Wedding dress collector teams up with Salvos for appeal exhibition

MARGARET Fava can’t remember where or when she bought her first op shop wedding gown.

But it was at least 15 years ago when the dedicated op shopper saw one during a store visit, bought it and set about sprucing it up.

That purchase set off a passion that has resulted in a collection of more than 300 pieces, with the oldest dating from the 1920s.

As many as 70 of them will go on display on 6 and 7 March when Mrs Fava teams up with The Salvation Army for an exhibition in aid of the organisation’s Red Shield Appeal.

It will be at the Bacchus Marsh Public Hall and will be open from 10am to 4pm on both days.

“I did not initially plan it to go on and on and on,” Mrs Fava said of her collecting. “It was a nice one here, a pretty one there and another one there.

“Over many years, one here and one there has grown.

“I don’t know the first one I bought; I don’t know why I bought it; I don’t know where I got it and I don’t know what kicked me off to buy that first one.

“I can walk into an op shop, there might be 10 wedding dresses in there and I won’t buy them.

“There has to be something about them that grabs me.”

Mrs Fava’s husband has built her two high rails to hang her gowns on and they now occupy two of the spare bedrooms in the couple’s Bacchus Marsh home.

About 98 per cent of the collection are wedding gowns, with some bridesmaids or debutantes dresses thrown in.

“But it’s the wedding dresses that are my thing,” Mrs Fava said.

She regularly posts photos of her dresses on the I Love to Op Shop Facebook page.

The Salvos’ national community fundraising team leader, Bridie Roper, said a colleague had donated a wedding dress to Mrs Fava a long time ago and the idea for a fundraising exhibition had been in their minds ever since then.

Ms Roper said she and other organisers had thought Mrs Fava’s hobby was a one-off, but they had since learned of other wedding dress collectors.

“It’s actually not as uncommon as we thought,” she said.

“But I think the story is so good because of the connection to the op shops, circular fashion, and the rescuing of the dresses.”

Tickets are $15 and are available from wedding-gown-exhibition.raiselysite.com/#ticketform, with an option to also make an appeal donation.