When a couple is getting married, they often have to endure the scrutiny and unasked-for opinions of their family and friends. For one engaged couple, this included their preteen nieces.
Breona Carter and Nehemy Manigat are currently going viral on TikTok after the bride-to-be’s 11- and 9-year-old nieces recreated their engagement video shoot in an attempt to call them out for being “corny.”
“They were just laughing so hard,” Carter, 22, told TODAY.com. “They’re like, ‘Oh my God, why are you posing like that?’ And then they were like, ‘Obviously, we’re going to show you what you guys look like.’”
In a video titled, “This shouldn’t be as funny as it is,” which has amassed over a million views, Carter’s two nieces, A’rya Williams, 11, and Aaliyah Williams, 9, hilariously recreate the behind-the-scenes portion of Carter’s engagement shoot with Manigat.
“POV: Your nieces think your bts of your engagement shoot is corny and mock you,” reads the text at the beginning of a video that transitions from romantic shots of Carter and Manigat posing in bridal garb to shots of her nieces attempting the poses themselves in their kitchen.
From smoldering stares into each other’s eyes to romantic hand-holding and “cheesy” laughter, the Williams sisters match their aunt and uncle-to-be shot for shot.
The sisters told TODAY.com that among other reasons, they found the shoot’s location, Los Angeles’ Union Station, “cheesy and corny” from their perspective.
“They’re at a train station,” Aaliyah told TODAY.com. “They’re in the streets.”
A’rya added, “Yeah, I didn’t get why they were in the middle of the street.”
Carter told the publication she only agreed to allow the cinematic roast on the condition she could post the video to TikTok.
“I didn’t think it was gonna do anything,” she explained. “Really, I was just like, it’s a funny video, and I guess everybody else thought it was funny.”
Many in the comments were both amused and sympathetic to the pitfalls of life with a preteen or two as your constant critics.
The virality of the engagement shoot send-up comes as engagement photos have grown in popularity. While the practice of sitting for formal engagement and wedding portraits has been around for centuries, posting them to social media has become a divisive trend. For some, sharing them is an act of sharing joy, while for others, it is received as branding the wedding in question as an “event.”
In the case of Carter, she said, “I wanted to be able to look back and genuinely be happy and like really say that we fully took in everything and documented every moment.”
However, the bride-to-be did admit, “I love content.”
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