On the night of December 11th, 1997, Fran Hansen awoke from a fitful sleep with a strange but powerful vision of three things: Oprah Winfrey, 10,000 wedding gowns, and a truck and trailer with big logos on them. Hansen had recently suffered through a couple of serious breast cancer scares, finding two lumps over the course of six months. Desperate for information, she’d scoured every book and website she could find about the disease. She discovered an online newsletter where over 600 breast cancer patients in 30 countries were sharing their stories. One story in particular had touched her heart: “Please pray for my family,” a dying woman had written. “Christmas is almost here and my husband just lost his job. We have no money to buy gifts for our children. I just wish this were over, so that my family could get on with their lives.”
Fortunately Hansen eventually turned out to be cancer free, but she remained haunted by the stories she’d read of terminal breast cancer victims struggling to pay their bills and say farewell to their families. She felt a strong desire to help, but she wasn’t sure how. And then came the vision: Oprah, thousands of wedding gowns, and a truck and trailer.
In the first flush of the vision, it all seemed so clear to her. She felt certain that women across America would gladly donate one of their most prized possessions – their wedding gowns – if they knew that the proceeds from the sale of those gowns would be used to grant wishes for people facing terminal breast cancer. But by the next morning, she’d already begun to doubt herself. She’d owned bridal shops before, was glad to be out of the business and was now happily set up in a new career as a college Financial Aid Officer. But the vision stubbornly refused to leave her mind, until she eventually shared it with her daughter, Anna. Anna surprised her by insisting that they follow through on it together. At that moment, Fran and Anna become the co-founders of the Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation.
“Anna was just 19 at the time, but she was really the one who made all this happen,” Fran Hansen says proudly today. “People write these articles about us, and sometimes they’ll say that I’m the brains and the brawn of Making Memories. Well, maybe I’m the brawn, but Anna is the heart and the wisdom.”
A VISION SHARED
Between 1998 and 2000, Making Memories collected nearly 2,000 gowns. Fran Hansen became one of “Oprah’s Angels” in May of 2000 and was given $250,000 worth of new wedding gowns from the celebrated New York Designer, Demetrios. In October of 2002, Winfrey asked her viewers to send Making Memories their wedding gowns. A few days after that show aired, two UPS trucks pulled up outside Hansen’s home, filled with gowns. Oprah, thousands of wedding gowns, and a truck and trailer: Fran Hansen’s vision had come true.
Breast cancer is the number one killer of young women, women who are often newly married or just starting families. According to Hansen, the wish they most frequently grant involves funding an entire family’s vacation to Disney World. They have also sent couples on second honeymoons, provided piano lessons for children, put roofs on homes and brought fans together with Faith Hill, the LA Lakers, the Green Bay Packers and the Cleveland Indians. Thanks to Making Memories, one dying, 26-year-old mother was given a video camera and was thus able to record a series of messages for her two little girls, messages celebrating their birthdays, their weddings, their prom nights, and the birth of their own children. Hansen’s voice catches as she tells the story.
“You tell me,” she says, “how much is something like that worth?”
SPREADING THE WORD
Making Memories currently holds about 32 bridal shows per year around the USA. They travel from city to city, hauling a trailer filled to bursting with wedding gowns, accessories, mirrors, garment racks, banners and signage and everything else needed to put these events together. Many of the gowns they sell are brand new, donated from salons, designers and manufacturers. Prices range from $49 to $599, with some originals priced up to $4,000. Even donated gowns that are too damaged to salvage are still put to good use, as they’re made into queen-sized quilts and raffled off.
Making Memories has become something of a pop culture phenomenon, with extensive coverage on TV and radio and in the pages of such magazines as Family Circle and Time. The Brides Against Breast Cancer shows have even inspired works of fiction, with romance writer Geralyn Dawson penning the Pocket Books novel Pink Magnolia Club, about three women who form a lasting friendship after meeting at a Making Memories wedding gown sale.
OC local Fran Oliver volunteered for a Making Memories show here two years ago, and she’ll be volunteering for another one this month in Garden Grove. She says the work is demanding but also rewarding and surprisingly fun.
“You show up first thing in the morning, and they open the doors and all the girls just flood in,” she says. “You spend the day helping the ladies try on gowns and figuring out what will fit them best, which can be a bit of a challenge as some of these ladies can be tall or very tiny. We also give them alteration ideas, if need be. We can spend hours with these ladies, and their families or fiancés sometimes, really getting to know them. We can almost always find something that’s just perfect for them. When they leave we tell them to wear a pink ribbon on the inside of their gown, so that when they get married, we’ll all be with them in spirit. It’s a beautiful thing.”
OVERCOMING THE ODDS
This year’s Making Memories bridal gown sales events came perilously close to not happening at all. One morning this November, a Making Memories truck and cargo container hauling over $3 million worth of wedding dresses was stolen from the parking lot of a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. The dresses were on their way to California for the last show of 2006, and Making Memories was left scrambling to recover from this devastating loss. CNN, MSNBC and press outlets as far away as China picked up the story, and soon a flood of thousands of dresses came in, donated from around the world. It was a happy ending worthy of a Capra movie, and Hansen believes that a higher power is watching out for Making Memories.
“When I first told Anna about my vision, all those years ago, she told me that she thought God had inspired this idea, and if He put it in my head, He would help us find a way to make it happen. And she was right.”
