As a little girl, I used to take my mother's wedding dress off the wire hanger in the closet in our guest bedroom and look at it while envisioning my own wedding day. After years of being exposed to air, my mother's dress slowly discolored. This wouldn't have happened if my mother would have had her dress preserved by a dry cleaner soon after her wedding. Dee Palevics of Victoria Dry Cleaners says the sooner you bring your dress in, the better. The less time stains and body oils stay on the fabric, the easier it is for the dry-cleaner to remove them.
Some stains show up months or even years later.
The preservation process begins with dry-cleaning the dress. Each dress is put through a machine in which no water is used. Nu-Way Cleaners, according to Traci Bright, uses a solution called Perk that gets all the dirt out without harming the delicate fabric. Some decorative trims and beads tend to cause problems during this process. The solution used in cleaning the dress causes the glue on these ornaments to dissolve.