A graphic of a room containing a white wedding dress on a mannequin with pictures on the walls and a chest of drawers
Episode 93 – What should I do with my wedding dress?

What should I do with my wedding dress? There's no right or wrong answer. It's a tricky one and depends on the space you have, how sentimental you are and how you feel about re-purposing it. In this podcast we will discuss why wedding dresses are tricky to declutter, whether you should even contemplate decluttering them and some handy donation or re-purposing options.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Johnson and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:31  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 93 of the Declutter Hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid. 

Lesley  0:37  
And I'm Lesley.

Ingrid  0:39  
If you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is the show for you. In today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about wedding dresses. And wedding dresses. Lesley, why are we talking about wedding dresses?

Lesley  0:56  
Because it's a tricky one, isn't it? It's a tricky one to declutter. Some people are perfectly fine with it, but some people keep holding them for donkey's years. So well. Tell me about your wedding day, Ingrid.

Ingrid  1:09  
Well, I had the best wedding day ever. So I've only been married once it took him 10 years to ask me I think. I think we both knew after about two or three years, we wanted to get married. But still it took us 10 years to get married. Basically, because we wanted to do an epic wedding day and it almost turned into a wedding weekend to be honest. And I got married in a castle Lesley a castle. So I know. I know. It was an amazing wedding. I'm not gonna lie, we saved up for it. It costs quite a lot of money. But we had the best weekend ever. And actually, one of my friends once said to me, Ingrid, your weddings is one of the best things I've ever been through. So that made me feel quite good, because I wholeheartedly agree with her. And it was just lovely. And we we enjoy our day so much. And I had the most beautiful dress. And actually, this is so funny, because when I was wedding dress shopping, I didn't go to 20 shops, I think I made one or two appointments. And the lady said to me, Ingrid, what kind of dress would you like? And I'm like, I've got absolutely no idea. I didn't look through magazines for months to decide what dress I wanted. I said I think I know when I see it. And I said as long as there's not a I didn't like those big bows on the back. I said my balm is big enough. I don't want to go back and I don't want any lace. What do I end up buying a wedding dress with a complete lace coat that I could take off in the evening apps. Literally stunning. It was so funny because it was on a Saturday in the shop. And I came out of the kind of changing room after with like, first one and then another one another one. And then I stepped out with the one and the whole shot if it wasn't great, and the people and they go and I thought Oh, this must be nice then because the whole shop kind of came to a standstill and everybody's kind of looking. I was like, okay, and everybody started crying and I'm sort of crying and like this is a one. So yeah. Love it.

Lesley  3:05  
wedding dress. And that's exactly the reason why it's so hard to declutter something like that. Because those memories, you know, the way that you've described it, and everyone loved it. It's such a beautiful day of your life. Why would we want to get rid of those memories, but equally, these are big, bulky things. So yeah. So

Ingrid  3:26  
before we then go on and I'm not going to tell you if I've kept it or not. So how about you Lesley?

Lesley  3:34  
Well, I've been married a lot longer than you because obviously I'm older than you so I've been married I'm gonna love to think now 1993 28 years coming up. So 20 years 20 years Wow. And I was together with Steve for five years before I got married which I thought was an eternity. I'm like Hello, can you just get on with it. And I'm the same as you I you know, I didn't really have in my mind really what I wanted, I knew what colour I wanted. I wanted it to be ivory. I did want you know the time that I got married in the 90s dresses were bigger than they tend to be at the moment you know because we've definitely gone through a phase of dresses being narrower and not quite as full as they were. I definitely had a full wedding dress and it was tool at the bottom. So it was very Princess like so I absolutely loved it. And same as you. My wedding day was very special. People loved being there and it's got such strong happy memories and I still love the dress and I still think it's very classical now I do believe that you could wear it now and it would still look great. So I think it's quite a timeless wedding dress.

