Cat Threatens to Spoil Wedding Ceremony, Photographer Comes to the Rescue
When a cat named Grayson suddenly appeared on a wedding aisle in North Carolina as the guests had already taken their seats in anticipation of the bride’s arrival, wedding photographer Lindsey McKenzie suddenly faced a tricky dilemma.
While the cat was evidently being adorable — scratching his back by rolling around on the grass — McKenzie thought about the enormous ball gown wedding dress the bride was wearing and the logistics of how she would traverse Grayson. After all, cats can be notoriously stubborn.
“This was unprecedented,” McKenzie tells PetaPixel. “What was I supposed to do in this situation? I had not asked my bride if she was a cat person or absolutely hated cats during our meetings and phone calls in the months leading up to the wedding.”
Looking back, McKenzie ponders whether she should add a section to her questionnaire titled: ‘What to do if an animal of some sort lays in the aisle during their ceremony’.
“We’re in North Carolina, for crying out loud! Anything is possible,” she says.
But as McKenzie saw the bride exit the house in the distance, she realized she had about one minute to act.
“I went up and nudged him with my foot. He scooted to the side of the aisle and flipped onto his back again. He was in a silly, goofy mood. I have my silly, goofy times… but this was not one of them,” the photographer says.
With hundreds of eyes watching her every move, and confronted with a cat she had never met before, McKenzie said a quick prayer and picked Grayson up, hoping he wouldn’t flip out.
“I scooped him up with my harness and two cameras hanging off of me, everyone waiting to see what was going to happen… I escorted Grayson and his chunky booty to the back of the ceremony, out of sight from the altar,” she says.
“He meowed in protest, but that was the extent of his argument. He sat in the grass where I placed him behind the chairs for a moment, and then pranced away and out of sight, happy with the attention he received.”
Moments later, the bride walked down the aisle, oblivious to the cat-astrophe that had just been narrowly averted.
“The groom cried, everyone was focused on them and the moment. And it was a beautiful ceremony. The bride had no idea about Grayson until afterwards, I told her I had to move a cat out of her way. She laughed about it, giddy on the high of just being married.”
McKenzie shared a Reel of the Grayson incident on her Instagram and TikTok, which racked up a combined 250,000 views.
McKenzie says that she has “never had a situation like this arise during a ceremony,” but wedding photographers often have to go above and beyond image-making.
“It doesn’t matter if there is a ‘coordinator’. From my experience, the photographer always does just as much, if not more for the day,” she says.
“The timeline, the well-being of guests, the happiness of the bride and groom, and apparently cat guests.”
It turns out Grayson lives at the venue in Wilmington, North Carolina, and McKenzie — who is the proud owner of three cats herself — used her feline know-how to deftly handle the situation.
Lindsey McKenzie Photography operates from North Carolina. You can find her on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and her website.
Image credits: Courtesy of Lindsey McKenzie
