Wedding photos turn up in thrift store lunch bag nine years later

July 1 (UPI) -- A woman who purchased a lunch bag from a California thrift shop made an unexpected discovery: a USB drive containing photos from a wedding nine years earlier.

Michelle de Mercado posted a series of wedding photos to Facebook that she said came from the thumb drive she found inside the lunch bag she purchased from the Desseret Industries thrift store in Sacramento.

The post was shared dozens of times and came to the attention of people who started tagging friends in the photos.

Mercado said the couple from the photos got in touch and explained the pictures were from their wedding nine years earlier.

The bride, Jessica Black, now lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and their three children.

"I don't know if one of our families accidentally had a flash drive of our photos and I don't know how it randomly ended up in a lunch box, but I was happy that someone was able to find it so fast," Black told KTXL-TV.

"It was definitely a wonderful day, and I'm so glad that I have photos to remember it because the wedding day is always so busy and chaotic and it just goes by so fast," she said. "So, it's good to have those memories captured that you can have forever. It's just a special, sweet memory."