DAY 15: Win a Couture Wedding Gown Preservation Package!

Give your dress the Royal treatment!
Every princess wants her gown to be treated with the respect it deserves. The Association of Wedding Gown Specialists will give your treasured gown very special care with a couture gown preservation package.
Value: $495

How Does This Contest Work?
You can enter the contest every single day between April 6th and April 28th. You’ll find the entry form on the blog post for the prize being unveiled that day. Scroll down to the bottom of this post the enter! You can always find today’s prize featured on the SmartBrideBoutique.com CONTESTS page.

Prize Details
The winner of the Princess for a Day contest will receive a couture wedding gown preservation package including:

• Specially-designed Courier Service container with directions inside for sending the gown to be cleaned and preserved
• Prepaid shipping via second-day air insured up to $25,000
• Individual handcleaning and pressing
• Anti-sugar stain treatment featured in Modern Bride
• Freshly-laundered muslin wrapping to protect gown
• Completely acid-free wedding chest
• Muslin wedding chest cover
• Written lifetime international guarantee honored by Association of Wedding Gown Specialists members represented in more than 500 cities around the world.

The Association will take full responsibility for the winner’s gown from the time it leaves her home until it returns safely.

Caring for your Gown
Represented in more than 500 cities around the world, the members of the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists will give your special gown the individual care and attention it deserves. After all, they know how much your gown means to you! They are trained to use the safest, most effective methods for cleaning, preservation, and restoration. In fact, their MuseumCare^™ and ZeroCarbon^™ preservations are endorsed by the Association of Bridal Consultants.
Their advanced treatments for preservation and stain removal have been featured in many bridal magazines, from Modern Bride to Martha Stewart Weddings, so you know your gown will be in expert hands whether you want to clean it for resale or preserve it for your daughter. Their unique anti-sugar stain treatment ensures your wedding gown will never yellow and that no latent stains will develop into dark brown spots because all sugar, salt, and acid–seen or unseen—is removed.
If you do decide to have your dress cleaned or preserved, read these wedding gown care tips to help ensure your dress remains in excellent condition.

Caring for the Earth
You can feel good about choosing a member of the Association of Wedding Gown specialists to preserve or dry clean your gown because the Association offsets all carbon emissions from preservations with donations to Carbonfund.org. Carbonfund.org is the leading nonprofit carbon offset and climate solutions organization, and they use the Association’s donations to fund reforestation projects worldwide.
Find an Association member near you now!

BONUS DEAL
If you don’t want to wait until April 29, 2011 to hear who the winner is, take advantage of a great deal now! Get a $35 off your cleaning and preservation until December 31, 2011. Get all the details here.

Check out all of the prizes one lucky bride will win!

Day 1:		Win a Kitty Andrews Custom Bridal Headpiece worth $525

Day 2:		Win an Unveiling Weddings Prize Pack worth $315

Day 3:		Win 3 Bridesmaid Dresses from Frocks worth $650

Day 4:		Win an Amanda Pearl Clutch and 6 lippys worth $726

Day 5:		Win Delicious Cookies for your Sweet Table worth $500

Day 6:		Win Custom Designed Wedding Invitations worth $1225

Day 7:		Win 2 Flip Video MinoHD camcorders worth $480

Day 8:		Win 5 Pairs of Bridesmaids Earrings worth $475

Day 9:		Win $500 Towards Your Wedding Regsitry

Day 10:		Win a Mother of the Bride Dress from Sears

Day 11:		Win $500 of Bridal Bling from Monet

Day 12:		Win a Bridal Kit and Ka-BOOB-le Package from Bring It Up (worth $360)

Day 13:		Win $500 Towards Two Recycled Wedding Bands from greenKarat

Day 14:		Win $3000 towards an Adele Wechsler Collection gown

Day 15:		Win a Couture Gown Preservation Package worth $495

Sneak Preview!
Don’t forget, you can enter once a day. So come back and visit us our contests page daily to see which fabulous prize is being unveiled each day. If your curiosity is getting the better of you, check out some of our soon to be unveiled prize sponsors below:

	When it comes to having a green wedding, no other firm in the country comes close. Elegance & Simplicity is a green wedding design company and idea house for the magazine Eco-Beautiful Weddings providing inspiration for eco-couture wedding style.
	Get ready for your honeymoon! This season’s colorful bathingsuit collection from Tosca Delfino has a tribal-indie-chic look, which draws from vintage concepts, providing a fresh, fun and sexy feel that can be worn on and off the beach.
	Well.ca is Canada’s largest online health & beauty store. From coast to coast, they provide you with your favourite health and beauty products.

