Missouri bride desperate to get stolen wedding photos returned

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV/Gray News) – A bride in Missouri is heartsick after someone stole her wedding photographer’s laptop with nearly all photos of the special day on it.

Now, she’s hoping someone either spots, or has the gear and calls the police to get the images back to her.

It was May 15 when Blakley Swanson Clement got married at Our Lady of Sorrows Church. A professional photographer caught so many precious moments, including when her father first saw her in the wedding dress.

“It was wonderful. It was everything we were hoping for and dreamed for,” Clement described.

The day flew by, but she knew she’d have photos to relive those fleeting moments and to pass down to future generations.

“Thinking about starting a family, that we can show our kids our wedding photos one day,” Clement reflected.

Now, all she has is a few snapshots taken by family and friends of the bride and groom.

Her photographer told her some of the professional shots were saved to the cloud, but nothing with the entire family at the church or on the Nelson lawn where they gathered after ceremony for portraits.

“To know that they’re gone is just really heartbreaking,” she said. “It’s just hard to process that I don’t have photos of me and Devin, and my parents or his parents, my siblings, his siblings and things like that.”

That’s because her hired photographer stopped at Loose Park in Kansas City the day after her wedding to get some photos of her own. She kept her MacBook in her car while shooting. When she returned to the car, it was broken into. The laptop and four cameras were gone.

The photographer gave Clement the devastating news this week and filed a police report.

Clement is hoping it’s not too late to track down the images.

“Whoever has these items in their possession, you know, find it in your heart to just anonymously come forward and return them if at all possible. Just because it would mean the world to us,” she pleaded.

If you have information to help Swanson Clement and her husband, call the KCPD’s Metro Division Property Crimes Division at 816-581-0679.

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