As I realised this weekend that it’s been over three months since our wedding and my dress is still hanging from the curtain rail in our bedroom, it made me wonder – what do you do with your wedding dress when you wedding has been and gone?

I walk past my beloved dress twice a day – once waking up in the morning, and once before I go to bed – and yet I only see it covered carefully in its protective jacket.  Is this a fitting end for my beautiful gown, a dress that cost so many pennies of hard-earnt money, a dress that made me feel so beautiful for a whole day, and a dress, that you could say, I had been dreaming of since I was a little girl?

Image: Mark Tattersall Photography

Well it got me thinking, what do other girls do with their wedding dresses, and do soon-to-be brides have a plan for their gown after the big day?

So to begin with, it’s over to you – what did you do with your wedding dress, or what are your plans for it after you’re married?  I’m hopeful some of you dear readers will share your thoughts and ideas.  There is so much hype and talk and dreams of ‘the dress’ I thought it was about time we talked about happens to them when the wedding is over.

It also got me wondering what ideas I could share of ‘good’ things you could do with your wedding dress after your wedding day.

Here are some positive alternatives to hanging your wedding dress from your bedroom curtain rail…

1. Sell your wedding dress on a preloved wedding website so that someone else can enjoy wearing it on their special day as much as you did – great if you are trying to recoup some of the money spent on your wedding.

2. Donate your dress to a specialist charity shop like Oxfam Bridal where the money raised from the sale of your wedding dress will go towards their charitable aims.

3. Put the money from the sale of your wedding dress into a savings account that you can put towards the wedding of any children you might have – or perhaps if you have a daughter the money could buy the wedding dress of her dreams.

4. Get it altered and dyed so that you can wear the dress again to parties.

5. My mom (who made her own wedding dress) gave her’s to a friend who was getting married, and helped her alter it and customise it to how she wanted.

6. And I guess it’s no bad thing to carefully wrap your dress up in tissue paper and store it away for future generations – who knows, maybe it will become a family heirloom.

I think for a lot of girls, our wedding dress is a pretty special thing, so if we don’t know what to do with it straight away it’s ok for us to take our time and figure out what we want to do with it.

And me?  Despite all these suggestions, I think I’m definitely going to need more time to decide, but I’d like to think it’s not the last time I’ll wear it, even if it’s just to flounce round in my parent’s garden pretending I’m eight all over again and dreaming of my wedding.

I’d like to pass it on and hope it could one day become a family heirloom, and that down the line a great-granddaughter might just say “ooh isn’t it lovely, that’s the dress I want to get married in.”

Don’t forget to share what you did with your wedding dress after your wedding day – or what you plan to do with it.  Any other ideas or suggestions welcome too.