Facebook Connects UK Bride With Stranger Who Gave Stranded Bridesmaids a Ride to Wedding
The good Samaritan, Bethan Young, calls the attention "very overwhelming."
— -- A U.K. bride was able to thank in person the stranger who gave her bridesmaids and her mother a ride to her wedding after their car broke down, and it was all thanks to Facebook.
Bride Bethany Mouatt asked for help on Facebook Sunday, a day after tying the knot in North Wales, in an attempt to find the “lovely lovely lady” who picked up her three bridesmaids and mother after spotting them hitchhiking on the highway.
“On the way to the wedding the car that was driving my bridesmaids to the ceremony broke down en route, meaning my bridesmaids resorted to hitch hiking,” Mouatt wrote. “A lovely lovely lady pulled over on a dual carriageway, rescuing my bridesmaids and the mother of the bride, and brought them to the ceremony. We didn't have chance to thank the lady properly and don't have any contact details.”
Mouatt included with her post a photo of two of her bridesmaids in their gowns on the highway, each holding their bouquet in one hand and their thumb out on the other hand.
The photo quickly went viral and Mouatt’s post was shared more than 166,000 times.
Just hours later, Mouatt shared that she had found the good Samaritan, a woman named Bethan Young, who got the bridesmaids and mother-of-the bride to the wedding destination just in time for the ceremony.
Mouatt and Young met for the first time Tuesday on the ITV show “Good Morning Britain.”
“We had a good laugh before we went on TV,” Young told her local newspaper, The Daily Post. “It was absolutely lovely. ... I think we’ll stay in touch, I certainly hope so.”
Mouatt called it “fate” that Young was the stranger who came to her bridal party’s rescue.
“She was on her way to collect her engagement ring and funnily enough, her partner was one of the joiners who worked on the barn where we were to be married. It was like fate,” Mouatt told the U.K.’s The Telegraph prior to meeting Young.
Mouatt, whose dad gave Young a bottle of champagne before she left the wedding venue, also told the newspaper how she watched the whole drama unfold.
“We got a little further up the road and all I could see was three of my bridesmaids and my mum standing at the side of the road and my heart just sank,” Mouatt said of watching it all unfold. “I didn’t have my phone with me and there was nothing I could do, so I spent the following 15 minutes panicking about what was going on, not knowing what was about to unfold.”
Young described all of the attention, including the TV appearance, as “very overwhelming.”
“I never ever would have put money down to say this would happen a couple of days ago, even when I dropped off the bridesmaids and said goodbye to them,” Young told the Daily Post. “I still never ever in my wildest dreams would have imagined this happening.”