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Two brides are forever bonded after wearing three pieces of the same vintage wedding dress five decades apart despite never seeing each other.
Santa Ynez resident KC Thompson recently paired the 80-year-old wedding gown she wore 32 years ago to marry her now husband, Sam Thompson, in 1989. While modeling the dress for the last time before the lace and frail satin began fade. , Thompson is inspired to revive his quest to find the Ellen Prince family, the original owners.
I’ve been keeping this story for a long time,” Thompson said. I had been on a mission to find someone Ellen was related to but it happened during the pre-internet years.
As Thompson begins sorting through his music collection for resale, the desire to completely renew the Prince’s family quest is ignited when he finds a carefully packaged wedding dress during a pandemic-driven spring cleaning episode in his attic.
I couldn’t get it out of my mind, Thompson recalls. One day while out for a walk, I said to myself, I called the newspaper Alpena.
Prince was born in Alpena, Michigan, in the early 1900s before she moved to Los Angeles County with her family as a young woman.
Through the city’s local newspapers, Thompson was able to effectively extinguish the antennae that reached the amateur pedigree of Jayna Huotari from Alpena. Thompson credits Huotari as key to finding George Light, the Prince’s great-nephew, who currently lives in Illinois.
A number of people helped, Thompson said, but it was Jayna who found the number.
With just one phone call, Light not only received the news, Thompson said, but he was moved by her efforts to reunite her great-aunt’s personal belongings including an 80-year-old wedding dress with her ancestors.
George was a funny guy and knew a lot about his family, he said. I look forward to meeting him.
Two worlds collide
In the 80s when Thompson was living in the San Fernando Valley and working in the music industry, his cousin Richard Payton arrived at a house where people were packing up boxes and laying them on the side of the road. Payton stopped and asked if it was for pick up, and was given permission to pick up the load.
Everything would just be trash, Thompson recalls.
Came to find out, the house was Prince and was being cleared for sale after his death. Some of the freight that Payton claims once belonged to Prince.
No less the time capsule that Payton gave to his cousin, Thompson, became the new owner of the Prince’s wedding coffin. Inside was a three-piece wedding gown consisting of a creamy white satin underslip, a V-neck and V-back lace pull-over ensemble, complete with old-fashioned long sleeves, a cream lace morning coat that buttoned the wrists and flowed down the train. a3-leg, circling around the feet of the bride and groom.
Thompson tried on the dress and realized that it fit like a custom made masterpiece.
I was like, this thing suits me, said Thompson. I wasn’t even dating then, so I had a wedding dress long before I had a boyfriend.
Other contents found in the wedding casket included a love letter from the Prince’s husband, a family photo, a Bible and a pair of cream-colored heels to accompany the wedding dress which Thompson said fit him like a glove.
Remembering Ellen Prince
After more than 30 years of sporadically trying to find the Princes to bring their belongings home safely, Thompson says he has finally solved the mystery.
At Light’s insistence, Thompson remains the owner of the wedding dress and shoes.
“We have agreed that there is no reason to send her a wedding dress,” Thompson said. “Besides, no one can wear it because it’s starting to break down. Almost 100 years old, very fragile.”
Another Prince’s family heirloom has been returned to Light, “who is very excited to receive it.”
It feels great to return the items to someone with a deep connection to his family, Thompson said.
Drawing more similarities between the two brides, Thompson also learns through Light that Prince has graduated from UCSB, located in the same area where Thompson and her husband married 32 years ago and lived for several years.
“I felt like he was with me the whole time,” Thompson said of Prince. “I feel we are the same spirit.”
Lisa Andr covers lifestyle and local news for Santa Ynez Valley News and Lompoc Record.
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