Carried a wedding dress on Southwest

[Figaro8398]

Just wanted to share my experience, as carrying a wedding dress on the plane was one of the biggest worries I had. I had called Southwest twice prior to our departure and was told that I could take the dress as a carry-on in the garment bag, but they said there was no where to hang it. I wasn't worried since I had made an appointment with Carolyn Allens to have it steamed the morning of the wedding. I carried my dress in the David's Bridal bag. I wanted to make sure that people saw what it was so that they may be a tad more helpful. It worked At Midway, the TSA agents made sure that the garment bag was flat on the belt, and made sure that I was able to get through the metal detector to grab it before it was crushed by the other items on the belt. As I boarded the plane, the pilot suggested that I wait till all the other carry-ons were in the overhead bin so I could lay it across the top. We decided not to wait; we wound up folding the bag carefully in half and closing the overhead bin door so no one would put anything else in. The bag would have easily fit on top of the luggage though! And the best part - the dress didn't need to be steamed!!!

The way home was just as smooth. We checked out of POR but our flight wasn't till the evening. The manager at Bell Services had them hang the dress in her office until we were ready to catch the Magical Express bus. They also put DH's backpack with his laptop right next to the dress so it was safe At Orlando, the TSA agents were just as good.

The only downside to carrying the dress on was that it did get heavy to carry after a while. My mom had suggested sewing loops on the bottom of the dress bag so that we could loop them through the hanger and carry the bag at half the length rather than the full length. Sadly, the weight of the dress ended up tearing the plastic of the dress bag near the seams. There was also a tear at the top of the dress bag. Luckily we had some friends who came down the day after us and they brought us duct tape to repair the holes. We carried it home without folding it.

I hope this helps to ease some stress of other brides wanting to keep their dresses with them as they travel!

 

[mjshorses]

Thank you so much for sharing! I'm so glad you had a very good experience with this. It's really neat how people saw what you were carrying and went out of their way to help you

 

[KristiLyn]

Thank you so much for sharing!!! I was worried about this too, in case we end up flying instead of driving

 

[stl_figment]

Thanks so much for sharing! We are flying Southwest to Florida and I was worried.

 

[*Pixiedust1438*]

Can I ask you how big your dress was? We are also flying southwest and I still don't know what I am going to do... I can't imagine my dress would fit in the overhead bin on top of other people's luggage?

 

[Figaro8398]

Can I ask you how big your dress was? We are also flying southwest and I still don't know what I am going to do... I can't imagine my dress would fit in the overhead bin on top of other people's luggage?

I will do one better than describing how big the dress was...I am going to try to post a couple of photos. I am 5'10" so it is a long dress

I also had DH's tux in the bag with my dress. The overhead was more than 6 feet long because my dress folded in half took up about a quarter to a third of the entire bin. When we placed our other carry-on next to the dress bag, there was still at least 4-6 inches on top of it.

 

[Fire14]

I've also read of folks buying dress it's own seat. Not bad when seats are 69.00 but at 100+ I'd be looking for other choices myself