After her 1989 wedding, Dayton native Beth Griswold had her wedding dress preserved in the hopes that future generations would wear it after her.  For years, the dress stayed in a box for safekeeping. However, when she finally opened the box three decades later, she found the wrong one.

The wedding dress, a traditional satin gown, had been professionally preserved and sent back to Griswold shortly after her wedding.

“We were told not to open up the dress. If you open up the dress, it will void the warranty. So for 30 years, I didn’t open up the dress,” Beth tells wdtn.com.

Griswold’s wedding dress was a family heirloom. It once belonged to Griswold’s mother, and the plan was for Griswold’s daughter Jessica to also wear the dress when she was ready to marry. The time had finally come for Jessica to be the third generation to wear this dress when she got engaged to her college sweetheart.

“My grandma had worn the same dress that my mom did, and it was beautiful and I loved it. And so, since I’ve been little, I’ve just anticipated I would wear that dress,” says bride-to-be Jessica Griswold.

Finally, the mother and daughter duo opened the box together, but what they found was unexpected. Griswold had been sent someone else’s wedding dress.

“As we’re opening it, I looked and there was all this glitter, and I was like I don’t remember having glitter on my dress,” says Beth. “As we opened it more, and took it out of the box, we realized that it wasn’t my dress.”

Devastated, Griswold contacted the preservers for help but they were no longer in business.

“They have no records. We don’t know if it got mixed up– It could be anywhere in the country,” says Beth. “The person’s dress who we have probably doesn’t even know that they don’t have their dress.”

The mother and daughter are now searching for the original dress, and continue to hold hopes it will come back to them.

Feature image: Pexels