A Chicago woman was horrified when, after 20 years, she opened the box she thought contained her wedding dress only to discover someone else's gown inside.
Kandace Keys-Randell, who wanted her daughter to wear the dress to her first cotillion, had no idea the outfit wasn't in the box until they opened it together.
In hopes of tracking down her wedding dress, Keys-Randell contacted ABC7 Consumer Investigator Samantha Chatman for assistance.
Speaking to the network, Keys-Randell said she brought the dress to Perruso Cleaners in South Holland following her wedding in 2005 so it could be preserved.
After the dress was packed away, she received instructions not to open the box unnecessarily as that would cause fresh air to enter, which could harm the preservation.
Newsweek has contacted Keys-Randell for comment via LinkedIn direct message.
Referring to a Perruso Cleaners employee, Keys-Randell told ABC7: "She said, 'Do not open the box.' They said, 'You'll put it in the box, and it'll last forever.'"
Keys-Randell said she got the idea to let her daughter wear her wedding dress to the cotillion from a friend.
"My best friend says: 'You're looking at all of these dresses. They're A-line. Why don't you just let her wear your dress?'" Keys-Randell said, adding, "To see her wear the dress that I wore 20 years ago would be amazing."
However, when she opened the box, she found a different dress inside with a tag that said, "Taylor."
"The last time I wore that dress, my dad was alive, and now he's not," Keys-Randell said. "He's not here. I wanted to see her with her dad wear the same dress that I wore with my dad."
Keys-Randell tried to call Perruso Cleaners to ask about the issue, but she found they had since closed down.
The ABC7 team contacted Prestige Preservation, the company listed on the box, which said the dry cleaner likely mixed up two wedding gowns.
"We truly wish we could reunite your client with their dress, but without access to the necessary records, we're unable to perform this type of search," the company told the news outlet.
It added that its preservation packaging had a viewing window so owners could see their garments without opening the box, but Keys-Randell told ABC7 that when she received the box, it was wrapped in plastic.
The owner of the missing gown has made an appeal to the person who may unknowingly have her wedding dress in their possession, telling the news outlet, "I would hope that anybody who went to that cleaners in August of 2005 will open up their box to see if maybe they have my dress because I definitely have someone else's dress."
Anyone with information about the dress is urged to contact ABC7 at iteam.consumer@abc.com or 312-750-7-TIP.
Elsewhere in viral bridal stories, a woman on TikTok fascinated viewers by unboxing her grandmother's wedding dress, which had been in a container for 64 years.
Meanwhile, a groom told Newsweek he had created a "score sheet" to decide which friends would receive invitations to his wedding.
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