Wedding taken care of for Lake County bride-to-be who lost home in Valley fire

Given all that’s going on in her life with the Lake County fire right now, Middletown bride-to-be Rachel Lemon almost postponed her appointment at a gown shop in Santa Rosa.

Good thing she didn’t.

Lemon, her mom and her future mother-in-law stepped from Starlet Bridal & Prom at Montgomery Village days ago speechless and in tears.

Shop owner Allison Hargrave-Barnard was moved so deeply by their family’s fire-borne tragedy and determination to go on with the wedding and make it joyful that she invited Lemon to select the gown of her choice, at no cost.

And that was just the beginning.

“I went into the back room,” Hargrave-Barnard said, “and I just started calling everybody I knew in the wedding industry.”

She asked colleagues if they’d contribute services and products to the nuptials of Rachel Lemon and fiance Dan Tyrrell, who lost their home near Middletown to the Valley fire. Hargrave-Barnard may have mentioned that the home of Lemon’s mom and primarily wedding helper, Lynne Lemon, burned, too.

Nobody turned her down.

Right there on the spot, and also in response to a Facebook appeal by Hargrave-Barnard, business owners pledged to donate a wedding band, a cake, cases of champagne, all the necessary flowers, photographic services, harp music and more.

“I’m still in shock at the kindness and generosity from total strangers,” Lemon, who works in Middletown as a cosmetologist, wrote on Facebook.

“I have always dreamed of having a beautiful wedding,” she wrote. “With the fire, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen. Thanks to you, it will.”

She’d made an appointment at the Starlet shop long before the Valley fire roared to life Saturday. Staff member Irene Thompson welcomed Lemon, her mother and Pat Tyrrell on Monday.

That was less than two full days since the Valley fire had ravaged Lynne Lemon’s home and also the home of the betrothed Rachel Lemon and Dan Tyrrell. Naturally, the impact showed in the demeanors of the women and the losses came up in the conversation there at the gown shop.

Thompson would learn that the groom-to-be, the owner of a Middletown martial arts studio, made a harrowing escape from his and his fiancée’s home, crashing into a tree in the choking smoke and finding that one tire, then the bed of his truck were aflame.

Thompson was taken by how sweet the future bride and her mother and future mother-in-law were, and by their clear resolve to carry on with the wedding plans despite the horror that had roared through their lives.

“They are the nicest family,” the saleswoman said. “It doesn’t seem like it could happen to a nicer family.”

Thompson was talking with Rachel Lemon about a gown when Starlet proprietor Hargrave-Barnard was drawn to the future bride and the other two women.

“You could tell that something horrible had happened,” the shop owner said. She was most impressed by what she witnessed in Lynne Lemon.

“You could just tell she was determined to make this day work for her daughter, no matter what,” Hargrave-Barnard said. She felt she had to do something.

So she told Rachel Lemon to please choose a gown and accept it as her gift. The Middletown woman broke into tears, then chose a dress by Maggie Sottero, one with pewter lace accents.

“By the time Rachel came out of the fitting room, we were all crying,” the shop owner said.

Hargrave-Barnard then went to work on the phone, asking others in the bridal industry if they’d donate to the wedding of fire victims Rachel Lemon and Dan Tyrell.

Quickly, she had commitments from E.R. Sawyer Jewelers, Grohe Florist, Rick Oullette Photography, harpist Susan Weinstein, hair stylist Jennifer Cadd, baker Jessica Ipsen, Woodhouse Chocolate, Sift cupcakes and others.

And to think, Rachel Lemon had nearly decided to cancel her appointment at the bridal shop.

“I felt silly thinking about our wedding when we had just lost so much,” she wrote on Facebook. “With my parents’ house and ours gone I wasn’t sure what, if anything, we would be able to afford.”

The date and location of the wedding are up in the air.

At Starlet, Thompson and Hargrave-Barnard are awfully glad she and her mom and future mom-in-law came in. Though it’s up in the air when and where the wedding will happen, the shop owner said one certainty is that Rachel Lemon chose the perfect dress.

“It will look lovely on her.”

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.