This Man Put on a Wedding Dress to Calm His Friend’s Marriage Jitters, and the Prank Went Viral

Though Val and Heidi Zherelyev had already been married since 2013, they looked forward to having a big, official wedding ceremony. Val was feeling nervous before the wedding, so Heidi and her brother conspired on the perfect wedding prank to get Val to relax and have a good time. And when it came time for Val’s first look at the bride, seeing a man in a wedding dress cracked him up and apparently got him in the right mood.

Val and Heidi were high school sweethearts. Right out of school Val joined the Navy, and the couple eloped in 2013 in a small, private ceremony. Though the couple were already married, they’d always wanted to have a big, fancy wedding.

So, when Val finished his tour of duty after five years, the couple planned to make their dreams come true. On the day of, however, Val was understandably nervous. It was important everything go smoothly, and that put a lot of pressure on the groom.

Seeing her husband in distress, Heidi got together with her brother Eric — both were pranksters, so they knew what they had to do: A wedding prank to break the tension. One of Heidi’s friends had an old wedding dress; she borrowed it and put Eric in the dress.

Traditionally the photographer takes pictures of the “First Look,” when the groom sees the bride in her dress for the first time. This time, however, instead of his bride, he saw a man in a wedding dress — that’d be Eric. As planned, the tension was broken and everyone had a good time laughing. Eric and Val were close friends, and he was so happy to see his brother-in-law.

The wedding prank was so popular that the guests asked the photographer, Kevin Chole, to post the photos online to share. With the couple’s consent, Chole wrote a blog post detailing the entire wedding. The photos quickly went viral, and people around the world were charmed by the unique, good-natured wedding prank.

See the wedding prank below:

Would you be a man in a wedding dress to help your friend relax?

All photos by Kevin Chole