By: Nour Kheireddine
Staff Writer
This years’ Sixth Annual Fairy Godmothers of Virginia Prom Fair finally came to an end Saturday, Feb. 26. It has been a very busy week for the volunteers and founder and Director Kelly Fortmann.
They have over 3000, dresses in their inventory, most of them donations. Fortmann started this from her own closet. She had five unused dresses in her closet and thought there must be someone who can use them.
By contacting the Fairy Godmothers, she learned to create her own organization. In Aug. 2005, she finally collected enough dresses to start the first annual Prom Fair. This event is for high school junior and senior girls with financial problems. It is aimed to help those girls who cannot afford to go to prom to go and have fun.
The volunteers act as the girls’ personal shopper and help them to pick out the perfect dress and matching accessories and make up.
The Prom Fair is sponsored by different organizations every year, and it receives a lot of support for the mission that it is set out to do: make dreams come true.
Never does the Prom Fair take place in the same place or the same time of year. The Godmothers open when they have enough donations and a space to set up the dresses, shoes and accessories.
A shopper who is a senior in high school said that she loves this idea of buying second hand clothes. She said, “Prom dresses are typically worn just once, for the couple of hours that the prom lasts and then that’s it.”
She had her friend with her and her friend said“It’s nice to have this as an opportunity, dresses are getting ridiculously expensive and they are not even what you like,”
The next shopper had an interesting sense of style and was alone waiting in line. She said she would rather shop here, when there is a wider selection of designs and prints, than at a department store.
Closing Paragraph: The Fairy Godmothers continue making dreams come true every year. For more information about volunteering or donating old dresses, please go to http://sites.google.com/site/fairygodmothersofva/
