Getting married is a monumental event in your life.
Let Janet Davis Cleaners keep the memory alive with wedding gown preservation services.
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Wedding Gown Preservation
Your wedding may only last a day, but you want to be sure the memories last for a lifetime. One of the few tangible items you will have after your wedding day is your wedding gown. To that cause, we are pleased to offer our exclusive wedding gown preservation service, which we call our MuseumCare™ gown preservation
Janet Davis Cleaners has been performing wedding gown services for Detroit and all of Michigan since 1954. Our gown preservation process is similar to how museums store and care for their delicate clothing. Each gown is cared for individually. It will never be mixed with another gown or with regular dry cleaning. Once your gown is clean, we touch it only with white cotton gloves to keep anything from depositing on the gown. After the gown is clean, prior to boxing, we invite you to inspect your gown (we supply white cotton gloves for you so you may closely inspect the gown). Each gown is then packed in an acid-free chest, stuffed with acid-free tissue paper, and supported by an acid-free bust-form. When you come to pick up your gown, we provide you with instructions for the safest keeping of your wedding gown. Every gown preservation is given a written lifetime guarantee.
“Very professional and great communication. They did a great job getting my wedding dress cleaned and professionally preserved. So happy they were able to get the grass stains out of the bottom of my dress!”
–Megan Petralia
Get your quote to clean & preserve your wedding gown!
Lifetime International Guarantee
We stand behind our preservation process. When you have your gown preserved with us, you’ll receive a written guarantee backed by members of the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists (in 500 cities internationally). When your gown is ready to be worn, simply return it to us or any AWGS member. We will inspect and re-press your gown at NO CHARGE.
Our Process
See the steps we take to preserve your wedding gown beautifully.
Step 1: The Inspection
First, before we clean your wedding gown, we perform a close inspection. We check to ensure the care label in the gown applies to the gown (sometimes the care label inside your dress is wrong). We do this by testing a small, inconspicuous part of the gown to make sure the composition and materials of the gown match the label.
Next, we test several beads on the gown to ensure they won’t come off, get damaged, or damage your dress during the cleaning process.
Step 2: Preparation for cleaning
Based on the inspection results from the first step, we will select the best cleaning method (we have several cleaning methods, all on-site, to choose from) for your gown.
For certain methods, all of the bead work must be covered and any flowers and hoops may have to be removed. Any details that have to be removed are meticulously marked so that they may be properly replaced after cleaning.
Step 3: Pre-spotting Treatment
This is where the bulk of the work happens on your wedding dress. All of the dirty areas and spots are meticulously treated prior to cleaning. This step requires an intimate knowledge of fabrics and spot removal chemistry.
A dry cleaning technician will spend an unlimited amount of time on your dress, going over every inch. Not every spot and stain can come out, but no expense is spared in trying.
Step 4: The Cleaning Phase
This is where the magic of the preservation process occurs. In proper preservation, nothing is added to the dress. Instead, the dress is fully cleaned and given an anti-sugar treatment. If the dress isn’t cleaned properly, nothing you do after this step will allow for a proper wedding gown preservation. After your gown is clean, as part of our wedding gown preservation process, your gown is given the white-glove treatment to prevent anything from re-depositing on your wedding gown.
As part of our lifetime international guarantee, if your gown ever yellows, bring it back for re-cleaning at no extra charge.
Step 5: Steaming & Pressing
Your wedding gown will be pressed or steamed to prepare it for storage in the wedding gown preservation chest.
At any time, you may return your gown to us (or any Association of Wedding Gown Specialists member) for repressing for free (once).
Setp 6: Inspect & Reassemble
Lastly, before we place your wedding gown into the preservation chest, we perform a close inspection to ensure all removable stains are gone. We re-attach any flowers or other details that had to be removed prior to cleaning (except for any hoops, they will be placed at the bottom of the preservation chest).
We invite you to view your gown at this point and approve all the work we have done before we place your wedding dress in the preservation chest.
The Final Step: Preservation Chest
Your gown is carefully packed into the correct size preservation fully acid-free (not just pH neutral) chest for your gown. Acid-free tissue paper is packed between the folds in your gown. An acid-free bust form is used to hold the shape of your wedding gown.
All of our wedding gown preservation chests have an acid-free window so that you may view your gown at any time. We also include a pair of white cotton gloves should you open the chest. When you pick up your wedding gown, we will provide you with a written warranty and instructions for the proper storage of your gown.
Before
After
Vintage Wedding Dress Transformation
Interested in seeing more comparisons like these? View featured Before & After images like this in our Wedding Dress Gallery.
All Wedding Gowns are Cleaned & Preserved On-Site
The key to properly preserving your wedding gown is to ensure that all of the oils and sugars are removed from your gown. By cleaning and preserving your gown at our facility, you can trust the quality of your preservation.
We don’t ship any gowns out for outside processing – everything is done at our plant here in Berkley, Michigan.
Acid-Free Materials Used in Preservation Chest
We utilize only acid-free (not just pH neutral) materials that will touch your dress after it’s safely packed into the preservation chest. This includes an acid-free preservation chest, acid-free tissue paper, and an acid-free bust-form.
The difference because pH neutral and acid-free is that over time pH neutral materials can re-acidify due to contact with moisture.
You View Your Gown Prior To Entering Preservation Chest
Because we perform all of the work on your gown in our own facilities, we give you the option to look at your dress one last time after cleaning but before it’s placed into the preservation chest. Most places don’t allow you to do this, or worse, they can’t.
Environmentally Responsible Practices
For each gown preserved, we make a donation to carborfund.org to offset the carbon emissions generated by the entire cleaning and preservation process.
Experience You Can Trust
Family-owned and in business since 1938, you can trust Janet Davis Cleaners to safely clean and preserve your wedding dress. The owner, a fifth-generation dry cleaner, oversees the care of every gown to ensure the gown is cleaned to the best of our ability while also protecting the delicate items, such as beads, sequins, and flowers, from damage.
Invisible Stains Treated
As a part of our cleaning process, we treat invisible stains. These are sugar-based stains that are not immediately visible but will yellow with time. The process is similar to cutting open an apple. When you cut the apple open, it’s white. But if you leave it on the table for an hour and come back, it will be yellow. The process is much slower with wedding gowns, but the final result is the same. By treating these in advance and offering a lifetime guarantee, you don’t have to worry about invisible stains.
Inquire About Gown Preservation Services
Leave it to Janet Davis Cleaners to preserve your most cherished dress!