ALMOST £4,000 worth of hand-made wedding dresses went missing at a wedding show on November 12 -- just hours before they were to be modelled.

Fiona Ormerod, owner and manager of Fiella in Topping Street, Blackpool, was preparing for the show when the dresses disappeared at a Wedding Fayre at Blackpool Pleasure Beach's Paradise Room arranged by The Citizen.

But undaunted by the loss, quick-thinking Fiona re-arranged the whole show to make sure people saw what they came for.

She said: "Because it was raining outside I kept six specially designed dresses in a huge black bin liner, but when I came to dress the models the clothes were gone."

Fiona, pictured here in her shop, said at first she and her colleagues suspected someone may have seen the bag and carted it away, wrongly believing it to be litter.

But after an exhaustive search by herself and Pleasure Beach staff, Fiona was forced to rearrange the fashion show. She said: "The show must go on, as they say, so rather than cancel we decided to put it back an hour and re-choreograph everything. We couldn't have done it otherwise because the timing for the changes in between the dresses would have been all out of sync."

In total they did three shows using 34 -- instead of the original 40 -- dresses, but Fiona said the gowns still haven't turned up. "Being mistaken for litter is the only sensible explanation because I can't believe they were stolen. I am so disappointed because one has antique embroidery which you just cannot get hold of any more."

The loss of the dresses is yet another let down for Fiona, as earlier in the year a different disaster forced her to move from her original premises in Church Street.

She said: "We opened the doors one morning to find a council drain had burst and the shop was flooded with gallons of raw sewage."

The stock was ruined, as were the interiors, and they were forced to move to Topping Street. But onlookers at the Wedding Fayre said Fiona was 100 per cent professional and, despite being under pressure, the fashion show went like a dream.

Fiona is appealing to anyone who comes across the wedding gear to call her on 291365.