Bride uncovers identity of wedding crasher 4 years…
The bride said, “I do … not know this guy.”
Michelle Wylie has spent the past 4 years attempting to guess the identity of an uninvited wedding visitor seen in snapshots taken on her special occasion.
And now, owing to the ability of social media, her matrimonial thriller has finally been solved.
Andrew Helliman mistakenly crashed Michelle and John Wylie’s November 2021 wedding. Courtesy Michelle Wylie / SWNS
“It was always in the back of my mind, who was that and why was he there?” Wylie, 38, from the UK, told SWNS, of the unfamiliar fella at her November 2021 nuptials. “To find out eventually after all this time is quite something.”
The millennial — who tied the knot with husband, John, at the Carlton Hotel in Prestwick, Ayrshire — noticed the suspicious attendee the second she noticed pics from her big day.
“As soon as I got the sample of the wedding pictures, I noticed it straight away,” added Wylie, a digital facilitator for the NHS. “We all said, ‘Do you know who that is?’ We were asking around the family and friends, and no one had any idea.”
“No one remembered him being there on the day,” she remembered, “and we now know he slipped away straight after the ceremony.”
Wylie has searched high and low for the thriller man seen in her wedding footage. Courtesy Michelle Wylie / SWNS
Hoping to get to the underside of the conundrum, Wylie routinely shared the pictures on Facebook, assuming somebody would ultimately fess up to being the “ransom stranger” who crashed her bash.
But, sadly, the newlywed “never got far” in her search — until this week.
“I was looking through the wedding pictures, and I just thought, ‘I’m going to message someone with a lot of followers and ask if they can share,’” said Wylie.
She reached out to content creator Dazza, with over 400,000 Facebook followers and 129,000 TikTookay subscribers, asking him to plaster the photographs all over his platforms.
“Daz put it up and within two hours we had found [him],” Wylie raved.
The unknown interloper was Andrew Helliman.
Helliman explained that he’d mistakenly attended Wylie’s nuptials, pondering he was at a buddy’s wedding. Courtesy Michelle Wylie / SWNS
But he’s not just some sneaky creep who will get his jollies by invading sacred events for the free food and booze — à la Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in 2005 buddy flick “Wedding Crashers.”
Instead, Helliman had merely made an harmless mistake.
“I was at the wrong wedding!,” he confessed to SWNS after seeing his mug in Wylie’s wedding pictures on Dazza’s web page.
“Four years ago my partner was acting as bridesman (male bridesmaid) for his friend Michaela’s wedding and I’d been invited as his plus one,” Helliman, 33, a painter and decorator, explained. “For some reason he told me it was at the Carlton hotel in Prestwick at 2:00 p.m., when it was actually being held at the Great Western hotel in Ayr.”
“He had already left in the morning to help with whatever it is bridesmen do, and left me to make my own way to the wedding.”
Helliman says his companion by accident gave him the flawed tackle to the wedding. Courtesy Michelle Wylie / SWNS
Running late to the fête, Helliman pulled up to the Carlton with just minutes to spare, believing that the wedding festivities going down exterior of the lodge — such as a bag piper who welcomed invitees with tunes as they entered the venue — had been for his companion’s buddy.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘Cool, this is obviously the right place,” recalled Helliman, who’d only met the bride and didn’t count on to know anybody else at the wedding other than her and his beaux.
“I parked my car and rushed inside. I made my way into the hall and saw the groom standing and waiting nervously,” he added. “I had never met Michaela’s husband before so I thought, ‘Alright, this must be Ben.’”
“The fact that I didn’t recognize a single person in this place didn’t raise any alarm bells.”
But bells started ringing in his head once Wylie, a good stranger, started making her method to the altar.
Helliman was shocked to see somebody other than his companion’s pal come strolling down the aisle. Courtesy Michelle Wylie / SWNS
(*4*) said Helliman, who was mortified by the mix-up.
“You can’t exactly stand up and walk out of a wedding mid-ceremony,” he said, “so I just had to commit to this act and spent the next 20 minutes awkwardly sitting there trying to be inconspicuous.”
After Wylie and John swapped “I Do’s,” Helliman made a clean escape to Michaela’s wedding.
“I was almost as popular as the actual bride and groom and spent most of the night retelling that story to people,” he joked.
And despite his best efforts to stay unnoticed at Wylie’s ceremony, wedding photographers caught him in the unintended act, prompting her years-long hunt for his identity.
Thanks to Dazza, Wylie and Helliman finally met face-to-face on Thursday.
“It is unbelievable,” said Wylie. “I just could not stop laughing when I heard the story. It is so funny, and the way [Andrew] tells the story is brilliant.”
“You just don’t hear about things like this happening,” she continued. “I just cannot stop laughing about it. It is great to finally find out who it was.”
With the help of a standard influencer, Wylie and Helliman finally met this week. Courtesy Michelle Wylie / SWNS
The unlikely pair plans to keep in contact now that they’ve formally met.
“Our wedding day really was the perfect day,” Wylie gushed, including that she needs Helliman would have stayed for her wedding reception moderately than leaving. “But this [blunder] adds another great story to it that gives us even more special memories.”
“It has certainly put a lot of smiles on people’s faces.”
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