We bought a seat for my dress as well. My mom had called the FAA to see if the dress had to go through the metal detector belt, she was told that you can ask to have the dress scanned by hand by a supervisor. Well, we got to the airport at 4:30am and the workers had obviously not slept!!! they told me there was no supervisor available and took the dress and jammed it on the belt. I started to argue with the lady and she called me bridezilla (which amost made me cry because i was so happy leaving for the wedding) ~ long story short, you should be able to ask, but only if you get a nice person! besides that, it was worth having a seat for the dress.