By Amy DeMelia

On the eve of her 22nd wedding anniversary, Amy Richardson of North Attleboro, Mass. thought it would be fun to take a few pictures in her wedding gown -- a frothy concoction she hadn't laid eyes on in more than two decades.

Imagine her surprise when she opened the box and discovered it was not the dress she wore when she married her husband, Phil, in 1984.

Apparently, there was some sort of mix-up all those years ago, and now Richardson has someone else's dress hanging in her closet.

"I was married in October 1984 and sometime around the end of that year, I brought my wedding dress to the dry cleaners to be preserved," Richardson said. "When I got the box back, I put it in storage thinking I might pass it along one day.

"I have three daughters, and they don't like the dress, so I never opened it. For fun, I thought I'd break it out of the box for my anniversary this year."

After rummaging around the attic, Richardson found the box with the precious garment within, opened it - and, at first, thought memory had failed her.

"I picked up the veil first and thought, 'Wow, this is the veil I picked out?' because I didn't remember it at all," she said. "Then I took a look at the gown and realized it wasn't mine.

"I'm a Size 4 and this gown is a Size 18."

Richardson said she brought the dress to the cleaners so many years ago, she doesn't even remember the shop, except that it was somewhere in the local area.

Many area dry cleaners send bridal gowns to other companies to preserve -- a process that involves treating the dress with chemicals so it will retain its original color.

It's not clear whether the mix-up happened at the local dry cleaners -- which means someone else in the area might have Richardson's dress tucked away in a closet or under a bed -- or where the dress was preserved and boxed.