While some brides rush to see their wedding dress shortly after the big day, others opt to wait for a milestone anniversary to pull it out and fondly reflect on their wedding day.

Sixteen years after her nuptials with Jordan on the beaches of Cuba, Ashley Charette recently was stunned when she opened the dry-cleaning box she thought contained her dress: It wasn’t hers.

An old photo shows Charette in her original wedding dress, which was hand made by her mother-in-law in 2008. (Submitted by Ashley Charette)

“I can’t even tell you the shock. I was speechless,” said Ashley.

After her mother, Margaret McCarron, returned to Canada from the 2008 wedding, she dropped Charette’s gown off at K Cleaners in Guelph.

Charette recalled that the wedding dress selection process was sentimental, since her mother-in-law offered to make it by hand.

“We wanted to do a destination wedding, so we decided to get married in Cuba, which was kind of the basis for the design because I didn’t want anything super huge, or hot or heavy.”

Unboxing surprise 

Once the happy couple returned from Cuba, Charette’s mother dropped the dress off in the dry-cleaning box, and that’s where it stayed for over a decade.

Charette and her husband were married on the beaches of Cuba in August 2008. (Submitted: Ashley Charette)

It wasn’t until Charette’s family was doing house cleaning in August that her son asked to see the dress.

When she pulled it out of the box, she quickly realized it wasn’t the one she had worn in Cuba.

“Jordan thought it was a joke and then I thought it was a joke. I thought maybe I was mis-remembering or maybe I was wrong.”

She said she immediately called her mom.

McCarron said that when K Cleaners’ representative received her call, the individual was more than helpful, but explained that given the time that had passed, there wasn’t much they could do.

“All their computers had been updated in 2012, so they couldn’t go back to ’08 to see who had a dress brought in at that particular time,” said McCarron. “I was really sad because it was a beautiful dress, and Ruth [the mother-in-law] had made it and it had some sentimentality to it.”

Charette says she was shocked and confused when the dress she pulled out of the dry-cleaning box was not the one she remembered getting married in all those years ago. (Karis Mapp/CBC)

CBC News reached out to K Cleaners but it chose not to comment.

Charette then took to social media to post about her quest to find her original dress.

The entry was shared dozens of times and the story made its way across Canada.

“The power of people is just something I didn’t expect,” Charette said.

Plans to reunite

While she remains hopeful she’ll eventually find her dress, Charette said the main priority is locating the rightful owner of the garment hanging in her living room.

“I plan on keeping it with me until I find the owner,” she said.

“It was important enough to her to have it dry cleaned, so it means something to somebody, right?”

Charette says her goal moving forward is to find the rightful owner of the dress in her possession and reunite the person with it. (Karis Mapp/CBC)

Both Charette and her mother have returned to social media to put out the call for anybody potentially missing a dress.

“It was dry cleaned and treated in August of 2008 and has been closed up in my closet ever since,” reads Charette’s Facebook post.

Although she misses her original dress, Charette said she’ll remain positive even if she doesn’t find it.

“At the end of the day, it’s just a dress. I still have my family and my husband, and I still have my wedding day, and we have all the wonderful memories since.”