Saying Yes to the Dress—at the Library

Puccio got married in 1985, when she was nineteen, in a simple chiffon dress with sheer, puffy sleeves. She grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, two blocks from the legendary bridal store Kleinfeld. “You needed an appointment, but I would go in and sell Girl Scout cookies, and hang out and watch,” she said. “If they were, say, throwing out some old headpiece, I’d take it.” She began collecting dresses for a bridal show that she staged, in 2000, at the public library in Bayonne, where she worked at the time. When the show was over, she kept at it: “I got one from freecycle.org in 2013—a strapless dress with a pick-up skirt that looked just like the dress on the poster for ‘Bridesmaids.’ The woman wrote, ‘That’s it, I threw his cheating ass out—I’m getting rid of the dress.’ ”