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A bride made her husband cry at the altar wearing a black Morticia Addams-style wedding dress after using a decoy for their first look

October 8, 2022

Amanda Kitchingman Roban-Cook surprised her husband by wearing two wedding dresses on their special day.Almida Meyer Photography

A bride in Washington surprised her husband by wearing a luring wedding dress for their first look.
But for the ceremony, Amanda Kitchingman Roban-Cook changed into a custom-made black wedding dress.
She told Insider that her husband was “disappointed” with the decoy, but cried when he saw the real one.

A Washington bride surprised her hubby in a black wedding dress after wearing a decoy for their first look that left him “disappointed” – pulling off the ultimate wedding day prank.

Amanda Kitchingman Roban-Cook, 28, and her husband Alex tied the knot in September after they started dating in 2016, she told Insider. The couple met while working as base EMTs on ambulance night shifts in Reno, Nevada. They currently live in Washington where Amanda works as a cardiac nurse and Alex is a firefighter.

After their 2020 engagement, Amanda said she began looking to bring her vision of the perfect wedding dress to life. Inspired by Morticia Addams from “The Addams Family,” she told Insider she wanted to design a caped black dress.

The couple during their first photo shoot.Almida Meyer Photography

But a month before the wedding, which took place an hour north of Seattle near a national park, they decided to take their vows privately.

“I had spent a good part of a year working on this dress, designing this dress, imagining what it would look like if I walked down the aisle and he looked at me and his reaction,” he said. she stated. But while making their vows in private, she said she feared she would miss the experience of seeing Alex’s live reaction to her dress as she walked down the aisle.

That’s when she got the idea to surprise Alex by wearing not one, but two wedding dresses on their special day.

The couple kiss on their wedding day.Almida Meyer Photography

Amanda told Insider she pulled out a silver dress she bought for $300 on Pinterest five years ago to wear for their first look and vows, tricking Alex into believing it was the real dress. bride.

One thing about their relationship that she shared that she loves is that they never stopped having fun together.

“We both kind of swore never to take ourselves too seriously and never to grow up,” Amanda said. “Especially at the start of our relationship, we played a lot of pranks on each other.”

When Alex saw her in the decoy dress, Amanda said she could see a hint of disappointment in his eyes as he had previously been so confident that she would wear black. “I don’t think anyone else would have really understood it, but I could just see the slightest ‘What?’ in her face,” Amanda said.

Amanda's dress featured a removable skirt. — Amanda’s dress featured a removable skirt.Almida Meyer Photography

But luckily, she had a “switcheroo” style in store. After their vows, with the help of two friends, she swapped her real dress – a Morticia Addams-inspired black Lace & Liberty wedding dress, which cost around $5,000 for a custom design.

“I wanted something very unique and very dramatic,” Amanda said of the dress, which featured a cape veil, a lace overlay with star details, and a removable skirt that she said made the made you feel like a princess.

Walking down the aisle with her father by her side, Amanda told Insider that seeing Alex’s reaction was worth it. “I saw Alex realize it was a totally different dress,” she said.

Amanda said that Alex — Amanda said Alex “completely lost his mind” when he saw her step out in her real wedding dress.Almida Meyer Photography

Not one to usually cry, Alex couldn’t help but shed a tear upon seeing Amanda in her real dress because it was so much more her style, she said.

“He just lost his mind, he had to turn away and ask for a handkerchief because he said he was about two seconds away from crying at the altar,” she said. And it wasn’t just Alex who was emotional seeing her in the black dress. Their wedding was intimate, she said, with just 50 guests in attendance.

“I think I made at least half the crowd cry,” Amanda said. “Our friends and extended family were blown away.”

And after spending so much time designing her perfect wedding dress, Amanda says she has no plans to keep it in stock. Amanda told Insider that her mother-in-law made a comment about how she could now “put the dress away and never look at it again” at the wedding, to which Amanda said absolutely not.