What was meant to be a dream come true for bride-to-be Samantha Pereira has turned into a distressing search for a lost heirloom. Samantha, who had planned to wear her mother’s wedding dress from 1994 for her big day in July 2025, discovered that the gown had mysteriously disappeared, replaced by a stranger’s dress. Now, she’s turned to social media for help in a desperate attempt to find the missing gown, told the New York Post.
“My mother has been saving this for 30 years, and it’s not her dress,” Samantha shared in a heartfelt social media post. The New Jersey native, who now lives in Maryland, explained that her mother, Christina Pereira, had always dreamed of seeing her daughter walk down the aisle in the same dress she wore on her wedding day. But that dream was dashed when Samantha realized the dress wasn’t her mother’s after all.
The mix-up, Samantha suspects, occurred years ago when her mother took the dress to East Side Cleaners in Newark, which has since closed, to have it preserved. Somewhere along the way, the dress was mislabeled or swapped, leaving the family with someone else’s gown.
“If anyone recognizes that dress, we would love to give it back to the rightful owner,” Samantha told NJ Advance Media, hoping her public plea might lead to a resolution. “If we can’t get our dress back, I would hate for anyone else to feel the way that we did, knowing that we were missing a dress.”
The story quickly gained traction on social media, with the video plea garnering nearly 780,000 views. Comments flooded in, with one woman sharing her own story of a similar mix-up that had a happy ending: “That happened to me! And I found my dress! And the lady got her dress back also,” she optimistically commented.
Other brides offered their own dresses, some remarkably similar to the one Samantha had hoped to wear. “If you can’t find your mom’s…mine is almost exactly the same as your mom’s and you’re welcome to it!!!” one kind woman offered.
Despite the overwhelming support, Samantha’s dream of wearing her mother’s gown remains unfulfilled. “It was just kind of like a dream to wear your mother’s wedding dress during your wedding,” she said in her emotional post. “But I never got that chance to actually do that.”
Now, with social media as her last hope, Samantha waits to see if her dream dress will be found before her wedding day.