What to do with a wedding dress?
Wedding dresses carry a particular magic. I believe it is the single most significant garment in a woman's life. Buying one becomes an occasion in itself, with friends, sisters, grandmothers, mothers-in-law and mothers all gathering to help the bride find the one that feels right. Mine was no different. The choice was enormous and the decision far from easy. But now my wedding is eight years behind me, and the dress has moved with us three times. The second-hand wedding dress market is oversaturated, and the prices have collapsed. My daughter has already made it perfectly clear she has no interest in wearing it one day. Then a piece of information arrived that changed everything. A friend told me about wedding dress donations for star children. I looked into it and found the "Potsdamer Mädels, gemeinsam für Frühchen und Sternchen", a group of remarkable women who sew dignified farewell sets for star children. It felt immediately right to give my dress to that purpose.
Sewing for star children
What the "Potsdamer Mädels", who belong to the association "In Liebe gehüllt e.V., Hand in Hand für Sternenkinder und Frühstarter", do is of immeasurable importance. A dignified farewell for a baby, no matter how small, is a vital step in working through grief. Yet grief of this kind is so often carried in silence and alone, which is almost impossible to believe when you face the numbers. One in ten women worldwide experiences a miscarriage. That amounts to a staggering twenty-three million miscarriages every year, forty-four every single minute.
Wedding dress donation for star children
Many of these women are star parents themselves, and giving back to other star parents is something they consider simply part of who they are. This voluntary work is extraordinarily time-consuming. Unpicking and cutting the fabric alone took a full day. Sewing took Stephanie around a week, and that was considered quick because my dress was quite simple in design. As a rule, she needs about a month to work through a single wedding dress. From mine came seven large wrapping blankets, each with two keepsake items and an envelope for ultrasound photographs or similar mementos, as well as eleven small wrapping blankets for losses up to twelve weeks of pregnancy, one medium farewell set for losses from seventeen weeks, and sixty-six palm comfort hearts. I am deeply glad that my dress found such a meaningful second life.
Stephanie from the Potsdamer Mädels notes that donated dresses are not in short supply, but willing hands at the sewing machine very much are. The association urgently needs more volunteers, because the demand is far greater than the capacity to meet it. If you sew and feel called to do something meaningful, please reach out to them via their Facebook page.
Star children are a part of us
Through the Potsdamer Mädels, I have come to understand how important it is that miscarriage and infant loss are spoken about more openly in our society. Parents need to tell their stories, so that other parents know they are not alone. That is precisely what we try to do through this blog. We invite people to share the stories behind their memorial pieces, and we want to give those stories a voice.
We would be honoured to hear your story too.
