It’s common for Goodwill to receive a couple used dresses as donations, but the store in Ottawa has never seen a donation of this size or quality before.
Bridal Elegance, 205 W. Etna Road, Ottawa, donated around 100 dresses to the Ottawa location, according to Goodwill workers, as part of an inventory cleanout.
Owner Jan Ferracuti said the business regularly donates the one shoulder prom dresses to charitable organizations every year, but chose to donate them to Goodwill locations across Illinois this year.
“We’ve been hearing from people that they’ve been having a tough time this year and we wanted to do anything we can to help out,” Ferracuti said.
Employees at the Ottawa Goodwill, 501 W. Stevenson Road, were putting the wedding dresses on the sales floor Tuesday afternoon. A variety of sizes are available in both wedding and prom dresses. All dresses are priced less than $100.
“The dresses are beautiful and it’s kind of great to have this sort of excitement in our community,” said Ottawa Store Manager Diane Quick.
Quick said January tends to be a slower month for the store and the addition of these dresses excited not only the community, but also store staff as well.
The Peru location, 1650 38th St., received dresses earlier in the month. Gretchen Piper, communications and marketing director for the Peru Goodwill’s district, said the “extraordinary” donation led to hundreds of customers, some driving three hours to the store.
“What this donation means is we can meet additional people with job training, youth services and veteran services,” Piper said.
Piper said the phone had been ringing nonstop since the Peru location received around 2,000 dresses donated over a number of days and then divided up among the other 10 stores in the district. Piper estimated around 500 dresses remain at that store and said long wait times were expected by the dressing rooms last weekend.
“We were talking about how to be proactive just in case,” Quick said prior to announcing they also received donated dresses in Ottawa.
The high demand was even a surprise to the original donor.
“In fact we’ve been receiving calls that said they thought we were closed,” Ferracuti said.
Ferracuti said the business regularly donates to charities and organizations specializing in suicide prevention and breast cancer research. These donations tend to remain anonymous as she doesn’t want it to be seen as advertising, but admitted she donated the red prom dresses upon being asked by a Times reporter and to dispel any rumors about the store closing.