The thought of getting your wedding dress cleaned may be quite daunting. After all, it probably cost you a small fortune and it holds some special memories. There's four reasons to clean a dress:

1. To preserve it so their children/grandchildren can see exactly what they wore and how lovely they looked on their wedding day

2. You may have bought an older dress you have fallen in love with and need it cleaned before the wedding day.

3. This is a a major stepping stone in your life and you may want to preserve a memento.

4. You may at some point may want to sell it.

To do any of these the dress must be in in pretty good shape and the first step to ensuring it stays in tip-top condition is getting it cleaned and packaged correctly. Leaving it for years is a recipe for disaster. Old stains, that you may not even have noticed, can become immovable and poor packaging can often lead to oxidization, turning part of the dress yellowy-brown - which can be irreversible.

These are the processes a good cleaner must go through to clean your dress properly:

1. Carefully check for stains, damage or any weaknesses.
2. Test any beads, roses, bows or other adornments to ensure they are safe in the cleaning solvent chosen for your dress.
3. Treat any stain correctly and carefully
4. Put the dress through a suitably delicate process in pure, unused or freshly distilled, solvent.
5. Ensure that the dress is dried at the correct temperature and for the right amount of time.
6. Check the dress for any remaining stains and repeat the above if necessary.
7. Carefully asses the dress before finishing to judge what methods to use and decide the right sequence to follow.
8. Hand iron the dress from top to bottom taking pains to:
   1. Individually iron any frills around the neck line
   2. Iron the sleeves using a sleeve board
   3. Work down the bodice ironing each panel separately.
   4. Iron each layer of the underskirt.
   5. Press any layers in the skirt all the way round by hand, stretching any lace work back into place.
   6. Complete each layer, first ironing and then steaming folds into place.
   7. Iron bows so they are rounded and full, not flat and lifeless.
   8. Steam and manipulate any silk roses into their correct shape.
   9. Pack sleeves and bows with acid free tissue paper.
   10. Use a body former draped with acid free tissue paper to form the body of the dress.
   11. Hang the dress to see that it drapes properly and make adjustments where necessary
9. Pack the dress in a purpose built cover or specially prepared acid free box.

.... most cleaners wouldn't even begin this process correctly - and that's where DrClean can help.

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