Personalised Wedding Dress Hanger

The bridal gown is almost certainly the most important dress a woman will ever wear. The most expensive, the most elaborate, and the most anticipated! Such a special gown deserves a special hanger! So I decided to see whether I could laser engrave a wooden hanger to personalise it for the bride. It worked really well, and think it would make a very special gift for a bride. I would like to take the idea one step further, and make personalised hangers for the entire bridal party, complete with their names, the date and their role within the bridal party. I hope you like my idea!

Step 1: Artwork

First, I downloaded a font that I liked from dafont.com.The design looks like it could be difficult, but it is actually super easy. The word at the top and the two names down each arm of the hanger are actually separate artworks. The hanger will be positioned and cut separately for each of them.

Once I had found the font that I wanted to use, I created separate LaserCut files for each of the three engraving areas: one for the word bride at the top, and one each for the maiden and married names on the arms of the hanger. As you can see, this hanger was made for the Bride of Frankenstein!

Initially, I messed up the placing of the text a little. After the first text had engraved off-centre it dawned on me that actually placing the words was very uncomplicated: To ensure perfect placement, all I had to do was change the origin point for each word. So I placed the origin point in the centre for the word bride, then matched the hanger up so that the origin point on the laser was in the centre of the hanger. As you can see, the second attempt worked perfectly!

Step 2: Engraving the Hanger

The wording at the top is easy to place by placing the origin point of the laser in the centre of the word, and lining up the laser with the centre of the hanger. This ensures that the word is centred nicely.

To position the names down the arms correctly, it was necessary to place the origin point in the bottom left corner (for the left hand name) and the bottom right corner (for the right hand name). This was you can control where the names engrave correctly. I found that the design looked far more pleasing when they were aligned along the bottom part of the hanger arm, as opposed to being centred along the arms or aligned near the top. If you choose to put different information, you may need to experiment to see what looks best.

The hanger can then be moved around the bed as you engrave different parts in different places.

One of the challenges of engraving a hanger is that it is not flat. This presents an obvious problem when engraving as any difference in the height of the material will cause the laser to lose focus. To counter this, we had to prop the hanger up at different angles to ensure the part we were working on was flat to the bed. Since our honeycomb bed is magnetic, we found that propping it with other magnetic items was most secure, but for engraving the neck, propping it up with another hanger worked perfectly!

Step 3: The Finished Hanger!

Once you have engraved the hanger, it is complete! Because wooden hangers already come sanded and finished, no further work is necessary. The wedding dress hanger is a unique, thoughtful but easy to make gift that is sure to be cherished for time to come. It would be lovely to make hangers for all of the bridal party, with their names, role and date on them, as favours or just to commemorate the occasion. I hope you like it!