After months of planning, anticipation, and celebration, your wedding day has come and gone in what feels like an instant. Your wedding gown is likely one of the most meaningful and valuable garments you will ever own, and your bouquet was thoughtfully chosen to complement one of the most memorable days of your life. While it can be difficult to part with these sentimental pieces, preserving your wedding dress and bouquet allows you to cherish those memories for years to come.
If you plan to keep your wedding dress, proper preservation is essential. Without the right care, fabrics can yellow over time, develop oxidation spots, accumulate mold or mildew, and suffer permanent creasing. Likewise, simply placing your bouquet in a vase will not preserve its beauty long-term. Fortunately, there are several professional preservation methods available to help maintain the appearance of your gown and bouquet while protecting the memories attached to them. Keep reading to learn more about the best ways to preserve these special keepsakes!
Photo // Terri Graves Photography
Preserving Your Wedding Dress
Taking your wedding dress to a local preservationist is the simplest and most convenient way to preserve your dress. Many local alterations stores offer wedding dress preservation! There are also several online companies that offer this service, but require you to mail your dress for preservation. Regardless of which option you choose, the company will clean it and package it using special methods to ensure safe, long-term storage. Consider asking your bridal boutique for their suggestions! If you’re up for the challenge (or if you’d like a cheaper option), you can preserve it yourself with these steps:
Get it cleaned
Getting your gown cleaned is essential to preserving it. Have your dress professionally cleaned within six weeks, unless it’s silk, which should be done immediately. The less time stains have to set in, the better. If you’re going on your honeymoon right after the wedding, make arrangements with a family member or bridesmaid to take your dress to the cleaners right away.
Do your research to ensure your dress is in the hands of specialists who know exactly how to manage delicate fabrics and embellishments, like pearls, beads, sequins, etc. Find out whether they use a virgin or recycled solvent. Recycled solvents can cause your dress to acquire an odd smell. Check the label on your dress for any cleaning directions as well. Lastly, take a look at their policies. What’s their warranty like, and do they guarantee a refund of the cost of the dress AND the cleaning should any damage occur? Notify the cleaner of any and all stains. Be aware of clear, invisible stains, like sugar, alcohol, soda, and oils, and places you might have sweated, as these stains will oxidize, discolor, and become noticeable over time if not treated.
Seal it, box it, or bag it
*Before handling your newly cleaned dress, make sure you’ve washed your hands to get rid of any lotions, oils and anything else that could transfer onto the dress. Wearing cotton gloves is strongly advised!*
Most preservationists either seal, box or bag dresses. Sealing it involves vacuum sealing your dress in a bag. While this might seem like the most protective route, sealing your dress can actually cause the permanent creases, yellowing, molding and mildewing we’re trying to avoid. It also prevents you from checking on it regularly. Most people prefer boxing or bagging their gown.
Boxing your dress first involves folding your dress and wrapping it in white acid-free tissue paper to help prevent creasing. If the tissue is any color besides white, it will dye your dress! Consider stuffing the dress with tissue paper to help it maintain its shape. Then, place your dress in an acid-free box made from acid-free board. Acid-free wedding chests are highly recommended! Boxing allows your gown to breathe and to be accessed easily. If you box your dress, it is advised to refold it every two to three years to avoid permanent creasing.
If you decide to bag your dress, hang it on a padded hanger by the loops inside the dress connected to the strongest seams. Then, bag it in a cotton or acid-free plastic bag, NOT regular plastic. While hanging your dress offers the best air circulation and permanent crease prevention, long-term hanging of your gown is not ideal.
Find a good place to store it
Where you store your dress is just as important as the cleaning and the packaging. Cool, dark and dry environments are best, such as under your bed or in a dry closet. Places with extreme temperatures, lots of light or humidity, like attics, garages, and basements, are a no-go. You might put some silica desiccant packets inside your packaging to help control humidity.
Floral Preservation // Archive Floral Preservation
Preserving Your Bouquet
Preserving your bouquet lets you tap into your creative side! We’ve listed a few popular options below, but they don’t stop there! However you choose to preserve your bouquet, make sure you do it while your flowers are still fresh for the best results.
Press them
While it’s possible to press your bouquet yourself, we recommend handing it off to a pro. Many local floral preservation companies specialize in pressed florals, and their expertise is ideal, given you only have one wedding bouquet! The floral preservation studio will take your bouquet, press the flowers, and arrange the dried blooms in a beautiful work of art (like in the example shown above). The floral preservation expert will work with you to create the design of your choice into a framed heirloom for your home.
If you decide to press your own flowers, do your research before you press them, because certain flowers press better than others. For example, there are flowers that quickly fade in color, have petals that easily fall off, or have a higher water content, which makes them more likely to mold and brown. Some flowers take longer to dry, and bulkier flowers might need the middle petals removed or turn out best when separated into individual petals or flowers.
When it comes to pressing flowers, there are several ways to do it. Stick them inside the pages of a big book, like a phone book or a textbook, or between two pieces of bolted plywood. Either way, you’ll need to make sure to sandwich the flowers between materials that soak up moisture. Cardboard and paper often work well for this. Parchment paper is common, too, but doesn’t always work due to its inability to soak up moisture. When they are ready, arrange them how you’d like, maybe around a picture or two, and frame them! Another option is placing them throughout your wedding photo album!
Dry them
Drying your flowers keeps them in their original shape and is easy to do! There are multiple approaches to this as well. The most common is tying the bouquet together tightly and hanging it upside down somewhere temperate, dry, and preferably dark to preserve color and perfume. Covering them with silica gel in an airtight container also produces a beautiful dried flower! After they’re dry, frame them how you’d like or put them in a cute silk bag as a keepsake.
Floral Preservation // Ever After Bouquet
Preserve in resin
Another popular idea is to preserve them in epoxy resin. Floral preservation companies offer many options for resin preservation, including bookends, trays, decorative blocks, ornaments, and more! This allows your flowers to look close to the same as they did on your wedding day. While it’s possible to do this from home by getting a mold in your desired shape, placing your flowers in it, and filling it with resin one layer at a time, it’s a complicated process and best left with a professional to ensure you love the finished product.
Paint or photograph them
While painting your bouquet isn’t preserving the flowers themselves, it still preserves the memory of your flowers in full bloom in an artistic way. Search around for a local artist who does custom paintings of bouquets or professionally photographs them. Either option turns your wedding bouquet into a piece of art you’ll treasure for a lifetime!
