When the wildfires in Fort McMurray forced residents in several neighbourhoods to evacuate, many got into their vehicles with merely the clothes on their backs.

Elise Boissonneault certainly didn’t have the time to retrieve her wedding dress from the seamstress.

“My fiancé called me and he was in the south part of town so he couldn’t get to me,” Boissonneault told CTV Toronto.

“He said, ‘You need to pack everything and just get out of there and go north.’”

Boissonneault lives in the Thickwood area of Fort McMurray, Alberta just north of Abasand -- an area believed to be hit hardest by the wildfire. According to recent reports, nearly 50 per cent of homes there have been destroyed.

At the time, her wedding dress was being altered at the home of a seamstress in Abasand.

“I believe her home is gone,” she said.

Though it wasn’t mandatory for residents in Thickwood to evacuate at the time, Boissonneault didn’t want to take any chances and left as soon as she got the call from her fiancé on Tuesday.

“It was a wall of smoke and it just kept growing,” she said. “I knew this wasn’t good. I could feel the heat even when I was packing,”

Boissonneault and her fiancé Brandon Phillipo had planned to wed on Toronto Islands this Saturday. She said she had already packed some of what she needed to leave for the wedding.

She was supposed to pick up her wedding dress at the seamstress before the end of the week.

“I had searched for that dress for a long time and you just want the perfect one for your special day. That dress… it meant a lot to me. To lose it, it really hurts.”

As she was in the midst of escaping the fire stricken city, Boissonneault’s friend took to social media and pleaded for a wedding dress to be donated to the bride-to-be.

The response was overwhelming.

Boissonneault quickly ended up with hundreds of people -- complete strangers -- offering up their used wedding gowns.

“It’s been all across Canada,” Boissonneault said of the online generosity. “There were people from Nova Scotia, here in Toronto. There were people in Edmonton and Calgary. I think there were some in B.C. It’s just crazy.”

The social media appeal even made its way onto Bunz Trading Zone -- a popular Facebook group where goods are swapped and bartered for anything other than cash.

In the end, Lea-Ann Belter Bridal shop in Riverdale offered Boissonneault to come into the store and pick out a new wedding dress herself.

“To be honest, the first dress that I tried on I actually started crying because all I could really think about was my actual dress,” she said.

Boissonneault and her mother tried on several dresses before they narrowed it down to two.

Unable to make a decision, Ginny Monaco from Lea-Ann Belter Bridal decided to donate both gowns to the bride-to-be – one for the ceremony and one for the reception.

“I’m really overwhelmed and I’m just touched so many people would be offering me a dress, I really didn’t expect it all,” she said. “Two dresses – who gets two dresses!”

Fortunately for Boissonneault, her home in Fort McMurray is still standing.

Boissonneault has an indoor security camera set up in her living room and has been able to stream the footage from her cell phone.

As of Friday, she said she could still see the couch in her living room, just as she left it.

“But it’s all just smoke if you look out the window,” she added. “You can usually see trees.”

“It’s scary, to be honest. Last night I basically cried myself to sleep. You just don’t know if you’re going to have a home.”

With a dress in hand, Boissonneault is trying to remain optimistic. Her two brothers are on route to Toronto and will join members of both her and Phillipo’s friends and family for the wedding on Saturday.

“We are very strong,” she said. “We’re grateful people are basically willing to take their shirts off their backs for us. It’s absolutely amazing.”

With files from Janice Golding