Your Old Wedding Dress and 3 Special Ideas What to do With It

Wedding Dress - Dress | WEDISTRY

Your wedding dress can be used in creative ways after your wedding day. You can donate your dress, preserve it, or keep your bridal gown and share it multiple times with a family member or others.

What to do with your wedding dress?

You should know that you have several options for what to do with your wedding dress. But before considering any of your options, remember that your dress belongs to you, and no one except your spouse should have input into what you should do with your wedding dress. In other words, you own your wedding dress you will love, and if you should decide what to do with it and later change your mind, it is your right.

Do what you think is best with your dress. When you are first married, you may think that keeping it forever is what you want to do. But later, you might think it has a better purpose than keeping it. Again, discussing whatever you are thinking about doing with your spouse would be helpful because your spouse is fully a part of your wedding and marriage. Your spouse might have an emotional attachment to your dress that you are unaware of. It would be better if you were aware of this so that you know how your spouse feels and are not surprised later.

What to do with Old Wedding Dresses

Your options for what to do with your old wedding dress depend on how sentimental and nostalgic you are and how much you need the dress, for example. If you don’t tend to keep things from special occasions, or better yet, if you don’t like to keep things that will not be used again like before, you might not want to keep your dress.

We tend to put a special emphasis on keeping wedding dresses for a few reasons. Our wedding has an exceptionally unique place in our emotional lives. That will cause us to keep more things to remember this special day, such as a photo album, souvenirs from our reception, flower bouquets, and many other items.

Another reason we tend to keep wedding dresses is because of the cost. It’s one very expensive thing we can keep; so many do. Finally, we keep our wedding dresses because they are stunningly gorgeous. Wedding dresses are art pieces; they are enjoyable to look at, and it is hard to part ways with them.

These reasons do not mean that we have to keep them. The thing to remember about what you decide to do with your wedding dress is purpose. Is the purpose of keeping it greater than other options, or are other options greater than keeping it?

Old Wedding Dress Recycle

One option that you have is to recycle your wedding dress. That means you will give the dress to an organization that will use it as it is best used. If one part of the dress works best for one dress and another for another, recycling the dress would benefit the most people.

Consider Donating to a person.

Another option for what to do with your old wedding dress is to give it to a specific person who needs it. This doesn’t have to be done directly. For example, you could use your church or a local church to find someone needing a wedding dress.

Share with a family member.

You could also choose to keep your dress for someone in your family in the future. This would be an amazing way to show support and continue your family lineage. It’s also great financial support if your family can wear your wedding dress.

Preserve Your Dress

The two keys to preserving your dress are to get it cleaned as soon as possible after your wedding, like the next day if possible, and to have it done by a professional who does wedding dresses. Yes, you can get this done by most dry cleaners. However, you will want to ensure the cleaner has experience cleaning wedding dresses. The best way to do this is to find positive reviews on Yelp. You can always find a good review there!

The advantage to preservation is that it is much more cost-efficient to preserve your dress than it is to go through the restoration process. Because wedding gowns are known to have delicate fabric, restoration is very expensive and time-consuming. Not only this, but a good wedding dress restoration service will also be hard to find. You can expect that a wedding dress restoration expert will be backed up with orders. These are all reasons that if you are considering preserving your precious wedding gown, you should make this decision as soon as possible after the wedding ceremony so you can hopefully start the wedding dress preservation process as soon as possible.

Keep Your Dress

After all, if you don’t feel compelled to donate your dress or share it with a family member, you should never feel guilty about anything related to keeping your dress forever. You know that your dress has enough meaning to you that that is enough reason for you to keep your dress without ever having to explain why to anyone. It’s one of the best ways to remember your special day, and who knows? One of the best reasons to keep your dress is that you might want to renew your vows one day.

How sentimental Are You About Your Old Wedding Dresses?

Your options for what to do with your old wedding dress depend on how sentimental and nostalgic you are and how much you need the dress, for example. If you don’t tend to keep things from special occasions, or better yet, if you don’t like to keep things that will not be used again like before, you might not want to keep your dress.

author avatar
Aaron Smith
Hi, my name is Aaron! I’m glad to be the founder of Wedistry, a collection of tools and tips to prepare couples for their wedding day. I am currently the manager of the Wedistry Blog and Wedistry for Wedding Parties on the App Store. Thanks for stopping by and I hope that you find this content helpful during your wedding planning process.

2 responses to “Your Old Wedding Dress and 3 Special Ideas What to do With It”

  1. moretha Avatar

    My mother’s gown is worn by my sister on her wedding day at Victory North Savannah (https://www.victorynorthsavannah.com/weddings). It appears to be stylish and appropriate for a traditional wedding.

    1. Aaron Smith Avatar

      This is so generous and such a great idea!

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