Benson Boone Wears Wedding Dress for Salt Lake City Prank
benson boone turned a Salt Lake City bridal session into a viral prank in late March, stepping in as the bride’s stand-in for a first look reveal. He wore a wedding dress, veil and necklace over jeans while wedding videographer Hannah Gulbrandsen filmed the reaction at the Utah state Capitol.
Salt Lake City First Look
On a Sunday morning in late March, Gulbrandsen was driving to a first look bridal session when Sydni Burrup called with the idea: switch the bride out for the groom’s best friend in a wedding dress, a TikTok trend built for a reaction shot. Burrup had already reached out to Eric Magelsen’s childhood best friend, Benson Boone, and he agreed to show up at the session.
That put Boone at the center of the reveal, and it gave Gulbrandsen only minutes to adjust. She tried to get a second videographer to help capture the moment but could not find anyone on such short notice, so she shot it herself with the photographer, standing in front of Magelsen while Boone walked up behind him.
Benson Boone In Costume
Boone wore the wedding dress over jeans, then stepped out from behind a pillar, parted the veil and strutted toward the camera before giving a wink. Gulbrandsen said he was “totally in character, totally willing to do whatever,” and added, “I mean, clearly you can see in the video that he is just so into it and so excited to be there. I didn’t really have to give him any direction. He kind of just did his thing. He knows how to work the camera really well.”
Magelsen’s reaction carried the clip. “My heart’s beating really fast,” he said in the video, while Gulbrandsen described the shoot as “a little bit stressed” and later said, “This was the hardest part, honestly, because we had to stand in front of Eric and get a shot of Benson walking up behind him. And so I was with the photographer, and we were trying not to laugh,” and, “It was honestly one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
Viral Video Exposure
After the reveal, Gulbrandsen’s video of Magelsen seeing Boone went viral, turning a 20-minute shoot into far bigger reach than a standard bridal session would generate. For a wedding videographer, that kind of exposure can matter more than the prank itself: the clip did what wedding marketing usually tries to do, only faster and with a 25-year-old pop star in the frame.
The sharpest detail is still the same one the audience saw first: Boone in a wedding dress, walking straight at the groom. Salt Lake City got the joke, and the video did the rest.
