Photo: Danielle O'Hora
Lost: One wedding dress and countless memories.
Donna McQuaid has launched the search of a lifetime after her wedding dress was accidentally donated to an op shop.
A couple of years ago, McQuaid lent her wedding dress – a strapless dress by bridal designer Maggie Stiro, with a lace overlay – to a friend who had recently got engaged. The friend was building a house and spending up on a wedding dress was an expense they didn’t need, so McQuaid was happy to help by pulling her “extraordinarily expensive designer dress” out of storage, along with another, cheaper dress she had bought as a fallback option.
“I always thought it would be a shame if it just gathered dust and never got seen again. So when my friend got engaged, I said, ‘take it, have a fabulous time’,” McQuaid told Afternoons.
Listen to Donna McQuaid’s story
She issued one caveat: she wanted the real wedding dress – which she wore to marry her Kiwi husband in 2016, shortly before they moved to New Zealand – back afterwards.
This is where things got tricky. The friend’s relationship broke down earlier this year and McQuaid didn’t feel right about asking for the dresses back. Then in August, she texted the friend and asked for the dresses to be returned.
Last week, McQuaid's friend rang her with a confession. The dresses had accidentally been donated to the Salvation Army store in Lower Hutt. The friend had gone back to the store when she realised what she’d done, but the dresses were gone.
McQuaid initially put on a brave face, but she was devastated.
“I said, ‘look, it's fine, I'm ok with that. And the truth is that I'm not, I'm really not. It was meant to come back to me, it was never me getting rid of the dress. There's a whole load of emotion that I have attached to this thing. And I didn't mind her going out and having fun and if it got ripped or stained or whatever, that’s fantastic, things should be used. But it was meant to come back to me because I wasn't finished with it.”
McQuaid remembers the dress in forensic detail: “It was strapless and had a lace flower overlay over a white underlay and it had a beautiful scalloped lace edge, no fringing on it.”
Photo: Danielle O'Hora
The dress was in its original box, about the size of a small suitcase, with a bejewelled bridal sash over it, and the box included McQuaid’s other wedding accessories.
“There was a lace bolero that gave me a little bit of modesty because it was quite a busty dress… and it had a veil with a hole in it. The veil had a hole in it because I made the veil myself and it wasn’t stitched particularly well in the first place. Then the morning of the wedding I steamed a hole in it.”
McQuaid thinks the dress would have been quite the find for an op shopper.
“They don’t normally get given away - they get sold. It was in perfect condition, except for one little smudge on the toe- line of the hem that I could not get out after the wedding. I tried everything to get that smudge of dirt out.”
Photo: Danielle O'Hora
McQuaid says the loss is particularly poignant because she wanted to share her dress with her children, aged five and one. Her own mother never got the chance to do that with her dress, because the family’s home in Antrim in Northern Ireland was firebombed, after McQuaid’s mother spoke out about seeing a Protestant postman being beaten up.
“She knew that they [the assailants] were paramilitary. She knew exactly what was going on. And she still went to the police at the time, even though she knew that there would probably be some bounce back. They got done and the bounce back was that they burnt our house to the ground.
“A friend heard what the plan was and she rang my Mammy, and said, ‘get out of the house, they’re coming for you’. Mammy got me and my brother, we were toddlers at the time, and whatever she could carry, and jumped on the bus up to Belfast. The house went up with everything that night.”
If the dress turns up, McQuaid is adamant that she doesn’t want to spoil the new owner’s big day or reveal their identity, but she wants to talk to them.
“This is her moment as well. But there's a point when you're done with your wedding, and life goes on and when she hits that point… I’m not quite finished with this dress.
“This dress was meant to be shown to my children when they're old enough to understand my story, my mam’s story and the connection to my history.
“This dress was meant to be in storage and come out in about 20 years’ time when somebody gets married, and then it opens the door to some stories that they might never have heard.”