Wedding Dress Mix-up

clockwise from bottom left: Shannon McNamara, left, and Kim Jones meet each other for the first time Jan. 23 as they exchange their wedding dresses in Franklin, Tenn. The two women were sent home with each other’s wedding dresses 30 years ago and only recently discovered the mixup. McNamara had waited many years for the perfect opportunity to unbox her professionally preserved wedding gown. That occasion finally arrived after McNamara’s youngest daughter Caroline McNamara said “yes” to her beau on Jan. 14. McNamara excitedly retrieved the distinctive storage box that had been professionally preserved and sealed by the now-defunct White Way Cleaners following her Nov. 15, 1986, nuptials. It was not her dress. “I was shocked. I decided to post a picture of this dress on Facebook hoping that someone might recognize it,” McNamara said. The same afternoon, someone posted a link to a news report from Dec. 12, 2012, that featured the story of Kim Jones of Acworth, Ga. A Nashville native, Jones had her wedding dress preserved at White Way Cleaners following her Oct. 25, 1986, nuptials. She too had unsealed her dress to share with her daughter only to discover it wasn’t her dress. The 2012 Tennessean article reported, “Kim Jones imagines another mom out there who also may be frantically searching for her wedding dress for her own daughter or might not even know that she, too, has the wrong dress under her bed or in her closet.” How right she was. With the help of social media, a story that took over four years to develop was resolved in a matter of hours as mutal acquaintances helped the two connect through Facebook. n Shannon McNamara, left, and Kim Jones show the similarities of their wedding dresses as they put their wedding pictures side by side in Franklin, Tenn. n Shannon McNamara, left, and Kim Jones hug each other and shed tears as they exchange their wedding dresses.