Blake Hall
Just as your military career can take you to far away places all over the world, it can also keep you from important events happening at home. Like, for instance, a big family wedding.
If you can’t make it to a family wedding because you are deployed, there is a solution for that.
A life-sized cardboard cutout.
Sure, this is a last resort option, because weddings are special and no one wants to miss that milestone (or the open bar). But if all else fails and you still want to show up in family pictures, cardboard is the way to go.
Many military families have done this. In the above photo, a sailor got to attend his brother’s wedding via cardboard surrogate. His collection of wedding photos went viral.
Here’s another photo of a group of groomsmen who made sure their buddy was represented while he was at training.
Lance Corporal Ben Smith was serving in Afghanistan when his sister married, but his grey replica features in most of the wedding photos. See if you can spot him.
When an Arkansas couple learned that their best man Robbie Wells would be deployed with the Army National Guard during their wedding, they photoshopped his face onto Daniel Craig’s body so he could stand at the altar with them anyways.
From the small sample we pulled from the outer reaches of the internet, we can tell that there are many ways to spin the cardboard cutout to fit your wedding needs.