Journey of traveling wedding dress from California to South Africa goes viral on TikTok
Often one of the most memorable statements on the day of anyone’s wedding is “I do.”
But for Simone Crouch, in the months before her wedding, another two words uttered by a complete stranger half a world away changed the trajectory of her special day: “I will.”
Crouch, who lives in South Africa, was in dire straights when it came to choosing a dress before her wedding in December, she told Good Morning America.
“I tried on about 10 wedding dresses,” Crouch told Good Morning America. “They put me in the wrong sizes and it wasn’t the right fit and it wasn’t the right cut and none of them made me feel good.”
Then, as she was combing the internet for options, she found it: Her dream dress.
The only problem was that the photo of it was three years old and it was being worn by another woman who lived in California, which was over 10,000 miles away.
The odds didn’t stop Crouch from trying, though — and the story entranced millions of viewers on TikTok.
‘What if I didn’t say no?’
Emily Heath’s phone buzzed with a message request on Instagram, she said in her TikTok video. It was from a random woman who lived in South Africa and wanted to buy her wedding dress that had been sitting in her closet for three years.
“At first it was a hard no,” Heath admitted in her video.
Crouch explained her dilemma to Heath: the dress designer wasn’t sold in South Africa and she couldn’t find a second-hand dress anywhere that fit the bill.
The more Heath heard, the more she started to think about changing her mind, she said.
“I started thinking about how I cried the first time I put it on and how this dress that was so important to me has just been languishing in the closet for the past three years,” Heath recalled in her TikTok. “So I was like, you know what? If you can send it back to me after you’re done you can borrow it. Sure, go ahead!”
Heath packed up her wedding dress in a box and shipped it to Crouch’s mother in the UK, who flew it to Johannesburg, South Africa, where the couple was having their wedding on Dec. 3.
Heath and Crouch’s story got nearly 4.5 million views on TikTok and many people were elated to hear about how Heath changed her mind.
“What an amazing life changing experience because you stopped and were willing to think… ‘What if I didn’t say no?’ Love this,” one person said.
“I’m not even halfway through the video and this is already my most favorite thing ever,” another said.
‘It fit like a glove’
Heath wasn’t the only bride to shed tears over her wedding dress on her wedding day. When the dress reached Crouch it fit perfectly without needing any alterations, according to the viral TikTok.
“To my surprise, it fit like a glove,” Crouch told Good Morning America. “It just fit like a dream. So I cried and … I was so excited that it was going to be a reality for me.”
Crouch didn’t just request Heath’s dress at her wedding — she invited Heath and her husband to join the special day, too.
“My husband and I had to cancel our honey moon because of COVID,” Heath told Crouch via Instagram. “We’ve been pushing off a big trip….maybe we’ll add South Africa in the running.”
And so they did. In December, Heath and Crouch met in Johannesburg to celebrate the new couple’s wedding as well as a bridal shower and a bachelor party. Even the wedding cards mentioned the special dress that traveled 13,500 miles to be there — and that Heath and her husband were the guests who had traveled the farthest to attend.
“I feel like I have a whole new set of relatives on the other side of the world,” Heath said in her TikTok. “It was such an amazing and incredible experience, sometimes the internet is not so bad.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 3:18 PM with the headline "Journey of traveling wedding dress from California to South Africa goes viral on TikTok."
