Lost 150-Year-Old Wedding Dress Found Thanks to Crowd-Sourced Search

Thanks to social media, Tess Newall has been reunited with an irreplaceable family heirloom.

The 29-year-old resident of Morham, East Lothian was married in June of last year. For the ceremony, she wore the same wedding dress that her great-great grandmother Dora wore in 1870. A few months later, Newall dropped it off at Kleen Cleaners in Edinburgh to be dry-cleaned. However, less than a month later, the shop closed and fell into bankruptcy court.

In the chaos of the bankruptcy, the dress seemed to have disappeared. A devastated Tess Newall took to Facebook in October begging for help in locating the dress.

“I have just found out that the dry cleaners have lost my much loved wedding dress,” she wrote. “It was made by my Great Great Granny in 1870 (I altered the top) and I wore it in June 2016. Kleen Cleaners in Edinburgh used to be the best but recently fell into crooked hands and have gone into liquidation. It seems that the dress was taken to be sold so it could be winging its way anywhere. Please share this far and wide in case anyone stumbles across it! I realize there are far greater issues in the world, but it means the world to us. More family memories need to be woven into its threads.”

Newall’s original post was shared over 200,000 times, with commenters as far away as France vowing to keep an eye out for the dress. As the months passed, Newall was close to giving up hope of finding the dress. Then everything changed on February 10, when Tess Newall returned to Facebook with an update.

“We received a phone call from the very kind landlord of the property who read about it through this amazing response. He checked what was left by the administrators Wylie & Bisset and found a crumpled heap of antique lace on the floor. My mum and dad have just been let into the shop and to their amazement and joy it is our dress! (Despite W&B repeatedly stating in letters that it wasn’t there and was “disposed of” or “auctioned off”)

Frustratingly — a representative of Wylie & Bisset who showed up after weeks of ignoring our pleas to let us in insisted that for “procedural reasons” he must take it back to his office in Glasgow, but assure us it will be delivered safely back to us on Monday…

My family can’t thank you all enough for creating this frenzy which allowed us in before it was too late, and are over the moon to be *almost* reunited with Dora’s dress ?

Love Tess x”

Newall further elaborated to the BBC, saying,”This is unbelievable and my mum was beside herself, but they have assured us that it will be delivered safely back to us on Monday. It’s going to be apparently driven from Edinburgh to my mum and dad’s house.”

Your Daily Dish has reached out to Tess Newall for a comment.