![\"Maid](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-133158081,imgsize-242008,width-400,height-225,resizemode-4\/maid-of-honour-shocks-bride-by-playing-her-old-voice-memo-during-wedding-toast.jpg\" "\\"Pic")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWhen Caroline Coady Powell, 26, picked her lifelong best friend Anna Cooper, 25, as the maid of honour, she never thought it would unfold into something the world would obsess over! On her friend\u2019s big day, Anna was supposed to deliver an emotional toast, telling the newlyweds how perfect they are as a couple. Instead, she played an old voice memo that left the bride speechless!<\/p>\n The moment Anna pressed play on her phone during her maid of honour speech, she knew she was about to destroy her lifelong friend in the best possible way! The 45-second audio clip was a condensed version of something the bride had recorded years ago. She had forgotten it even existed, so she never saw it coming. The whole thing was captured and later posted on TikTok, where it has raked in over 20 million views.So, what was in the voice memo? It was the recording Caroline sent to Anna hours after she met the man she would eventually marry! Caroline was talking to her best friend about someone she had just met and thought was nice. This was long before she knew she would eventually marry him.\u2018Hearing it again felt incredibly sweet and surreal. I\u2019m so grateful to have that moment preserved, and even more grateful that Anna trusted her intuition to include it in her speech,\u2019 the bride told People.<\/p>\n Caroline and Anna have been in each other\u2019s lives since 2004, when the latter\u2019s family moved into a Nashville neighbourhood. Soon, the neighbours\u2019 kids became close friends. Two kids only a year apart in age tend to do that. Over the next two decades, their connection became the kind of friendship that survives college, careers, and distance, the kind you actually work to keep alive!Their voice memos are epic, some even the length of \u2018podcast episodes\u2019, where they\u2019d vent, laugh, and decompress about whatever was happening in their lives at that moment. And one of them was sent by Caroline on September 17, 2023, when she attended a wedding where she met her future husband, Colton Powell. She had heard about him earlier through mutual friends but had never actually met him, mostly because he\u2019d been away at law school in California.He almost didn\u2019t make it to the wedding that day. If his schedule had been different, if he\u2019d decided differently about that last-minute trip, Caroline wouldn\u2019t have walked up to him at the rehearsal dinner.\u201cI was a bridesmaid, and we ended up meeting at the rehearsal dinner. It\u2019s crazy to think that if he hadn\u2019t made that last-minute decision, we may never have met,\u201d Caroline said. After returning from the wedding, Caroline told Anna all about Powell.\u201cI was slap-happy and so giddy, so naturally I sent a seven-minute voice memo to Anna. I definitely do not remember it being seven minutes long, but I\u2019m not shocked by that at all,\u201d Caroline recalled.But she never thought Anna would save that recording.\u201cIn the full seven-minute recording, it was so obvious [Caroline] was completely smitten with Colton. I already knew who he was, I knew he was a great guy, and I knew they\u2019d met in such an organic way through mutual friends, so I felt like there was real potential there,\u201d Anna said.So, when the couple were getting married, Anna knew what should be in her wedding toast. She wanted to make a meaningful gesture for the couple, and this voice memo was too perfect to discard. She edited out some parts and kept the perfect ones for the toast.\u201cI was really intentional about what I included, and I know Caroline well enough to know she\u2019d love it. I know her family well enough to know they\u2019d love it too, and I knew Colton would love hearing what she had to say about him just 24 hours after they met. If I\u2019d had any doubt that it wasn\u2019t the right thing to do, I never would\u2019ve played it,\u201d Anna said.The bride had \u2018absolutely no idea\u2019, but once she heard it, she was in tears, and so were the attendees.<\/div>\nThe
Best friends for life<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n