Everybody say, "Free publicity!" (via Washington Post)
So that photo we posted of the wedding party posing with a bunch of strangers that was really funny but had very little details? Yeah, that was fake.
In case you missed it, the legend went that engaged couple "Kristen" and "Roger" sent out a group text to invite people to their wedding photo shoot and BBQ. When the text made it's way to an accidental recipient, that recipient said he was still going to attend and he would bring his friends. The image of this text spawned the trending hashtag #WeStillComing.
Remember?
Everyone on the Internet thought this was a funny story, but the lack of details made it seem super fake. The actual couple in the photo, Amy and Ian Hicks, wanted to set the record straight. The story was super fake. They went to the real journalists over at the Washington Post told them the real story behind the picture.
Apparently, the photo really was of a wedding group and a bunch of strangers, but it was the wedding that crashed the party, not the other way around.
A 30-person Detroit rap group called 7262 was filming a music video for their track "Anthem" in front of abandoned Michigan Central Station when newly married Amy and Ian showed up in an antique trolley with their wedding party in tow. The Washington Post embarrassingly described the scene as including "tricked out" vintage cars and rappers wearing "brightly colored street threads."
When Ian and Amy got out to take some pictures in front of the building, 7262 cheered for them, and some of groomsmen went over to mingle with the rappers. That's when wedding photographer Adam Sparkes saw the publicity opportunity for what it was and invited everyone to dance in 7262's music video.
As Sparkes told the Post, “They looked over at us, we waved back at them and then we said, ‘we are going to come over and dance in your video.’”
Fortunately, the rap group was #WeStillCoolWithThat, and the wedding party ended up filming with the guys for 15 minutes, unbeknownst to the groom.
As Ian told People, "We didn't even know that they were filming us, we were just hanging out and messing around with them."
He did take pictures though, and someone, somewhere, grabbed one off of Ian's Facebook page and the story evolved into the fake #WeStillComing text conversation as it played the telephone game around the Internet.
Now the truth is out, and so is 7262's first video, which opens with the bridesmaids running over from the trolley and some of the groomsmen working some pretty decent moves. For those of you that aren't troubled by explicit lyrics or images of the archaic institution of marriage, I've included the video below:
7262's Danta Norris, AKA Mojo, told the Post he's happy that the wedding party crashed their video shoot, saying, “It’s all cool that people making what they make up, it’s making it blow up more.”
As a rap fan, I watched the video, and it does blow up. If they want to keep having hits like this, their next video would need to be crashed by an alien spaceship or Kim K's elbow fat.
(by Myka Fox)