Some Great News

The story of John Lush and Susan Hedrick’s surprise, celebrity-studded wedding started with a viral tweet.

The post on Twitter included two videos, each one showing a man proposing to a woman at a gas station in the rain. The first video was already famous—a clip from the hit TV show “The Office” where Jim Halpert (played by John Krasinski) finally pops the question to Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). The second video showed Lush surprising Hedrick with a ring outside of a Wawa.

Like Pam, she said yes.

The couple, two high school educators living in Maryland, had started watching “The Office” together when they began dating. They grew to love the show—and each other, of course. So, when Lush (A&S ’04, EDUC ’05G) decided to propose to Hedrick, he knew that he wanted to recreate Jim’s proposal to Pam.

“We always had a connection to that scene and those two characters,” Lush says. They even planned part of their event to reflect the iconic TV wedding: At the end of the ceremony, the entire wedding party was going to dance down the aisle to Chris Brown’s “Forever,” just like their Dunder Mifflin counterparts.

Then, COVID-19 forced the couple to postpone their June 2020 wedding until May 2021. On a lark, Lush re-shared his tweet and invited Krasinski and Fischer to their rescheduled nuptials.

He didn’t really expect anything to come of it. And he certainly didn’t expect to receive an invitation from Krasinski in return—this one for he and his fiancée to appear on “Some Good News,” the popular feel-good web series co-created and hosted by the television star. But, as excited as the couple were, they couldn’t imagine that a much bigger surprise was in the works for their May 7th Zoom call.

“When we were lying in bed the night before, I was like, I wonder if he’ll bring on Pam?” Lush recalls. “But that was kind the extent of what I thought could happen, maybe she’d pop in and say congratulations. We never thought anything else would happen.”

It turned out that Krasinski and his crew had planned a way for them to wed in super-fan fashion.

“The truth is, I am able to attend,” he told the couple, referring to their wedding. “But only if it happens right now.”

The actor, who revealed that he had gotten ordained as a minister for the occasion, had virtually assembled Lush and Hedrick’s parents and members of their wedding party. After a song by country musician Zac Brown, the couple exchanged “I-do’s,” laughing along the way. They even got the end-of-ceremony dance they had planned—this time with the entire cast of “The Office” reunited via Zoom.

“It was very surreal,” Lush says. “I called my brother afterwards and I couldn’t even accurately tell him what happened because I couldn’t figure out if it happened that way or if I imagined it.”

More than 11 million people on YouTube have now watched Lush and Hedrick tie the knot and reunite one of TV comedy’s most beloved casts. For the couple—and surely for many viewers, too—the experience felt like a celebration of how love and good humor can thrive even through the most trying of times.

“Every Sunday, Krasinski just does such a good job of injecting and infusing positive vibes and stories into people’s lives all over the world,” says Lush. “To think that we’re a small part of that is something we’ll never be able to thank him for enough.”

The couple still plans to hold a formal ceremony next year—“Forever” dance included.

Watch the fun unfold on YouTube here.