A bride-to-be is pleading for help after discovering her mother’s wedding dress — the very gown she planned to wear for her own nuptials — was misplaced three decades ago.
Samantha Pereira writes in a TikTok post that her mother wore the dress 30 years, taking it to a New Jersey dry cleaner to have it cleaned, preserved, and boxed.
Samantha decided to try the dress on ahead of her own wedding, thinking she might be able to wear it on her big day. But when she and her mom opened the box, they found a different dress had been preserved inside.
“My mother was heartbroken and in tears when she finally opened up her wedding dress which she had preserved so I can try on for my wedding,” Pereira writes in the post. “When we opened up the box, we realized that this dress is not her wedding dress.”
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As she explains on TikTok, Samantha’s mother’s dress had “a high-neck with lace trim,” and lace puff sleeves — plus, a very long and dramatic train. But the dress in the box is an off-the shoulder dress with lace detailing and no train.
In the 30 years since Samantha’s mom’s wedding, the dry-cleaner who preserved the dress, shut down store.
“The business is no longer around,” she writes on TikTok, adding: “So if you or your mother got married in 1994 and preserved your dress at East Side cleaners in Newark, New Jersey, please DM me so we can get my mother’s wedding dress back to her and the wedding dress we have back to whoever owned it!”
Samantha included a video of her trying on the mystery dress, in the hopes that someone watching might recognize it.
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In a follow-up video, Samantha explained how she “really wanted” to try on the dress “in hopes that maybe I could wear it on my wedding day or at least just put it on for nostalgia.”
Since posting her original video about the dress, the story has gone viral on TikTok. That visibility, she says, will hopefully provide the “opportunity to possibly find my mother’s wedding dress — and return the dress that we have to its rightful owner.”
“I know it’s a slim chance that my mother will get her wedding dress back,” Samantha adds in her follow-up video. “it’s been so long. But there’s still a chance. And I’m still very hopeful.”
