A New Jersey bride-to-be is making a public appeal to locate her mother’s wedding gown after discovering it had been mistakenly swapped with another dress nearly 30 years ago.
Samantha Pereira, 27, had planned to wear the dress her mother, Christina, donned during her wedding in June 1994. The dress had been preserved by a now-defunct Newark dry cleaner, East Side Cleaners, shortly after the wedding. When Pereira and her mother retrieved the dress from storage, they realized it wasn’t the same gown.
@samanthapereirax Tiktok do your thing please 🙏🏽 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. When we opened up the box, we realized that this dress is not her wedding dress and the business is no longer around.. 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! ##fyp##wedding##newark##weddingdress##newarknj##newjersey##lost##help##missing ♬ original sound – Samantha Pereira
“This dress was supposed to be passed down for my wedding,” Pereira shared on social media, hoping to return the gown in her possession to its rightful owner and recover her mother’s original dress. She described the misplaced gown as having a distinctive long train and unique design, atypical of 1990s wedding dresses.
Despite the closure of the dry cleaner and the time passed since the swap, Pereira’s social media posts have garnered over 750,000 views on TikTok and Facebook. Several viewers offered support, with some offering their own wedding dresses as alternatives. A few leads have emerged, but so far, none have successfully reunited Pereira with the lost gown.
Pereira is set to marry on July 18, 2025, and while her hope to wear her mother’s dress remains uncertain, her public plea continues to reach potential leads.
@samanthapereirax Replying to @Paige🖤 UPDATE ON MISSING WEDDING DRESS #greenscreen #wedding #newark #weddingdress #newarknj #newjersey #fyp #news ♬ original sound – Samantha Pereira
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