Dresses to help hospice

When Sue Sara put her hand up to put together a wedding for a couple who were battling cancer, she never dreamed it would grow to helping more than 100 brides to walk down the aisle in a special gown.

Facebook page ‘Pay it Forward Wedding Dress Hire’ has seen more than 100 brides get access to bridal gowns on a budget. However, after eight years, the page is now closing down with the dresses being sold to raise money for charity.

The page began when a local couple decided to get married after the groom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

On a tight budget, they reached out to the community to help pull it together.
Sue, who was admin of the ‘Pay-it-forward’ Facebook page at the time, fielded donation offers from hair, make-up, and a wedding gown to make the day happen for the couple.

“Everything pulled together for a fabulous wedding.”

After the wedding, the bride donated the dress back to the page, hoping to help another bride create a special day on a budget.

“I’ve got this habit of sticking my hand up and I thought ‘what a beautiful idea’. I never thought for one minute it would grow to this,” Sue says.

Since that original dress donation there have been more than 70 wedding gowns, bridesmaid dresses, mother-of-the-bride outfits, shoes and accessories donated and all of them are going up for sale.

Some have never been worn, and still have the price tags attached of up to $1000.
“It’s just got so big and Covid has basically killed it, there’s only been one gown hired out and it’s taking up space that the landlord would like to use.”

From the original dress, Sue has seen gowns donated from Invercargill to Waiheke Island, and even one from Australia.

“It just snowballed.”

Sue will be selling everything on the Facebook page with all proceeds donated to the Nelson Tasman Hospice.

She says nothing will be over $250 and they have something for everyone.

Sue says, previously she’s had offers from people to store the gowns but that was when there were only about a dozen.

“Now there’s around 70 of them, so you can’t expect someone to fit them in their front room. I have to be practical with the space.

“This was the time for me to say ‘ok, we’ve done pretty good, but it’s time’.”