What to Do with Your Wedding Dress After the Wedding is Over

You planned every aspect of your wedding from the flowers, your wedding dress, and the reception to the ceremony for a year, but now your big day has come and gone. While your memories are preserved forever in your heart and in the hundreds of photos you have of your wedding day, now you have a dilemma. What should you do with your wedding dress? The beautiful gown you spent months shopping for is hanging like a behemoth in your closet, and your new husband is hinting that he wants to use the space for something a little more practical. Here are some tips for what to do with your wedding dress after the wedding is over.

What to do with Your Wedding Dress After the Wedding is Over: Preserve it

If you want to keep your wedding dress as it is and you cannot bear to part with it, then it is essential that you take the proper steps immediately to preserve your gown. Ideally, the proper cleaning and preservation will protect your gown from yellowing, creasing, molding or mildewing, light and dust. Some companies offer preservation packages. For example, WedClean will send you a postage paid box for you to pack your dress in and ship it to them. In two weeks, the gown is returned to you cleaned and preserved in its very own storage chest. In 30 years, your gown will be ready for your daughter's wedding day.

What to do with Your Wedding Dress After the Wedding is Over: Donate it

If gown preservation sounds like a chore, consider donating your wedding dress. A charitable organization called Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation accepts gown, veil, and slip donations. Just pack your items in a box and send them to the address listed at www.makingmemories.org. The foundation asks that you include a $10 check to pay for the expense of preparing your wedding gown for sale. Be sure to include a self-addressed stamped envelope inside your package so that Making Memories can return a tax-deductible receipt for you. Making Memories hosts a Brides Against Breast Cancer, Nationwide Tour of Gowns, and the donations it receives are used to grant final wishes for men and women suffering from terminal breast cancer.

What to do with Your Wedding Dress After the Wedding is Over: Retool it

If you cannot part with your wedding gown but you want to make more practical use out of it, consider remaking it. That is, think about special ways to use parts of your dress so that the memories of your wedding day will become a theme for years to come. You may want to use the satin from the train of your gown for edging on a baby blanket or two. Use the tulle to make sachets for potpourri to place in your clothing drawers. Make throw pillows for your bed and tie colored ribbons around them as accents. Consider having a seamstress make christening, communion, or bringing home baby outfits for a boy and a girl. Cut fabric from the dress and use it to mat the portrait of you and your husband on your wedding day. You could even keep the bodice of your dress and have a shorter skirt attached to it to wear to special occasion parties. Whatever you decide to do with your wedding gown, make sure that you keep the memories of your wedding day close to your heart.