Wed Clean

This place was recommended online for cleaning your wedding dress. It's not local but it works great and I had no problems with the process. They first send you a box and bag to put your dress into with paid shipping. Then you package your dress and send it to them. They clean it and preserve it for you. Finally they send it back to you in a box with your dress neatly packaged. It's small enough for me to put it under my bed. The whole process took about a month but most of the time was spent in delivery since they are based in the East coast.

I did feel a little worried about sending my dress away but since I heard nothing but good reviews, I decided to try and was happy with my experience.

This place only does wedding dress cleaning so they are very efficient and therefore can offer lower prices. Prices start at $99 and you can buy insurance. I didn't.

Paid $130

I went with Wed Clean based for the most part on other people's recs posted online. When I sent in my dress, the cost had gone up to $129.95 to start. Shipping and handling is added on top of that. I also had my crinoline and shawl cleaned just so everything would be in the same place. Cost for each extra item was $14.95.

After you've paid, they send you a shipping kit that consists of a box, tape, a dress bag, and the shipping label and receipts. After I sent the dress back, I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks, and then randomly received an email saying that I would be charged $20 extra because my dress doesn't fit in their standard sized box. There wasn't anything in their policy documents that I could find that stated the possibilities of extra charges. I was less than pleased, but they had my dress. What could I do. Then I got a form email notifying me that they were unable to get out all the stains on my hem, but it was pretty badly stained by tire dust from when I stepped from a busy hotel driveway onto the curbs, so I wasn't really expecting too much.

When the dress was returned, I was a bit less annoyed. It was packed very securely and the dress box itself was sturdy.

Final cost breakdown: $129.95 for dress, $14.95 each for shawl and crinoline, $19.90 for insurance, $29.95 for shipping, $10.00 for handling, and an after-the-fact charge of $20.00 for a larger dress box. For the price, it was an ok experience. I would have been less displeased if prices hadn't gone up that much, and if there weren't so many other charges tacked on top.