How do you remove stains from a wedding dress?

I have a beautiful wedding dress that has some stains on it. I would like to give to someone else that can use it, but it has some stains on it from dirt and maybe some food. I am not sure how long they have been there, as the dress was given to me. How can I safely remove the stains?

How do you remove stains from a wedding dress?
I used to work in the bridal industry, so I know that stains are hard to address. First, we need to know what type of fabric the gown is. Most bridal fabrics (silks, satins, taffetas and chiffons) will water spot with anything that is put on the stain. In the bridal shop that I worked at, we would work carefully with our fabric steamer, iron and Woolite detergent to work out the stain. We would put a very small amount of Woolite on a clean white wash cloth with a bit of cold distilled water and work that into the stain. After working the detergent into the spot, we would take a fabric steamer and iron to the dress to steam and press out the water spot until the dress was dry. If the Woolite left a bit of a residue spot, we would work the distilled water into the spot and take the steamer and iron to it to work it out. This may not work for the type of dress that you have, so I might suggest to you to try these techniques on the hem of the dress where a water spot may not be as noticable. To be safe, take the dress to a professional dry cleaner, although there are no guarantees that dry cleaning will take the stains out either. Hope this information helps!
Reply:Go to a specialty Mexican shoppe. There they will sell you a bar of soap (pink) labeled "Zote" . It should cost about 1.90 or 2 dollars.





Take it home, wet down the dirty section of the dress and rub the bar over it until there are bubbles/suds. Rinse and repeat.





Cleaning one area should take no more than 5 - 10 minutes.





If the food stains have grease in them: wet, rub with Zote, and allow to dry in the sun. Wet, rub with soap, and scrub out completely.
Reply:You add the lemon juice to a pot of water that has been boiled and the heat turned off and soak the parts of the dress that have the stains then hang it out in the sun to dry. If that doesn't work, you may just have to take to a cleaners. Good luck!!
Reply:Let a dry cleaner try. I wouldn't dream of trying to fix a wedding dress.
Reply:I read that to do it sefely, you rub lemon on the stains and then hang in the sun for natural bleaching out that wont ruin the fabric. They do this to antiques as a safe and effective method, but you may have to repeat.