When I married Mr. Chat in 2014, I knew I wanted to savor as many details from that opulent October day in Newport, Rhode Island as possible. I had fallen in love with a silk trumpet-style gown months earlier and felt even more drawn to the eye-catching dress with plunging back and rhinestone waistband when I slipped it on for my ceremonial walk down the aisle.
I was adamant about cleaning and preserving my wedding gown immediately after the big day, but with my new role as Mrs. Chat and a busy newlywed year filled with travel and social events, my beloved frock found itself buried deep in my closet. Shame on me!
Earlier this year, as I was reorganizing my closet, I came face-to-face with my wedding gown once again and decided it was time to give it a little TLC. But with the harsh chemicals used by many professional dry cleaners (especially if you’ve had a long night of partying in your garment), I was skeptical about who I would trust to breath new life into my bridal best.
After doing my due diligence about green dry cleaning, I chose Clevergreen Dry Cleaners and spoke with owner Farshad Sayan to learn more about his eco-friendly business. Sayan is a veteran in the world of professional dry cleaning who holds more than three decades of experience cleaning and preserving a wide variety of garments from modern formalwear to vintage frocks.
In 2006, Sayan established Clevergreen with the first storefront perched along Charles Street in Boston’s tony Beacon Hill neighborhood. Today, he has five locations in the greater Boston area including a massive headquarters and plant on North Street in Medford. Sayan has even cleaned costumes for movies filmed in the Bay State including Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a 2009 comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner.
Sayan explained that the environmentally-friendly solvents he uses on garments today are not as aggressive as the products that he had used before going green. Because of that, he admits he took a refresher course in the art of stain removal, so he could achieve the same or better cleaning results while keeping within the green parameters.
The two pieces of advice Sayan has for brides are:
1. Clean your wedding gown as soon as possible to prevent stains from settling into the fabric. Don’t neglect your dress for months because stains that sit in garments for that amount of time will cause serious damage.
2. Be sure the business you choose to work with knows what they’re doing and knows their limitations when it comes to removing stains safely.
My wedding gown took roughly 10 weeks to clean and the end result was gorgeous – even for a garment that I sadly neglected for 16 months. I completely agree with Sayan that a bride should send her wedding gown to a professional soon after her wedding day. I know if I had been more cognizant about the time my dress sat stained in my closet, I would have had an even better and brighter result on the bottom interior fabric – the area my dress had the worst soiling. Sayan and his team, however, did an incredible job tackling all the hard to remove stains. Here are a few before and after photos…
My wedding gown cleaning was complements of Clevergreen Dry Cleaners.
