How to Choose a Wedding Gown Specialist

Trust is the essence of love and a successful, worry-free wedding. In the same way that a bride puts her trust in an ABC wedding planner to relieve her stress, you want to be able to refer a wedding gown specialist you trust who will make sure your bride is ecstatic about her gown so she can bask worry-free in the beauty of her day.

Based on our 31 years of bridal gown care and thousands of successful gown fittings, cleanings, and preservations, here are ten recommendations that can help you find the ideal wedding gown specialist:

• Plan Ahead. Encourage your brides to budget upfront for wedding gown servicesInclude a line-item estimate in your bride’s initial wedding budget to insure her gown’s legacy and value are preserved. When brides plan and budget upfront for pre- and post-wedding gown care, financial surprises are avoided and gown repurposing options for anniversaries, future generations, or resale are assured. Every gown is unique, so take the time to answer a few questions over the phone or fill out an online estimate request to determine the cost for the services needed. Here’s a sample of our form. (http://www.margarets.com/Bridal-Estimate-Request.html)

• Schedule an appointment with a gown alteration expert as soon as a bride’s dress is selected. Fitting appointments and pre-wedding pressing services are as time-sensitive as every other wedding service.

• Interview the bridal team for sensitivity to bride’s personal preferences. When a bride comes in for a fitting, our seamstress’ goal is to make the bride feel as special, excited and relieved as the day she found her dress. We strive to pay extraordinary attention to her details, affirm her personal preferences, and keep her and/or you in the loop as much or as little as she would like.

• Look for specialty services that are all handled in one location to prevent details falling through the cracks. Not every salon provides all-in-one gown services. There are often many moving parts for gown care that need meticulous tracking including alterations, gown cleaning and pressing, gown delivery and pick-up, preservation and storage.

• Have the gown pressed a few days before the wedding and delivered to the venue. Prearranged pressing and delivery assures a beautiful gown for photos. Your brides can receive a Bridal Emergency Kit for day-of-wedding needs, including safety pins, make-up mask, needle and thread, fashion tape for potential wardrobe malfunctions and the magical “Janie Stick” to camouflage or remove stains.

                        

• Use gown specialists that engage in environmentally sustainable cleaning and preservation techniques. With our Legacy preservation services, your bride’s gown is inspected in a multi-spectrum light room, repaired, cleaned in one of 99 proprietary solvents (always fresh, never recycled and specific to fabric), and preserved in an acid-free museum quality archival box accompanied by a preservation inspection report with before and after photos and long term care instructions.

• Arrange for next day pick-up of the gown at the wedding location, the bride’s home or from someone you trust. You and your bride have enough to think about, much less worry about after-wedding gown details. Next day pick-up takes the worry out of dealing with stains or damages the gown may incur at the wedding from all the fun your bride is having.

• Choose a gown specialist who has a lot of experience dealing with last-minute wedding oops! When things don’t go as planned, you want someone you can count on to save the gown while you save the day. As an industry leader and trusted resource for bridal gown alterations, cleaning and preservation services, Margaret’s expert bridal team has seen and saved gowns from all kinds of last-minute surprises including a guest spilling red wine down a bride’s gown skirt; a dog peeing on a bride’s gown; a bride rushing to us the day before her wedding when another cleaner iron-burned the front bodice of her gown and a bride who let her “trash-the-dress” silk gown sit in the back seat of her car in the sun for three weeks while she was on her honeymoon and the stains dissolved the fabric. Fortunately, all these gowns were rescued and lived happily-ever-after.

• If you’re planning a destination wedding, inquire about clean-by-mail services and how shipping and storage of gowns are handled. A guaranteed delivery tracking service is critical to timely delivery. With preservation, museum-quality archival boxing and storage facilities for long term preservation will protect your bride’s gown for generations to come.

• Seek out members of the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists for continuing education, innovative best practices, and museum-quality archival preservation products and certified services.

We treasure our relationships with our wedding planners and are always looking for ways to make your job easier and wow your brides. If you have any questions or comments, please email us at bridal@margarets.com. We’d love to hear from you.

To learn more about Margaret’s Cleaner’s Couture Bridal services and enter to win a free gown preservation (certificate is transferrable), go to www.margarets.com/bridal/drawing. Join us on Instagram (www.instagram.com/margaretscouturebridal) and watch our new video (http://www.margarets.tv/margarets/Margarets-Introduction-Video.html ) because a wedding dress isn’t just a dress, it’s a love story worth treasuring.