Here’s the Real Story On That Viral Photo Of a Wedding Being Upstaged

The photo of an Iowa man proposing to his girlfriend in front of a bride and groom at a wedding reception that went viral a couple of weeks ago was not actually a dick move like we all thought. The photo, captioned on Reddit as “Any girl’s wedding nightmare,” showed a man on his knee and asking his girlfriend to marry him while the newlyweds watched from their table in the background. The bride seemed to have a faux smile and a look of vengeance in her eyes. In reality, she was holding back cryface. The proposal was her idea.

The guests who were widely assumed to be upstaging someone else’s wedding were actually the bride’s sister and future brother-in-law. According to The Washington Post, this was an incident of misplaced online shaming. When the photo was uploaded to Reddit, it unleashed a wave of fury throughout the Internet. The poster’s account has since been deleted.

“My fiancé told her he didn’t want to ruin their day and she insisted it would only make it better!” Megan, the woman who was proposed to, told New York Daily News. “The groom of the wedding actually held my engagement ring the entire trip! Everyone in the Reddit picture knew the proposal was going to happen except for me!” The two couples are very close and Megan and her fiancé plan to have the bride and groom be maid of honor and best man at their wedding. Lauren Bernardo, the photographer at the wedding, didn’t have an album of the wedding anywhere for public view. She believes that someone stole the picture from Megan’s Facebook page and posted it to Reddit.