Exclusive: Father of the Bride Surprises Couple at Disney Wedding With a Celeb Performance
No better way to amp up the romance than by adding in an element of surprise. Country duo Dan + Shay recently took time out of their headlining tour to visit Disney World, with an extra special performance at one lucky couple’s Disney wedding.
The pair crashed the wedding reception of Morgan Tilton and John Glennon of New Jersey at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., on Saturday, March 2. In a video clip from the event, the newlyweds can be seen looking stunned as Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney take the stage for an acoustic version of their hit, “Speechless.”
(Credit: Disney Fairy Tale Weddings)
(Credit: Disney Fairy Tale Weddings)
“I’ve crashed a lot of weddings. Never actually been invited to crash one before, so this is really cool,” Mooney joked after the fact. “They usually kick us out of these things.”
Tilton and Glennon, meanwhile, had no idea that the country duo was going to crash their wedding, though Tilton says her father had been “joking about an ‘A lister’ coming to the wedding for about 10 months” leading up to the big day. Among the celebrities he hinted at were Luke Bryan and Kenny Chesney. “But it was joked about to the point where I said, ‘Okay, this is getting old,'” Tilton tells The Knot.
Behind the scenes, Dan + Shay worked with Tilton’s father and Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings team to put the whole surprise together, a task that was indeed upwards of 10 months in the making.
“From what I gather, he spoke to the talent agency or record label and was hitting a wall,” Tilton says. “Then he brought in Disney to make more direct connection; who turns down Disney?” From there, Tilton says, he worked with their Disney wedding planner Kristie to bring the whole surprise to fruition. “He even kept it a surprise from my mom!” she says. “I think this was so hard. He had to pretend he didn’t know certain Disney people or things about the wedding that he (in my mind) wouldn’t have paid attention to.”
(Credit: Disney Fairy Tale Weddings)
(Credit: Disney Fairy Tale Weddings)
“Weddings are a huge moment in the timeline of someone’s life, which is why we’re so grateful when we find out our music is involved,” Smyers told Billboard. “It’s even more special when we get to witness it first hand. Morgan and John are great people, and we wish them a long and happy marriage. And free Dan + Shay tickets for life!”
The wedding, which included 170 of the couple’s closest family and friends, “was more than we could have ever dreamed of,” Tilton says. “We had a bit of everything from Minnie and Mickey, a confetti cannon to fireworks, but the whole start to the day was when the doors opened. It was the first moment that actually felt real for me. I had been running around for days and here I was finally walking down the most stunning aisle I’ve been dreaming of since I was a little girl to the most amazing man.”
Of the moment when Dan + Shay appeared onstage to serenade the newlyweds, Tilton says she “just started to cry because it was so amazing and overwhelming.”
“Now every time the song comes on the radio, it has a whole new meaning,” she says. “All of our guests have said they will never listen to the song the same way again.”
(Credit: Disney Fairy Tale Weddings)
(Credit: Disney Fairy Tale Weddings)
“Speechless” holds a special spot in Smyers and Mooney’s own lives, too. The pair, who released the music video for their song last May, incorporated clips from both of their own weddings into the three-and-a-half minute video.
“The lyrics of the song were inspired by the moment we first saw our wives walking down the aisle on our wedding days,” Smyers told The Knot. “We wanted to set the visual tone by accompanying the song with a wedding-themed video, and using our own wedding footage felt the most genuine and authentic.”
Smyers married his longtime love, Abby Law, in May 2017, and Mooney got hitched in October of that same year, to fiancee Hannah Billingsley.
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