My Dry Cleaner Clothes Spa

 

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Professional Gowns and Wedding Dress Cleaning                

• Hand cleaned gowns
• Virgin solvent for all dry-cleaning.
• Hand pressed gowns

You should be aware that many local dry-cleaners do not clean and preserve gowns in their facilities, but choose to send their customer's bridal gowns out to wholesale dry-cleaners. There are some risks to this common practice. Wholesale cleaners often clean wedding gowns in large volume, as many as 20 gowns at once. It is possible that little or no attention will be given to pre-treating or spotting. The dirt from other gowns may even contaminate your gown. And because the gown is usually sealed in a small box, you may never know if the gown was cleaned at all, to determining the best cleaning for your gown, you will need to know if your local cleaner does the work themselves, (as we do) or sends it out.

 Things You should know about your wedding dress:

Cleaning Summary
If your gown and/or lining is silk, rayon, or acetate but does not have beads or sequins you should be able use a dry-cleaner that uses perc. That will be a plus if the dress is really dirty (look at the hemline!) Perchloroethylene is the best degreaser. If your dress is silk, rayon, or acetate, but has beads and sequins, the Stoddard formula, Hydro-carbon or Greenearth will be the safest.

Be sure to point out any stains to the dry-cleaner. Also, notify the dry-cleaner of any spills on the dress, even if they don't show. Dry-cleaning fluids will not remove sugar stains (such as wine or soda), so the dress needs to be pre-treated.

If your dress and lining are polyester, with or without beads and sequins, wet cleaning should be safe and will get your dress the cleanest. Check your label carefully, and look for a hand wash or dry-clean only label, or the symbol indicating water washing. If in doubt, test clean an inconspicuous area of the dress.Dry-cleaning
Three common dry-cleaning solvents currently used for bridal gowns are:

1. Perchloroethylene Commonly called perc. this is the most common solvent that dry-cleaners use. It is the best solvent for degreasing and may be your best choice if your dress is silk, rayon, or acetate and quite dirty. However, this solvent is more likely to damage sequins and beads, or melt the glue if they are glued on.
2. Exxon DF-2000 (Also called Hydro-carbon)
   This is a newly formulated petroleum-based solvent. Like the Stoddard solvent, it is safer for beads and sequins, but is not quite as effective at degreasing as perchloroethylene and the Stoddard solvent.
3. Stoddard solvent.  Harder to find, this is a petroleum-based solvent that is becoming rare. Because of fire regulations, this solvent cannot be used in strip mall type dry-cleaning establishments, and is therefore not commonly used.

4. Petroleum-based solvent  Some bridal gown care labels state, Dry clean only with petroleum based solvent. Both the Stoddard solvent and Exxon DF 2000 are petroleum based. But finding a dry-cleaner who uses one of these can be difficult.  You may also check out the website www.df2000.com for a list of DF-2000 solvent suppliers by state. If they are unable to help you, try looking up dry-cleaning equipment in your local yellow pages.

Wet-cleaning
Most dry-cleaning use what is called wet-cleaning for their bridal gowns. Wet cleaning is simply cleaning with water and has several advantages.

Check your gown care label for fabric content. If your wedding gown has no label indicating fabric content, the following price test may help you:

• Polyester gowns usually retail for $1500 or less.
• Silk gowns usually retail for $2000 or more.
• Fabric content from gowns costing between $1500 and $2300 can vary.

Many brides know that their gown is made of satin. However, they should be aware that satin is not an actual fabric, but a type of fabric weave. There are silk satins, polyester satins, acetate and rayon satins.

Vintage gowns from the 40's and 50's are usually rayon or acetate satin. However, higher end dresses from this period could be silk.

The easiest way to identify your fabric is select Uncertain on our estimate form and we will determine fiber content when we receive your gown. Remember, you do not pay for any of our services until you receive a firm price. We will return your gown to you at no charge if you do not wish to proceed.

For best results, find a dry-cleaner who uses virgin solvent for cleaning wedding gowns. Because of ecological regulations and expense, solvents are recycled. Impurities that are not filtered out of used solvent can be re-deposited onto garments. Garments cleaned in dirty solvent will have a dry clean smell.