Tom Hanks Photobombs Pittsburgh Bride on Her Wedding Day: 'We All Lost It'

“He was like, ‘Hey! I’m Tom Hanks. I would love to get a photo with you and I immediately froze,” the bride Grace Gwaltney said

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Published on March 22, 2022 04:49 PM

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Tom Hanks gave a Pittsburgh bride the ultimate surprise on her wedding day.

The Oscar winner, 65, joined the bridal party for photos outside the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh as they were getting ready to leave for the ceremony on Saturday.

The bride, Grace Gwaltney, revealed she was shocked to see the Finch star.

"He was like, 'Hey! I'm Tom Hanks. I would love to get a photo with you' and I immediately froze and was just looking around," she told KCRA. "I didn't know what to do."

The wedding photographer Rachel Rowland told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the group "started screaming and were pretty much in shock" after the encounter.

"We all lost it," Rowland shared with KCRA. "The bridesmaids shuffled out of the limo, and he posed with photos and congratulated everyone, and then as fast as he popped in, he was gone. It was just so sweet and fun!"

Gwaltney was certain she was meeting Hanks because of his recognizable voice.

"You see him and then he starts speaking and he was like, 'You look so beautiful. I'm so happy for you.' He was talking in my ear," she admitted during her interview with KCRA. "I was thinking of Toy Story."

The bride was so excited by the encounter that she even made time to tell her husband Luke before they got married at Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.

"We had a moment before the ceremony and we prayed and we were holding hands and going back-to-back so we wouldn't see each other," she revealed. "Luke, I just met Tom Hanks. I had to sneak that in there."

Gwaltney knew that the actor was in town to film the upcoming movie, A Man Called Otto. She called him the "perfect person" to play the titular character, a retired man who strikes up an unlikely friendship with his neighbors.

"He is filming his new movie and my sister and I were just talking about how much we love the book that he is filming the movie for so it was kinda like full-circle," she said. "It was honestly like crazy because we were just talking about him."

Her experience meeting Hanks made Gwaltney feel like a lucky bride.

"I'm sure a lot of other Pittsburgh brides would love for him to photobomb their shots," she shared.

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This was not the first time Hanks had been a surprise celebrity guest at a wedding.

In October, he posed for photos with Diciembre and Tashia Farries who tied the knot on the beach by Santa Monica Pier in California.

"We see a guy walking through the crowd and initially I'm like, 'Who's this guy getting in our pictures?'" Tashia told PEOPLE at the time. "And we hear everyone like, 'Wait, is that Tom Hanks?'"

The next thing the newlyweds knew, Hanks pulled his hat off and started chatting with them. "Immediately he treated us like family," Tashia added.