Among the many duties of grooms before they get married is the choice of who will stand at their side by the altar as their best man. It's not the sort of thing you take lightly, either. For some, it's an agonizing choice; do you go with family, or a close friend, and if there are several, which one do you go with at risk of alienating others?
Well, for Will Claussen, the choice was easy. Figuring out the right way to do it, however, took a bit more work.
He and his fiancée, AJ Johns, have been together for two-and-a-half years and they'll be tying the knot in July 2021. Who Will wanted standing by his side as his best man was never in doubt: his little brother, Henry.
"I always knew that Henry was going to be my best man," Will told the BBC, "we have been pretty much inseparable since he was born."
"He has the sweetest soul and has never said a bad word about anyone so it was a no brainer for him to be my best man," he added to In The Know.
Henry, 22, has Down syndrome and he was starting to worry that he'd been left out of the wedding planning so Will came up with a plan to ask Henry in a fun way.
"I decided to use one of his favourite hobbies, metal detecting, as a way to ask him to be my best man," Will told the BBC.
Rather than tossing it into the sea, however, Will buried it at the family's cabin on Ten Mile Lake near Hackensack.
As AJ filmed, Will and Henry went out with the metal detector on a treasure hunt, found the bottle, and dug it up.
But then Will read the note to him out loud.
"You are already the best bro and also the best friend. So will you please say 'yes' to being my best man? Love Will," the note read.
An overjoyed Henry couldn't resist leaping into his big brother's arms.
"I’m happy for my brother. I’m happy for their marriage. And I’m so proud of them so much," Henry told ABC News. "I’m so excited for the wedding because I can’t wait to see the kiss…they’ll have a lot of presents, cake, happiness, dance, and so yeah!"
Check out the whole, heartwarming video.
h/t: BBC, ABC News, In The Know