Proper preservation of your wedding gown is essential. Without it, your gown can become discolored and, over time, the fabric can even begin to disintegrate. Below are some tips for keeping your wedding gown as gorgeous as the day that you walked down the aisle.

1. Budget Correctly

If you are on an extremely tight budget, be sure to make some room for your wedding gown preservation. This service can cost anywhere from $200 to $750 dollars. Still, it is worth it to get the job done right. Remember, that doesn’t always mean going with the lowest bidder. You want to find someone with a great reputation who will get the job done right.

2. Don’t Wait

As soon as you get back from your honeymoon, you should start looking for someone to preserve your wedding gown. Your dress has many natural enemies including humidity, sunlight and time. The sooner that you begin the process of wedding gown preservation, the more pristine your gown will be. If you have waited, it’s not too late. In some cases, some restoration work may be required, but the sooner you start, the less damage there is likely to be.

3. Check References

Always check a few references before handing over your wedding dress. This is an irreplaceable item. Don’t trust it to just anyone. Find a specialist through the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists here. Ask for some references and also check out the business by calling the Better Business Bureau. A quick call to the BBB will let you know if they have had any complaints that were not resolved.

4. Get Guarantees

Choose a wedding gown preservationist that offers some sort of gown preservation guarantee on their work. A quality company will have enough confidence in their work to offer some sort of guarantee.

5. Be Realistic

The first step in wedding gown preservation is cleaning the gown. While a quality business will be able to remove many stains, if you chose to roll around in the grass to get a certain shot for your wedding album, or spilled red wine all over the front of your dress, the wedding gown may come back to with some grass stains. Wedding gown preservation is something that you should absolutely do if you plan to keep the dress. If you are going to sell the dress, then a simple cleaning is sufficient.

Guest post by The Wedding Planning Guides, offering practical and fun advice for brides and grooms managing the stress of wedding planning.

Some newer sustainable fabric names are coir, pina, and ingeo. These are fabrics made from, respectively, cocoanut, pineapple, and corn plants. Lyocell is yet another one that is made from wood pulp. The wood pulp comes from fast-growing trees in managed forests and is processed with recycled chemicals. Fabric can also be made from soy and bamboo plants.

All of these newer sustainable fabrics can be wetcleaned but will fare best if handcleaned to reduce the mechanical action involved in cleaning them. However, if a gown is silk, it is usually best to dry clean it.

Many designers now offer gowns made from sustainable fabrics. For example, Adele Wechsler offers an Eco Collection in addition to her other designs. Other designers such as Gwendolyn Gleason Couture do the same, and you can find a range of green gown offerings at SmartBrideBoutique.com. For help in planning an entirely green wedding go to GreenBrideGuide.com. You’ll find many, many vendors offering green services there.

And the members of our Association of Wedding Gown Specialists offer green gown presrevations. You can read about our partnership with Carbonfund.org at http://www.WeddingGownSpecialists.com/zero-carbon-weddings.htm

Even if  the cost of your wedding gown is only a few hundred dollars, why risk its beauty by taking it just anywhere to be cleaned?  You wouldn’t take a car you really cared about to the local gas station for repairs, and choosing the right person to care for your gown is  important.  Begin by looking at the label in your wedding gown.  You will find that many designers use our Association’s care labels and recommend brides bring their gowns to one of our Specialists.   My post “True or False: Five Myths about Wedding Cleaning and Preservation”  will also help you understand the instructions on the care label.

Then you should ask lots of questions  before trusting your gown to anyone.  You can find a list of the kinds of questions you should ask http://www.weddinggownspecialists.com/bridalgowncaretips.htm.   And if you are not happy with the answers to your questions, keep looking until you are.   It is worth taking the extra time so that your gown, too, will have a happy ever-after!

 Blue tissue should be used to package your wedding gown.  Not true.  There is usually a little truth in an old wives’ tale, and we know, for example, that an apple a day really is good for us.  But blue tissue paper is NOT good for wedding gowns, and no one really knows why it was supposed to be good for wrapping wedding gowns.   It may have something to do with bluing.  There is a written reference to bluing as early as the seventeenth century, and bluing comes from indigo, a naturally alkaline substance that can neutralize any acidic content that might cause yellowing.  Bluing also adds a trace of blue dye to fabric, which, again, offsets any yellowish cast in white fabric.  In the 1920s and 1930s, wedding gowns were often wrapped in a deep blue paper, but the paper was waxed, and the wax prevented the acidic content of the paper from damaging the gown.

