MARRY-ON LUGGAGE
Eagle-eyed dad spots missing wedding dress at airport and saves bride’s big day
AN eagle-eyed dad who spotted an abandoned package at Edinburgh Airport saved a stranger’s big day by discovering the bride’s missing wedding dress just hours before the ceremony.
Graeme Reid was returning from a holiday in Italy with his wife and two young children when they faced their own baggage chaos on Wednesday.
The 57-year-old was waiting to see if their six bags would arrive when he spotted the cardboard box lying on the floor with a label marked for the city’s Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa.
He contacted the venue and sent them photos before receiving a frantic phone call from father-of-the-bride Peter, who explained that the dress went missing while he and his wife travelled from their home in Bangkok four days earlier.
The 67-year-old raced to the busy transport hub and was reunited with daughter Stephanie’s custom dress.
As a result, Stephanie, 32, who lives in Swansea, was able to avoid wearing jeans as she tied the knot with husband Christopher Adams Pak, 37, at the Royal Botanic Garden on Thursday. The newlywed said: “I didn’t think my dress would come at this point and it really was an amazing coincidence that Graeme saw it.
“I can’t thank him enough for what he’s done because it really was causing us so much grief in the days before the wedding.”
Peter, a general manager at JW Marriott in Bangkok, now plans to meet up with Graeme to give him a “bear hug” as a thank you for saving the day.
He explained how he and his wife brought the hand-made dress over from Thailand as luggage on Lufthansa.
He said: “We arrived in Edinburgh from Bangkok via Munich, where we had a threeand-a-half-hour layover, on Saturday so we were pretty sure that the luggage would make it despite staff shortages everywhere. But it didn’t.”
The dad-of-one added: “We had two back up plans. The first was a ‘jeans’ wedding which was funny and sad at the same time.
“The second was a friend of my daughter who had recently got married and when she heard what had happened, she brought her own wedding dress over from America on Monday.”
Ironically, Good Samaritan Graeme’s own luggage went missing.
He said that he, wife Carmela D’Angelo and their kids Vittoria, seven, and Gordon, five, waited for over an hour at the baggage belt.
They were eventually advised to leave and submit a lost baggage form. Thankfully, it has since been found.
Luckily, he’d spotted the box with the wedding dress before they left. “Peter then called thanking me as it was a really important part of the wedding. If that was my daughter’s wedding dress, I’d move heaven and earth to get it too,” he said.
An Edinburgh Airport spokesman said: “We know handling agents are working hard to reunite all passengers with their baggage as quickly as possible and we are supporting them in this where we can.”
A spokesman for Lufthansa said that severe staff shortages were affecting baggage services and added: “We can only apologise for the inconvenience caused.”