Research dry cleaners in your area that are certified wedding gown specialists. There is actually an association called the Wedding Gown Preservation Association or something like that, which dry cleaners have to be certified to belong to. Anyway, once you’ve found a dry cleaner who specializes in wedding gown preservation, take your dress there and they’ll do the rest. Usually it involves doing a deep cleaning with special chemicals that don’t hurt silk or delicate lace. Then they stuff it with acid-free tissue paper so it doesn’t get mashed and they put it in a nice box very carefully. The box is also made of acid-free paper so the dress won’t yellow out with age.

To be honest, though, I’m not going to preserve my dress. I personally don’t see a point in spending money to preserve a dress that will likely never be worn again (I mean honestly, how many brides out there do you know that actually want to wear their mother’s old-fashioned wedding dress rather than buy a new one of their own?) and you have to figure out where to store it, and they take up a lot of space! I would rather either sell the dress on eBay or donate it to a charity I recently heard about that collects used wedding dresses and re-sells them at a highly discounted price to brides without a lot of cash. In this economy, I think there are probably a lot of women out there who can’t afford a brand-new wedding gown and still deserve to look beautiful on their big day. It would be cool to help them out. : )