I recently was married and afterwards I wanted to clean my gown. I went to a few cleaners and was told that they could not clean my gown without damaging the beads. I spend $7,000 on this gown and was very concerned that I wasn't going to be able to clean it. I finally called the Unique bride where I purchased the gown and they suggested National Gown Cleaners. I called and had to leave a message on their voicemail. Their voicemail says that it can take 2 days to get a call back. At first I was kind of wondering why it took that long. On the second day, I received a call from Liz. She explained the services to me and said that I would have to bring the gown into their offices in order to get a cost.
I decided to make the appointment with National Gown. I went to Campbell, Ca and met with Christine. She was very knowledgeable and made me feel very comfortable with the process. She even took photos and gave me copies. The best thing was the cost was only going to be $450.00 and I got to see the gown before it got boxed. I could also see the gown anytime I wanted since they use archival boxes with no sealing. I was told that it might take 8 months to get the gown done. Christine explained that the gown gets cleaned in the first 24 hours, so I felt a bit better. I was nervous about waiting so long but after I saw how many gowns they were processing, I better understood why you wait so long. About 8 months went by and I got a call to inspect my gown. I couldn't believe what a great job they did. My gown was beautiful! After I did my inspection, I went in to pick up my gown (about 2 weeks later). I highly recommend this company. They are very busy and do many very expensive gowns so, I would suggest that you plan on waiting a few months to get your gown done. They do not take calls while they are in the office (you can see how this works when you are there) so you will probably need to leave a voicemail message. I found that they email very fast so, I used email after my first meeting with the company. They also require a 50% retainer to start the process and only accept visa, MasterCard and check. NO cash. They have been around a long time and have a book of references in their office to review. I was most impressed with the time they took to explain things to me.
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