 Whatever the history behind this idea, blue tissue is absolutely the wrong thing to use for preserving your wedding gown.  Blue tissue is not acid-free and, worse yet, the paper will, if it gets wet, dye your gown blue.  Only white, completely acid-free, which means all acidic content was removed and not just neutralized, tissue and completely acid-free wedding chests should be used for your wedding gown preservation .

Your wedding gowns should always be sealed in plastic.  Not true.  Most textile conservators warn against storing fabrics in plastic or plastic-wrapped containers because plastic traps moisture that can allow mildew to grow.  Desiccants are sometimes added to plastic-wrapped containers to absorb the moisture, but they have a very limited capacity and must then be replaced—which, of course, destroys the seal on the package.  Then, too, unless the plastic is chemically inert, it can emit fumes that yellow your gown.  That’s why your gown should never be stored in a plastic garment bag.  Still another problem with plastic:  plastic sets up an electrostatic charge that, together with the trapped moisture, can permanently set wrinkles in your wedding gown that no amount of pressing can remove.     

Taking your wedding gown out of the wedding chest will damage your gown.  Not true.  Be very wary of preservation services that void their guarantees if the seal is broken.  There is no inherent reason why your gown cannot be taken out of the container for inspection, and the service may just be hiding problems such as leftover stains or damage from the cleaning process.  On the other hand, it really is not necessary to take your gown out of the container and refold it on a regular basis.  If your gown has been packed properly, the folds of your gown are buffered with tissue that prevents sharp creases, and it is a law that if something can happen it will.  In other words, every time you handle a precious object such as your wedding gown, there is the potential for danger, and the day your gown is removed from the container is the day the roof leaks or it rubs against a dirty wall.  If you do choose to take your wedding gown out of the chest, be very sure your gown is opened in an area that is safe from such hazards—and safe from pets or small children, too.  Also, wear white cotton gloves so the oils in your skin do not transfer to your gown.   

All guarantees are the same.  Not true.  All guarantees are definitely not the same.  If you read carefully, you will find most guarantees simply refund the cost of the cleaning and preservation—even if the service damages your gown during the process.  Look for a service that stands behind the work regardless of the cost of the gown and ask who is going to stand behind the guarantee–now or twenty-five years from now!

2.  Flowers that hide your gown:  If you are going to carry a large bouquet, practice holding your flowers low.  If you hold them too high, they will hide your gown when you are walking down the aisle, and you will see more flowers than gown when you look at your video and your photographs.

3.  Veils and hairstyles that hide your face:  Make sure your veil frames your face—not hides it after you lift your blusher.  And remember not to obscure the right side of your face with your hair.  That’s the side next to the groom—the side everyone wants to see when you are at the altar.

4.  Relatives taking photographs:  Uncle Charlie may be a great guy, but he is not trained to stay out of the way so that others can see you when you exchange your vows.  And it is also not fair to relatives who want to be part of the celebration to make them spend the day behind a camera with one eye closed.  Let a professional capture all those special moments and share them afterward with your family.

5. Unplanned schedule of events:  Avoid leaving hours and hours between the ceremony and the reception if you possibly can or some guests may party so hard they do not make it to the reception.  If there must be a long delay, offer guests some options such as a lounge in the reception venue or, for out-of-town guests, a list of nearby things to do.  On the other hand, do not forget to allow enough time for photographs.  No one really minds if you miss hors d’ouevres with your guests, but a dinner that gets overcooked because you are still taking pictures is a disaster.  If you are having your ceremony and reception at the same location, you might even consider posing for your formal photographs before the ceremony, and then you will have extra time to spend with your guests.

6.  Kids at weddings:  If you plan to have a very young ring bearer or flower girl, be sure each gets to bed early the night before the wedding.  Designate someone other than mom or dad (if they are in the wedding party), to watch them during the ceremony.  For children at the ceremony, whether they are in the wedding party or not, things such as snacks in a zip-lock bag that opens quietly, clear (in case of spills) juice in boxes, and a coloring book with washable markers will hold their interest.  At the reception, serving children’s meals promptly and having books and crayons on hand will help keep them at the table. 

One more tip:  After all your thoughtful planning, try to relax and enjoy each moment.  It will all go by much too quickly, and your friends and family are there to share the joy of your special day—not to complain about missteps along the way.

Adapted from “The Seven Biggest Wedding Mistakes” by Rod Jovanelly at A Touch of Color Photography in Connecticut

1. Take your bridal gown out of the garment bag if the bag is plastic and hang your bridal gown where it will be safe from children or pets. Wrap it in a clean sheet to protect it from light and dust.

2. Make a list of everything you will need the day of the wedding–including things for emergencies. Look here for ways to treat spills on your wedding gown the day of the wedding. If you are dressing in your wedding gown away from home, double-check your list before you leave the house.

