P.E.I. musician selling wedding dress to help finance new album

To help finance her new album, P.E.I. musician Meaghan Blanchard is selling one of her most cherished possessions — her wedding dress.

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Blanchard's new album, The Great Escape, is due out Jan. 10, 2018. She and her producer just finished mixing the recording this week and although she's put in about $15,000 so far, she needs another $10,000 to print the CDs and vinyl and do some marketing. 

I never thought I could look or feel the way a bride feels.— Meaghan Blanchard

"I was just looking at my expenses and I thought whew! I still have a long way to go to get this record out the door for January. And then I went upstairs and saw my wedding dress hanging in my spare bedroom and I just thought — someone else could really enjoy it as much as I did," she said.

The 28-year-old wed fellow musician Thomas Webb this summer and loved everything about her lacy, cream-coloured gown and the wedding day.

Blanchard wrote a touching post on Facebook for the dress, as well as placing the ad on Kijiji.

"This dress will make you dance ... I felt sexy and beautiful. This dress will have you dancing like Beyoncé," she wrote. "My brother came over, and took me by the arm: 'I just want to say…that you look beautiful, and that I love you.' The first time my brother told me that he loved me, was in this dress. This dress will break your heart."

Blanchard is asking $1,200 for the dress. 

She hopes her ad stands out because it lists not only details of the dress itself, but about the joy it brought her.

'A win-win'

"I never thought I could look or feel the way a bride feels — I always thought that was kind of silly till I tried this dress on," Blanchard said. She was self-conscious about her curvy hips and shorter stature — she's five feet four inches tall — but the dress helped. 

"It kind of hugged in all the right places." 

Blanchard is keeping her wedding shoes as a memento of the big day, but feels hanging on to the dress would be wasteful.

"I just feel like if I could offer that kind of an experience for someone else while raising money for a new record, then it's kind of a win-win," she said. 

More fundraising efforts

Blanchard will soon launch pre-sales of The Great Escape, which will also help finance its production. 

The album, Blanchard's fourth, is a brand new sound for her. She's getting away from the country style of her last couple records, she said — describing the album as having a folk-roots, indie-cinematic sound. She also designed the cover art herself.

"It really feels like me and I really hope people enjoy it," she said. "It feels good."

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