It's a conundrum that's bound to vex a guest at any wedding that allegedly costs $6.5m to stage: what can you bring to the event to make it special?
The bride and groom have already devised a week-long celebration staged at a luxury resort in Puglia – the Borgo Egnazia isn't so much a hotel as an actual village, constructed at a cost of 150m euros – featuring horseback riding, cocktail parties and, of course, the wedding itself, during which the bride wore a custom-made Giambattista Valli Haute Couture gown. They walked up the aisle to an original song of the groom's own devising while being showered with actual flower petals cut into the shape of hearts. What can you add? It's obviously no good just rocking up with an Argos voucher and a personalised greetings card from Moonpig.com.
Such is the dilemma that faced guests at Justin Timberlake's recent wedding to Jessica Biel. Under the circumstances, it's hard not to be impressed by the resourcefulness and out-of-the-box thinking of guest Justin Huchel, an LA estate agent and friend of the groom. Confronted with the question of what to get the couple that have everything, he came up with the perfect answer: some poor people to laugh at.
Huchel made an eight-minute long video shown at the wedding, featuring a variety of vagrants and street musicians interviewed on the streets of Los Angeles, captioned: "Greetings from your Hollywood friends who just couldn't make it!" At one juncture, an off-camera voice suggests that one toothless man may have "fooled around" with Biel; at another, a man who appears to be penniless suggests that he's sent the couple a wedding gift. Upping the ROFL-factor even further, one report claimed that some of those interviewed were "obviously intoxicated, mentally ill, or both, and at least one of them was entirely incapable of speaking".
Not just poor but mentally ill! Incapable of speaking! Ignoring the killjoys who seem to think that even in a week of thoroughly depressing news, this represents some new pinnacle of ghastliness, capable of withering your faith in humanity at a stroke to a husk the size of Hutchel's apparently tiny brain, Lost in Showbiz instead prefers to hail both the arrival of a hot new addition to the wedding planners' checklist. Flowers? Yes! Photographer? Yes! Best man's speech? Yes! Hilarious video humiliating the homeless and mentally ill? Yes! You're good to go!
