Wedding Dress Cleaning, Preservation, & Restoration

Your wedding day has come and gone with memories you’ll treasure for a lifetime. At the center of all of those memories: the dress. You spent countless hours carefully selecting your ideal gown and having it expertly fitted to look just right. You said your vows in the dress, had your first dance in it, started the rest of your life in it. Now you want to make sure this exquisite dress will receive the best care so future generations can admire and create memories of their own with it.

The key to making sure your treasured dress thrives for generations? Expert wedding dress preservation service that goes far beyond the simple commercial dry-cleaning and repacking that will leave your gown in a cardboard box with a cellophane window and a warranty limited to the cost of the service. At J. Scheer & Co., we have developed a custom process to safely clean, conserve, and prepare your dress for long-term storage. Our team of experts combines hands-on training in conservation science with decades of experience informed by collaborations with museum professionals. Your memories will last a lifetime. Your dress can, too.

Our wedding dress cleaning service begins with a thorough assessment of the condition of your dress. Our laboratory testing techniques allow us to identify stains and spills because makeup, champagne, wedding cake, and perspiration all affect fabric chemistry differently. We analyze fabrics, dyes, and weaves, note ornaments and their composition, and document any damage. Our detailed evaluation report informs a specialized treatment plan created for each garment.

If left untreated, even minimal soiling is deleterious to the integrity of fibers, making proper cleaning essential to the longevity of any textile. Many substances can even cause fabric to oxidize (a reaction with oxygen that causes darkening) over time. These chemical reactions not only ruin the visual appeal of a dress, but cause irreversible fabric deterioration.

Although dry cleaning is an appropriate method for cleaning most natural fibers, care labels are often misleading or erroneous, and the wide variety of fabrics and finishes often found in the same wedding dress require specialized cleansing agents. Standard dry-cleaning solvents cause glues and other common adherents to dissolve, and beads and buttons made of certain plastics to discolor. Aqueous, or water-based solutions can cause some dress fabrics or linings to shrink. Because we carefully identify the composition of all materials before treatment and have the widest array of solvents and surfactants available to us, we both eliminate the risk of damage during the cleaning process, and consistently deliver successful outcomes.

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In the fullness of time the weight of a folded textile will cause creasing, which can lead to irreversible weakening of the fibers. We carefully fold your dress and generously support those folds with the finest archival acid-free materials available to conservators – the same materials we use for rare museum costume and flat textile collections.

Our wedding dress preservation boxes meet the most rigorous conservation standards for quality. A cardboard box, even if labeled acid free, reacidifies over time and increases the chances of your gown being damaged. We use only proprietary acid free boxes made of chemically inert polypropylene that resist water and mildew and protect your gown from light, insects, and changes in relative humidity. We encourage you to open the box periodically not only to admire your dress, but because occasional air flow prevents gases, mold, mildew, and stale air from being trapped in its fibers.
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At J. Scheer & Co., we understand and appreciate the special relationship you have with your wedding dress. Your life may look different as the years go by but our highly respected wedding dress cleaning & preservation service techniques ensure that your gown will always remain the dress of your dreams.