3. Several days before the wedding, look over your wedding gown and wedding accessories and make sure everything is ready to wear. Hang your veil near the shower to smooth any wrinkles or let a Specialist help you. Visit here to read about free pressing for your wedding gown from a Specialist.

4. Wear your shoes around the house so you will be comfortable the day of the wedding. You might even rub the soles against a sidewalk or other rough surface to make them less slippery.

5. Arrange for someone (two “someones” are even better) without a fresh manicure or dark polish to help you dress in your wedding gown. Or hire a professional dresser who will take responsibility for your bridal gown all day and make sure you are dressed perfectly in a bridal gown that is not creased or wrinkled and is bustled properly.

6. Make sure you know how to bustle your wedding gown and show whoever is helping you dress how to do it, too. Pin five or six safety pins to the underside of your wedding gown. They will not show, and you will be glad they are handy if your bustle loops break.

7. Allow plenty of time to get dressed in your wedding gown. Allow even more time if it is raining.

8. Worth repeating–allow plenty of time to get dressed in your wedding gown. Allow even more time if it is raining.

9. Most important, remember to relax and enjoy every minute of your special day because your wedding day will go buy all too quickly!

Go here for more information about wedding gown care.  Look here for help with your destination wedding gown .

1. Look for someone who specializes in cleaning and preserving wedding gowns. Most cleaners do not do their own work when it comes to wedding gowns. They send them off to someone else, often someone else in another state. Not good. You want a cleaner who takes responsibility for your gown.

2. Ask if the cleaner has been specially trained and if the cleaner is a member of an Association. The last thing you need is someone who is going to practice or “learn on the job” with your beautiful gown.

3. How many years has the cleaner been in business? The cleaner may be very well trained, but years of experience count. The longer he or she has been in business the more likely he or she has seen a gown similar to yours and knows how to handle a gown as special as yours.

4. What kind of solvent is the cleaner going to use on your gown? A specialist knows that some solvents are more gentle than others and will use the solvent best for your gown’s fragile beading and other decorations.

5. Does the cleaner handle solvents responsibly? Some cleaners can even offer you carbon-free gown cleaning and preservation when you make a donation to a non-profit organization that provides carbon offsets and climate solutions.  See www.WeddingGownSpecialists.com/zero-carbon-weddings.htm.

6. What kind of guarantee does the cleaner provide? Today or twenty-five years from today, who is going to honor the guarantee that your gown will still be in pristine, ready-to-wear condition?

7. Will completely acid-free tissue be used to buffer the folds of your gown when it is packed and will the container be completely acid-free? Do not settle for pH-neutral materials that can re-acidify over time—especially if the gown is stored in a damp area where humidity can dissolve the neutralizer in the packing materials.

8. Does the container allow the fabric to “breathe” and allow the fibers to expand and contract with changes in heat and humidity? Shrink-wrapping can trap moisture that may cause mildew and create an electrostatic charge that sets creases which no amount of pressing can remove.

9. What precautions does the cleaner take to protect the gown during the cleaning process? During the packing process? Prongs, for example, around the beads on your gown can snag the fabric during the cleaning process. When it is packed, puffy bows or flowers should be stuffed or protected with a nest of tissue. Bust pads should also be removed because they emit off-gases that will yellow your gown.

10. Is the gown going to be clean? Will the cleaner remove all stains and “floor dirt” around the hem of the gown.? Does the cleaner guard against latent stains? Stains such as wine or ginger ale contain sugar and can dry clear. Over the years the sugar in latent stains caramelizes and turns brown. Such stains do not automatically dissolve during the cleaning process and require special care.

Believe it or not, cleaning is the most important part of the preservation process so look for a cleaner who will allow you to personally inspect your gown. And then look carefully to be sure your gown will be as lovely years from now as it was the day you wore that very special gown.

Years ago when I first began cleaning and preserving family gowns, I thought stories of lost gowns were just another urban myth, but I have talked personally with many victimized brides and I know first hand that you cannot be too careful when choosing a preservationist to care for your gown.

Having a professional clean and pack your gown in an acid-free wedding chest is a much better option. A professional will pack your gown so that it maintains it shape perfectly with a minimum of folds and creases, and the wedding chest takes up a lot less room in your closet than a big bouffant gown bag. Wedding chests also protect your gown from sharp objects that can slice into your dress. They are also a much more effective barrier against insects and mice than bags. A bride once came to me in tears because mice got into her bag before the wedding, shredded her train to make a nest, and left her a present of lots of little black stuff!

No museums that I know use bags to store textiles, and that, too, should tell you something–an acid-free wedding chest is a better choice than any bag.