CHANDLER, Ariz. — Two months after Katey and Saje Lazenby got married in Chandler they found out a couple had crashed their wedding.
The discovery was made when the newlyweds got their wedding photos back and noticed a picture that had two people they did not recognize.
“She looked at me and goes ‘do you know these people,” Saje said his wife asked him. “And I said, ‘I’ve never seen them before in my life.”
Katey remembered asking herself if maybe her family members brought more than a plus one. After sending several text messages, no one knew who the smiling uninvited guests were.
“Nobody really noticed that there were extra people there,” said Katey. “I would love to just thank them. Thanks for crashing our wedding, it was just super great.”
How the wedding crashers went undetected
The Lazenby’s were born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. They moved to Arizona in June 2020, after following up on their "whiskey year" — which was to do everything they said while being drunk on whiskey.
One of those things was to leave their snowy-cold surroundings and after a short vacation to Europe that was interrupted by the pandemic, the couple made their way to Phoenix.
In February, the couple tied the knot at Santan Brewing Company in Chandler, surrounded by 60 of their closest family and friends.
Since most of the guests were from out of town, the wedding crashers blended in.
“Our Alaska people didn’t know who our Arizona friends were and of course, our California cousins might not have known who our Alaskan cousins were,” said Katey. “So, it was just funny. Nobody was going to question that they were there. They looked like they actually belonged there.”
Finding the smiling uninvited guests
After the mass-text messages to her family failed to provide any leads on the identities of the wedding crashers, Katey took to social media.
She published a post on Facebook asking anyone if they recognized the couple because they wanted to “buy them a drink to thank them for attending” their wedding.
Within 36 hours of being published, the couple was found.
A woman identified herself and her husband as the smiling uninvited guests photographed.
“Look no further!” the woman wrote. “My husband wanted to dance with me and once we realized it was a wedding, we smiled for the camera, finished our dance, and left. It was just such a fun and good-looking time we had to stop in.”
The woman even added a picture and said it was taken before crashing the wedding as “proof” it was them.
“It’s so perfect because it was somebody that was fun enough to crash a wedding, but also someone fun enough to correspond on Facebook and say, ‘yeah it was us, look at the extra picture,’ Katey said. “It was very fun and lighthearted.”
A wedding for the books
The Lazenby’s hope the wedding crashers accept their invitation for a drink and get to meet them in person because they say they would also go uninvited to a wedding to leave a memorable night for someone else too.
“If I could crash a wedding I would,” said Saje. “Sneak in for a dance and leave? Sound great to me.”
The wedding crashers missed the food, cake, and churros, newlyweds said.
“It was an open bar, so hopefully they got a drink,” said Katey. “If they did, good for them.”
On top of possibly making two new friends, the newlyweds said strangers outside their venue also lent them their Classic Chevy Bel Air to take wedding photos with it.
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