Traveling With a Ballgown

I’d say if you can do the vacuum seal if you can. Are you also taking a steamer? I’m not sure about taking it in a duffle bag out in the open unless you have the plastic it came in. It’s still a bit risky though, if you can maybe take a backpack if it’s big enough to fit. You don’t want to risk losing your luggage.

I suggest looking for a ball gown garment bag on Amazon (sadly the one I used is no longer available) and booking a professional steamer to steam your dress the morning of your wedding.

I vacuum packed my ballgown coming home from Vienna. It was fine, I just had to fluff up the crinoline again.

This is great advice. I have a gala t g to and will be traveling with a ball gown to the east coast and was questioning how I would accomplish that.

Can you ship the gown ahead of the flights? The bridal shop may know a good method of sending it. The four flights make the challenge greater. Maybe there is an intermediate destination where you can send the gown to. Then see if a final flight or two have a place to hang it as a carry on. Otherwise, it seems best to leave the shipping to the pros.

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That’s my plan. Taking it with me, but I just can’t fit the dress in a carry on. The company haven’t reply my email for 3 weeks now. If it can be vacuumed, it would save me a lit of headache 🙃

I can’t carry my steamer because they have a different voltage, but will definitely borrow a steamer from the hotel.

View Quoted Comment I wish I could, but it’s taking too long, and most importantly, it’s not safe at all. I had experience where I lost my tracked package 2x when I sent stuff for my family. Lost of goods and lost of delivery fee. Insurance only covers a part if the lost, so yeah… that option is not available 😔

Oof, this is something I agonized over a great deal LOL. It's still to come in late August, but here's our plan and how we got to it. For reference, my gown is huge - it's mikado satin with lots of layers and an incredibly long cathedral train - full on ball gown like yours I think. So first, I reached out to the dress designer for advice - I was considering somehow fitting it into a carry-on (wasn't even sure if it could fit, but maybe if I really squeezed things), but the designer said absolutely don't do that. I looked into carry-on sized dress boxes, and I seriously considered doing this, but ultimately got worried if I could make it fit and carry it on. The designer recommended just putting it in a garment bag and folding it gently in half and then asking the flight crew to place it in a coat closet - so from here, I started to call airlines to see what their policies are before we made our flights to Italy. I learned that no one will guarantee that you'll be allowed to carry on your dress if it's kind of big. In the end, we ended up purchasing a seat for just the dress.... I hated this because it's just so ridiculous, but it was the only way we'd have some peace of mind for travel and I think it will work out kind of okay. The airline just attached an extra seat to my ticket round trip, so the dress will have a guaranteed spot on the way there and on the way back we will have an empty seat since we're planning to ship it back rather than lugging it around during our honeymoon.

Who knows how this will turn out when we arrive at the airport, but I feel like I've done absolutely everything I can to make it work lol

View Quoted Comment Ouch! That sounded like my original plan. The dress turned out to be no-vacuum, and only low heat steam. I really have to rely on the crews for all 4 flights 🥺. The 2 first ones I think would be less risky because it’s international flights. But the last 2 are a smaller local airplanes, so I don’t even know if they have space for it. Looking at the seats options, all of my flights are fully booked. There is no way I can even purchase a seat for the dress.


My plan now is just take the risk and put the ballgown into the largest check in luggage, and just pray 🙏🏻 🤣😅

I literally just created a discussion post asking the same thing 😂fortunately enough my gown is not fluffy at all since it’s a beach wedding dress. It’s just lace, simple, and I love it ! But I’m still not sure how I should travel with it. But I was looking online and they said some people actually buy a seat for their dress or ask if there are any open seats to their dress can lay across it. I think I’m just going to try to keep it in its original packaging and steam it when I get to the island. But I don’t think lace get as wrinkly. But steaming it may be your best bet