I have to admit, I still have my wedding dress. Six years post-divorce, and I have somehow not managed to get rid of this thing! The dress is now so old that the charity Brides Against Cancer will not take it– they only re-sell dresses that are from 2005 or later. Donating a dress made of Italian lace with silk that cost over $1000 requires some careful consideration, and although I thought about holding on to it for my family’s sake, what are the chances that anyone will want to wear a dress from a wedding that ended in a divorce?
So today I was reading about a book that is coming out soon– 101 Things To Do With My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress. This guy has a blog, and it has some pretty hilarious pictures of what he did with the dress after his wife moved out! Let’s just say, the dress is no longer in any condition to be donated anywhere– except maybe as filling for a punching bag. What struck me was his ability to find humor in what must have once been a very painful situation. It is really a healthy sign when we can laugh at some of the crap that hits us in life, and his ability to laugh and find love again is truly inspiring.
Thanks to this random find today I learned of a new charity that takes wedding dresses and has them re-sown into burial dresses for children that are still born or die in the NICU. Families going through this grieving process can barely deal with basic decisions, let alone find time and funds to purchase proper dresses for their little ones funerals. I finding it to be quite a worthy cause, and also amazingly proper that the dress should be buried. Divorce is like a death in one’s life, and finally I found a way to properly commemorate this tragic loss while helping another family. For those interested, the charity’s site is www.MaryMadelineproject.com
