- Back in 2010, a bride named Samantha appeared on TLC’s Four Weddings, letting viewers into her Fourth of July-themed wedding
- On April 22, 2025, her grown daughter Hannah — who served as her 13-year-old maid of honor that day — opened up on TikTok about how her mom, who was visibly drunk on her wedding day, is doing now
- Hannah also shared texts from her mom that explained some of the thought process around her appearance
Do you remember TLC’s Four Weddings? We now have an update on one of the show’s most interesting events.
The reality series, which premiered on TLC in 2010, featured four brides with four different weddings in the same geographic area. The brides attended each other’s weddings, and then judged the weddings in the categories of dress, food, venue and the overall experience. The bride with the most points won a honeymoon.
On April 21, a TikToker recapped what she called her “most requested” episode of Four Weddings: season 2, episode 5, titled “…And a Swarm of Ants.” The episode, which aired in October 2010, is famous amongst fans, in part, because it featured a Fourth of July wedding at which the bride, Samantha, was drunk. Samantha, at the time 39, said that she decided to get married that day because of her love for America.
A woman who identified herself as Samantha’s daughter Hannah, who served as her mom’s maid of honor in the TV wedding, responded to the video on TikTok on April 22, giving an update about her mom and answering viewer questions about the show.
“My mom is Samantha, the fourth of July bride from Four Weddings. I was her 13-year-old maid of honor,” she said in the video. She showed a photo of herself with her mom on the wedding day, complete with their red, white and blue bouquets.
“Since it wasn’t her first wedding, I think that her making me her maid of honor was sort of a quirky olive branch to me as the oldest daughter,” she explained. “I was not particularly happy about anything happening in this episode, which you can probably tell. I’m kind of like scowling through the wedding vows.”
Hannah shared that her mom and her then-stepdad ultimately divorced about four or five years after the episode aired. “And my mom has since remarried again, in a stable relationship, doing really well,” she said, adding that her mom “did not” get married on any holiday this time around.
She said that though her mom’s politics were more in line with the Fourth of July wedding at the time, she’s now in her “liberal hippie era.” She noted, “In general, I think, is not the type of person anymore that she kind of comes across as, rightfully so, in the episode.”
“The weirdest thing I think for me was that this was a pretty dark time, in my life. This was a pretty difficult time because of everything going on in my family, and it is kind of weird to see it like pop up periodically on the Internet,” Hannah shared. She also joked that the scene where her mom has a nip slip was “crazy.”
Hannah answered follow-up questions in a second video. She shared that filming the wedding wasn’t “super intrusive” and the crew was just three or four cameras. She said she did feel uncomfortable that they filmed the dance floor, but chalked it up mostly to the fact that she was 13.
“They did put my toast in, though, and I think they did me dirty in that, because I’m getting kind of choked up in that toast, and it’s not in a sweet and happy way,” she said. “It’s in a ‘I really don’t want today to be happening, and I’m very stressed,’ kind of way, but that’s fine. You don’t know.”
One person commented, “Your mom drunkenly saying, ‘Happy Birthday, America!’ lives rent-free in the back of my head. Glad to hear you and she are doing well.” Hannah replied that it’s a favorite in her family, too, writing, “hehehe trust me when I say my siblings and I still quote it ALL the time.”
On April 23, Hannah shared that she had talked to her mom about the episode and the interest it received on TikTok. Her mom’s response was, “Oh, no,” she said.
Hannah shared screenshots of her mom’s texts about appearing on the show. “My only regret [about] the show was that I put my young children on TLC,” she wrote. “I do cringe looking at the footage.” Though in the episode, her wedding was the third, in real life it was the first they filmed, and she felt “weird” having “total strangers … and a camera crew” there.
Samantha also shared positive memories of the other bride’s weddings and added that she happily gave high scores to the other brides because she “forgot it was a competition.” She particularly loved the milk and cookies that Anna, who was 19, had at her wedding; she said it was the couple “embracing their youth.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“I think our episode gave the producers the template they used for all the other seasons: the messy one, the sweet one, the straight laced one and the bitch,” Samantha wrote. “Kind of like Sex and the City but much lower brow.”
“She’s really been enjoying reading everyone’s comments here,” Hannah said, thanking “everyone” for being “so nice.”
All 10 seasons of Four Weddings are streaming now on Max.
Read the full article here
