So Sunday finally came along! It was so very exciting, three months in the making; the Abigail’s Collection ‘Wear Your Wedding Dress Again 2013 Charity Party’ was held and boy oh boy what a fantastic night it was!! 100 guests including business friends and our amazing customers joined Rob, the team and I and together we all literally had a ball! I can honestly say that the feedback from the event was tremendous, it was a fantastic!
Groups of girls (our guests) had spent the afternoon quaffing champers and getting their hair and make up professionally done before hopping back into their wedding dresses. A huge thank you from me to Emma Brookes and Tina Crossley for recreating my wedding day look, I felt very lucky to have had their professional assistance and can see why my Brides totally rave about them!
Our night to remember was all in aid of the inspiring charity ‘Help For Heroes’ and our raised funds are specifically for Chavasse VC House (one of the UK’s Help For Heroes recovery centres) which is based in Colchester. It was exciting to see Guests faces as they arrived. Prested Hall, our awesome venue event partner, was ablaze with Help For Heroes coloured spotlights (red and blue) and the entrance to the gorgeous building was laid with red carpet and gold ropes! It looked fantastic and the atmosphere was totally awesome too! Such an amazing night ….
So the night gave us the chance to celebrate in our wedding dresses once again and that’s exactly what we did and we really did it in style! We walked the red carpet whilst ‘Pap’ style photographers Simon and Hayley from Picture Box Portraits and Darius Laws snapped cameras at our heels and then we danced, we laughed, we photo boothed, we video flick booked, we posed, we ate, we drank and we literally had a blast! The very gorgeous and ultra talented X Factor stars Next of Kin sang us some numbers including their stunning single ‘Cant Find Me’ due to be released in February – you can watch more of their performances on their you tube channel. DJ’s Dave and Paul from Dreamwave Events threw down some perfect party tunes and the beautiful Sarah Grace Neale reminded us all why we were there when she performed a beautiful song to a short Help For Heroes film, you can see more of her performing on her you tube channel too.
Our Butlers in the Buff were blinking fantastic, certainly a highlight!!?! As you can imagine at times they certainly had their work cut out for them what with all of the female attention (well done Mitchell and James you absolutely amazing and did such an awesome job helping us raise money by selling so many raffle tickets). And it was with thanks to Dreamwave Events and Aurora Pearl that the venue looked absolutely stunning! Prested Hall staff served some divine canapés, very yummy, and we kept the drinks flowing whilst Toby and Alan from Four Ace Entertainment wowed our Guests with their cool card magic! Ann Goldschmidt’s beautiful flowers looked gorgeous on Al Fresco’s smart poser tables which Brides excitedly gathered around and posed at.
We scoffed scrumptious and impressively designed Help For Heroes cupcakes made by the very clever Charlotte from Vanilla and Ivory and our luxury raffle went down an absolute storm and with prizes from The Lemon Tree, Poplar Nurseries, Tiptree Jam, Perrywood Garden Centre, Cooper BMW Ipswich, Lexdon Crown, Picturebox Portraits, The Blue Strawberry and Avanti – it’s no wonder we raised £405 on the raffle alone!
I didn’t get the chance to fill up one of those cute stripey bags with candy at Al Fresco’s Candy Cart (I was too busy quaffing bubbly, lol) but I’m told that the gorgeous Sarah Jackson and Mum Trisha from Vintage Memories did a sensational job with all of the ace sweeties, so much so that Brides were obviously determined to stave off their drink induced munchies a little later as they filled up handbags and grabbed candy stuffed goodie bags upon departure!!
And the excitement of this event isn’t over yet. Humble Productions Boss (Dave) is making a short film of the evening, oh my, I just can’t wait to see it! I’m so looking forward to seeing what was captured! Brides Buzzed, cameras snapped and glasses chinked all night so I know he’ll have grabbed some great footage, it was a superb evening and the film will be awesome, just like Dave! Here he is with my Darling Rob and our SJ….
Yesterday, proudly, Rob and I went (on behalf of everyone at Abigail’s Collection and all of those involved with our event) to present Chavasse VC House with the £3000 that we raised – It’s what this has all been about and it was this man; Derek Derenalgi that inspired me to get off my bum and do something to support the Help for Heroes charity. He’s an incredible inspiration and in the face of a life changing and traumatic injury he was unbelievably positive and determined. Thank you Derek for what you have taught me. Words cannot express how inspirational you are!
Altogether it’s been an exciting, moving, successful and exhausting charity project. I’ve never organised a charity event before and it was exhilarating! It’s with thanks to all of the incredibly supportive and generous companies mentioned above that we were able to throw our Guests a really rather special and spectacular charity party! I was so excited to put my own wedding dress back on and proudly stood in it at my husband’s side once again whilst he delivered our welcome speech. In February we celebrate 9 years and my goodness what a 9 years it’s been! Thanks Darling here’s to lots more together and hopefully a couple more totally awesome ‘Abigail’s Collection Wear Your Wedding Dress Again’ charity parties thrown in along the way….
Last but by no means least a very big thank you to our wonderful team who is always behind (and often in-front) of me. Here they are showing Tom their love, ha ha lucky Tom, great picture Guys! High Fives all round, we did it and together we raised £3000 for Help For Heroes and that is just totally flippin fantastic!!! Well done everybody, we should be proud xxx