Ingrid  4:44  
Same with my dress. You could wear it now. It's absolutely beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. So listeners you probably understand from my answer is that I have kept my wedding dress my wedding dress is still there. I have not decluttered it and it is in my it's actually at my mom's house for for loads of different reasons, but I know exactly where it is. It's really well taken care of. It's in a cover. Everything's together. I did declutter the wedding shoes, but I still have to dress.

Lesley  5:15  
I still have mine as well. It's upstairs here. I wouldn't say it's really well kept. It's kind of in a suit carrier kind of bundle. So I probably should do something with it and get it dry cleaned, and it probably has been dry cleaned. To be fair, I should probably preserve it a little bit more. But what am I going to do with that wedding dress is the question. So you and I have decided that we can keep it but we're not compromised on space. Some people are compromised on space, and have to make harder decision about these things. But my take on this is if you don't want to declutter it, don't declutter it. What are you thinking, Greg? Because people feel under pressure to declutter wedding dresses, don't they?

Ingrid  6:00  
Yes. And I'm the same as you. If you don't want to declutter it, keep it. I mean, my mom has asked me, she's like, Ingrid, your wedding is here. And like, I know, but there's now there that I think some sort of shop opened where you could sell it or so I can't even remember. She's like, well, I can I can ama No, do not touch the dress. I don't know why there's not as you know, I am a very decluttered and organised person. And there's not a lot of things that actually that I'm super special for me. But that is the one thing that is an absolute, do not touch it. That's not leaving my house item. It's just so special for me. Yeah, so um, um, even if I would be compromised on space, if I even if I would go to a one bedroom flat, that's deep, probably including my wedding album.

Lesley  6:50  
You're doing exactly the thing that we tell people that they're not allowed to do, which is to keep it at your mom's house. That's a that's a cardinal sin that Ingrid to keep things at your mom's house.

Ingrid  7:01  
I know, it's the one item, it's because I moved abroad. And so the wedding dress was at my parents house. And if they have space in a in a wardrobe there and I moved abroad, and then it would I would have had to ship it via plane, it was just so it's kind of always stayed there. But I mean, I can now if I could go if my mother needs to downsize or wants me to take it, I can take it. That's not a problem. I can have it here. But it's just happened to be there still.

Lesley  7:30  
And so it really depends on how sentimental you are. So you and I are both quite sentimental. I'm and I'm going through them all my sentimental things at the moment. And it's highlighted to me just how sentimental I am to be fair keeping things. So it's not something that I'm ever gonna get rid of it. But what am I actually going to do with it? This is the question, what do you do with it? Do you need to get rid of it? Some people are really happy to get rid of their wedding dress. Sometimes wedding dresses have sad memories attached to them as well. You and I have been married once. Touch would have not gotten divorced. Yeah. That's that's the kiss of death, isn't it?

Ingrid  8:12  
I'm gonna knock on wood. Now. Lesley, can you hear me knocking I need to knock on wood is?

Lesley  8:17  
Yeah, so we've had one wedding. And we've had one marriage. And so of course they are happy memories. But for other people out there, it's not quite as happy and that marriage may have ended, they may have more than one wedding dress, they may have no wedding dress they may have you know, it really just depends, doesn't it? But I suppose here we are experiences, that that's a very special thing. And we're not going to take that out of our lives. But I do think about what am I actually going to do with that, you know, when am I going to be able to bring that out and bring those special memories back. So a lot of the sentimental stuff that I've got, I've got a plan with what I'm doing with a lot of that at the moment. So I can use it. And so I can enjoy it a little bit more because it has been boxed up. And so I've taken that task into my own hands at the moment, and I'm working on that. But what about the wedding dress? How am I going to get those happy memories back? And can I actually get those memories from a photograph? Most of us have got a wedding photograph around up somewhere easily accessible or in an album. So does that give us enough of a memory looking at ourselves on a photograph in the dress? Or do we need the actual dress?

