NY/NJ Brides: Where to dry clean a wedding dress?

[disneyberry]

Holy crap, I'd been putting off looking up a good dry cleaner for my wedding dress (way too busy since we got home!), and today I finally called around and the places in NYC are quoting me $300 to $500 for cleaning my dress!!!

I don't want any of the preservation (ripoff marketing), just a good cleaning and then I'm going to buy an acid-free cloth garment bag or something for it.

This makes me wish that I'd just given my dress to Carolyn Allen's before we came home to have them clean it and send it home for me.

I still have to wear my dress one more time for an at-home reception and now I'm wondering if I should just wear it with the stains (just the bottom hem is dirty from dragging on the floor) to save the cost of cleaning it, if it really is supposed to be hundreds of dollars per cleaning!! O.O;

Anyone know of a good cleaner in the area that doesn't charge an arm and a leg to do a cleaning?

(And I promise I'll go back to working on my wedding TR after this at-home reception is over... I'm still swamped with too many things to do nowadays!)

 

[hmgolden]

My parents had my dress dry cleaned at their regular dry cleaner. It didn't cost anywhere near $300 for the cleaning. I do live a bit upstate in NY (about an hour and a half outside of Manhattan) and it was 4.5 years ago, so maybe that has something to do with the pricing.

Personally, I would probably choose wear the dress to the reception without cleaning it - assuming that there are no obvious stains on the bodice or the skirt. Chances are the hem is just going to get dirty again at the at home reception.