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"Fatigues to Free Wedding Dresses"

COSTA MESA – Planning a wedding is stressful enough when the bride or groom isn't stationed in a war zone. For military couples, schedules and finances don't always cooperate.

About 50 brides-to-be got help Sunday when they were treated to free wedding gowns, shoes and shawls at Mon Amie Bridal Salon.

The rules: Either the bride or groom must be on active duty and been deployed overseas at any time since Sept. 11.

April Rojas and her husband, a Marine, eloped to Las Vegas in 1998 because the San Clemente couple didn't know when they could have a formal wedding.

"It's hard when you're in the military to try to plan things," Rojas, 24, said.

Now a mother of three, Rojas hopes for a dream wedding in Hawaii in 2007.

"It's something you dream of your whole life, and it's something you don't want to miss out on," she said.

Heather Murray's fiancé left for Iraq three weeks ago. On Sunday, Murray found a beaded dress worth $1,000, more than she could have paid, she said. Murray, 29, cried when she talked about planning the May wedding on her own.

"You don't know if he's going to come back," she said.

Lauren Connally, a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, has spent seven months in Iraq and will be married in January if she isn't sent back. The woman of self-described "simple" tastes had never looked at wedding dresses before finding her satin and tulle dress. "It's all really real now," Connally, 24, said.