Bride Opens Preserved Wedding Dress 3 Decades Later and Is Shocked by Her Discovery

A Tulsa bride is searching for her long-lost wedding dress. 

Over three decades after Tammy Gaddis married her husband at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma, she decided to pull her wedding dress, which she had professionally sealed and preserved in 1992, out of storage ahead of her daughter’s wedding. However, she was shocked to discover that the dress in the preservation box wasn’t hers. 

“My daughter and I opened it because she’s getting married this summer, and we were going to have it repurposed into something she could use and wear on her wedding day,” Gaddis told News on 6. “When we opened the box, I immediately knew that it was not my dress.”

Although the dress Gaddis found in the box had a few similarities to her own gown, including a bodice covered in intricate beading, there were also a few unmistakable differences that made her certain the dresses got mixed up during the preservation process. 

“This one is very full, and it has a train that’s attached,” she noted. “My train was detachable. It came off, so I knew it was not my dress.”

Upon discovering that the dress she held on to for more than 30 years had belonged to someone else, Gaddis, who has since moved to Maryland, also found that the Tulsa business that preserved the gown all those years ago is no longer in business. So, she is looking to others to help her find her missing gown. 

“I have gone through a roller coaster of emotions,” she told the outlet. “But right now, I am really hopeful that somebody may have my dress — and this may be their dress.”

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Indeed, Gaddis is urging any brides that have had their dresses kept in a gold Keystone preservation box to double check that it’s truly their dress that’s been stored away. 

“There were multiple layers of the preservation,” she explained. “So you can open the box and there’s a cellophane window inside, and it’s still preserved inside. So, you can check to see if it is, in fact, your dress.”

After all, Gaddis was hoping to give her dress a second life by passing it down to her daughter for her own special day.

“It would mean the world,” she emphasized.