When newlyweds Maria and Rylee Medina sat down to relive their special day by flipping through their wedding photos, they didn’t expect to find a surprise star — Maria’s 19-year-old brother, Jose Medina.
Three months after their July 19 ceremony at The Gahanna Sanctuary in Ohio, the couple noticed that among their digital wedding pictures were dozens of solo shots of Jose — all in different poses, as if he were the guest of honor at his own private session.
“We were clicking through them and saw there were back-to-back pictures taken of just him,” Maria said. “We immediately started laughing and asking ourselves, ‘What the hell? When did this even happen?’”
Amused by the discovery, the women posted a TikTok video showing themselves laughing as they scrolled through the photos. The onscreen caption read, “pov ur little brother has his own photoshoot in the middle of your wedding reception,” while their video caption joked, “had more solo pics than any of the bridal party too like 😭😭😭😭.”
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At one point in the clip, one of them laughed, “Three thousand dollars! Why do you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven pictures on our photo album?”
Maria later sent the video to Jose, who laughed about it — unaware it would become a viral sensation. Since being posted on Oct. 19, the clip has racked up over 12.6 million views and 2.6 million likes.
Maria said her brother wasn’t trying to sneak in a free photo session. “He said he forgot he’d even asked for those,” she explained. “He was just trying to be funny.”
The couple, Jose, and their photographer, McKaylee Courtright, were all surprised by the viral attention. “Our photographer said he asked and she delivered. She thought it was crazy that it went viral,” Maria said. “My brother and I think it’s really nuts that he went viral like that. We posted it mostly for ourselves, but it’s great to see how many people found it funny.”
Jose’s newfound fame has followed him to college in Cincinnati, where Maria says classmates have been teasing him. “He’s loving the clout,” she added.
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TikTok commenters had plenty of fun with the situation, joking that Jose had found the perfect opportunity for dating-app content. One person quipped, “He had a Hinge photoshoot at ur wedding,” while another added, “The fact the photographer edited it too is HILARIOUS.”
“Babyyyy he was getting you your money’s worth,” one comment read, while the top-liked response summed it up perfectly: “Me when I look fly and big sis is footing the bill 😭😂.”
