wanted to do is bring it home and try it on - every single day. Now the day is finally here when you have it on and you’re about to walk down that aisle.

The next few hours are a bit nerve-wracking, you’ve walked down the aisle, said your vows and are now a married woman. You’re getting to know your dress by this point and it’s getting easier to manoeuvre and move it so people aren’t standing on you. The key is here to just be a bit careful when drinking that champagne, hold the glass deliberately and small sips – you really don’t want to spill wine down your front this early on, (that comes later!).

Less hustle – request a bustle

People will stand on your dress! Don’t stress about it, it will happen. Your guests just want to be close to you and they don’t really think about the dress that’s in the way cos they’re not wearing it and haven’t just spent all this money on it. By the time you go for photos or the reception, if you have a train, you’ll hopefully have a bustle that’s been put in by the seamstress or dressmaker who works in with where you bought the dress from. There’s really no specific time to put the bustle up, just whenever the train starts to get annoying really.

Check out our article on how to keep the bottom of your wedding dress clean.

Let it stain…

During the reception, don’t worry too much about how dirty the dress is getting – that’s what MyDressbox is for! Just relax and enjoy the night. Wine marks can come out, fake tan marks can come out, dirt can come out. If you go to a garden or forest for your photos, don’t worry about that either as we carefully pick out all those bits of bark and tree that are left in your dress afterwards.

But if it rains…

The big thing to remember is: if it rains on your wedding day or if your wedding dress gets wet in any way, it needs to be fully dry before sending it to us for cleaning. If it’s only a little wet, then hanging it up on the coat hanger is fine, hang it in an airy place with lots of airflows, that way it will dry quickly. If your dress is very wet, drape it on a clothes-drying rack, that way the weight of a wet dress won’t make it stretch. Once the dress is dry, send it to us for cleaning and boxing as soon as convenient.

We have had a few dresses that were sent in wet and had been wet for some time when they got to us, mould had been growing. Mould is very, very hard to remove. We can dull the mould staining but if it’s stubborn, we can’t get it out completely.

We have got a before and after photo of a wedding dress before and after mould - we'll try and dig them out and post them online!

MyDressBox is are wedding dress cleaning and preservation specialists servicing all major cities in Australia and New Zealand, including MelbourneSydneyPerthBrisbaneAdelaideCanberraHobartGold CoastNewcastleSunshine CoastWollongongGeelong and many more.

If it didn’t rain on your wedding day and your dress is dirty from the day, send it to us as soon as possible, the earlier we can clean a wedding dress, the better.

Clean your wedding dress as soon as possible – but feel free to get the honeymoon out of the way if you must!

That said, we have cleaned wedding dresses that have been dirty for four-plus, even seven years and they came out fantastic so don’t think that if you haven’t got it done straight away then it can’t be done.

Find out more information about our Wedding Dress Services.

The day will be what it will be, sometimes you just have to go with what life gives you. If it rains and you wanted sun, don’t let it get to you - otherwise, it will ruin your day.  It might even be an opportunity for a creative photographer to get some unique shots – speak with them about it.

Back to blog

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.