Nicole Pagliaro, 30, took her beloved vintage wedding dress to South Beach Cleaners on Sand Lane after her August 2012 wedding, and she thought it was lost forever when the store was wiped out in the devastating storm.
“My first thought was, ‘What about my wedding dress?’ ” Pagliaro said. “I was devastated, I cried.”
For weeks, Nicole and her husband, Michael, 34, returned to the remains of the store to see if the dress could be located. But the space was filled with water.
“Michael tried to give me false hope,” Nicole said.
But a few weeks ago, they were driving past a different shop on McClean Avenue — where South Beach owner Hector Pacheco had reopened his business — when they made an amazing discovery.
“I saw my dress in the window!” Nicole said.
When she walked in the next day, receipt in hand, she stated that the dress in the window was hers.
The woman working said the manager wasn’t in, but took down her contact information.
When Nicole came back, Pacheco recognized her instantly.
“I almost started crying. We hugged each other,” she recalled.
Pacheco said the dress was the only thing that survived when the waves crashed through his store.
He had refused to sell it — because he thought it brought good luck.
“He told me it was a symbol of regrowth and he had feeling that I’d find it one day,” Nicole said. “It was the only thing that wasn’t damaged. It was in pristine condition.”
Nicole plans to store the dress at the top of her closet until her 16-month-old daughter is old enough to wear it, either for her sweet 16 or her own wedding.
She believes finding the dress was a sign.
“My husband and I weren’t together for long before we got married. This is just another way of God telling me that it was meant to be,” she said. “If the dress can survive Sandy, we can survive anything, and that’s true of our relationship, too .”