BEACHWOOD, Ohio — The bride wore white, but she was seeing red Sunday afternoon.
Riva Weinstock Eisenberg was excited as she arrived for her wedding in suburban Cleveland, but her joy soon turned to annoyance when she noticed her brother had brought a llama to the ceremony. Granted, the animal, a male named Shockey, was decked out in a tuxedo and a yarmulke, but Eisenberg should not have been shocked when she arrived at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Cleveland East.
After all, her brother made her a promise five years ago.
Eisenberg’s reaction to the formally dressed wedding crasher was photographed and shared on Reddit by her brother, Mendl Weinstock, before heading out to news outlets and social media.
“Her face says she wishes you didn’t live up to that promise,” one Reddit user wrote in response.
“I’m reading ‘I swear to God, bro, I will cut you,’ on her face,” another poster wrote.
It all began as a joke five years ago, Cleveland Jewish News reported. Weinstock, now 21 and junior studying financial planning at the University of Akron, was traveling from Ohio to Indiana with his sister, who was 17 at the time, and two of her friends.
“She was talking about her wedding, planning it, making plans almost as if it was going to happen the next day even though she wasn’t dating anybody at the time,” Mendl told CNN.
The chatter began to annoy Weinstock, who blurted out his promise to bring a llama to her ceremony.
“It kind of was irking me a little bit,” Weinstock told Cleveland Jewish News. “So I told her, I’m not going to come out to the wedding just to get a reaction out of her because I was fed up with hearing about it. And she freaked out. …
"So, just to keep it going the most random thing that could pop into my head, I said, ‘I’m going to bring a llama to the wedding.’ And, of course, she freaks even more. So, eventually she gets so upset that she told me that the llama is invited to the wedding.”
In October 2019, Eisenberg got engaged and called her brother to share the news. An hour later she received a text, telling her his llama rental was confirmed, CNN reported.
“When my brother puts his mind to something, he gets it done,” Eisenberg told CNN. So at some point I had to accept it and decide that it was easier to get in on the joke than to fight it."
Renting the animal from a llama farm near Cleveland cost $400, but Weinstock said it was worth it.
“It was so worth it. I mean it was worth it just to see her reaction, but it’s been more worth it now that I’ve gotten all this internet fame,” he said.
“I was not too thrilled. I think my face in the picture pretty much wraps it up,” Eisenberg told CNN.
“I wish I kept my mouth shut for the past five years and had a big surprise because the reaction would have been 10 times better,” Weinstock told Cleveland Jewish News. “But, unfortunately, I love picking on my sister too much and just getting that reaction every single time for five years was too perfect.”