When Alaina Grenier, 26, found her mom’s 1991 wedding footage a few months before her own wedding, she got an idea.
Alaina’s mom, Anna Hall, had chosen her older sister, Debbie Miller, to be her maid-of-honor. In the video, Debbie walks down the aisle wearing a pink pastel dress.
Like her mom, Alaina grew up close to her aunt Debbie. “People in our family used to call me her shadow because wherever she was found, I was right there,” Alaina tells TODAY.com.
After watching her mom’s wedding video, she had a thought: Why not pick Debbie to be her matron of honor, too?
“It just made sense; she’s just the person that’s always been there,” Alaina says. “She’s quick to forgive, she’s patient, and she’s loving.”
When Alaina told her mother about her plan to ask Debbie to be her matron of honor, she says “she loved it.”
“She loved it just because she knows that we’ve always had that special bond,” Alaina says.
And so, nearly 35 years after she was Anna’s matron of honor, Debbie made an entrance at Alaina's wedding to Tyler Grenier. The wedding unfolded this past October at a farmhouse in Urbana, Ohio, the town where Debbie and Anna grew up.
“Walking down the aisle at the wedding was a challenge because I was wearing four inch heels,” Debbie tells TODAY.com. “The first time I didn’t worry about if I could walk in heels or anything else. This time it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh!’”
After the wedding, Alaina posted a video comparing the footage of Debbie at both weddings to her TikTok page. The caption read, "My aunt was my mom's matron of honor 34 years ago so it was only fitting she was mine too."
The similarities in the footage are apparent — especially in the little lopsided smile Debbie wore at both weddings.
“She did the same little smirk she did during mine,” Alaina says of the original video.
Debbie also noted the differences between the two weddings. First, there was the styling, “particularly in hair and makeup,” Debbie tells TODAY.com.
Debbie says each wedding was equally emotional, but for different reasons.
“Both times when I was walking towards the venue, I got a little teary-eyed thinking about the memories, both at Anna’s wedding and Alaina’s,” she says.
“When I was the matron of honor in my sister’s wedding, I was watching my baby sister become a bride and grow up. This year, I was watching the baby of my baby sister become a bride and grow up. This was both surreal yet bittersweet, bringing back the nostalgia of walking down the aisle for my sister all over again. My baby is all grown up now."
