Dress Confessions
In their china closet, Carol and Charles Kuntz of Butler have the glasses from their wedding toast. In September, the Kuntzes used them to toast each other on their 50th anniversary.
But Carol Kuntz wishes she still had her wedding dress.
“I saved it for probably 30 years,” she said. “It turned yellow. Like a dummy I got rid of it. It was absolutely gorgeous.
“You do things and then you wish later you hadn't done them,” said Kuntz.
Paula Cline of Sarver has been married for 35 years and still has her wedding dress in her closet.
“My daughter would not wear it because it would be a capri length on her,” said Cline.
She has never opened the box, but she plans to hang on to the dress.
“My mother got it cleaned while I was on my honeymoon,” said Cline. “I think I was always afraid to open it, that it would ruin the seal.”
Cline said with a laugh, “It might not even be my dress in the box.”
“That's the old hocus-pocus,” said Steve Hutchinson, owner of Hutchinson Dry Cleaners, 331 Negley St. “We want you to open them up and look at them. If there are stains that appear over time, we reclean them.”
Cline's sister got married nearly 33 years ago. When the sister's son got married, Cline's mother made the ring bearer's pillow out of the sister's wedding dress.
“It was pretty,” said Cline. “There is a lot of the dress left. There are two more children and they'll each have a pillow when they get married and the grandkids. My mom has it all in a big box in her basement. It ended up as a really nice idea.”“I made my wedding dress,” said Donna Gardner of Freeport. “It was patterned after a dress I saw in Nordstrom's. I bought patterns and modified them.”Her gown was a coral-colored fabric with an ivory lace overdress.“It is very pretty,” said Gardner. “I tucked it away. We were in the Navy and whenever we would move, it would move with us.”Gardner tried on the dress recently, hoping to wear it for a 25th wedding blessing in the Catholic church.She said, “It fits but it just didn't look quite right. Just not the same as it looked 25 years ago.”Gardner plans to keep the dress anyway.“I just put it back in the closet,” she said. “It's not something I'm going to hand down to anyone.”Kylee Smith of Chicora was married in October and, so far, has not done anything with her dress.“I just stuffed it right back into the garment bag. It's in the back of my closet right now,” said Smith. “I definitely want to get it preserved.”Smith's mother, Tracy Rankin of Karns City, still had her own wedding dress when Smith got married.“From my mom's dress we made a money bag for my wedding,” said Smith. “It was special.”She said she may use her own dress in a similar way.
Jane Swartzlander of Chicora does not know why she saved her wedding dress for such a long time. She and her husband celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in June.“About five years ago, I was in the cedar chest trying to minimize what was in there,” said Swartzlander. “I burned it.”“At my age, I hate to leave the kids with a burden about what to do with something,” she said.Brides that don't want to keep their dresses can donate them and sell them outright or on consignment.The St. Vincent DePaul store, 226 Greater Butler Mart, does not have any wedding dresses right now, but they occasionally receive them.Store manager Al Laslavic said, “If they're nice and in good enough condition we put them out for resale.”“We've had some come in boxed after their wedding. We put those out as is in the package. If they aren't in a box we'll put them on a mannequin so people can really see them,” said Laslavic.
Second Time Around, 136 S. Main St., has more than 75 wedding dresses available for sale.“We have quite a few from bridal shops and we sell them on consignment,” said Lindsay Briceland of Butler, the daughter of owner Grace Wright.Briceland said, “A lot of times people don't go forth with their wedding and people cannot return them. So we get a lot of brand-new dresses that have never been worn. There are a lot of people who get divorced and bring their dresses in to sell them.”“There are people who store them in the boxes and they move and think 'What am I going to do with this?'” she said.The store also accepts wedding dresses veils, slips, tiaras and dresses for bridesmaids and flower girls. However, the items should be less than seven or eight years old and without tears or stains.“We don't take antique or outdated dresses,” said Briceland. “The girls want the newer styles.”The most expensive dress the store has ever sold was $800, and it was a brand-new dress.Briceland's own wedding dress is at the store but not on a rack.“I don't think I'm going to sell it,” said Briceland. “A lot of girls are having their dresses made into christening outfits for their little girl. I'm hoping someday that I have a little girl.”Hutchinson Dry Cleaners can clean wedding gowns and box them for storage until that dayHutchinson's can also repair dresses.“The most common is a tear from their shoe with dancing, buttons that come off or the loops where they have the bustle,” Hutchinson said.“I always scold the girls to not take off their shoes. They drop the gown down two inches and mop the floor. They pay a lot more to get that soil out.”According to Hutchinson, many of today's gowns are made of fabric that can be professionally washed.Recently, the store received a gown that had mildewed.“Taking care of mildew is a whole separate procedure and we were able to do it beautifully,” said Hutchinson. “It looks fantastic.”Dresses stored for many years can turn yellow.“Those old ones that were grandma's, it is an extra procedure but a lot of that yellow washes out,” said Hutchinson.People celebrating their 50th, 60th or 70th anniversary sometimes want to display the gown.“We can take that gown that's all yellow and do that procedure,” said Hutchinson. “Those are the exciting ones — when the owner comes back to pick up and it looks like the original.”Even washable dresses are usually dry cleaned first before being washed, according to Hutchinson.“The dry cleaning first removes a lot of the oils,” said Hutchinson.The store now takes a $50 deposit before cleaning wedding dresses just in case the bride never picks up her dress. The store tries to return those dresses and sometimes keeps them for years before passing the dresses on as donations.Hutchinson said, “It's amazing how many girls don't come back.”After washing and removing flower, wine, cake and rigatoni stains, the dresses hang to air dry.“We pull the train back and it almost looks like they are walking down the aisle,” said Hutchinson.“The thank you letters that come, those are the things that are sentimental. It's not your normal dry cleaning clothes.”
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