I have a passion for beautiful dresses and my collecting began a few years ago with vintage wedding gowns.

After going to see an exhibition of ‘Wedding Dresses Through The Ages’ at the Bowes Museum I just had to have some. To be honest it became something of an obsession and ended up with a very large collection, of gowns, headdresses, tiaras, shoes, hoops etc., which became a headache to store and I eventually sold them for a small profit.

I had all styles, sizes and colours from all the major wedding dress designers, Vera Wang, Benjamin Roberts, Ronald Joyce and the fabulous Jessica McClintock to name but a few. Wherever I went I was looking for them, scouring charity shops, classified adverts and online auction sites. One such dress, which was by a Canadian designer from about 1970, was a real beauty and I had to bid frantically to get it. I paid much more than I wanted to, (anyone who uses Ebay will know how easy it is to do that) and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. I was not disappointed it was stunning – cream satin and lace.

I decided to take it to work to show a colleague who was interested and left it on the back seat of my car and for one reason or another forgot to take it back into the house. A couple of days later I asked my son Darren to take some old paint tins and rubbish from the garage to the tip. Which, the good lad that he is, he did. I think you know what’s coming next – yes he took my beautiful, expensive gown and put it in a skip.

A few days later I went for the dress from the car only to find it was not there. I immediately realised what had happened and went into panic mode. Screaming and shouting at Darren ‘what did you take to the tip’ ‘did you throw a big blue dress bag off the back seat away as well’? ‘Yes’ he replied, completely non-plussed, I thought you’d put it on the back seat for the old paint tins to stand on’.

If I hadn’t needed to get to the tip very quickly I think I would have murdered him on the spot. Any way, on reaching the tip I could see the huge wagons that were there to take the skips away and by that point I was hyperventilating. It was raining and I had no chance whatsoever of retrieving my gorgeous dress, but even so I had to try.

The people managing the tip at the time were very helpful and started to go through the skips that had not already been emptied, for me. Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted – not in a skip but ‘LAID’ in the middle of the road, a large blue dress bag, which had been run over several times by cars; all the tyre marks were there to see. It looked like there was nothing in it but I grabbed it, heart pumping, and pulled it open, and can you believe it my dress was in there, flat as can be, but not a mark on it!

Eventually, I sold all my wedding gowns but couldn’t bear to part with this one and it still hangs with my new collection of ball gowns - but that is another story