The bride buys a wedding dress from a charity shop and finds a sweet note hidden inside

When Laura Trower saw her dream wedding dress in the window of a British Red Cross charity shop, she burst into tears of joy at the incredible discovery.

The ‘perfect’ dress was the first Laura, from south London, tried on back in 2019 and staff told her the purchase would also fund three wheelchairs for the charity. But the magic of the dress was just beginning as the now 31-year-old found a note attached from its original owner, Fran, with contact details and asked those who bought it to share photos so they could experience the dress second. big day.

Once Laura had said “I do,” she contacted Fran, and the pair shared photos and messages from both weddings about their shared love of the dress. Fran said: “Everyone gets attached to their wedding dress, I just wanted to know who has it. But I wasn’t expecting anything. I was so surprised to get the message because it was a while later. But it does I’m so happy to know that someone so sweet loved the dress as much as I did.”

Laura now wants the dress to continue its journey and has taken the dress back to the same British Red Cross shop in Forest Hill, south London, in the hope of finding someone else who loves it as much as they do. She added a brown cardboard tag tied with red string that read, “I bought this dress from the Red Cross for my wedding, so this dress has history in this store!”

Laura said: “We attached a similar note to the dress in the hope that anyone who buys it will continue to share the history of this beautiful dress.” Fran had originally bought the dress from a bridal shop in Camden for £1,500 in 2017 and British Red Cross staff say they remember it coming into the shop in a clean box.

British Red Cross regional retail manager Berni Considine said: “We’ve remembered this dress so well since it first came out. Not many of our garments come with a special touch, but even without the message, this dress is beautiful. – there is just something about it that makes it stand out – the design and cut is simply amazing.

“Before the pandemic, the British Red Cross in Forest Hill was well known for its wedding dress events, when we would dedicate the shop for a day to wedding dresses and bridal accessories. So we would love to be able to pass this dress on to the bride-to-be and continue to be a part of the life of this unique dress and all that it symbolizes.”

A version of this article was first published in June 2021.