5 Essential Things to Preserve From Your Wedding Day

Your wedding day is over, you’re back from your honeymoon and you are looking around for signs of your wedding to help you relive the best day of your lives. For couples who are sentimental, there are several things that you may want to save from your wedding, either for your own personal enjoyment or to pass these heirlooms and artificats on through your family generations. Creating a wedding keepsake box post-wedding can help you to create new traditions in your family. In order to do this, it’s important to plan ahead to save your wedding day heirlooms. Here is a list of wedding heirlooms to consider preserving — and a few unexpected things that you may not have thought about adding to your “items to save” list.

Bouquet
Preserving your bridal bouquet after your wedding is a beautiful way to commemorate the aesthetic of your wedding. If your florist knows that you want to save it, they can help you make sure that happens after your big day is over. If you are going to do the bouquet toss at your reception, you can also have your florist make you a tossing bouquet so that you don’t have to throw your beautiful bridal bouquet and crush the flowers.

Cake and Topper
It can be tough to save the top tier of your wedding cake for a whole year, but it is possible if your cake designer and your caterer know about it in advance. It isn’t uncommon for caterers to throw out the extra cake at the end of the night, if they aren’t given specific instructions. In addition to the cake, be sure to make plans to save that cute, perhaps personalized, wedding cake topper that you worked so hard to find.

Paper Goods and Signs
Be sure to send yourself a wedding invitation so that you can save it for after the wedding. Otherwise, you’ll send all of the invites out and never get one for yourself! Many of the day-of-the-wedding paper goods and signs get tossed by the planner or event coordinator in the haste of staying on your wedding day’s timeline. If there are signs and paper goods such as the ceremony programs or menus that you know you want to save, either set aside a copy in advance or designate a bridesmaid to be in charge of making sure those paper goods and signs are not thrown out.

See More: Wedding Keepsake Ideas to Always Remind You of Your Big Day

Garter
For brides who opt for this age-old tradition, your wedding garter is the perfect heirloom to save after your wedding. Start a new family tradition by passing it on through the generations as the “something borrowed” or “something old” among the brides in your family. If you are going to do the wedding garter toss at the reception, consider getting a small tossing garter so that you can keep the original.

Wedding Dress
Wedding dresses are the most common artifacts brides save after the wedding. If you aren’t going to pass on the entire dress to future generations, perhaps use the material for something else — like a garter for a close relative, an ornate throw pillow, or a veil. If you are planning on saving your wedding dress, be sure to get it professionally cleaned before storing it away. Materials that aren’t cleaned age faster and don’t hold up well over time.

Julianne Smith is The Garter Girl, a stylish wedding garter company hand making modern heirlooms for today’s brides. She is on a mission to modernize the oldest wedding tradition and provide women something sophisticated to wear on their big day. She is a reformed political junkie with a love of tradition, an eye for style, and a passion for beautiful things. You can find more at www.thegartergirl.com, on social @gartergirl, or at the park in our nation’s capital with her three little kids.