Get Out and Give Back – Prom-ises

One advantage of being an old bride is that you aren’t beholden to a fluffy white dress.  So when I started the great wedding dress hunt two years ago, I had only three criteria: The cost wouldn’t require re-financing my house, it had to make me look like a goddess, and I had to feel like a rock star when I wore it.

Incredibly, I found the perfect purple silk gown my first time out, and on a glorious October Saturday in 2007, I was, like every bride before and after me, the most beautiful woman in the world that day.  

Since then this gorgeous dress has been hanging lifeless in my closet. That is, until last night.  

Last night I bid goodbye to my beautiful dress and gave it to April, a pretty, high-cheeked college student, who is collecting party dresses to donate to the area’s underserved teenage girls so they can wear a beautiful dress to their proms.

April contacted a local welfare-to-work type nonprofit that agreed to host and publicize a fundraiser where the dresses would be given to girls who need them. By the time I met April last night she had already collected 25 dresses. Then she took mine, plus four more from two of my neighbors who loved the idea. Tonight another neighbor is cleaning out her closets to donate her dresses to April and her cause.

Any parent will tell you that proms and dances are expensive and always a source of stress in a home inhabited by a teenage girl. Telling a 16-year-old girl to wear the same dress she wore last year (gasp) is not an option, nor is trading it with her BFF (that’s “best friend forever”). April doesn’t know it, but after her charity event is over next week, at least 30 teenage girls will love her. And their parents will really, really love her. 

Imagine the burden lifted from a struggling mom’s shoulders when a prom dress is a gift. Organizing a local dress drive is fairly simple and anyone could do it. Or, check out www.donatemydress.org, a nonprofit that encourages girls to donate their prom and special occasion dresses to those who cannot afford them (according to people.com, a reigning teen queen just donated her prom dress to it). Another online nonprofit, www.makingmemories.org, uses the money it raises from selling new and used bridal gowns to grant wishes for metastatic breast cancer patients.  

I challenge you to clean out your closets in the next few weeks and donate those party dresses that you’ll never wear again. Think of the space you’ll have for new clothes. Allow someone else to be a goddess for a day…and you’ll get to be one twice.

Get out and give back.

Send your comments and volunteer stories to www.getoutandgiveback.com.