Most women would agree – their wedding gown is the most important dress they’ll ever wear.  And, while all brides hope to preserve their marriage, quite a number desire to preserve the dress as well.  Why?

2009 Bride is Beautiful the 3rd Time Around in 1947 Wedding Dress

•  To wear at a ceremony to renew wedding vows
• As an heirloom for a daughter or granddaughter to wear someday.

In fact, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an heirloom as

1. A piece of property that is part of an inheritance

2. Something of special value handed down from one generation to another.

In the case of wedding gowns, though, there’s something every wedding dress owner needs to know: There’s a big difference between merely “heirlooming” a dress and preserving it for the future.

The truth is, as practiced by most dry cleaners, heirlooming a wedding gown consists of dry cleaning it and then sealing it in a box.  But cleaning and boxing a wedding gown is hardly enough to prevent fabric discoloration or the oxidization of invisible sugar stains on the dress.

That’s why, in preserving wedding gowns, Classic Cleaners uses the only process endorsed and recommended by the Association of Bridal Consultants – MuseumCare™ Preservation. Classic Cleaners partner and wedding gown specialist Leon Neal explains what is included in MuseumCare™:

• Thorough cleaning
•  Removal of sugars, salts, and acids (conventional dry cleaning methods cannot accomplish this)
• Conditioning the gown for long-term 
• Sealing in an acid-free environment
• Providing a lifetime guarantee against sugar stains and yellowing.  This guarantee is backed by more than 100 Wedding Gown Specialists worldwide.

 ”Love is lovelier the second time around,” Frank Sinatra used to croon.  Proper professional preservation can ensure that, the second – or third - time around, each wedding dress will be worn in its full loveliness!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Back in the day, our great-great-grandparents knew Milk of Magnesia was a good remedy to “buffer” stomach acid.

  But, along with preventing acid indigestion in our own bodies, did you know that books and clothes need to be protected as well?

When Classic Cleaners professionals are preserving an heirloom or a wedding gown, for instance, they use layers of acid-free paper to stuff the garment, and then pack the item it into a box made of acid-free material.

"Buffering" clothes with acid-free paper

(The definition of acid-free paper is paper with a neutral PH of around 7.) 

Up until the middle 1800′s, paper was made from various plants, including mulberry and flax.  Then it was discovered that paper could be made more cheaply from wood pulp. It took chemicals to break the wood down into pulp, however, and that process left a residue of acid. The problem was that the acid would turn the pulp yellow and cause it to deteriorate over time.  In fact, many valuable books in libraries became illegible over time, all due to the effects of acid in the paper on which they had been printed!

Today, much of the commercially produced paper is acid free because, during the processing of the wood, “buffers” are added to neutralize the acid in the pulp (kind of like putting “Tums” or Milk of Magnesia in the mix).

Layered with acid free material and loaded into the acid free archival quality preservation box, your gown or heirloom can “breathe”.  Good thing, too, because at Classic Cleaners, we work hard to preserve our reputation as the best wedding gown preservation service from Indianapolis to Noblesville and everywhere in between.

Acid indigestion for clothes?  No way!  After all, as a Classic Cleaners customer, you’ve got a “buffer” in the dry cleaning business!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Heirloom toy dinosaur

Dinosaurs haven’t roamed the earth for 65 million years – except for one very special one, that is, who showed up at Classic Cleaners last month. According to the Guardian, most dinosaurs did well to survive thirty years; our Classic Cleaners’ find was fifty years old!

So what’s the story? The dinosaur is a stuffed animal given to our customer fifty years ago as a birthday present from her brother.  Now, she would like to give it to her grandson, so she asked the professionals at Classic Cleaners for help cleaning and repairing the creature. As you can see, our dino friend survived handsomely!

To preserve treasured heirlooms of any kind and of any age, we use the same advanced technology and techniques we employ for wedding gown restoration, carefully cleaning, treating, and repairing each item to bring it back to life. Dino is not only prepared for immediate enjoyment by our client’s grandson, who knows? He may bring joy for generations to come!

In a different restoration assignment, a Classic Cleaners’ customer brought in a once-beautiful pair of cloth-trimmed shoes.  Because the shoes had been stored for fifteen years in plastic, the leather on the shoes had turned the lace overlay yellow.  While we normally don’t recommend preservation for shoes, this pair, we were informed, held great sentimental value. With expert and painstaking hand treatment, our Classic Cleaners technicians were able to bring the shoes back to their former beauty.

Before

Shoes after restoration

At Classic Cleaners, we try to bring beauty back to the eye of every beholder!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Recently on this blog, we’ve told two wedding gown restoration success stories:

Classic Cleaners of Indianapolis restores improperly cleaned wedding gown to glorious beauty!

Classic Cleaners restores 1947 wedding gown–beautiful bride wears it with pride!

We use the same processes in Classic Cleaners’ safe, gentle, and highly effective wedding gown restoration service and Classic Cleaners’ safe, gentle, and highly effective cleaning and MuseumCare preservation service for wedding gowns.

The main difference between the two services is this: We restore wedding gowns that have become discolored or otherwise damaged over time, and we clean and preserve recently worn wedding gowns so that they do not become damaged over time. Of course, once the gown is restored and worn again in a ceremony, it needs to be preserved thereafter to keep it beautiful for the next bride in your family.

One of the tools we use to preserve your precious gown is our archival-quality wedding gown preservation box. In this post I’m including two pictures of the box. The first is a professional photograph of the box, which, as you can see, has an inner box with a see-through window and an outer box.

The other photo is not professional (I took it!), but I’m posting it here to show you that we put our preservation boxes on display in many of our stores. In the display models, the outer box has been cut away to show the inner box, but, of course, that’s just for display.

Classic Cleaners’ archival-quality wedding gown preservation boxes have many special features to keep your gown clean and odor-free while preserving its original beautiful color as time goes by. As we say on our wedding gown preservation page (linked to above),

We layer your gown with acid-free tissue and carefully fold it into an acid-free, archival-quality preservation box. We store metal buttons and findings and shoulder pads separately, stuffing the sleeves, bodice, and folds with additional acid-free tissue to prevent hard wrinkles. The preservation box, designed especially for this purpose, allows the gown to breathe, keeping it in perfect condition for many decades to come.

The box itself is made of acid-free materials and lets your gown breathe.

We’ve earned a reputation of having the best wedding gown preservation service in Indianapolis because we take such exquisite care with your gown. For a gratis consultation on your gown, please visit your favorite Classic Cleaners location or contact us at the number below!

–Matt
The Classic Cleaners Blog Team

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