Cleaning a very dirty wedding dress!

Charliezoo

Hi All,

My wedding dress was over budget but I bought it knowing I'd have to sell it to make some £ back on it. Unfortunately on the big day it got absolutely filthy! The underneath of it dragged on what must have been a very dusty floor at the venue and as a result its literally black underneath and around the bottom of the skirt.

I'm more than willing to pay the £100 to get it cleaned but I'm worried that I'll pay up and it won't be clean enough to sell so that's more money down the drain which I can't afford to risk.

How successful is wedding dress cleaning normally? Its made of a heavy silk and I'm so worried it's ruined

Debbiecatal

Sorry no advice on how good cleaning is, but you could try selling it and letting people know they will have to clean it?

You could show a pic of the mark and say you have reduced the price by £100 to cover the cleaning bill perhaps? I would consider a dress where I have been told up front, in fact I would be encouraged I wasn't being ripped off and you were an honest seller!

trying_2_b_good

The dry cleaner I used in Manchester was very helpful and gave a realistic view of how clean the dress would come out. He said that I'd done the best thing by taking it to him soon after the wedding (about 3 days) as leaving it longer stops it from being as effective.

He went through the different stains on the dress and said what he'd struggle with (the hem for example - and he was right, that's still got feint marks on it). It came out great though - it was absolutely filthy before! I think I'd be able to sell it if I wanted to - the marks are all right at the bottom and you'd have to get on you knees and stare if you wanted to find them!

My dress wasn't silk - I don't know how well that cleans as the detergent and heat may need to be less powerful.

Either way I'd get it done - it's worth a punt or you'll just have a filthy dress that's not worth keeping in the attic!

HTH

Charliezoo

Debbiecatal wrote: »

Sorry no advice on how good cleaning is, but you could try selling it and letting people know they will have to clean it?

You could show a pic of the mark and say you have reduced the price by £100 to cover the cleaning bill perhaps? I would consider a dress where I have been told up front, in fact I would be encouraged I wasn't being ripped off and you were an honest seller!

I did consider that but it looks so awful that I think it would seriously scare any bride to be off! It looks like a nasty dirty rag at the moment and I wouldn't get anywhere near what its worth if I tried to sell it as it is now so do really need to get it cleaned.

RainbowDrops

Best to just go in to your local cleaner & ask what they think.

I took mine in this weekend, it's grubby around the bottom, so the cleaner said it might take 2 washes & may not come completely clean.
But it's only costing me £80.

LEJC

Have you actually taken it to a cleaner yet and got a quote...if not do...there you will be able to discuss the options and also the likelyhood of the markings beeing removed totally or partially...

once you have that information you can decide whether its cost effective to clean it and sell it or as debbie says cut your losses and selling it with the marks fully documented...

most staining will come out if its done quickly after the wedding...the longer its left the harder it will be to remove it....

The other thing to consider is how noticable any marks would be after cleaning...at the moment you know that its dirty,and you know what you paid for the dress....but there may be a bride to be out there who also knows what your dress is worth because she loves it and cant quite afford the pricetag you paid...but could live with the fact that there are some blemishes from the previous wearing that havent fully been removed in the clean....

EllieBelly1

If you sold it to someone who was shorter than you and needed it taken up would that help?

floss2

Try good local cleaners as well as the national company....although as we have a barracks nearby, the manager of our branch of the national company told me they often get ball gowns in for cleaning (which are 50% the cost of wedding dresses) and "you'd be surprised how many are ivory cream or white"

jenhug

is it real silk? if not, my friend used to own a wedding dress shop (back in the 90's when it was all shot silk, ruffles and sequins), she used to machine wash on 30 with the dress in a duvet cover. dry pressed they came up immaculate. If it is real silk you may want to take advice, although if you think it is ruined you haven't really got much to lose???

sugarwalsh

The bottom of my dress got pretty dirty this weekend. I took it outside in the sunshine and used a damp cloth and some hand soap and sponged the worst of it off. I also managed to get rid of the fake tan which had rubbed off.

It isn't immaculate, but much improved - the 'top' of the dress is now immaculate again. When I sell it I will forewarn the buyers the dress will need dry cleaning. Most second hand dresses only really sell for £200-300, regardless of the initial price of the dress. I think spending upto £100 cleaning it would be a waste.

If mine would fit in the washing machine I would have popped it in! Have a little dab at the underneath and see what happens - you have nothing to loose and you might just get it to an acceptable standard.

Megan

ncandac

Not knowing the original price it's hard to say what's best but as mentioned above it's rare to see a second hand dress fetching more than a couple of hundred quid, so I'd be tempted to sell it as it is and let the buyer worry about cleaning it.