Bride claims cleaners returned to her the wrong gown

ATLANTA - A local bride did want many do after the big day - she had her gown dropped off at a specialty laundry to be cleaned and preserved. But what she found in the box was not what any bride wants to find.

"When I got home and looked at the box I knew pretty immediately it wasn't my dress," said Tori Morris who got married last August.

But the laundry, June's of Atlanta, says not so fast.

"Oh, this is it," said June Smith Warhurst pointing to the boxed dress.

Ms. Warhurst and Tori and Carter Morris agree on little more than this: These newlyweds did bring a dress to June's of Atlanta to be cleaned and preserved. But the couple insists they were sent home with someone else's gown.

Sitting on the couch with her new husband, Tori said, "I felt like my dress was made for me the moment I tried it on. It was lace at the top. It was great for a summer wedding."

And it was white. The dress that was picked up after it was cleaned and boxed at this long-established specialty laundry is champagne colored. These two dresses are not the same. They agree on that.

Tori is a small woman, a size four she says. The dress she received in the box was a 10.

June didn't buy this was a sign that this is the wrong dress.

"Well, she looked like she wore a 10 to me. It might have a 10 inside, but it's been altered then."

June, who says she's been in business for 40 years, said she has never lost a wedding dress; her Morningside-Lenox Park Atlanta shop has a sure fire process.

"This gown would come back here with me. Let me show you. If it had a veil, it's with me, too.
One comes back here with me at a time," she said carrying a dress from the front of the shop to the back.

The dress then goes in a machine to be cleaned. And June reminded us that the cleaning process is a one-woman operation.

"I'm the one, don't let the nails and the jewelry fool you," June said animated. "You would see me in a pair of shorts, my hair, this is a wig, my hair down, looking like the wrath because I am it."

But Tori does believe there's a mix up. The box the cleaned dress arrived in, she said, has inaccurate instructions. It says to shorten the gown. Tori told the Fox 5 I-Team that, no, she wanted a big stain removed.

"On the front of the dress there was like a pink, red, some kind of drink was spilled on the dress."

June said that's not written down, but she remembers the request.

"I told her it's not coming clean."

June said she also recalls telling Tori personally when she came into the shop that the stain can't be removed.  

"Oh, yes. I am the one who waited on her."

But here's a problem. Tori said she's never stepped foot inside of June's of Atlanta.

Again June pushed back.

"Oh yes she did. I stood right here at the counter and talked to her."  

She motioned toward the dress's ticket.

"That's the ticket. That's her name."

But the top of the ticket and the dress box show Carter Morris's name, Tori's husband, because he said, he dropped off and picked up the dress, not his wife.

And that wine stain June says she couldn't get out, well, we looked hard for it. June fumbled over the dress looking for it.

"See this. See this. See how dirty."

It was indeed dirty, but no wine stain as far as we could tell.

"It looks better than I thought it did, let's put it that way," June told me.

The young couple says they went to social media to see if perhaps someone else out there has her dress, but got nothing.  

And June, for two weeks, had no hope either.  

"I can't produce a dress that I don't have."

But maybe she can. After both sat down with the Fox 5 I-Team, Tori got a voice message that the dress might have been found. No details. But Tori plans to find out when she gets back from out of town. She's hopeful because, as she told us the first time we met her, she's always only wanted one thing.

"I want my wedding dress back."

We will check back in to see if she does get gown and perhaps an explanation as to how it was misplaced.