Wedding traditions are always changing and evolving. While it’s still considered “bad luck” for the bride and groom to see one another the night before the wedding, the first time they laid eyes on one another in their wedding attire used to be at the altar. But now, many brides and grooms are opting for a “first look” moment.
During the first look, the couple have a private moment to see each other, along with a photographer, before they meet in front of their guests. One bride used this time as an opportunity to prank her husband-to-be.
Amanda spent a year designing the perfect black wedding dress.
Amanda Kitchingman Roban-Cook and her husband Alex had been dating since 2016, according to Insider. The two have pranked each other from the early days of their relationship. "We kind of both vowed to never take ourselves too seriously and never grow up,” Amanda said. And why should their wedding day be any different?
After they got engaged in 2020, Amanda began working on making her perfect wedding dress a reality. She was going for something that Morticia Addams of The Addams Family would wear, so she designed a black caped dress.
The couple had a wedding with 50 guests planned, but a month ahead of that, they decided to exchange vows privately before the public ceremony.
Amanda didn't want to miss Alex's true reaction to her dress.
"I had spent the better part of a year working on that dress, designing that dress, picturing what it would look like with me coming down the aisle and him looking at me and his reaction," she said. But the decision to marry privately meant that Amanda would miss seeing Alex’s in-the-moment reaction to the dress she’d spent so long conceptualizing and creating.
Not to mention, a week before the wedding, Alex told Amanda that he was certain her dress was black. After all that planning, she was going for the element of surprise.
So she decided to get back to the essence of their union and prank him. Amanda found a silver gown she’d purchased for $300 five years ago. She wore it during their first look and their private vows, making Alex think it was her real wedding dress.
Alex was confused by Amanda's traditional wedding dress.
When Alex saw Amanda in the decoy, she noticed there was a hint of disappointment in his eyes. He had been confident that she was going to wear black.
"I don't think anybody else would have really caught it, but I could just see the slightest 'What?' in his face," Amanda said.
Then, for their wedding in front of their guests, Amanda wore her real dress.
The custom gown, crafted by Lace & Liberty, cost $5,000.
"I wanted something very unique and very dramatic,” Amanda said. With a cape veil, a lace overlay in the sleeve and a removable skirt, the dress rose to the challenge.
When Alex saw the real dress, he cried.
And as for Alex, Amanda got the reaction she was looking for.
"I saw Alex have the realization wash over him that this was a totally different dress … He just absolutely lost it. He had to turn away and ask for a tissue because he said he was about two seconds away from ugly crying up at the altar,” she said.
