Suzanne Amidzadeh, the lucky winner of the Catherine Parry competition in issue 145 of Wedding Ideas magazine, is absolutely delighted with her Catherine Parry wedding dress. The competition, which ran earlier this year, offered readers the chance to win any style from the 2015 Catherine Parry collection up to the value of £1,500.
Suzanne, a support worker for adults with learning difficulties, spotted the competition in Wedding Ideas magazine shortly after her engagement to fiance Grant, a soldier in the Royal Engineers. Suzanne and Grant met while he was on R&R from a tour in Afghanistan, but only a week after they met they were parted for 6 weeks while he completed his tour of duty. Grant was then posted to Germany, forcing the couple to continue a long distance relationship for another six months before Grant proposed to Suzanne during a skiing holiday in Norway.
“After we were engaged I began to look at wedding magazines, which is when I saw the competition” Suzanne remarks. “I absolutely adored the dress that was pictured with the competition and I just thought I’d try my luck, why not! I never imagined I’d win”.
“I remember finding out that I had won” says Suzanne. “I was at home alone, I had just got in and checked my emails on my phone. I couldn’t believe what I was reading and I had to read it a few times over before it finally sunk in. I called my fiance and he didn’t answer. I called my future mother-in-law. When she didn’t answer, I ran up to her house. She wasn’t in! I was so excited I just sat for a while waiting desperately to tell someone!”.
The next step was choosing a dress from the collection. As Suzanne explains: “I loved the dress I had seen pictured in the magazine with the competition, however when I looked at the whole collection it was almost impossible to choose – they were all gorgeous. I managed to narrow it down to a list of 5 which I looked at every day for quite a while before slowly whittling it down to 3, then 2 and then 1. Though my 5 choices chopped and changed a bit, the dress I finally chose was a design that had struck me from the beginning and had always been in my short-list”.
“As soon as my dress arrived I called my mum, mother-in-law to be, my nan, my aunt and my sister-in-law to be, and asked them to meet me to open it. We opened it and all gasped, it was so much more beautiful than the pictures showed. We sat down for a good 20 minutes had a cup of tea and just stared at it before I finally tried it on. I’ve tried on a LOT of wedding dresses and having modelled in a few bridal shows recently its been endless, hand whilst all of the dresses I’ve modelled have been lovely THIS dress is something else” says Suzanne.
“As soon as I stepped into it I could feel how well it fitted, it was luxuriously soft and it was light but at the same time so grand and so beautiful, it felt so comfortable I didn’t want to take it off! None of us had ever seen a dress like this one before and it was such a wonderful surprise just how perfect it could be without me even seeing it in person before and despite the fact I have tried on SO many wedding dresses, yet this one felt completely different”.
Suzanne can’t wait to wear her dress on the big day. The couple will marry in St James Church in East Cowes in May 2016. “The church is small and cute from the outside but very grand inside” says Suzanne. “Our reception is being held in my nan’s garden – we have hired a marquee and asked our guests to make food for a buffet as wedding gifts. We have around 130 guests attending with family coming from all over the world so it will be a big family celebration”.
Commenting on behalf of Catherine Parry, the label’s co-owner Simon Ryan, says: “We’re delighted that Suzanne is so pleased with her gown and we can’t wait to see the wedding pictures! On behalf of everyone at Catherine Parry we wish Suzanne and Grant a fabulous wedding day and a very happy future together”.