Weddings are supposed to mark the beginning of a lifelong journey with the love of your life, but for one woman, it marked the end.
A bride used what should have been the best day of her life, to expose her fiancé's affair by reading out his text messages in place of her vows.
Now, that's one way to do something different with a standard wedding ceremony...
The woman - whose name was redacted, and decided to post her story online using a pseudonym for both herself (Casey), and her fiancé Alex - was left heartbroken after the day she was excited to for, turned into a nightmare just hours before she was due to say, 'I do'.
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Not only was she given the rude awakening that her partner of six years was a cheat, but she also found out about it all in a big way - from the other woman.
According to Casey, the night before she was due to change her life, she was hanging out with her best friends when her phone began to go off like nobody's business.
The messages in question were a series of screenshots from an unknown number I didn’t recognise with an accompanying message stating: "I wouldn’t marry him. Will you?"
The screenshots in question were of 'loads' of conversations between Casey's hubby-to-be and another woman dated from months to 'only days before'.
"My brain simply could not compute WTF was going on. There was no questioning the legitimacy of these messages. I just knew," Casey wrote in an essay for Body+Soul.
Some of the incriminating texts included: "This weekend. You and I. It is on, hot stuff. Bring your A game.
"Your body is f*cking incredible. And shit do you know how to use it. I wish my GF had half the skills you do."
"I miss you so much. I can’t stop thinking about L, S, F’ing you. I’ve never had this kind of connection before."
Ouch.
The heartbroken bride revealed 'every word like a dagger' in her heart as she was left wondering: "How could I cancel when everyone had already travelled to be there and everything was paid for?"
While her girls were 'threatening all manner of violence' against the cheating bloke and insisting she call him up 'immediately and call the wedding off', Casey had something a little different in mine.
"But I loved Alex. I wanted to marry Alex tomorrow. I was too shocked and sad to be angry. I didn’t call him," she explained.
After not getting a wink of sleep, the bride-to-be awoke and alerted her mates of her decision.
She continued: "I was going to go ahead with the wedding as expected, and ‘out’ him in front of our friends and family.
"I walked down the aisle with leaden feet, my dream dress now just a costume. "As he saw my face he knew this was not an ecstatic woman on her big day, but he had no idea what was coming.
"I arrived at the front of the room, took a big breath and I faced our friends, our parents and I told them the truth about Alex."
Casey announced to the crowd of their nearest and dearest: "There will be no wedding today.
"It seems Alex is not who I thought he was."
A 'ripple of shock' went through the crowd following the bombshell announcement with a stunned Alex attempting to take hold of Casey's hands for her only to put down the flowers and whip out her phone reading 'every single message' she had received.
"With each word, more colour left Alex’s face," Casey recalled. "I let my weeping eyes rise and meet his, and he had not one thing to say.
"He stalked out of the church with his best man trailing behind him. His family looked on, horrified."
Go figure.
After facing her guests once more, Casey explained to the crowd: "I love all of you and as horrible as this is I’m glad you all are here.
"There will not be a wedding reception today, but instead, there will be a celebration of honesty, finding true love and following your heart even when it hurts."
Admitting that, while it was certainly not the wedding day she had planned, the woman revealed it was 'one hell of a party'.
Let's hope there was an open bar.
Topics: Life, Real Life, Sex and Relationships, Wedding
Britt Jones