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It was the bride of Prankenstein.
A California groom was let down by a raucous gag in which his best friend trolled him by posing as the bride at his wedding. A clip of the epic wedding punk currently has over 588,000 views on TikTok.
“Thankfully, I’m not embarrassed,” Riverside’s Stephen Garlatta, 26, told Jam Press about the prank, which happened after he tied the knot with his wife Lauren Bartoli, 25, in April 2022.
The car salesman’s best friend, Austin Kuentz, had decided to switch spouses during the traditional bridal garter removal. According to Garlatta, his pal and fiancé had been planning to marry Rickroll for a month.
The resulting 1-minute clip shows the groom sitting blindfolded on a chair while his best friend Küntz dances around unnoticed in front of him in his wedding dress. Meanwhile, Garlatta’s bride-to-be Bartoli, a barber, stands by the side, waiting for the hilarity to set in.
Suddenly, Küntz rolls up the dress to reveal his garter, whereupon Bartoli guides her unsuspecting future husband’s hand to his leg. After touching what he thinks is his mistress, Garlatta uses his teeth to slip the garter off his cheeky pal’s leg as the crowd goes wild.
Hearing laughter, the groom removes the blindfold and then, realizing he has been betrayed, bursts into a fit of laughter. The clip ends with Garlatta hugging the cosplaying prankster as the audience erupts in cheers.
Garlatta painted the side split scene. “She [Lauren] said, “Put the blinds on and sit down.” I was confused and didn’t know what was going on,” the groom recalled. “She originally told me that she didn’t want to do the garter toss because she’s shy, so I said, ‘If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.'”
Which led to the shock of the groom at the reception.
“I felt the dress move next to me and I thought, ‘Damn! She’s getting in!’” he said.
When asked how they couldn’t tell the bride wasn’t Bartoli, Garlatta chalked it up to being a little tipsy. He also later learned that Kuentz had spent “20 minutes” shaving his leg in preparation for the prank.
Fortunately, the groom puts up with the gag.
“My first thought was, ‘OMG, this is great!'” he said. “I know everyone thought it was funny.”
TikTok was also let down over the marital masquerade, with one commenter exclaiming, “The look on his face.”
“Close than friends,” said another. “He didn’t get angry, he started crying with laughter.”
One fan exclaimed, “That dress suits him so well!!!!”
Apparently, the marital leg-pulling marks the latest escalation in an ongoing prank war between Garlatta and his other half. “I’m pranking her [Lauren] all the time, so I think this might have been her vendetta,” he said, vowing, “I’ll get her back.”
In a far less successful wedding stunt in April, a woman accidentally torpedoed her sister’s big day by shouting “I disagree!” jokingly during the knot tying ceremony.
