If a groom seeing a bride in her dress before the ceremony is bad luck for a wedding day, then getting photobombed by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson must be the ultimate good luck omen, right?
Pittsburgh bride Grace Gwaltney was taking pictures with her bridesmaids downtown when a familiar face approached and asked if they could get a picture together. You know, as if she was a celebrity. However, in this case, the man asking was the Hollywood A-Lister.
Yes, the Tom Hanks (and later, his wife Rita Wilson) jumped into the bridal photo shoot to the delight of all, according to the bride. “He said, ‘Hey I’m Tom Hanks, I’d love to get a photo with you,’” Gwaltney told a local TV station, per Newsweek. “I immediately froze and I was just looking around and didn’t know what to do.”
She added that his voice immediately reminded her of his cowboy character Woody. “It’s his voice. You see him and then he starts speaking and he’s like, ‘You look so beautiful. I’m so happy for you,’” she said. “He was talking in my ear and I was thinking of Toy Story.”
“When it first happened, we were all confused and it didn’t click for a second,” photographer Rachel Rowland told Newsweek. “Most of us stared quietly for a second. Then we all erupted in screams. You always have all of these plans and ideas for when you meet a celebrity, and then when you do—especially national treasure Tom Hanks—you really become mush.”
Hanks was in town filming A Man Called Otto, the American adaptation of the Swedish novel A Man Called Ove. “He was exactly as you would assume him to be, joyful, funny, loud, and kind,” Rowland recalled, adding, “Rita [Wilson] stayed on the sidelines, but we all forced her to hop in a few. Then, as quickly as it happened, he was gone, and our day was completely made.”
