A local woman is on a desperate search for her wedding dress after she says the dry cleaner she took it to closed without notice.
Footer's Cleaners in Squirrel Hill is listed as "permanently closed" on Google.
That came as a surprise to Nicole Delgado of Squirrel Hill, who dropped her dress there last fall for preservation. She said it stayed in her closet for ten years because she heard horror stories about the preservation process, including lost or damaged dresses.
"I know that's not a fast process, but I checked in with them probably every three to four weeks, and they kept assuring me it was being worked on. It had been sent to be preserved, and it was delayed. They would call me as soon as it came back," she said. "I finally kind of let it go and trusted that they would indeed call me when it arrived."
She called again Thursday only to find the store's phone had been disconnected.
Delgado sent her husband to the store looking for her dress and some answers. She says when he arrived, the store had been cleared out and a contractor was working inside. The man told her husband the store tried to contact as many customers as they could, but many of the wedding dresses didn't have names. Everything that wasn't picked up when the store closed was donated to Goodwill.
"He felt really bad when he got to the wedding dress because there were quite a few without names on them," she said. "They simply didn't know how to contact those people."
She and her husband have spent the last day scouring local Goodwill stores with no luck.
"It was just very, very sad," she said. "Of course, there was the adrenaline and the panic to see if I could locate it. If it was still out there, what could I do? It feels a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack."
In a Facebook post, she asked those who shop there to keep an eye out for her dress. The post has over 1,000 shares, leaving hope the dress will be back in her closet soon.
If she never finds the dress, she hopes it becomes a dream dress for another Pittsburgh bride.
"My best hope is if it did go to another local Goodwill, maybe someone else found it and it makes their day special, as well."