“This vintage wedding dress changed my life!”
When K.C. Thompson decided to wear the vintage wedding gown she found in an abandoned trunk when she married, she felt a bond with the bride who once wore it and set out to find her family!
Peering into the old, abandoned trunk her cousin Rick had rescued from a trash heap outside a home in Van Nuys, California, one day in 1986, K.C. Thompson was moved to see the treasures it held: handmade quilts, old letters, photos, a family Bible… and a wedding gown.
K.C., a worker in the Holly wood entertainment and music industry, held up the three-piece ecru lace wedding dress set made up of a slip, gown and overcoat and was immediately struck by how petite the bride must have been. Something they had in common. When both Rick and her roommate, Debbie, urged her tr y it on, K.C. shivered with goose bumps to see the ensemble f it perfectly. And she also easily slipped her size 5 feet into the tiny cream satin pumps. This can’t be a coincidence,
K.C.’S spirit whispered, and she and Rick vowed to return the precious belongings to the mysterious bride’s family.
Upon closer examination of the belongings in the trunk, K.C. and Rick pieced together its owner was a woman named Ellen Prince, who from the wedding photos was likely married in the 1920s or 1930s. After doing some research, they tracked down a couple of possible relatives, but their letters went unanswered. So, K.C. packed the trunk away. But it was not forgotten.
When K.C. met and married Sam Thompson in 1989, she not only wore Ellen’s gown but they displayed a wedding portrait of Ellen wearing it on an easel at their reception. Afterward, K.C. carefully packed the gown away again.
Then, when COVID hit in 2020, K.C. found extra time on her hands, and her thoughts went to the trunk of treasures. She decided to relaunch her search for the owner’s family.
She contacted the newspaper in Ellen Prince’s hometown
KK.C. (above) on her wwedding day and Eellen Prince (left), ththe bride who first wwore the gown of Alpena, Michigan, where a reporter agreed to run the story and see if any relatives responded. No one did, but Jayna Huotari, who loves to research genealogy, came on board and was key to unlocking identities and phone numbers of a few of Ellen’s younger relatives. K.C. was able to connect with only one, a great nephew, George Light, in Illinois.
He was stunned a woman in California had the trunk and graciously accepted the return of Ellen’s belongings— all except the wedding dress. He insisted K.C. keep that, which touched her deeply.
“I hope Ellen somehow knows she was not forgotten, and the care she took to save pieces of her legacy was not in vain,” K.C. says. “I want her to be at peace.”