Ingrid  9:24  
Well, that's the That's the million dollar question. Isn't it? Really? I mean, I think if the dress gives a lot of negative emotions, because maybe because it was a horrible day or because you got divorced or it's not something that's important to you. I mean, some people are not really connected to their wedding dress for them. It was just a dress for a day. And they're like okay, well that's days done now and I'm happy to let it go. But I think especially if it has negative feelings and emotions, holding on to it, then it gets really tricky because Every time I mean, you know, it's in your house, you know, you know it's there. And I think, then it's maybe easier to let it go. Or maybe it's very hard to let it go. But then you will feel much better. After you've let it go instead of hanging on to that, because you will know it's there, you will see it. And you'll be confronted with those feelings all the time.

Lesley  10:22  
It's a really interesting one and good, isn't it? Because it's something that we get asked all the time. So we get asked it obviously, in the Facebook group, we get asked by clients, and more recently, then we got asked in a live q&a, didn't we? So it came up in one of our q&a. So we have q&a Is anybody who's a member of the declutter hub, every two weeks, we go live, and we talk about many, many different things. But the wedding dress debate that and let's call it that was really lively, wasn't it? And I think sometimes it's about you just need someone or a number of people to come up with their opposing opinions. Because up until that point, you've only got your thoughts on it. And it's useful for them to get my thoughts, your thoughts in grid, which sometimes the same, and sometimes a different, to get experiences from other members as well is also really useful. So opportunity to discuss things like that. It's really, really useful. So we talked about it in our q&a, we didn't come up with a conclusion. So it'd be interesting to see whether the person that chatted about it in the q&a, we need to remember to go back to our member and say, What did you decide finally, about the wedding dress? Because she was very keen to know what we thought about it wasn't sure.

Ingrid  11:32  
Yeah, you and I think are both aligned here that we both want to keep it. But then let's think about what we can do with it if you want to keep it. So what are our options? We are we're keeping it now. What can we do?

Lesley  11:47  
Obviously, the most important thing is what I've not done, which I probably need to put on my list of things to do, which is to preserve it a little bit better than it has been preserved at the moment to make sure that it does stand the test of time. Because things will disintegrate over time. You know, you and I both know that because we see things that disintegrate if it's not kept well. And if it's a certain type of material, it may degrade over time. So I think it's important to take it to a specialist, dry cleaners or someone that packages at wedding gowns. I think it's probably just the dry cleaners isn't it to make sure that it's put, it's wrapped in tissue paper so that it looks beautiful in the box, and then it's in a proper box, I think as well. That can be stored well. So that's the first thing that's really important. We need to look after it appropriately, which you have done. And I have not done but it's on my list of things to do.

Ingrid  12:35  
Well, maybe my job is Lesley to make sure it actually goes into my house. And I can actually maybe show it to my daughter. I don't I can't remember ever showing it to her. Even if we're at Grandma's house. I can't remember showing it to her. So maybe my job is to actually get it from my mom's house back into my house. Yeah, we both

Lesley  12:54  
got action points. You know, what's quite interesting, actually, is that this weekend, it was my best friend's 29th wedding anniversary. And so she decided that she was going to wear her wedding dress. I know there's not many people around to be fair, that would still fit into that dress, but she did. And so but she had a real what we call an Arang, you know, huge wedding dress that she wore back in the kind of early 90s I think it was when she got married. And so her and her husband had dinner at home. He dressed up in a dinner suit, and she dressed up in a wedding dress and paraded around the kitchen. It's quite funny actually, the bail on the kids were there. So think it was it was a kind of almost like an anniversary thing. And so I think that's really cool. I think I would be too scared to actually try and dress up in a way I'd be like, No, we'll just be so depressing. It will be such a negative, but like really, that was healthy. No, it was when I was 25. And look at me now. So I think I'm a little bit scared to do that whole dress up thing. I think a better option for me would be if and when my daughter so I've got two sons and a daughter. If my daughter decided that she wanted to get married at any point that she was looking at wedding dresses, I think that would be a cool time to say not to say you need to wear my wedding dress, but to say try my luck because that'd be quite good fun. So I think that might be quite a nice thing to do as a run up to a wedding celebration for your daughter or daughter in law potential daughter in law or somebody else special in your family. So I think in my head, that's the kind of thing that I've got. Well, it was interesting

