Should you have your wedding gown steamed? That seems to be the question a lot of brides are asking as we enter the busy summer wedding season. Read on to find out why you should definitely consider having Charlotte’s Weddings steam and press your wedding dress before your big day.

First, let’s start by talking about your wedding dress arriving to Charlotte’s. The designer of your dress packs the dress into a box, which then gets shipped to us. We inspect your gown upon arrival to our shipping & receiving department, check it in, and then give it to you at your pick-up appointment. We don’t steam your dress before we give it to you because it will be put back into the garment bag, you will have alterations done and then put it back in the bag again.  If it were steamed before, it will only re-wrinkle. That is also why we suggest bringing your dress in after your alterations and before your wedding for us to steam it, to make it flawless for your big day. You will be looking at your wedding pictures for the rest of your life and you won’t want your dress to look wrinkled in them.

So you’ve decided to get your dress steamed, now what? You will need to think about a timeline to make sure you leave enough time for it to be steamed. Contrary to popular belief, it does NOT simply take ten minutes to steam an entire wedding dress. There are layers, upon layers, upon layers underneath and inside a wedding dress, all of which take time to dry as we steam and press your gown. We ask for you to drop off your wedding dress a week to ten days before you want to pick it up from steaming. This is because it is a process to steam a wedding dress and we want to make it perfect for you. Steam and press is also a great tool not just for your gown, but for your other bridal accessories, such as a sash and a veil!  Needless to say, depending on the dress, it can take quite a bit of time to completely steam it.

What do you need to do? Call us! We schedule steaming of dresses by the day you want to pick it up, which should be as close to your wedding day as possible. Then you will drop your dress off a week to ten days before that date, which you do not need an appointment to do. The cost of steaming your wedding dress depends on the type of fabric your dress is and the amount of layers it has underneath it.

For Charlotte’s brides, steam & press can cost between $100-$250 to steam your wedding dress, depending upon the style of gown, number of layers, and difficulty. We also steam & press gowns for brides who found their gown elsewhere, costing between $150-$300 (depending upon the style of the gown). Payment is due when you drop it off so you don’t have to worry about paying for it when you return to pick up your dress. Give us a call at 503-297-9622 if you have questions.  We would love to steam and press your wedding dress to relieve stress for your big day!