A Wedding Dress Horror story- A Cautionary Tale

I have been exchanging emails with my friend Liz. Her daughter is getting married and wanted to repurpose both her mother's wedding dress and her future mother-in-law's wedding dress into something wonderful for her wedding.

Yesterday was one of those rainy gross days that makes you want to just say in bed. My mother used to say about days like that, while reverting to her deepest Brooklyn accent., "I shoulda stood in bed".

Liz showed up in the gross rain with two wedding dresses in tow. One was in a dry cleaner's bag (covered with a heavy black garbage bag against the rain).

Liz's dress was similarly sheathed in a black garbage bag but it had been preserved in a box.

Before she unveiled the box, I mentioned to Liz how the daughter of one of my mother's friends had paid to have a wedding dress preserved. They wanted to lend the dress to a friend, opened the box and saw that not only had it not been preserved, the dress hadn't even been cleaned and the giant wine spill that had taken place during the reception was still evident on the dress and to top it off the dress was kind of stinky after it's years sitting in a cellophane lined cardboard box.

Liz is a careful person and one who is prone to read directions. She read the note on top of the box that mentioned that the guarantee on the preservation would be void if the gold colored seal on the side of the box was broken. I noticed that for a box meant to preserve, the cardboard did not seem to be made out of the sort of museum quality cardboard that actually preserves textiles and looked like it had discolored and was beginning to disintegrate.

While Liz read the letter I looked through the green cellophane window in the lid. I noticed something rather disturbing.

The dress was covered with little dots of black, dead bugs and critter droppings.

We looked up the cleaner that had offered the preservation services. We saw that they had done business under a number of different names over the years, Prestige Wedding Gown Preservation, National Wedding Gown Preservation, Global Wedding Gown Preservation, to name just a few.  We saw that they had asked wedding gown manufacturers to hand out flyers selling their services. We read that they had been sued by the State of New York for selling fraudulent services- the process they described for preservation was hokum. We also read many horror stories similar to Liz's.

The unpreserved dress needed a wash. The "preserved" dress was scary.

The $280 Liz spent to preserve her dress 1988 is now the equivalent of not quite $600. It's a case of the Emperor's New Cleaners. All of it quite distressing.

Liz though is a woman of action. She has plans about how to be made right. Once the dress is sorted out and decontaminated I will begin this project.

So after you wear your wedding dress, get it cleaned and shove it in a plastic bag in a bottom drawer or in the back of your closet and you will be better off than paying to get it "preserved".