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

To help finance her new album, P.E.I. musicianMeaghanBlanchard 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 finishedmixing the recordingthis 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. MeaghanBlanchard

"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 Beyonc," she wrote. "My brother came over, and took me by the arm: 'I just want to saythat 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 fivefeet 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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