-
Tracy Kauffman-Wood has been trying to find a dress for her daughter’s fall 2025 wedding
-
Not a fan of shopping, she saw a dress she loved earlier this year: the one Michelle Yeoh wore to the 2025 SAG Awards
-
Figuring she had nothing to lose, the mother of the bride messaged Yeoh on Instagram asking to borrow the Armani Privé gown
With Tracy Kauffman-Wood’s daughter’s wedding quickly approaching in October, the mom has been keeping her eyes open for dress options. Then, while watching the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards earlier this year, Tracy, 69, immediately fell in love with Michelle Yeoh’s stunning Armani Privé gown.
The dress was a multi-color silk organza sleeveless sheer gown covered with silk tulle, embroidered with hand-painted floral details and crystals.
“That gown really struck me as something I would be thrilled to wear,” Tracy tells PEOPLE exclusively.
This isn’t the first time she’s fallen in love with someone else’s dress. Back in 1987, when she was getting married, Tracy faced a similar dilemma when it came to wedding dresses. There weren’t many formal dresses or wedding gowns that reflected her taste and style. However, her friend Beth had worn a white lace, tea-length dress she found in an antique shop for her own wedding.
At the time, she asked her friend to borrow it, and she said, “Yes.”
“It occurred to me 38 years later that if I could borrow a dress for my own wedding, I could certainly borrow one for my daughter’s wedding,” she says. “Looking at Michelle Yeoh in that dress, I felt like we were probably the same size. I decided to DM Michelle Yeoh. What did I have to lose?”
“Celebrities seem so close by these days with social media. It’s not like I had to write and mail a fan letter to her agent. That’s old school. If I could reach her easily, why not?” the professional photographer who lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia adds. “Would she be charmed by my request? The worst she could do is ignore me, if she ever even saw my message. I did it on a lark with the fantasy in my head that she might actually answer. Why? I don’t know. But what a sensation that would be!”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Courtesy of Amity Wood
Tracy Kauffman-Wood holding up photo of dress
Related: Woman Says Sister Is Charging Her to Be in Her Wedding Party, Including a $150 ‘Bridesmaid Fee’
Not long after sending the message, Tracy told her daughter Amity, 28, what she’d done. The bride-to-be recalls her eyes instantly growing wide. Right away, she Googled the dress and questioned her mom about whether she would want to accept responsibility for a pricey Armani Privé gown.
She also tried to explain to her mom that while the Crazy Rich Asians star, 62, wore the dress, she most likely didn’t own it. “I know it isn’t Michelle’s dress, but I’m still trying to explain this to my mom,” Amity adds.
After the confusion wore off, Amity and her fiancé Casey laughed for five minutes before Amity asked her mom to explain the situation to her again while she recorded it for fun. Then, she encouraged her mom to send Yeoh another message on her official Instagram account.
A few days later, Amity posted the video to TikTok, not thinking much of it. But when she woke up the next day, it had around 35,000 views. By that night, it had reached 200,000 views and was gaining traction fast.
Since then, the video’s amassed more than 3 million views and hundreds of comments.
“Suddenly thousands of people are saying, ‘Your mom is so cool!’ ‘I love her!!’ ‘I wish I had this mentality! Rooting for her!’ ‘She’s adorable!’ ” Amity tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It’s a very strange thing to experience,” the bride-to-be adds. “I’m like, yeah, obviously my mom is cool. It’s funny because they just know my mom from a few seconds on the Internet. That’s my mom, and now I’m having to share her with over a million fans. She’s way more than just what they saw on the video, but I’m glad they’re supporting her boldness.”
“People are following me to see where this goes,” she adds. “There was a woman who is a stylist, and she commented that she took some time to reverse image search the dress. She browsed Etsy to try and find a similar dress that my mom might like, and she sent me the link. I thought that was a super kind thing to do, even if it wasn’t too much time or effort out of her day. She was considerate of my mom and wanted to give us options for her mother of the bride dress.”
Although Tracy or Amity has yet to hear from the Wicked star since going viral, the mother-daughter duo say their fingers are crossed that either Yeoh, her team or Armani will get back to them soon.
“I think this will make dress shopping for her a lot more interesting,” Amity says. “She doesn’t really go shopping, it’s quite rare. She dresses for comfort over style, so her asking for an Armani Privé spring-summer 2025 gown was crazy to me.”
“As a backup option, hopefully we find something that she likes when we go dress shopping with my future mother-in-law, Judy,” she adds. “She’s awesome and I’m close with her. They both get along well, I’m super lucky. Judy is fashionable, so it’ll be a fun time. She’s done mother of the groom dress shopping twice already. My fiancé Casey is the youngest, and the last son to get married, so she knows what she’s doing. I’ll be sure to post about that too!”
Read the original article on People
