Wedding dresses bond survivors of 3 mass shootings

Jane Dougherty makes it look easy, taking apart three layers of a wedding dress and putting it back together. Her expert hands move quickly between cutting, pinning and sewing.
"I do about a dozen a week," Dougherty said. "I've been doing this 13 years. That's a lot of dresses."
Dougherty started sewing when she was 6 years old. By third grade, she was making her own clothes.
She made her first wedding dress in 1981 for her sister, Mary Sherlach.
"I never made a wedding gown before, but she had faith in me," Dougherty said. "That's where it all began."
Dougherty does all of her sewing in her basement. She sews and watches the news.
"I was very aware of the shootings, I wasn't somebody who was oblivious to shootings," she said. "I just thought there is more and more and they're getting closer and closer. [In] December it came real close and took my sister."
Dougherty lost her sister Mary in the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
"It took me a year to care again because it seemed unimportant to me," Dougherty said of her alteration work. "Getting involved in gun sense law and becoming an activist was so much more important."
The Sandy Hook tragedy inducted Dougherty into a club of survivors.
"They're my tribe, they are my tribe," she said. "When I'm with them, I can express my anger, my sadness, my guilt, whatever I'm feeling. I can express it with them easier than I can at home."
That's how Dougherty met Coni Sanders and Megan Sullivan-Jenks. Coni's dad Dave Sanders was killed in the Columbine shooting. Megan lost her brother Alex Sullivan in the Aurora movie theater shooting.
"It's one of those things when you go through something this horrible, you just kind of gravitate towards the people, it's almost like you can feel the pain," Sanders said. "Even though we don't know each other terribly well, it just feels comfortable because you know that person has been where you've been. With Jane and Megan, you kind of naturally gravitate towards each other."
The three have done some activism work together -- and then it came time for Sanders and Sullivan-Jenks to get married.
Dougherty saw some Facebook posts from both women that said neither were having a fantastic time with wedding dress shopping. Sanders didn't find anything she liked and Sullivan-Jenks was in the middle of the Aurora theater shooting trial.
Dougherty offered to help. After all, they were her tribe, and it was only fitting.
"We got this dress and it needed [to be] altered," Sanders said. "It was so cool to have somebody that could help me, that knew that it was going to be hard for me to get married without him there."
"I don't think I would've trusted anyone else to do the alterations other than Jane," Sullivan-Jenks said. "I knew she cared about it as much as I did. And wanted to put everything that she could into it to make it my special day."
The weddings were perfect, as perfect as they can be. And the love Dougherty put into their special days just brought the tribe closer.
"We're bonded, even if I have to get married again," Sanders said.
"I'm not planning another wedding," Sullivan-Jenks replied.
"I do other dresses," Dougherty joked.
The three women are part of the Everytown Survivor Network, which brings together Americans who have been personally affected by gun violence to build a community of support and empower them to become leaders in the gun violence prevention movement.

The Survivor Network connects loved ones of victims and survivors to advocate for solutions to prevent the gun violence that kills 88 Americans and injures hundreds more every day. The Survivor Network, along with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun violence prevention organization in the country with more than three million members and more than 40,000 donors.