Cherished Gowns
At Wishy, we want to understand more about what charities can offer and how we and the public can support them. We sat down with Megan at Cherished Gowns to find out more.
What is Cherished Gowns?
Cherished Gowns UK is a charity that provides the families of babies that are stillborn, miscarried or pass away shortly after birth with items of clothing that they can be dressed in for their funeral. We offer five sizes of Cherished Gowns, and each gown is accompanied by a hat, pair of booties, a blanket, and a cloth nappy. These items are provided completely free of charge to parents, funeral directors, and we also supply every UK hospital with this service. All the items that we provide are lovingly made by volunteers around the UK, from donated Wedding Dresses.
Cherished Gowns opened our very first Preloved Bridal Boutique in September 2020. This shop sells Wedding Dresses that have been donated to the charity specifically to be sold to raise money for the charity. These dresses are usually new, or very light loved. Our stock is always changing and have stock from designers such as Maggie Sotterio, Justin Alexander, Pronovias, Essence of Australia, Phillipa Lepley, Ellis Bridal, Enzoani, Mori Lee, Ronald Joyce and Sophia Tolli. Our price range is £50 - £500. We also stock bridesmaids & flower girl dresses, veils, headdresses, petticoats, hoops, cover-ups, shoes, and other accessories. The dresses that are sold are to raise money for the charity whereas other dresses can be donated specifically to be transformed into Cherished Gowns.
Why Was Cherished Gowns created?
Cherished Gowns UK was founded in September 2014 when Megan created a gown for a local bereaved Mother from her Wedding Dress. She shared this gown with her Midwife who was very keen to offer gown packs to their hospital. We worked hard to develop patterns and established 5 sizes of gowns, 3 sizes of nappies and co-coordinating knitted and crochet items to create a perfect outfit for each size. We made it our mission to make our service not only completely free of charge but available to every Hospital, parent, and funeral director in the UK.
How has Cherished Gowns grown?
By April 2015 we had recruited 400 volunteers around the country and had supplied 75 hospitals with our service. We had a steady supply of Wedding dresses being donated and our volunteer seamstresses worked quickly through them. The media began to take notice of the charity and newspapers ran stories on our project. At one point one of our Facebook posts was shared over 1 million times and every UK newspaper ran a story on our special charity. We received over 20,000 emails in just 24hrs and 10,000 people joined our waiting list to donate a dress overnight.
As a result of all the media attention we had some significant financial donations and this allowed us to rent a small office to store our items, and recruit volunteers to help despatch these items. This space allowed us to grow our charity, and in February 2016 we achieved our first big goal; to supply every UK hospital with our service. Since then, we have continued to grow and moved into a larger office and secured contracts giving us low-cost postage of our hospital’s boxes, and we successfully achieved full Charity status with Charity Commission on the 7th April 2017. It started with Megan, a sewing machine, and a social media presence. Over the last 7years this has grown to be thousands of volunteers all over the UK producing items. The charity has produced over 1.8million items and around 29,000 wedding dresses have been transformed in the process.
What are you most proud of?
We are truly honoured to have received many Awards for our work including a Butterfly Award for Most Media Impact, a People of Dover Community Award for Voluntary work, a Turley Community Award and Darcey’s Dream Most Supportive Bereavement Service. Megan was also the recipient of the Prime Ministers Point of Light Award. In a personal letter to Megan, Prime Minister Theresa May said:
“The clothing you provide for stillborn babies is providing comfort to grieving parents across the country. It is moving to hear how your compassion has inspired so many others to volunteer for the charity, ensuring even more families receive this support at such a devastating time in their lives.”
What does the future look like for Cherished Gowns?
We would like to open 3 more stores in the UK to raise money for our charity. The more money we receive the more families we can help. We already have waiting lists for donations of dresses and more stores will help us to receive these wonderful donations. We are also looking for more volunteers who can join us in producing items for the charity, run the shops and help with the running and administration of the charity.
How can we help?
We currently do not have a need for more gowns, but this can change. Aside from needing more volunteers, we always need donations for supplies of haberdashery and packaging. Postage is one of our biggest costs. We send out 15,000 parcels a year which accumulates to £20,000 a year on postage alone.