The search for the missing photos

Fifty-six years ago, Barry and Margaret Sharman were married in a quaint ceremony in Canada. The young couple celebrated with friends and family, before bringing their bridal party to a nearby photo studio to snap some pictures together prior to the reception.

A few weeks later, the Sharmans were heartbroken to discover they couldn’t afford the final prints of their photos; they ended up leaving the studio empty-handed and just chalked it up as an L.

Margaret thought of the wedding photos often, but between raising her two sons and moving away, they were pushed to the back of her mind. That is, until, a few years later, when the couple were more financially stable and she *Nickelback voice* 🎶looked for these photographs🎶. But alas – the studio had closed down and she had no way of contacting the owner. 

And so the years went on… until the impossible happened.

Last month, Margaret received an out-of-the-blue email from one of her former bridesmaids and longtime friend, Sandy Farynuk, containing one of her lost wedding photos.

As soon as she opened the attachment, she burst into tears. “It was so emotional to see a photo of our entire wedding party,” she said. “I was stunned.”

So, how did she get it? Sandy is the president of the Enderby and District Museum Society. And when a peer at the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery sent her an email with a black-and-white photo of the wedding party that had been donated to the museum, she recognized young Sandy in the photo.

• It turns out, the museum had almost all of the photos from the Sharman's wedding day. They were found in a large box of photos and negatives donated from a garage sale, according to Jackie Pearase, administrator of the Enderby and District Museum and Archives. 
• Margaret said she wishes she could track down the photographer, W.E. Saby, to thank him. She said she had tried to no avail.

“He’s an angel,” she told the Washington Post. “He could have destroyed those photos, and he didn’t. If he is still alive, I’d like to tell him, ‘Thank you.’ The photos he took 56 years ago are the most thoughtful, miraculous gift I could ever have imagined.”