Weddings are always a little more fun when there’s an element of surprise — and one WWE fan went above and beyond when it came to adding shock to his ceremony when he slammed this bride’s “ex” through a table in front of their friends and family.
After Nick Boulanger proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Alex Bravata, the lovebirds — who are both fans of professional wrestling — knew they wanted their wedding to leave a lasting impression on their guests. It wasn’t long until the Texas couple decided an old-fashioned wrestling showdown would be the perfect way to do it.
“We’ve been engaged for a while and we wanted to put our own stamp on it, we didn’t want it to be one of those typical weddings where it’s all romantic and then you have the dance,” Boulanger, 30, tells PEOPLE. “I like professional wrestling, so I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time.”
When friends connected Boulanger with Austin-based wrestler Steve Patin, who goes by the stage name Steve O Reno, the two began to assemble a secret script they would play out at the February 23 wedding.
“He absolutely loves wrestling and he’s a true professional — the stuff he goes through, like getting thrown over tables, hit by chairs!” Boulanger says of Patin (who is not Bravata’s real-life ex!). “And we worked together to develop a script and he was very professional. He would redline it and add his own creative input and everything.”
The duo devised a storyline that would see Patin play Bravata’s jilted former boyfriend, who would crash the wedding in an effort to steal her back. Boulanger would then come to his wife’s rescue, and literally choke-slam the jealous ex through a table on the dance floor.
In order to make the plan become a reality, Boulanger personally built the table he would slam Patin through using the weakest wood he could find at a local Home Depot.
“There is no wrestling store out there or anything where you could actually just buy these breakaway tables or stuff like that,” Boulanger, whose favorite wrestler is Chris Jericho, explains. “I actually found a video on YouTube and put it together myself.”
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When the big day finally arrived, the only people who were told about the plan was Boulanger’s groomsmen. Everyone else would be in for a WrestleMania-sized surprise.
Footage of the skit shows Boulanger stepping in front of Patin as he attempts to steal the bride. In true WWE fashion, the two get into a shoving match and guests start chanting Boulanger’s name.
Then, when Patin looks to the crowd and removes his jacket, he turns back around and walks right into Boulanger, who immediately grabs him by the neck and slams him through the table to the cheers of the guests.
“Oh man, it was awesome,” Boulanger says of what it was like to act out a wrestling move he has seen countless times on television. “It was always kind of a dream.”
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The video of the skit has now gone viral, garnering more than 90,000 views on Instagram since it was posted on Sunday, and Boulanger couldn’t be happier how it turned out — and that his wife even let him go through with it!
“The way I pitched it to her originally, I wanted to do it at the ceremony when the officiant asks, ‘If anyone can think of a reason why these two should not be wed, speak now or forever hold your peace,’ ” Boulanger recalls while laughing. “But obviously she was lukewarm on that, so we negotiated on the reception.”
He adds: “But to do that in front of all the people that we love, at our wedding, and just seeing the table explode like that — it was just so awesome.”
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