Patricia Harrison - Gift of a Wedding Founder and Chair

The idea for Gift of a Wedding came to me in 2012 after I, an experienced wedding planner, and several other wedding suppliers offered our services free of charge to a young man aged 27 who had recently discovered that he was terminally-ill with brain cancer.  

He was given 18 months to live. This experience led me to conduct some research, where I unfortunately discovered that there were couples all over the UK affected by terminal illness who were struggling unnecessarily to create their dream days.

With such a short time to organise a wedding, the only choice for these couples was to fundraise, rely on the generosity of family and friends, or put an appeal out to the wedding industry. The problem with all these options is they are time-consuming and need a lot of organisation.

Having worked in the wedding industry for many years, I am aware of how generous the wedding and hospitality industries can be. The solution immediately became clear to me.  There needed to be a group of wedding and hospitality professionals on standby, ready to donate their products and services whenever the need arose.  

This spark of an idea led to the creation of Gift of a Wedding.