Andrea Mantooth (left) helps Megan Acord try on her new wedding dress at the BeLoved Bridal Boutique near Norman, Okla. A tornado that devastated parts of Moore, Okla., destroyed her father’s house where she kept her dress in May, putting the couple’s wedding ceremony in jeopardy. Mantooth, the co-owner of the boutique, heard Megan’s story and let her pick out a new dress for free. (U.S. Air Force photo/Desiree N. Palacios)
Megan Acord kept her wedding gown at her father’s house in Moore, Okla., to keep it out of her husband’s sight as she counted down the days to their summer ceremony.
But after a powerful tornado devastated Moore on May 20, Megan and Senior Airman Justin Acord spent days at her childhood home salvaging everything they could. They found her father’s clothes, his computer and even precious photos. They never found the dress. The Newcastle-Moore tornado seemed to have blown away the couple’s chance for a special wedding day.
But an effort led by Megan’s boss and a bridal boutique in nearby Norman gave her and Justin another opportunity for their dream wedding with the bride wearing a dress considerably more elegant than the one lost in the tornado when she walked down the aisle Aug. 16 in downtown Oklahoma City.
“I felt so much like a princess, plus more, because my first dress was really simple, and this dress is the total opposite,” Megan said before her wedding. “I had the experience I think every bride should get – to try on a dream dress and not really have money issues to worry about. Getting to experience this was literally the best day of my life.”
The couple first exchanged vows in a simple courthouse ceremony April 26 because Justin’s 33rd Combat Communications Squadron unit was scheduled to deactivate. They planned a more formal ceremony in July before they moved from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., to Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., where Justin will also work in cyber transport systems in the 628th Communications Squadron, but plans changed on May 20. Megan didn’t even think about her dress that day because she was dealing with what she calls “one of the scariest moments” of her life.
Senior Airman Justin Acord and his wife, Megan, visit what remains of her father’s house after a tornado destroyed it and large parts of Moore, Okla. Justin is stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. (U.S. Air Force photo/Desiree N. Palacios)
Justin and Megan rode out the storm at her grandmother’s house about 5 miles north of Moore and watched with horror as weather updates showed the center of the tornado over 19th and Santa Fe streets in Moore, just a few blocks from her father’s house. After the storm passed, Justin headed for the area, but Megan didn’t find out her father survived until she saw him on a national news interview about an hour later. They spent the next couple of days trying to salvage everything they could from what was left of her father’s house.
“The rest of that week was emotionally and physically draining,” Megan said. “We didn’t want them to bulldoze anything just because we knew there was still stuff in that house that was still salvageable. We spent hours upon hours upon hours out there. Most of the stuff that meant the most to us was found, but obviously not my dress.”
They considered calling off the entire ceremony because of the aftermath of the storm, clean-up efforts and having to replace the bridal dress. But they didn’t know that Brian Hilgenfeld, owner of the Moore Chick-Fil-A where Megan worked as a cashier, and his wife already had a plan to replace the dress. While Chick-Fil-A filmed an interview with Megan at the site of the destroyed home, Hilgenfeld’s wife Laura told Justin what they wanted to do.
“That was a big item to have somebody donate for you,” Justin said. “It gave us back the spirit and drive to push forward with our wedding plans. If we hadn’t had it donated for us, we may not have been able to have the wedding.”
The bridal store where Megan bought her first dress offered to replace it at half-price, but Laura thought she could find a better option, so she called BeLoved Bridal Boutique in nearby Norman. Co-owners Andrea Mantooth and Lindsay Gasaway then contacted a sales representative for designer Stella York, who told them to allow Megan to select any dress she wanted. One weekend, Megan’s friends took her to lunch and surprised her by stopping by the boutique in downtown Norman, where a TV news crew waited to capture the moment. Megan selected what she calls her “dream dress,” a $1,500 jeweled, belted Stella York gown with a sweetheart neckline.
Laura Hilgenfeld touches up Megan Acord’s makeup at the BeLoved Bridal Boutique near Norman, Okla. Hilgenfeld is the co-owner of a Chick-fil-a in Moore, Okla., and Acord’s boss. (U.S. Air Force photo/Desiree N. Palacios)
“Megan matches the dress she picked from us,” Mantooth said. “She wanted the opposite of what her first dress was, which was really simple. She got this opportunity and wanted to go bigger and better. It is glamorous, but she’s very deserving and very humbled by it. It started out as something we thought we could do that would be special for her, and it just blew up.”
Megan describes her first dress as “pretty, but simple.” Because their budget would only allow $500 for a dress, she only tried on three or four dresses. But once she was given the opportunity to select whatever she wanted, Megan tried on seven or eight until she found her “dream dress.”
For Megan, the dress was much more than what she’d wear when she finally had her big day with her husband in front of family and friends. It was a symbol of the people who wanted to help restore some joy after a day filled with so much heartbreak and tragedy.
“I love being from the city of Moore and the state of Oklahoma, just seeing everybody in our city come together, along with our state and our country,” Megan said. “Even though there has been so much heartbreak, you get to see stories like mine, too.”
The tornado and May 20 were finally in Justin’s and Megan’s past. They were now able to look forward to Aug. 16 and the rest of their lives together.
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