We recently received this critical question about how to transport your wedding dress to a destination wedding, in this case, to Las Vegas:

I am wondering about tips to get my dress and my partner's suit to Vegas safely. We are going to a Tough Mudder event and have a fair amount of gear as it is. Any help would be amazing!

- Allison

Here's how we'd handle it in a few different scenarios. We'll also be going in depth on mailing your dress in another post, so stay tuned.

Transporting your wedding dress by air

First, contact your airline if you're traveling by air and find out about their wedding dress policy. Trust me, they have one. It's a risky challenge to transport your dress (and/or your partner's outfit) to begin with, so take a few changes as possible.

I'd definitely suggest storing your dress in a flat garment bag as your carry-on instead of checking it. Some airlines have suit closets available for it to hang, but it may have to go in the overhead bin, depending on your airline. An more empty flight may allow you to store it in a vacant seat, but if it's large, you're too nervous, or you have money to spend, consider just buying the dress its own seat. It might sound ridiculous, but if the ticket is $150 or something lower, it may just be worth your mental state.

In any case, your dress will likely wrinkle during the trip, so plan to have it steamed when you land.

TIP: store the dress in a clean bag inside the garment bag just in case there's any stray dirt inside.

Here are some tips from the TSA Blog:

Ideally, the dress can lay flat in its garment bag or other packaging and fit through the X-ray machine. If it can't, our officers can screen the dress manually, but this will require opening the garment bag. Rest assured that our officers will use gloves for the alternate screening to avoid damaging the dress.

We strongly advise brides to contact their airline to ask about taking their wedding dress on the plane. While some aircraft have closets in first class that can hold the dress, others may not, which could cause challenges in storing the dress above the seat. Airlines will also count the dress as a carry-on item, so be sure to learn about your airline's carry-on policies to avoid having to check any items at the gate

Transporting your wedding dress by car

If you're road tripping to your wedding destination, this makes things somewhat easier. Carefully pack up your dress and outfits into clean, waterproof garment bags and keep them separate or on top of other luggage so you reduce smooshing, wrinkling, and any chance of dirt.

To minimize wrinkling, take the largest vehicle you can so there's room to lay the dress as flat as possible. Fold the seats down and cover them with a sheet, and extend the garment bag out instead of keeping it folded.

Need more desintation wedding tips?