Here comes the… Oscar winner.
Tom Hanks gave Pittsburgh bride Grace Gwaltney an epic wedding story when he stopped to congratulate her as she was on the way to her wedding on Saturday. He then posed for photos with her and her bridesmaids.
“He was like, ‘Hey, I’m Tom Hanks. I’d love to get a photo with you,'” newlywed Gwaltney told WTAE Pittsburgh of the star, who’s been in the city filming A Man Called Ove. “I immediately froze.”
“We all lost it,” photographer Rachel Rowland told the outlet. “The bridesmaids, who had already climbed into a waiting limo outside the Fairmont Pittsburgh hotel en route to ceremony, “shuffled out” and Hanks “posed [for] photos and congratulated everyone.”
Gwaltney said the whole time they were snapping pictures, Hanks, who has a well-established reputation as a Hollywood nice guy, chatted away in her ear.
“I was thinking of Toy Story,” she said as Hanks voices the character of Woody in the franchise, adding, “I’m sure a lot of other Pittsburgh brides would love for him to photobomb their shots.”
Actress-singer Rita Wilson, who has been married to Hanks since 1988, was there as well, but tried to stay on the sidelines. She did join in for a few photos.
Gwaltney said she couldn’t wait to tell her now-husband, Luke, about the photobomb, but because she was headed to their wedding ceremony, it was tricky.
However, “We had a moment before the ceremony and we prayed,” she explained. “We were holding hands, back to back so we couldn’t see each other, and I was like: ‘Luke, I just met Tom Hanks!'”
“I had to sneak that in real quick,” she laughed.
Photographer Rowland told Newsweek, “You always have all of these plans and ideas for when you meet a celebrity and then when you do — especially national treasure Tom Hanks — you really become mush… We all erupted in screams,” she said of the scene.
She added that Hanks “was exactly as you would assume him to be, joyful, funny, loud and kind.”
And then, poof, it was over. “As quickly as it happened, he was gone and our day was completely made,” Rowland recalled.
Hanks has randomly served as other brides’ “something famous” on their special day.
In 2016, he jogged by a wedding shoot in NYC’s Central Park — and stopped to take photos with the bride and groom.
In 2021, two brides were saying “I do” on the Santa Monica Pier when Hanks noticed the festivities and stopped to wish them well.
The star also escorted a bride to her wedding ceremony in 2008 — in between shooting scenes for Angels & Demons. He did it as a kind gesture because production, at the Pantheon, held up the ceremony.
Hanks apparently enjoys weddings so much that he even replied to a bride who sent him an invite to her wedding. The self-proclaimed “big Tom Hanks fan” received a typewritten letter and a signed photograph of him holding their invitation. While he couldn’t attend, because he was in rehearsals for a play, he invited them to California once it opened to see it.
