Teen marries wedding dress collection with fundraiser

Teenagers don’t commonly collect wedding dresses, but Theresa Bennett may be no ordinary teen. Marriage may be far from her mind, but the 17-year-old has a deep fascination with chiffon, sweeping trains and cap sleeves.

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Marital commitment has been hard to find in her family, where three older sisters had children outside of wedlock and divorce was routine for other kin.

Her father was murdered when she was 7 months old, leaving a mother with seven children to raise. Her 19-year-old brother was gunned down by gang members while he was walking to their home in San Antonio, when Bennett was 3. Her mother’s boyfriend made life at home difficult, so one day she went to a drugstore pay phone and called her aunt and uncle in Mesa to say she needed a safe place to live. That was in late 2002.

“I want to be the first in my family to have a successful marriage,” said Bennett, who graduates in May from Redeemer Christian School in Mesa and has a long-term goal to enroll at Harvard Law School and become a corporate lawyer.

For now, though, she wants to raise at least $10,000 on April 5 for the St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic in Nogales, Ariz. Building on the theme of the recent Hollywood film “27 Dresses,” Bennett has organized her own “35 Wedding Dresses Fashion Show and Reception.”

Bennett has enlisted classmates and friends as “brides” to model 18 of the wedding gowns, with Redeemer male students as escorts for the girls. The stories behind some gowns will be told. One is Bennett’s grandmother’s wedding dress from 1948, which had been passed down to her aunt, Tess Cowan of Mesa. Other dresses, owned or loaned, are from weddings in 1954, 1956, 1959, 1960 and later.

“Over the years, I have obtained quite a few wedding dresses,” Bennett explained. “My collection has sparked many people’s interest and raised quite a few eyebrows.” Last summer, while visiting her grandfather in Connecticut, she stopped at a wedding boutique and struck up a conversation with a woman who restores wedding gowns. When Bennett told of her own dress collection, the woman suggested she hold a fashion show.

The teen liked the idea.

“Originally, I wanted it to be at a church with a real wedding, but that didn’t work out,” she said. With an eye on showcasing her gowns to benefit a charity, she learned about St. Andrew’s Children Clinic, a nondenominational, nonprofit operation that provides free medical treatment the first Thursday of each month for disabled children of poor Mexican families. Founded in 1973, it is touted as the oldest continuous border health project in the U.S. More than 2,000 children were helped by volunteers in 2006 in the clinic set up at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Nogales. Among services provided were 332 diagnostic tests, 25 orthopedic surgeries, five eye surgeries and 93 prostheses. As many as 300 children are seen at each monthly clinic.

“Theresa wanted to do a flip-flops drive for kids that don’t have shoes in Haiti, but this was a lot more doable,” said Redeemer classmate Katelyn Pechin, who will be one of the gown models. “She is very motivated. She wants to do the very best she can do.”

“I think it’s pretty cool,” said Chelsea Gross, 15, another Redeemer student, who said putting on a wedding gown was a new experience. She will model two dresses, one from the 1950s and the other from the 1980s.

One of her teachers, Sally Lanzel, said Bennett is “very enthusiastic about life, about her community and very excited to help the world.”

Bennett has set up a rack with two bars in the family living room to hold dresses for the show. She finds the evolution of the wedding dress remarkable. “Wedding fashions go on a roller coaster,” she said. Her earliest dresses, some made of satin, were simple and beautiful, she said. “In the 1950s, they started doing short lace dresses, and, in the 1960s, they started doing beading, see-through fabrics.” She found 1980s gowns somewhat gaudy with their big sleeves, “beads galore and lots of ruffles” and embroidered flowers.

She is amazed by some small dresses of the 1950s. “It seems women had no ribs and such small waists,” she said. “Most of my friends are athletic, so it is a little difficult for them to wear those dresses.”

She will display 17 of the dresses on mannequins at the fashion show. Models and escorts had a rehearsal on March 22 to make things fit, see where pins, tape and other fixes were needed and work out logistics.

“I’m a little nervous,” Bennett said later. Her mother, Valerie Harris, and aunt are working hard to help find auction donations and attract a crowd of at least 200 guests.

When Bennett first moved to Mesa, she began helping out at the Cowans’ church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Mesa. There she is an acolyte, has worked in the children’s nursery, helps the Altar Guild and has actively worked on holiday outreach projects with low-income people. At her school, she regularly served as the student director of dramas. Bennett has earned $3,500 and $10,000 per-year scholarships to attend a two-year women’s school, Cottey College in Nevada, Mo., to major in history and minor in business. She would then pursue a bachelor’s degree elsewhere.

Her mother recently moved to Mesa to be near Bennett before she sets off for college.

Her fashion show, Bennett said, is also a way to celebrate the rite of marriage. “It’s a blessing that God is giving us,” she said. “He encourages us to marry and then have children and have a family, so I know I will be married before I have any kids. Marriage is very important.”

“Most of the time, it only happens once, so it is just a special day — one of the biggest days of your life,” she said. “You want to look beautiful for it.”

Bennett said she hopes to someday design her own wedding dress.

What will happen to her gown collection when she goes off to college?

“My aunt is going to continue to store them in my room for me,” she said. “I want to display them when I get my own place ... I only know that when I get a wedding dress, I don’t want anyone to get rid of it or sell it.”

If you go

What: 35 Wedding Dresses Fashion Show and Reception
Benefit: St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic in Nogales, Ariz.
When: 11 a.m. April 5
Where: Woodridge Lake Clubhouse, 1257 E. Grandview St., Mesa
Cost: $25 for show, wedding cake and silent auction
Information: (480) 962-0006 or (480) 203-1168 or tesscowan@aol.com