More than a century of expertise has shaped every detail of how we clean and preserve a wedding dress. Once your dress arrives at the cleaning facility, it moves through six careful steps — each one designed to protect it for the next hundred years. Start to finish, most orders take 4–14 weeks from when we receive your dress (restoration of dresses 20+ years old takes approximately 8–12 weeks).
How Long Does Wedding Dress Preservation Take?
We send you your free shipping kit within 1–2 business days of your order, including a prepaid FedEx label.
Your dress is professionally cleaned, hand or steam pressed, and carefully placed in its acid-free preservation chest.
Your beautifully preserved dress ships back to you fully insured via FedEx, with tracking.
Timelines above are for Traditional and Celebrity Preservation. Cleaning without preservation is about 2 weeks at the cleaning facility (3–4 weeks total with shipping); Restoration is approximately 8–12 weeks. Need it sooner? In-House Rush processing (+$50) takes 7–10 business days at the cleaning facility and does not include rush shipping.
The Six-Step Journey
Step 1 — Ordering Your Preservation
Choose your service, add personalization if you’d like, and check out. Your shipping kit leaves our warehouse within 1–2 business days and arrives at your door in 4–5 business days, fully insured.
Step 2 — Sending In Your Dress
Your kit arrives in 4–5 business days — a sturdy commercial box, a prepaid FedEx label, packing materials, and simple instructions. Pack your dress and bring it to any FedEx location.
Step 3 — Dress Check-In
When your dress reaches the facility, it’s assessed, photographed, and logged into the tracking system. Allow up to 2 weeks for it to appear in the tracking tool — the evaluation process is thorough and every dress receives individual attention.
Step 4 — Museum-Quality Cleaning
The heart of the process. Your dress is cleaned with museum-quality technology built for delicate wedding fabrics — every stain, visible and invisible, addressed before your dress is carefully placed in its preservation chest. See how we clean → · the technology behind it →
Step 5 — Minor Repairs & Boxing
Our in-house textile specialists handle minor repairs at no charge. Your dress is skillfully hand or steam pressed (depending on your service), then carefully hand placed into your acid-free preservation chest with acid-free tissue.
Step 6 — Delivery Back to Your Home
The preservation chest, with your beautifully preserved wedding dress inside, is carefully placed into a storage box with a handle, then secured in a sturdy shipping box and sent back to you fully insured via FedEx with tracking.
Watch How It Works
When to Start the Process
The best time to send your dress in is as soon as you can after the wedding — the sooner, the better. The longer a dress waits, the harder visible and invisible stains become to remove: perspiration residue, sugar from cake icing, and natural skin oils all look fine the day after the wedding, but over the years they oxidize into permanent yellow patches. Acting early gives the facility the best chance to return your dress in essentially perfect condition.
That said, it’s never too late. If your dress has been in a closet for years, our Wedding Dress Restoration service is built specifically for older dresses (20+ years) that need anti-yellowing treatment and fabric preservation. Brides send us mothers’, grandmothers’, even great-grandmothers’ dresses — and they come back wearable again.
After You Receive Your Preserved Dress
Once your preservation chest arrives home, storage is what keeps your dress pristine for the next century. Keep the chest somewhere cool, dry, and consistent in temperature — avoid attics, basements, and garages, where temperature swings and humidity do the most damage. A flat, shaded spot is ideal: under a bed, the top of an interior closet, or a guest room. Don’t stack heavy objects on top.
You’re welcome to open the chest anytime to view your dress — that doesn’t affect your guarantee, and resealing squares are included for when you’re done. Only fully removing the dress from the chest voids the 100-year guarantee, since that’s how we know it hasn’t been worn again. Read the full guarantee →
Process & Timing Questions
What does your cleaning process actually involve?
Upon arrival at the cleaning facility, every dress is inspected under UV light to find stains that aren’t yet visible to the naked eye, then hand spot-treated and cleaned using a specialized process built specifically for bridal fabrics. From there it’s carefully pressed, fitted onto an acid-free bust form, and placed in an acid-free preservation chest with a UV-protective viewing window — all handled by technicians trained exclusively in bridal fabric care. Your finished dress ships back to you in a sturdy shipping box with a prepaid FedEx label. Learn more about our cleaning process →
How long does the full process take?
Processing and delivery times vary by service:
- Shipping kit (free with every service): arrives within 4–5 business days of ordering.
- Traditional or Celebrity Preservation: about 4–14 weeks from order to return delivery, depending on distance and seasonal volume — peak season (May–October) runs toward the longer end.
- Wedding Dress Cleaning without preservation: about 3–4 weeks total.
- Traditional or Celebrity Restoration: about 8–12 weeks total.
- In-House Rush: add $50 to speed in-house processing to 7–10 business days (plus about 1 week shipping each way).
How long does wedding dress preservation last?
With our professional museum-quality cleaning and preservation, your dress can stay wedding-day white for 100 years or more — protected from UV light, pests, dirt, and dust in its acid-free preservation chest. That’s exactly what our written 100-Year Guarantee covers. If it ever yellows while stored properly, we’ll restore it at no extra charge.
My wedding was a while ago. Is it too late to preserve?
It’s rarely too late. If your dress is under 20 years old, cleaning and preservation is the right path. If it’s 20 years or older, Restoration addresses yellowing, brown spots, and fabric deterioration in addition to cleaning — and we’ve successfully restored dresses as far back as the 1800s. No matter how long your dress has been stored, there’s a good chance we can bring it back to beautiful condition.