An eagle-eyed Scots dad who spotted an abandoned package at Edinburgh Airport saved a stranger's wedding after discovering the bride's missing wedding dress just hours before the ceremony. Graeme Reid was returning from a family holiday in Italy with his wife and two young children when they faced their own baggage chaos on Wednesday.
The 57-year-old was waiting to see if their six bags would arrive when he spotted the well-packaged cardboard box lying on the floor with a label marked for the city’s Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa. He contacted the venue and sent them photographs of its location before receiving a frantic phone call from father-of-the-bride Peter who explained that the dress went missing while he and his wife travelled to Scotland from their home in Bangkok four days earlier.
The 67-year-old raced to the busy transport hub and desperately hunted for a member of staff who could help reunite him with daughter Stephanie’s custom dress. Thanks to an "angel" from Menzies Aviation, who are the baggage handling firm for the airline Lufthansa, Peter was reunited with the missing dress which had sat unattended for 30 hours.
As a result, Stephanie, 32, who lives in Swansea, Wales, was able to avoid wearing jeans as she tied the knot with husband Christopher Adams Pak, 37, at the Royal Botanic Garden on Thursday. The newlywed said: “When my dad burst in to tell me that the dress had arrived, I was taking a nap as I was so tired from all the stress.
"I didn't think my dress would come at this point and it really was an amazing coincidence that Graeme saw it. I can’t thank him enough for what he’s done because it really was causing us so much grief in the days before the wedding.
“He’s an absolutely amazing person and he couldn’t have done more for us."
Her dad Peter, a general manager at JW Marriott in Bangkok, now plans to meet up with Good Samaritan Graeme to give him a “bear hug” as a thank you for saving the day. He explained how he and his wife brought the hand made dress over from Thailand as luggage and thought that it would arrive without issue.
He said: “My daughter and Chris were in Thailand early in April and they selected the dress but only had one fitting before going back home so we decided we’d bring it to them. We had two options; to courier it but that was very expensive or bring it as luggage. So we did that.
“We arrived in Edinburgh from Bangkok via Munich, where we had a three and a half hour layover, on Saturday so we were pretty sure that the luggage would make it despite staff shortages everywhere. But it didn't."
After being unable to get hold of Menzies for the next few days, Peter returned to the airport on Tuesday to see if the dress was on the next arriving Lufthansa flight from Munich. But after being unable to access the restricted area, he returned back to the hotel and asked them to alert the family if anyone got in touch.
As soon as Graeme emailed the next day, Peter returned with renewed hope that evening. Peter, who has worked in hospitality and tourism for decades, told how one Menzies worker went above and beyond to help him and his family.
He explained: “The photo that Graeme took of where the luggage was helped them to identify exactly where the dress was. A lady was called in who had access to the restricted area.
"She went in and it was still there. It had arrived on that Tuesday morning on the next flight from Munich.
“It was still sitting where Graeme saw it. It had been there for 30 hours and no one had touched it. Anybody could have walked away with it. When the luggage came out, I hugged the lady from Menzies. She had tears in her eyes."
The dad-of-one added: “We had two back up plans. The first was a ‘jeans’ wedding which was funny and sad at the same time. The second was a friend of my daughter who had recently got married and when she heard what had happened, she brought her own wedding dress over from America on Monday.
"I arrived back at the hotel with the dress late on Wednesday night - just hours before the wedding on Thursday morning. We all cried.
“Stephanie is our only child so it was the one and only wedding. We are planning to meet up with Graeme on Saturday afternoon. I need to see him and give him a bear hug.”
Dad-of-two Graeme, whose own luggage remains missing, spotted the package amid chaotic scenes at Edinburgh Airport after their Ryanair flight from Bari landed. He said that he, wife Carmela D’Angelo and their kids Vittoria, seven, and Gordon, five, waited for over an hour at the baggage belt before their flight “disappeared from the board”.
They were eventually advised to leave and submit a lost baggage form but the Edinburgh dad decided to perform a good deed by trying to reunite the parcel with its owner. He said: “Whilst I was waiting I noticed a large package clearly abandoned in the corner of the reclaim hall. It was addressed to the Sheraton Hotel and gave a name.
“I called the hotel to say what I had found and took photos before leaving the airport. Peter then called thanking me as it was a really important part of the wedding.
“They'd been going frantic wondering what to do. When he told me the box contained the wedding dress. I was like ‘oh s***’.
“Peter told me he’d contact me after the wedding to recompense me. But he honestly doesn’t need to. I asked him to send me a picture of the bride in her dress and that would be more than enough.
“If that was my daughter's wedding dress, I'd move heaven and earth to get it too."
An Edinburgh Airport spokesperson said: "We're happy to hear things worked out for Ms Caprez and that she was reunited with her belongings ahead of her wedding day. We know handling agents are working hard to reunite all passengers with their baggage as quickly as possible, and we are supporting them in this where we can."
A spokesperson for Lufthansa said that severe staff shortages were affecting baggage services and added: “We can only apologise for the inconvenience caused. In this case, we are very happy that this important luggage could be repatriated just in time for this very important event.”
A Swissport spokesperson said: “We’re pleased that we have located Mr Reid’s baggage and our team will be reaching out to advise on next steps to reunite him with his belongings. We would like to apologise to those passengers who’ve experienced delays to the return of their baggage at Edinburgh Airport.
"A key cause of these delays is a spike in ‘short-shipped’ luggage – when bags aren’t loaded onto the right departing flight, arriving late to Edinburgh - which has a significant disruptive knock-on effect. Our team don’t have control over this happening, but we have tripled the team who are working on re-uniting passengers with these bags as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson at Menzies Aviation said: “We always strive to uphold our high service standards for our airline customers and their passengers, despite the well-documented staff shortage and supply chain issues affecting the entire aviation industry.
“We are really pleased we were able to reunite Ms Caprez with her dress in time for this important event and wish her and her husband a happy marriage.”
They added: “To deal with the current issues at Edinburgh Airport, we now have a dedicated team working hard to reunite passengers with delayed baggage and have invested in handheld technology to speed up our processes. Starting from the 26th July 2022, we will be consolidating all luggage at the Royal Highland Showground.
“The facility will be secure and fully manned by our staff, and open for passengers to identify their bags in person. We understand the distress and frustration being separated from luggage can cause passengers, and hope this new facility will enable passengers to be reunited with their bags as quickly as possible.”
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