A couple of weeks ago, we received an email at school about a local fundraising group who was asking for gently used or new prom dresses for girls in our district who could not afford to buy one. I LOVED this idea and wanted to help. Even though I'm a teacher and "give back" quite often, I felt VERY Strongly about giving back in this way. After all, I know quite a few girls who are in high school these days and one of them I might be able to help feel a little less stressful about going to the prom. At first, I thought that I could donate a couple of my old prom and formal dresses and then quickly remembered they are all in Iowa in my bedroom closet downstairs. That wasn't going to work. There wasn't enough time to ask my mom and dad to send them. So, after some thinking, I decided to e-mail the staff at school and ask if anyone wanted to donate some money (any amount) towards a NEW prom dress. I received a wonderful response and quite a few donations. I drug Dj to the outlet mall first to see if I could find any deals, but no such luck. Then, I went to Penney's and found all of the prom dresses on sale....SCORE! With about $100, I found the perfect (what I Thought) dress. When we were shopping at the outlet mall and again at Penney's I asked a few high school girls their opinions on prom dresses that were in and out. They kindly gave me all the information I needed and were so sweet.
As I was looking at all of the dresses, I came upon "the one" at Penney's after looking for quite some time. I decided to pick something that was a little "less" traditional and more for something original. After all, as a high school girl, we all wanted our dress to be the only one of its kind at the prom, right?! Many girls told me the same thing: originality was a must at the prom. I fell in love with this particular dress and after talking to the sales clerk and 3 high school girls, I didn't need any more convincing. So, I am SOOOO hoping that a young high school girl picks OUR dress b/c it rocks! :) The dress on the hanger does not do it justice. This dress is beautiful in person. :)
When I dropped it off today, the women were SOOOO excited that we had a NEW donation to give and made the comment that they thought our dress would be picked right away. They invited me to help dress and fit the girls in May when they invite them to pick and try on dresses. I just might go down and help out.
5 comments:
Very cute dress... and kudos to you for "giving back" even more than you already do each day!
I love this idea Sarah. We have something similar in town and I have donated my old dresses and a few bridesmaid dresses that I think are very pretty but would never have a reason to wear them again. I think it's great that you were compelled to do something even when you knew you didn't have a dress of your own to donate!
That is so nice! I recently donated all of my old dresses to church and they were giving them to a similar organization. Lucky for us, we didn't have prom with poofy dresses so I'm convinced 7 or so girls got a great dress!
All of my old formal dresses went to the wounded warrior project to allow the servicemembers in DC for rehab to attend one of the military specific inaugural balls. I figured my prom dresses were not quite old enough to be vintage at this point and nobody would want them!
This one is really original though... I have no reason to look so I have little frame of reference!
I LOVE THE DRESS!! It's perfect! Way to go, Sarah! I've been thinking about donating my wedding dress to a breast cancer charity (they take the donated dresses and auction them off to new brides) then the money goes to breast cancer research! I'm just not sure if I'm ready to part with my dress yet....I still love it :)
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