Ingrid  14:27  
because my mother from her wedding dress made a christening gown that I was christened in so that was kind of in the 70s I think the thing to do, and we found lots of ideas on Pinterest, didn't we about you can maybe create a garter for somebody else's wedding or maybe incorporate some of your wedding dress your daughter's veil. There's some very creative people around on there to see if you can. What you can do is you want to keep the wedding dress but you want to repurpose it a little bit.

Lesley  14:59  
And I think The key is with any form that you want to donate or anything that you want to pass on, you need to make sure that the person that you're suggesting that so in my case, that would probably be my daughter, does she want it? Yes, she wants part of my wedding dress in a garter or in a veil, or whatever. And if she doesn't, if she thinks that's a nice idea, then that's a lovely thing to do. But it's important not to enforce your own ideas about what you want onto someone else. Because in the same way that I could choose everything about my wedding dress, and my wedding day, she needs to be able to do the same. And so I would be very mindful of that. But I think it would be a lovely thing to do in the right circumstances as well. So quite like the idea of repurposing, and actually, you probably wouldn't need to destroy the whole dress, you could probably take a small part of the dress and utilise that within a garter or within a veil, or whatever that might be. I think that's a really lovely idea. So I'm going to I'm going to park that one for future for the future.

Ingrid  15:57  
Yeah, and I've also seen some ideas about maybe creating a pillow of the material for around your house, you said something about turning it into a bear, didn't you Lesley using the fabric to turn it into a bear.

Lesley  16:09  
I think the bears were really lovely idea of actually, for a lot of things. And so it's not just wedding dresses. So there is a company in the UK, and I'm sure that they're across the world as well, where you send them part of a wedding dress part of it, it's quite common to do them with blazers, we have school uniform here in the UK. So people have badges on blazers, that they wear for school, and quite often they get turned into little, you know, they put a blazer on the bear, which is quite cool. Wedding dresses in the same Christening Gowns are the same, that's quite a nice thing because they could take your wedding dress, and then it could be part of your every day. Ornamental stuff in your house part of your displays, which I think is really nice. So you could give it to a child if you got married and give it to your first child or whatever. You know, things like that are quite cute. So I'm inventive repurposing ways to use your gown. Because it is quite hard, isn't it to sit on something that could do so much for somebody else and just leave it in a cupboard. That's the downside of it you and I like but we were not ready to let go. But there is a downside to that, which is we're not putting things back into general use. And we should be giving it to someone who can enjoy it for a second time or something like that. But there are if you decide that you are happy to donate it, there's lots of places that you can donate it to aren't there?

Ingrid  17:26  
Yes, for sure. I mean, it's so we were going to discuss some of the options, because there are so many different ways where you can donate your wedding dress. So if you do decide that you don't want to keep your wedding dress, here are some of the options. So first of all, you can of course, donate your wedding dress to a charity shop. I mean, there are charity shops like here in the UK, Oxfam Red Cross, they have shops that only do wedding dresses and wedding outfits. So if you really want it, just bring it to your local charity shop where you like maybe the only item they have, there are charity shops who have specialised wedding departments. So that is maybe the first start if you want to think about donating to bring it somewhere, donate it to charity. But there are also some specific charities on there, Lesley?

Lesley  18:19  
Yeah. And I think personally, I really liked the idea of the specific charities, I would love the idea of giving my wedding dress to somebody who really truly needed it. I'm not saying that people at a charity shop don't need it, there's a different story that there are lots of charities who will give things to people who truly truly need them or are at their time of need. So there's one that's really lovely, that's quite local to me, which is called the gift of a wedding. So what they do is they create a wedding day for people who are terminally ill. So quite often these are done without much notice. And they need to pull things together very quickly. And donating your wedding dresses to them is something that they asked for all the time. So gift of a wedding, beautiful, beautiful charity that do some fantastic work for people that are terminally ill. And so I would love the idea of doing something like that with my wedding dress.

