Alex Lloyd
Party Dress Day
Fundraising for Good Grief Trust
Story
Party Dress Day will be returning for 2024! You are invited to don your party best to feel good and raise funds for The Good Grief Trust on Friday 26 January 2024. Everyone is welcome so encourage your colleagues, classmates, family and friends to join in.
Our first event took place on Saturday 6 February 2021 and was organised in just a week. The inspiration was the pandemic and everything we had missed in the previous year, from gathering with loved ones to simply dressing up for a party - and the thousands of families who had lost someone irreplaceable to Covid.
We invited anyone who was interested to put on a favourite party outfit to feel fabulous and look forward to good times ahead. We asked participants to share a picture of their party wear on social media using the #partydressday hashtag and make a donation. The response was overwhelmingly joyful and uplifting - and we raised £1,710 for The Good Grief Trust. It was a special day and lovely to feel part of a celebration despite being under lockdown restrictions.
In fact, it was so much fun, we did it all over again on Saturday 3 April to celebrate Easter weekend. This time our story made it everywhere from BBC Radio York and BBC Look North to Desert Island Disco on Lauren Laverne's Radio 6 show! We also appeared in the Sunday People and Red magazine.
Best of all, it took our fundraising total to £2,800 - enough to cover one of these services:
- Supply over 100 UK NHS Hospital Trusts with Good Grief combined condolence and signposting cards to give to their bereaved families
- Offer Help and Hope to approximately 10,000 families suffering a bereavement anywhere in the UK
- Supply 300 GP practices with Good Grief cards and signposting resources for 6 months
- Supply 40 volunteers with Pop Up Cafe packs to offer bereavement support in the community.
Party Dress Day is now an annual event on the last Friday of January - the perfect way to shake off the January blues while helping others. Our 2022 event raised just over £3,000 and we collected a further £2,300 in 2023. Can you help us take our cumulative total over £10,000 in 2024?
Get out that frock, snazzy shirt or simply you favourite pair of shoes, wear it on Friday 26 January, whether you are walking the dog or in the office, and make a donation.
Don't forget to post your pictures on social media and use the hashtag #partydressday so we can share them on the @partydressday Instagram, Twitter and Facebook feeds.
We’ve also got an official Party Dress Day playlist on Spotify to get your party started:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47vLwABN4fmPt68SFvp22v?si=crBRuffnSh-jarDGgSeH8Q
Dressing up might seem frivolous but this small action has the power to lift your mood and feel part of a caring community.
Best of all, your donations go help those who are bereaved feel that they are not alone.
The Good Grief Trust is an inspiring organisation that brings together grief services under one umbrella. It aims to raise awareness of issues around bereavement and try to change the way we deal with this taboo subject in the UK, ensure acknowledgement of the potentially severe effects of grief and encourage us all to talk it about it more openly.