OS 10.3 - Undelete / Recovery Tools / Lost Files

Hello to the world of people much better with computers than I am ...

A wild tragedy occurred out of nowhere today. A folder on our desktop just magically dissappeared. We did not empty the trash, we did nothing, now it's gone. At first, the amount of free space on the partition did not change; then it did after restart.

I've researched and everything seems very costly. I'm also not sure if this is a problem I can throw at Mac (it's not under warantee anyway) cause we didn't delete the file or empty the trash. The computer just ate our folder!

If anyone has any free or supercheap recovery tips, I'd be oh-so-grateful (and so would my fiance; we lost files for our wedding planning that she didn't back up). It's a powerbook running OSX.

Thanks so much,

Dan