Wedding Blog

During my wedding planning madness, I never thought about where and how to get my dress cleaned post-wedding. After all, I would have plenty of time after the honeymoon. Right?

Lo and behold, when I started doing my research, most websites recommend that you get it cleaned immediately after the wedding (we’re talking about the day after). It sounds a little ridiculous, but it makes sense. If your favorite white blouse got stained, you would have it cleaned immediately instead of letting it sit while you go off on a trip to Hawaii.

Many websites also recommend that your dress NOT sit in a zippered plastic bag on a hanger in the closet. The closed plastic can make the gown sweat and hanging it by the dress loops can make it sag and misshapen.

I started freaking out. Did I wait a month too long to get my dress cleaned? I checked to see if my gown-in-plastic had turned yellow during my honeymoon. I kid you not, I breathed a sigh of relief to find out it was still ivory.

There was also my worry about the red ballpoint pen mark…

As you may or may not remember, I was putting on my wedding dress the day of the wedding when I found a long red ballpoint mark across the front of my dress. It didn’t actually bother me much, as it was rather slight and towards the bottom of the dress. I was too happy to really care, and I figured people would (should) be looking at the beaming bride’s face anyway, and not at the floor of her dress.

Still, I wanted to sell my dress afterwards, and I couldn’t imagine that very many brides would want to buy something blatantly damaged. Would anyone be able to get the pen mark out? I had no idea. There are plenty of forums on red wine stains, but nothing on ballpoint pen mark stains.

After a few days of research, I ended up trying my luck at WedClean. Getting your wedding dress cleaned feels like a one-time shot. You can hate your florist and get a new one, but if the cleaner ends up damaging your dress instead of cleaning it, it’s a pretty hopeless scenario.

I chose WedClean because:

1) I heard horror stories about taking a wedding dress to your local dry cleaner.

2) Their services start at $129 which seemed reasonable but not a scam. I didn’t want to pay $400 as some places charge.

3) They had good reviews on theknot and elsewhere online.

The process was easy. You make the payment online, they send you a box, you ship your dress in the box, and they ship the cleaned dress back to you. From start to finish, it was about a month. I e-mailed to ask them if they would be able to remove the ballpoint pen mark, and they said they would try but no promises.

I got my dress last week, and when I checked out the stains, I literally shrieked in amazement.

Red ballpoint ink pen stain…GONE! I could not believe it. There was not one trace it was ever there, not even a faded mark or a tiny dot.

In addition, all the telltale signs of the outdoor ceremony (grass/wood/flower stains) at the bottom of my dress had disappeared. My dress looked new! In fact, better than new.

I kept trying to tell Mr.Tomato the miracle of it all, but I’m sure he was just thinking, “Ah, my funny wife…”

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Rating: 4.5/5 stars (Everything was great but the idea of shipping my dress made me a little nervous though nothing happened)

For more information, check out www.wedclean.net