086 - How to travel with a wedding dress?

In the first stages of our planning I researched different options for traveling with a wedding dress. In some threads on the boards, brides were saying it would be of no harm if you just stuck the dress in a backpack as your carry on. Well that’s a really good option, but a couple of things came to mind:

• The closer it is to me, the better! I don’t want to risk losing it.
• The smaller the better! I have so many things to pack and only two suitcases and a backpack. I need to use space really wisely.

Because the space (and weight) of the backpack was too precious, I decided to go a different way, and pictured this in my mind:

{ Image Source }

I’ve traveled with pillows before, and I’ve just carried them under my arm with no problems at all. So I thought that maybe I could just make a “wedding dress pillow”. So I went straight to my leftover fabrics and found the perfect one that I had leftover from a pajamas I made a few weeks ago. I grabbed my scissors and jumped into action!

{ I cut two rectangles of fabric and sewed a zipper to one side }

{ Then I started the slow an painful process of stuffing my wedding dress into the pillow. In the picture on the right, you can see I made two of them: one with just plain fabric and other one with a thicker inner layer. }

{ I folded the dress carefully so it wouldn’t get too wrinkled. I’m not so worried about that because I can always dry clean it once I’m in CA right? In the right pic, you can see my dress inside the two pillows. }

{ I tried to squeeze the dress down as much as I could. If you remember, my crinoline alone is pretty puffy - I want to be a marshmallow bride }

This is the perfect way to dream about our wedding, and spend 15 hours on a plane.
I’m really happy with the way it ended up. It’s actually really small (considering how puffy the dress looks) So I’m hoping it helps me get my beauty rest right before I’m reunited with Mr. Poodle!!

Speaking of being reunited, I’m SOO excited!! I’ll be a really really busy bride these next few days with packing and finishing up my last projects before my trip, so I don’t think I’ll be able to blog again until I’m in beautiful California. But to make it up to you, I want to share another teaser from the dress I’m making with the fabric I showed you all in my last post.

{ I still have some work to do, that’s why I’m grabbing it on the front }

Maybe this was too much of a tease, but the next time you’ll see it will be in our engagement pictures.
Now back to the subject at hand. Have any of you had to travel with your wedding dress? What was the best packing option for you?