Ingrid  19:10  
Yeah, yeah, there's also a company called cherished gowns or heavenly gowns or treasured Angel, there are several companies, and they actually create wedding dresses into carefully crafted burial gowns for babies that were born too soon, too late or too poorly. And then they are being donated to hospitals and pennants throughout the UK completely free of charge. So if that is something that is close to your heart, that is probably wonderful charity. I mean, we just happen to find two or three charity here in the UK, but I'm sure across the world there in your country, wherever you're listening, there must be charity should do the same. So if that is something that really is special to you, maybe that's the right way for you to donate your wedding dress.

Lesley  19:58  
So it may be that you actually want to Sell your wedding dress. And there are places that you can sell your wedding dress to and make money from them. So it might be too. You can sell them to film companies use them all the time, particularly if it's a vintage wedding dress, there is a specific wedding dress. resellers. There's one in America, I think called pre owned dresses.com. So that's also a fantastic way to go if you want to make money. So if you want to make money out, you know, we spend a lot of money on a wedding dress. I can remember can you remember because I can remember exactly how much my wedding dress cost? Can you?

Ingrid  20:31  
My mum and dad bought it for me. But I remember how much it was. Yeah,

Lesley  20:35  
I do. Man was 485 pounds. Which I guess it wasn't a crazy amount of money for a wedding dress. But it's still a lot of money in those days. I probably you know, that would probably be the equivalent a couple of 1000 pounds now, I guess I don't know. So it's quite, it was a lot of money, but it was an appropriate amount of money. So, so yeah, but wedding dresses can run to 1000s and 1000s of pounds. And so, you know, if you need that money to start on your own with life, then you can certainly there's definitely a market for reselling. Look around in your local area to see what's available to you. And then there was a couple of quite cool ideas. I've already spoken about my friend who wore her dress on a wedding anniversary. And then there are wedding dress parties. Now I think that would be even more depressing than trying one person trying on the wedding. So be honest with you, you get your height it could be it could be the end of beautiful friendship. So you get 10 friends together. It's kind of almost like a competition. Who can fit into it sounds very, very scary to me. But some people maybe maybe what it is is people who only just got married and then two or three years later they're having a wedding dress party. I'm not sure it's gonna quite work for people my age. But yeah, wedding dress party. Well, yeah, that's all common. And I wedding dresses on I know there was something there's there's a ridiculous show. And they have them all over the world called Real Housewives of Cheshire, which is beyond hideous, but hilarious. Same as the Real Housewives of New Jersey and all the American ones where they definitely they went on a hen party, also called a bachelorette party, I think in America and Australia, maybe I'm not sure. And they wore their wedding dresses to the hen party. And so things like that can happen. But again, hen parties tend to be when you're around that kind of you know, late 20s, early 30s Edge not when they're the menopause is hit and miss. Bread comes on like horrendously. So yeah, so you could have a wedding dress party. I won't be having one of those anytime soon. 

Ingrid  22:33  
Me neither, Lesley. I must say when you told me about your friend putting her dress was like, wow, I kind of hate her right now. She's still freaking her wedding dress. I cannot do my wedding dresses. 

Lesley  22:46  
Not good. Exactly, exactly.

Ingrid  22:49  
You what you could do is maybe create if you're like super creative, maybe you can upstyle it and create a new dress. And maybe if you're good at like fabric, dyeing paint or something. I don't know how you do that. But you could make maybe like a cocktail dress. If you're like, super creative. I could never do that. Because I'm not very handy with that kind of thing. But that is something you could do.

