Coronavirus puts wedding dresses from China on hold - WSMV Nashville

Coronavirus puts wedding dresses from China on hold - WSMV Nashville
Swap or buy prom dresses for up to $20 in Franklin Saturday - WKRN News 2
Local initiative offering free formal dresses to local girls - Seymour Tribune

Posted: 28 Feb 2020 05:30 PM PST

All eyes continue to focus on coronavirus.

The illness is even impacting weddings.

A lot of people are scrambling to rearrange their plans for honeymoons and wedding dresses.

An East Tennessee woman said her bridesmaid's dresses will no longer be shipped in time for her wedding.

"My maid of honor called me and she was like, I'm going to need you to sit down. We just received emails that the dresses are not coming, said Ashley Ingram.

Ingram said said her 8 bridesmaids ordered the dresses back in December.

The dresses were expected to be delivered in March

Ingram said each bridesmaid was sent an email stating the dresses would no longer be delivered in time for her April wedding.

"They have extended the Chinese New Year. They are not going to be able to go back in the factories until the coronavirus situation has been sorted out. I get married April 25th so that's very soon and we're having to start basically back from the beginning and choose all new dresses."

Ingram said in just a few days they were able to choose a new dress for her bridesmaids.

"We have just found another dress that is here in America and can be shipped to us. At the end of the day, April 25th. I will still be married."

Swap or buy prom dresses for up to $20 in Franklin Saturday - WKRN News 2

Posted: 29 Feb 2020 01:58 AM PST

FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WKRN) – Young women have a chance to get a beautiful, formal dress Saturday, no matter their financial situation.

It's the tenth year for Love the Dress TN's annual event in Franklin.

Ladies can bring a formal dress to swap with a dress that's been donated by folks in the community. You can also purchase a donated dress for $10 or $20 and the proceeds will go towards the local non-profit.

There are roughly 2,000 dresses available this year.

"When I was a teacher in Williamson County, I had some students say 'oh I'm not going to go to prom.' I'm like 'why?' and they say 'I can't afford a dress.' You have kids that live in $2 million homes but you also have kids that live in the projects or had a father or mother who lost a job," said Love the Dress TN's Mindy Hoover. "Poverty and hardship come in so many different forms."

Hoover added that the event can be an emotional one.

"There are lots of tears during the day. You just have glimpses of wonderful moments. You have girls coming in from single-family – dad raising them going 'I don't know what to do, please help,'" Hoover said. "We take those girls and just love on them and find them a beautiful dress and it's just a really exciting moment when you see them light up."

Local schools also refer students who are in financial need, and Hoover said girls sometimes drive two hours to take part in the program. Click HERE for registration information.

The event's being held Saturday at the Gate Community Church at 3835 Carothers Pkwy, Franklin, TN 37067 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Local initiative offering free formal dresses to local girls - Seymour Tribune

Posted: 28 Feb 2020 10:25 PM PST

CROTHERSVILLE

Tiffany Reynolds realizes formal dresses can be expensive.

She said some prom dresses can cost several hundred dollars. Having worked in retail for 25-plus years, she also has seen women spend $1,200 on a dress at a high-end clothing store and not think anything of it.

Not everyone has that luxury, she said.

That's why she has organized a formal dress giveaway through the The Helping Hearts initiative.

Since mid-January, she has been collecting short and long dresses of a variety of colors, sizes and styles. She wound up with around 75.

"Everybody here is kind of working middle class, and sometimes, it's hard for parents to take care of everything they need to take care of at home and provide those extras," she said. "When everybody steps in and does it together, it just makes it so much easier for everyone."

On Feb. 22, she conducted a giveaway event in the cafetorium at Crothersville Community Schools. Even though it didn't go as well as she hoped, Reynolds is still determined to give the dresses away to local girls who need them with prom and other formal dances coming up.

"By doing something like this for the girls, it will alleviate some of the financial pressure for parents," Reynolds said. "Maybe their daughter wants to go get her hair done before the prom, but if they bought a prom dress, they couldn't do that. Maybe she wants a manicure or pedicure or something like that so that she's able to go."

Several of the dresses that were donated are brand-new and still have the tags attached. One of Reynolds' friends didn't have a dress to donate, so she bought a new one and took it by her house. Then Saturday, a woman brought one of her daughter's dresses to add to the collection.

"I had posted a timeline of things that we wanted to do as a group, and the prom event was one of them, so people knew ahead of time that, 'Hey, here's what we're preparing for,'" Reynolds said.

She started The Helping Hearts in November 2018 as a communitywide project to help the students of Crothersville Community Schools with items needed for school.

A back-to-school event allowed students to pick out a backpack and any clothing or shoes they needed at no cost, and more than 200 winter coats were given out through a winter clothing drive.

"That was pretty big, and those were donations from not only in our community but people in surrounding communities just reaching out saying, 'Hey, we have these items,'" Reynolds said.

Also, around 80 families benefited from a clothing giveaway set up inside a shop in town.

"Those are mainly from Crothersville, but we had so much left over, we just opened it up to surrounding communities," she said.

One woman from out of town came by and picked out like-new clothes that she could wrap and give to her children for Christmas. Otherwise, they wouldn't have received anything for the holiday.

"She was extremely thankful," Reynolds said.

She also had several people in town come in to get items for their kids and at the same time donate a few bags of clothes they had outgrown.

Reynolds said it has been great to see people respond to her Facebook posts requesting specific needs for local children.

"We had a specific need for something, I post it and within four or five minutes, I had somebody say, 'Oh, I have this. I can donate this. Do you know someone that can use this?'" she said. "It was really nice to be able to do that."

The Helping Hearts also has a Spare Change Challenge underway. All money collected will be donated to Crothersville Community Schools to pay off students' outstanding lunch account balances and book rental fees.

Collection buckets are at Crothersville Town Hall, Beauty from Ashes Tattoo Parlor and Cerrowire, all in Crothersville.

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