Our Team.
Our organization is primarily made up of: folks that operate drop off locations for bridal gowns, dismantlers, seamstresses, Funeral Homes & Hospitals, our community partners, and other supporters.
Drop Off Locations
We have suspended wedding dress donations until September 2017, at which time we will list the contact information for our authorized drop off locations. We thank you for your patience and understanding.
These volunteers accept donated bridal gowns & deliver them to us in St. Catharines.
Dismantlers
These talented ladies dismantle the bridal gowns and salvage the useable materials for our creations. The teams are primarily made up of residents at Tabor Manor and Heidehof seniors residences in St. Catharines.
No new volunteers are needed at this time.
Seamstresses
Our dedicated seamstresses convert the materials into the burial gowns and wraps.
Please note - no new seamstresses are required at present.
Hospitals, Funeral Homes
Our creations are distributed to families when needed by Hospitals & Funeral Homes.
We welcome further outlets (hospitals, funeral homes) in the province of Ontario.
Click the Hospital or Funeral Homes Tabs above to see lists of current outlets.
PASSIONATE PEOPLE:
Join Our Team
Press Clippings
“They deserve to be recognized no matter how brief their life might be.”
— Lynn McIntyre-Enns, a member of the Niagara volunteer group Precious Angels, which turns donated wedding gowns into dresses and wraps for babies who die at birth or shortly after, speaking in a story in April.
From the Saint Catharines Standard, January 2, 2016
"Off the Cuff: Niagara's Newsworthy Quotes from 2015".
Her mother held her hand tight. Side-by-side, hand-in-hand they walked down a brick pathway towards a gazebo near the shoreline of Lake Ontario.
Two years before Jessica Martin-Randall's wedding day, her father, Tom, had died of cancer. And so the privilege of escorting her down the aisle fell to her mother, Mary Martin.
And in that moment, those few minutes spent walking down an outdoor aisle one afternoon in July 2008, are filled with beautiful memories.
One of those memories is of her wedding dress. Mary had helped her daughter choose the dress, and paid for it as a gift. And after the wedding, Jessica had the gown dry cleaned and sealed in a display box with a small viewing window.
And then it sat on a shelf in her basement. Over the years, she might have looked at it a couple of times.
The next time Jessica found herself thinking about her wedding dress, was after her mom died.
On Oct. 11, 2014, Mary, 62, was walking home along Niagara Street around 8:30 p.m. when she was hit by a vehicle and killed. The driver has been charged with impaired driving.
After the funeral, Jessica began sorting through a lifetime of memories in her mother's home.
What do we do with everything? she wondered. What do we take?
She came to realize that memories are held in her heart, and not in things. Then she thought about the wedding dress. "You try not to put value in an item," she says. "It's in the memories."
And so, she gave away her dress away to a group of volunteers in Niagara who turn donated wedding gowns into tiny dresses and even tinier wraps for babies who die at birth, or shortly after. Each outfit comes with a tiny, handmade angel charm.
Since Precious Angels began last fall, volunteers have given 60 outfits to the St. Catharines hospital, as well as Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, and McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton.
"They deserve to be recognized no matter how brief their life might be," says volunteer, Lynn McIntyre-Enns.
She once owned a flower shop, and creating the tiny outfits is like creating an arrangement for a funeral, she says. "It's the last thing someone is doing for the loved one," she says.
"I want to make it as beautiful as I can."
A team of women carefully dismantles the gowns, saving whatever they can. Fabric. Lace. Buttons. Ribbon. Every gown has something to offer. Then, seamstresses select parts from different gowns, and sew them together into tiny dresses. Some babies are so premature, they fit inside a wrap, a piece of fabric that unfolds like a burrito, with a pocket the size of a deck of cards in the centre, for the baby.
Since Robyn Moore of St. Catharines started the group, the response has been so generous she has 150 gowns yet to be dismantled. Most belonged to women who've been married many years. The sentimentality has worn off and they simply want their gown to go to a good cause, she says.
But for Carly Aanen, her decision to donate her wedding dress was more personal.
Her baby girl, Kinsley, died in the womb and was delivered stillborn in May 2013. At the time, Carly and her husband, John, did all they could to validate her life. They had photographs taken, and saved everything they could, from the clothing she wore to foot prints. In their home, there are photographs of Kinsley along with their three other children, big brothers Marshall and Bryson, and baby Arabella.
So when she found Precious Angels on a Facebook mom's group, she knew her wedding dress had a new purpose. But first, the sentimental mom in her needed pictures of Arabella wearing the wedding gown. So, she photographed her baby girl in the centre of her gown, spread out around her on the floor. And then, Carly was able to let it go.
"It's going to families like us," says Carly. "To know their baby will get to use it, means enough to me.
"We're all bonded together."
On Nov. 28, 2014, Jessica Hardy felt the warmth of that bond. Her baby girl, Adalynn Heaven Hardy, was delivered stillborn at 37 weeks. A nurse at the hospital offered her a Precious Angels dress.
"It made me feel like she was still with us. Like people still cared," says Jessica, 26.
"Just because we had a baby and she's not here, people still cared about us."
In the short time she had Adalynn, Jessica and her family created as many memories as they could. They hugged the little girl. Kissed her. They collected a locket of her hair, and made hand and foot prints. And a photographer from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, an organization that provides remembrance photography for parents suffering the loss of a baby, took pictures of Adalynn. In many of those pictures, she is wearing the dress with lace around the neck and a swirl of beads down the front.
"I don't have anything else. It's one thing I get to hold on to and say, it's hers," she says.
The comfort that it gives parents like Jessica, is the reason Jessica Martin-Randall doesn't miss her wedding dress.
Indeed, donating it is part of her own grief journey. "Every decision is a goodbye because I didn't get one," she says.
She is grieving the death of her mother. And her gown will help someone grieving the death of a baby.
And somehow, it felt right.
Her mother would have been proud of her choice.
She pauses, holding back tears, and adds: "I felt that mom would be OK with that."
PRECIOUS ANGELS
What: Precious Angels is a group of volunteers who take donated wedding gowns and turn them into tiny dresses and wraps, for grieving parents of miscarried, stillborn or preemie newborns who never make it home from the hospital. The outfits are delivered to the St. Catharines hospital, as well as Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington and McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton.
The gowns: White or cream coloured are accepted.
To donate: The group has 150 gowns yet to be taken apart and sewn. They are asking that people hold onto their wedding dresses until after the summer, then consider donating. There are drop off locations across Niagara.
Details: For more information visit their website at www.preciousangelsniagara.com or their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/Precious-Angels/1560218144197963?sk=timeline
