Your special day is over and you’ve loved wearing your perfect dress, but what do you do with your gown now? Below, we explore our favourite things to do with your old wedding dress.
Donate
Donating your wedding dress to charity is a feel good way to ‘dispose’ of your dress. There are a number of great charities who will put your dress to good use. Some nonprofits, such as The Brides Project, resell old wedding dresses and use them for money for cancer research.
Other charities, such as The Wedding Wishing Well, work with couples who are less well off, providing other brides-to-be with beautiful gowns or selling old wedding dresses to help fund less fortunate couple’s dream weddings.
In addition, the charity Heavenly Gowns, who support grieving parents, take old wedding dresses and recycle them into gowns for babies who have passed away.
Keep it
You invested lots of time into finding the perfect wedding dress for you. Your wedding dress may be one of the most sentimental items of clothing that you will ever own, and treasuring it away in your wardrobe or in a box is a nice way to remember your wedding day and how you felt wearing your dress.
Trash it
Some readers may feel a knot in their stomach at the thought of ‘trashing’ their wedding dress, but others may love the idea. ‘Trashing’ your wedding dress, is a recent trend which has taken off in America, where brides find fun ways of destroying their dress. Some brides decide to swim in their dress, play in the snow, or walk along the sand.
One bride, speaking to Bridal Guide, describes the fun you can have going this route: “I think the point of a ‘trash the dress’ session is not to do something you will regret down the line, but instead, to enrich your wedding/marriage experience by giving yourself the gift of feeling beautiful. I was no longer worried about keeping it clean for the ceremony…I could simply be in my dress and relax. I danced in the snow, posed, did a snow angel and wore a beautiful red cape…I felt like a kid again.”
Recycle it
Turning your dress into something new can be a nice way to uphold the warm feelings you had on the day of your wedding. You may enjoy using the material to create a christening gown for your child, or you may like to pass it along to your daughters – for their own weddings.
Reuse it
You may also like to consider having your wedding dress dyed and shortened so that you can enjoy wearing it on other occasions, after your wedding day. Choosing this option can help you feel like you are getting the most out of your dress.
Sell it
Make back some of the money you spent on your dream wedding, by selling your dress. If you bought a designer gown, you can sell your dress on specialist websites and hopefully make back some of the cost of the gown.
