Wedding Bell Blues: A 911 Operator Saves the Day When A Kent Woman Calls to Report Her Stolen Wedding Dress

On Sunday morning, a bride-to-be in Kent was preparing for that evening’s wedding when something terrible happened. She was walking back and forth between her home and the car, loading it up with her wedding dress and items for the reception, and when she came back out to the car everything was stolen. She called 911 and call receiver Candice answered.

“I asked the basic information that we need,” Candice said. “But when I was asking, I was thinking, ‘Oh my Gosh, well, I have a dress she can wear!’ Of course I didn’t offer that right away because we had to get the information to try and look for the people immediately. But that was what I was thinking.”

An officer was dispatched to the bride’s house, and after the report was taken he told her that Candice had offered her dress. The two women had a conversation over the phone.

“We bought our dresses at the same store which is pretty ironic. Then, to make it even more awesome, we are about the same size so it worked out pretty well.”

Candice was just married about a year and a half ago.

“My dress is a lace dress. It has little white cap sleeves on it and it has a v-neck. I think it’s the most beautiful dress!”

Hours before her wedding, her dress stolen, the bride accepted the amazingly generous offer from a woman she had never even met.

“She was definitely in shock because of what had happened. I mean, anybody would be. I would not have held myself together as well as she did. I was really impressed with her. I think she was trying to handle what had just happened and then she was surprised that I wanted to offer her my dress.”

So Candice arranged to get the dress over the the bride, since she was still at work.

“My husband, bless his heart, he was supposed to go camping this weekend but he wasn’t feeling well so he stayed home. So, if we had went camping none of this would have even happened. It would have just been a thought. I called him up and I told him what was going on. I asked him if he could go pick up my dress. He went to my brother’s work. My brother had the key to my folks’ house. He drove to my folks’ house and he’s trying to get into the house and the key is not working. So he calls my brother and my brother goes, ‘Oh dear, I gave you the wrong key.’ So my brother leaves, comes over, gives my husband the correct key. My husband goes in the house, gets the dress, and then he drove it to her fiance.”

So far no plans have been made to get it back.

“Just worry about it later. She had a hard enough day yesterday and my husband told her fiance, ‘No rush to get it back. Just try to enjoy your day as much as possible because it does go by fast.’ She had a really stressful day so I’ll get it back sometime in the future.”

I asked Candice why she decided to make such a generous and personal offer to a complete stranger over the phone.

“It’s funny because I didn’t even have to think about it. It was just, she needed a dress, I had one. It was like, all right, here we go, let’s see if she wants it. There really wasn’t much thinking about it. It was just, oh! I can help her! That’s one of the worst things that can happen on your wedding day and my heart just broke with her when I realized that it was her dress that was stolen and she was getting married that day. You know, God is good. He made sure all the pieces fell in place.”