Mix-up at dry cleaners has Guelph, Ont. woman searching for missing wedding dress

A Guelph, Ont. woman is hoping someone may know where her wedding dress is, 16 years after she got married.

Ashley Charette tied the knot with her husband on Aug. 6, 2008 and wore the dress of her dreams.

“My mother-in-law very nicely said that she would make it for me,” said Charette. “It was originally made out of a curtain.”

After walking down the aisle in that gown, Charette and her husband stayed in Cuba for the following week for their honeymoon.

“My mom took the dress home with her. I had asked her to have it dry cleaned,” she said.

Ashley Charette and her husband walk down the aisle during their 2008 wedding in Cuba. (Submitted: Ashley Charette)

Unboxing a mystery

It stayed in the box unopened until last week when Charette and her family were tidying up the house.

They came across the box she believed it was in all this time and her son asked to see it.

So the married couple opened it up, but someone else’s dress was inside.

“I said, ‘It’s not my dress.’ And [my husband] laughed at me. He thought I was joking,” she said, explaining that the dresses are quite different. “I just stood there. I can’t help but be shocked now. I cried.”

A wedding dress that does not belong to Ashley Charette is splayed out on a table after she discovered her own, custom wedding dress was missing. August 22, 2024 (Spencer Turcotte/CTV News)

Search for the dress

Charette and her mother got to work right away as they tried to track down where the dress could be.

They contacted K Cleaners in Guelph where the dress was brought originally. CTV News contacted the cleaners too.

“Is this about the wedding gown?” an employee on the phone asked, adding they were well aware of the ordeal.

K Cleaners has been working with the family trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.

They said new owners took over the business in 2012 and their computer system was overhauled.

“After so much time and data collected in the computer it gets purged. So there’s no access to the old invoices,” the employee told CTV News.

Complicating matters further, Charette’s dress was preserved and vacuum sealed, which is work that the K Cleaners staff say they outsourced to another company.

That’s where they believe the switch happened.

K Cleaners says the company they outsourced to also experienced an ownership change after 2008 and their computer system changed too. So there’s no paper trail.

Charette just hopes her story spreads and that she can find the person who is also missing their wedding dress.

“Because it was important enough to her to have it cleaned in the first place,” she said.

Charette and her husband also plan to renew their vows. But they want to do so with Charette wearing the original gown.

“I will wear that dress if I get it back,” she said.

So as she prepares to say “I do” once again, she’s determined to say it only for her husband, and not “I do” to another dress.