I’ve been saying for at least 10 years that I plan on inviting the entire cast of Friends to my wedding — whether they show up or not, I feel obliged.
But could you imagine inviting some of your favorite celebs to your big day, and actually getting responses from them?
Well, as it turns out, it’s not impossible as you might think!
Back in 2012, Louis Bam, a 37-year-old man from Cape Town, South Africa, invited 300 complete strangers to his wedding.
Louis and his now-wife chose 300 of their favorite celebrities, politicians, and public figures , and sent them an invitation.
First of all, can we just take a moment to appreciate how much effort these people put in to inviting their idols to their wedding? 300 invitations is no joke.
That would be very time consuming, and in most cases, not very rewarding.
Anyways, back in 2018, Louis took to Twitter to explain the entire story of his and his wife’s wedding invitation experiment.
“Ok so due to popular demand (literally only @mspr1nt asked) I’m going to tell you about the time I invited 300 people that I didn’t know to my wedding,” he wrote .
“This was in 2012 and it seems now that back then, I had nothing better to do,” he added.
In an interview with Bored Panda , he revealed that it all started as a surprise for his wife, Estelle.
Which is just the sweetest thing ever.
“I try my best to come up with things that my wife will appreciate in life. I try to do one special thing for her every day. Sometimes just buying a chocolate,” he said.
“Other times planning takes a bit more time. So for our wedding day, I wanted to make sure there are a lot of little surprises for her throughout the day. This was one of them. “
“Right, so the idea was simple enough. Google celebrity addresses (turns out there are some websites that help stalkers with just this),” he explained.
“Mail them invites, and present my wife with an album filled with celeb wellwishes at the wedding as one of a couple of small surprises during the day “.
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“There are plenty of websites dedicated to listing celeb addresses for fanmail,” he told *Bored Panda*.
“My sister Yvette helped me with the admin as well as physically mailing everyone,” he added .
That’s a really good sister, if you ask me.
He admitted that he didn’t actually want any of these celebrities to show up to the wedding, despite being invited.
“I didn’t want any of them showing up. It would have been pretty awkward if someone did pitch .”
I would love celebs at my wedding, tbh.
He explained that he simply wanted the replies so that he could compile them and gift them to his then-soon-to-be-wife.
“I was just hoping for an album with letters from celebs saying congrats on the wedding to present to my wife as a gift,” Louis said .
“One South African DJ I invited did discuss coming to the wedding on radio and nearly spoiled the surprise.”
“My wife’s cousin called us and said they’re talking about your wedding on the radio. I just lied and said I have no idea what they’re talking about .”
“My sister helped me a lot with this ludicrous idea. We sent approx 200 letters to celebrities that my wife and I liked, and world leaders that, well, lead stuff,” he tweeted.
“Did not foresee that the toughest bridge to overcome would be the price of postage, but it was .”
Louis explained that he ultimately received about 50 responses, most of which were written by the celebrity’s respective staff. But 50 responses nontheless!
“I went through the album while doing my speech and no one was impressed .”
“Everyone thought I was lying and making names up so it was a bit of a flop,” he said.
“It was only when I was seated at the table that people wanted to see the album that they noticed that it was for real. Haha, my wife wasn’t too impressed .”
“A lot happens on your wedding day so it was just one of a thousand things that happened on the day.”
“I think the fact that it still makes the news every once in a while is more special than it was on the day .”
Would you ever invite 300 celebrities to your wedding?
For all you know, it might make for the ultimate wedding gift!
Let us know what you think of Louis’ story in the comments below!
