It's supposed to be one of the happiest times of Kylee Howell's life. The Cedar Rapids woman is preparing for her wedding in September and had just purchased the perfect wedding dress.
But joy turned to devastation last Saturday after someone stole Howell's SUV with the wedding dress inside.
Howell and her friends were in Davenport over the weekend to pick up her dress. A few hours later Howell tells KCRG-TV 9 both her vehicle and dress were gone. “I had originally went dress shopping and tried on multiples dresses, but was like, ‘oh yeah, hmm, I kind of like it, not really,” Howell said.
Then she said she thought she finally found the perfect one. “Then I tried this one on and I just started crying and my friends were like okay, this is the one,” Howell says.
After seven years together and two daughters, Howell and her fiancé started planning to tie the knot. “We kind of weren’t in a hurry, since we knew we were paying for all of it ourselves, we’ve just been saving,” Howell says.
Howell said while celebrating the day at a friend’s house, she went out to get something out of her car. “We parked in the front, went in through the front door, was in the house just playing games, hanging out, and then I was like, ‘I need to go to my car and get my glasses,” Howell said.
That’s when Howell says she realized her car and that perfect dress were gone. At first she thought her friends were playing a joke on her.
“I was like, 'well my car is not back there,' and they instantly jumped out of bed and started searching around,” Howell said. She called Davenport Police and made a report, but she’s still hoping someone will return her dream dress.
“At this point, I am just kind of hoping something will fall into place and something good will come out of this…Obviously I am still excited, I would marry him right now if I could,” Howell tells KCRG-TV 9
As of Monday night, Davenport police still have not been able to locate Howells's car or her wedding dress. The vehicle is a gray 2015 Kia Sorento with Linn County plates. It has an Iowa Hawkeyes sticker on the left side of the rear window.
She's hoping insurance will help cover some of the costs, but says the loss of the dress is a pretty big financial setback.
(Photo: KCRG-TV 9)