WPCNR'S THE REAL DEAL. By The Wedding Genie. September 29, 2007: It’s hard to imagine that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a dress can actually end up helping not only someone else but you as well after the wedding is over.  It can if you decide to donate it to a good cause!  This is one of the many options available to brides after the wedding is over and the dress just takes up space in the closet along with a host of memories and good pictures of course. 

Our favorite charity, to which a gown can be donated, bridal, bridesmaid or mother of the bride, is the Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation (www.makingmemories.org).  The organization has an arm called Brides Against Breast Cancer (BABC) which accepts donated gowns from brides, retailers and designers and then resells the dresses in order to raise money to grant wishes to terminal breast cancer patients.  Breast cancer is the number one killer of women under 48.  In many cases, the men and women suffering from this illness have young children and their wishes more often than not are to make a happy memory during such a difficult time. 

 Past wishes granted include family vacations to Disney World or Hawaii; video cameras for recorded messages; the opportunity for a child of a parent suffering with breast cancer to meet someone famous; tickets to major sporting events and many others.  These wishes literally provide families with wonderful memories that they can hold on to and hopefully enjoy during a time of such sadness and exhaustion.  The first wish ever granted was to a woman who just wanted to have a family reunion, and although she was not given much time by ALL the doctors, she remains healthy today (this was 7 years ago) – she swears it was the renewed joy she felt by having an opportunity to celebrate her life for a day, rather than focus on her disease, that helped her beat the diagnosis. 

Brides Against Cancer

Brides Against Breast Cancer gives women an opportunity to really help others while getting a tax write off and doing something good with something that brought them so much joy.  Additionally, BABC does “Gown Tours” all over the country – so if you are a bride looking for a dress – there is a gown tour coming to New York city next week (October 4-7).  And, if you have a dress that you want to donate you can either go to www.makingmemories.org for details or bring your dress to the gown tour next week.  For more information on the event please see http://www.brides.com/promo/somethingpink/. 

But, if donating your gown is not the preference, there are two other options.  You can preserve it for yourself or someone else – we recommend doing this right after the wedding – it makes cleaning the dress easier and allows the preservation process to start immediately.  The most cost effective option is online through a company called WedClean http://www.wedclean.net/ and it costs about $129 for the preservation of your dress.  Its simple, time efficient and very reasonably priced.  Two other options where you don’t have to send your dress away to an internet company are J. Scheer & Co. http://www.jscheer.com/, which can be expensive, but you definitely get what you pay for and Hallak Cleaners http://www.hallakcleaners.com/.  Both are extremely reputable and reliable. 

Bridal Dress Exchange.

And of course, the last and often most lucrative third possibility is to sell your dress to another bride.  A new option that just came on the market and which we love so far is Save the Dress http://www.savethedress.com/, a website that allows you to market your dress directly to prospective buyers.  The costs for listing a gown are very reasonable and the process straightforward.  More traditional means for selling a gown include Ebay http://www.ebay.com/, a popular source for brides over the past few years and Craig’s List www.craigslist.org, which is a free site to list on but does not garner as much success as Ebay, even though there are selling and listing fees involved (based on the sale price of the dress).

Reuse

While not a common option, we have also had a few brides re-use their gown by cutting it down to a wearable cocktail dress.  Frankly, this is not one of our favorite options – and if you really wanted to see the dress re-used in your presence, we would highly recommend offering it to a friend or relative, for whom there would be great sentimental value in accepting your wedding gown! 

Whatever you decide to do with your dress we hope your decision brings you as much fulfillment as the dress did on your wedding day!  And to make sure that this is the case, next week’s column will discuss attire for weddings and events-- and of course, cover the gown!

Note: Got a question or a comment for the Wedding Genie? Ms. Uyanik will answer your questions. Simply e-mail her at weddinggenie@candgweddings.com