A shot-in-the-dark Facebook post is reuniting a Maple Ridge woman and a wedding dress she sold on the Coast five years ago – a dress since made more precious in the face of loss.
When she got married in 2018, Abby (who asked we only use her first name) would have rathered elope, but ended up having a big traditional wedding, “mostly for our parents, specifically my mom.
“It was really important to her that I have a proper wedding where our families got together,” recounted Abby. “So we went ahead with it, and my mom, I gave her full creative control. She basically planned the whole thing.
“It just brought her so much joy.”
Abby enjoyed the celebration but didn’t feel much of a connection to the day or the second-hand dress she’d bought in Bellingham on her first outing dress shopping. “It was pretty, I thought it was a beautiful dress. But it wasn't something that I dreamed about when I was a little girl.” So, the following year, Abby sold it on Facebook Marketplace.
In 2022, Abby’s mother, Heather, died unexpectedly.
“I’ve viewed my wedding in a really different light since then,” said Abby. “That day is a lot more important to me now, it has a lot more meaning behind it.”
After her mother died, Abby started looking through old albums and found her parents’ wedding photos. She saw the suit her mom wore on her own wedding day and wished her mom had kept it. “It would have meant so much to me to have that now.”
Abby now has her own daughter and through her regret at not having her mother’s wedding outfit, the wheels started spinning, “Maybe my daughter will want my dress one day.”
Having since deleted the Facebook account that she’d used to sell the dress, Abby had no way of knowing who she had sold it to. All she knew was that she’d shipped it to a lovely woman in Sechelt. She searched for local Facebook groups and posted in the first one she could find – Everything Sunshine Coast BC.
“Without going into a lot of details, I will just say that a lot has happened in my life since then and I am suddenly deeply regretting getting rid of that dress,” wrote Abby in the Jan. 7 post. “I want to buy it back, if she is willing to sell it to me.”
“It was a total long shot. I did not expect to get my dress back,” said Abby.
Fifteen minutes later, a local woman, Kelly, sent Abby a message saying she was the woman who had bought the dress five years ago. “I didn’t give her a lot of details at first because I didn’t want her to feel bad if she didn’t have it,” said Abby. “And when we first started speaking, she thought that she had actually gotten rid of the dress.”
It turned out Kelly had sold the dress to a friend and the friend still had it. Neither of the women had ended up wearing it.
“I was just stunned. I couldn’t believe that I found it,” said Abby. “It was shocking to me that [Kelly] would know where it was and that she’d be willing to let go of it.
“The fact that there was no question, her and her friend immediately said yes, we’re going to do what we can to get back to you...it’s really remarkable.”
Abby’s daughter is now three, she loves playing dress up and playing princess. “She sees photos from our wedding and she’s asked where the dress is.
“It’ll be really exciting when I can bring it home and show it to her.”