Lesley  23:12  
I think if you're crafty or creative, the world's your oyster. Yeah, isn't it in terms of what you can do with that, you can make it into picture frames as people making them into frames with jewellery, you can put stuff into a box frame, you know, there are even people who frame the whole dress. Have you seen those in these huge houses, they put a huge kind of six foot frame and put the whole wedding dress in them as well, which is quite nice, quite a nice thing to do. So there's so many things you can do if you're creative. And if you're not creative yourself, there will most certainly be someone out there who will do something for you. So if you feel that it's something that you want to display, you can do that. If you feel like it's something that you want to repurpose into something else that you can just use a small portion of your wedding dress that works. If you want to donate it, there's loads of places to donate it to. If you want to sell it, you can sell it. Or if you're like me and Ingrid, we're just going to keep it till the end of time. And at some point we're going to have a nice day probably with our daughters and hope that they play ball or want to play mommy's wedding dress. The mom's wedding dress game. Yeah, I'm not going to try my Nan, I'm going to put it on my daughter who absolutely will fit in it.

Ingrid  24:21  
Same here. Same here. One last thing I wanted to share with you Leslie what was really cool. My friend was connected to a charity in Africa and she got them all shipped to Africa. And there they used him for I think, kind of a rental dress agency because the African brides really wanted to wear the white wedding dresses. And I think she was renting them out. And so it was fantastic. So she got a lot of wedding gowns repurposed and donated that way so she did an amazing job on that. So I thought it was really cool.

Lesley  24:51  
I'm feeling on the static now. I'm feeling nostalgic, half a little bit depressed because I know that I can't fit into my wedding dress anymore. So I'm not quite sure. And I've got an action to do because I've got to put it, I've got to get it dry, cleaned and preserved properly. So that's what this podcast has done for me, Ingrid. So what are you going to do after this podcast,

Ingrid  25:12  
I think I'm going to take my wedding book out over the weekend and look at my wedding photos, a bit of nostalgia, have a bit of nostalgia and just kind of revisit the day in my head and in the photo. So that was that was lovely. Actually, it that's interesting, because that triggered another job. But one of my frames that I have my wedding folders in the back thing to kind of put it out, fell off. So I think I need to get to new frames and reframe are two wedding dress photos that I have on my site in my bedroom. So that's another job I need to do connected to wedding and wedding dresses, because I love those pictures, I'm going to have to look at the quality as well, I might have to reprint them because I took the nice photo progress prints, that really good quality. So there's a little job there as well asleep. But yeah, that and that wedding dress at some point will come to my house and we'll store it safely. And, and we'll see what happens. Well, you can fit

Lesley  26:06  
it now in your brand new loft. Yes, I

Ingrid  26:08  
know. I know. I can put it nicely maybe get a nice large books get some tissue paper as well. I mean, it's already in a thing. But yeah, maybe I need to get a nice wedding dress books or large books that can go up there. And I can store it safely. So listeners one weird podcast actually to talk about wedding dresses, but so many emotions connected to wedding dresses and so many things you can do with it if you no longer want it. So we hope that we've inspired you to have a think about that. And to have a think about to actually want to keep it and if I want to keep it where am I going to put it and what I'm going to do with it. And if you don't want to keep it. Oh my gosh, there's so many things actually wedding wedding dress can go I'm going to investigate some of my options. So thanks so much for listening today. And we really hope you've enjoyed this podcast and if you've enjoyed it, please share it with other people, maybe your friends and family would love our show to on our show notes page. On our website, you can find all the sharing buttons. If you'd like to get more tips and advice please follow us on social media. We are on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as at declutter hub, and we have a lively supportive Facebook group, the declutter hub community, we'd love to see you there as well. If you'd like to know more about our q&a s and our membership, have a look at members dot declutter hub.com To find out more. If you don't want to miss the next weekly episode, subscribe to the declutter hub podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and iHeartRadio. And it will pop into your notifications each Friday. See you next time.

Outro  27:50  
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