Bridie held a Fashion Show and Afternoon on 17 November 2019, in aid of The Fragile X Society, and raised the incredible amount of £6745.
My name is Bridie and I have four children, two of whom have Fragile X Syndrome. Ciaran, our eldest, is 33 and Anton, our youngest is 28. Their siblings are Mairead, 31, and Aodhan, 29. Unfortunately my husband, Danny, who was the main carer because I worked, passed away 6 years ago. Anton is now in supported living and has been there for over 2 years. He moved in crisis but it has been very successful. He is only five minutes away in a bungalow and we see him at least 3 times a week.
My friend, Janet, has run the Fashion Show and Afternoon Tea for the past two years and I have helped her, so in 2019 we decided to run it for the Fragile X Society. It would also raise awareness as many people don't know what it is.
It took lots of preparation i.e. advertising, selling tickets, asking friends for contributions of clothing, shoes, bags etc. We spent many days preparing all these items as we only wanted new or nearly new, any others were donated to local charity shops. Most of my immediate family were called on to make the sandwiches and work on the day as we had sold over 200 tickets. My friend is the one who chose the outfits for the models as she has great vision. There were several different categories: winter coats, woollens, The Races, The Movies and Christmas. On the day we had volunteers to man the kitchen, stalls, serve teas and sell raffle tickets.
We raised over £6700 and were left with so many items that we donated more to the local charity shops. We also gave a suitcase and two large bags of winter clothes each to two Homeless charities in Glasgow.
The Fragile X Society adds: “We are tremendously grateful to Bridie for organising her fashion show and afternoon tea as a way of raising both awareness of fragile X and much needed funds that are essential to our ability to provide support to our fragile X community. Thank you, Bridie!"
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