Posted on July 16, 2024 by Barbara Bermudez
Amid the costs for getting married, many local brides-to-be expect to budget a few thousand dollars for a wedding gown. Unless they check one out at the Maurice M. Pine Free Public Library in Fair Lawn, that is. Then, it’s free.
No library card needed, no residency requirement. Just make an appointment with library director Adele Puccio, who has been collecting gently used wedding dresses for nearly 25 years, and browse through her inventory of 100-plus dresses.
Try them on at the library and take one home, then alter as needed.
The gowns, donated by people living all over the tri-state area, come from brides who can’t bear to throw them away yet no longer want to keep them. When dropping them off at the Bergen County town’s library, they often regale Adele with tales of where they bought their dress and how a parent may have scrimped and saved to buy it.
“In today’s world, people are so angry and fractious, and this is so positive—every dress has a story and I love hearing them,” Adele says. “The donors love that someone may wear their dress again and the brides are so grateful they don’t have to spend so much money on a dress for one day.”
Sam Sadkin, of Harrison, is one such bride. After seeing a post on Instagram about the free dresses, she tried on seven before finding one that made her “feel like Cinderella.” And, she adds, “It was great saving this huge cost for the wedding.”
Estefani Soler is another bride who found her wedding gown, a long-sleeved cream-colored dress from the 1970s, at Fair Lawn’s library. A fan of vintage clothing, Estefani jumped at the chance to peruse
Adele’s collection when she caught wind of it.
The icing on the cake? Estefani actually got married at the New Milford Public Library, where she was working at the time. “Great things come out of the library,” she says.
Upon visiting the Fair Lawn Library, Estefani tried on a few dresses, including a ’90s style that “wasn’t me.” But when she put on what ended up becoming her wedding gown, she just knew it was the one for her. “When you vintage shop, you don’t want to wear something that’s very dated. You kind of want it to look like, yes this is dated, but also looks modern at the same time,” Estefani says. That’s what this dress embodied.
In addition, Estefani was inspired, style-wise, by celebrity Sofia Richie’s chic yet modest gown for her 2023 wedding to Elliot Grainge.
Estefani accessorized simply, with flowers in her hair, a necklace that her now-husband, Jonathan Soler, gifted her years ago, and secondhand shoes. Luckily, she didn’t even need to alter her borrowed gown; the only money she spent on it was $100 for dry cleaning.
On their wedding day, the Solers had about 30 people at their library ceremony. (New Milford’s library doesn’t usually host weddings, but once Estefani’s bosses heard that she was planning to tie the knot at city hall, they offered it up.) Employees from other libraries came too, excited about the unusual nuptials.
The couple celebrated at a local restaurant afterward with family and friends.
Adele, of the Fair Lawn Library, is grateful for all dresses, but especially needs donations in size 14 and larger, and gowns made in the last 10 years.
Brides are asked to return the dresses to the library, but are not required to do so.
Adele asks that all donated dresses are in clean, usable condition; she does not send the gowns out to be professionally cleaned before lending them out (because of cost), though she has soaked some of the dresses in Retro Clean in the past to lift out yellowing.
Other local libraries in New Jersey lend more than books and periodicals, too, through a program called the Library of Things, in which patrons can borrow items that you wouldn’t expect to find at a library, from snowshoes to metal detectors. But the Fair Lawn Library seems to be the only place with wedding gowns on hand, making for a very special shopping experience.
Make an appointment by emailing puccio@fairlawn.bccls.org or calling 201-796-3400, ext. 4.
Additional reporting by Julie GordonÂ
