Strangers paid $40 each to attend this Long Island wedding. The bride says they were the life of the party.

A dance remix of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” blasted through a crowded venue. It was the first song of the night at Kimberly Gedeon and Jason England’s wedding reception, held at The Fox Hollow in Woodbury in August, and the bride was hoping it would get the party started.

To her delight, one group of guests instinctively jumped out of their seats and headed to the dance floor. But their arrival was the first time that Gedeon met any of them: They were total strangers.

"Those wedding crashers definitely matched my energy," Gedeon said.

Gedeon and England used Not a Wedding Crasher, a service launched earlier this year that helps couples fill seats left vacant by last-minute cancellations or to meet minimum headcounts.

Couples create profiles on the website with their wedding details, set a price per seat and invite strangers to apply to attend their big day. Applicants must undergo identity verification and tell the couple why they’d be a great addition to their festivities.

The service can make up potential financial losses or just add new energy into the mix, which is what Gedeon and England wanted. Couples generally select a price between $25 to $75 (although there is no maximum limit), and the platform collects 20% of the total.

Wedding bells (and bills)

Jeff and Karina Besen, of San Diego, got the idea for their company while brainstorming date-night ideas last year.

"You can’t just go to a wedding," without an invitation, Jeff Besen acknowledged. "At least not morally."

Guests sometimes bail after a couple has submitted its final headcount, leaving them on the hook for the seat. Not a Wedding Crasher provides a possible solution.

"Now there's an opportunity for them to fill those seats with people who want to be there, and will make a monetary contribution to attend," the co-founder said.

In 2024, the average wedding cost on Long Island was $54,600, according to data provided by The Knot, a wedding planning platform. The figure was higher than the national average that year, of $33,000. Additionally, 39% of Long Island couples will go over-budget, The Knot found.

It’s free for couples to list their weddings on the Not A Wedding Crasher website. The minimum seat price is $25, and couples can go up from there: One couple getting married in Texas recently set their price at $150 per seat, Besen said.

Heather Cunningham is the owner of Brides of Long Island, an organization that offers resources and community support for those planning weddings on Long Island. It has a Facebook group with more than 27,000 members.

Filling seats with strangers at a wedding isn’t a new concept on Long Island, but selling them is, she said. Since its founding, Cunningham said brides have posted in the group about needing seat fillers on their wedding day. These seats are usually scooped up by future brides who are considering getting married at the same venue and would like to see it in action.

"We’ve been seeing this happen for almost a decade already," said Cunningham, who founded Brides of Long Island in 2016.

As for turning that into a business, "I do think it’s a really interesting concept," she said. "There are definitely people who just genuinely love weddings, and I feel like as long as everyone is transparent and comfortable with it, there’s an audience for it."

Bring on the crashers

Gedeon and England needed to fill about a dozen seats for their wedding; they just weren’t sure how to do it.

"We initially had a budget for 100 guests, and we really did not want to surpass that," said Gedeon, 35, who is a technology journalist. "We did not want to just have 85 guests and then have empty seats, just throwing money out the window.”

While scrolling through TikTok, Gedeon found Not A Wedding Crasher. The couple priced their seats at $40 each, hoping to find some strangers who would help light up the dance floor on their big day.

"We wanted to find somebody who was willing to absorb the entire experience," said England, 36, also a technology journalist. "We don’t want people sat in the corner by themselves; we want it to be a party."

The couple didn’t have to wait long for applications to come in.

"We had a flood of interested people," said Gedeon.

There are several reasons someone might apply to become a wedding crasher, Besen said. In addition to the out-of-the-box date night idea, the concept has also attracted engaged couples in need of wedding inspiration, and those who usually work events like this that can now be on the other end of the experience.

When Plainview resident Jen Halfant, 37, first saw a TikTok posted by the Besens on her feed, she was skeptical, but "it immediately piqued my interest," she said.

"I have been wanting to do more things by myself that were fun," Halfant said. "And I thought this would be a really cool way to celebrate love; it doesn't matter who it is."

During the cocktail hour, "I made it my mission to figure out who else was crashing," Halfant said. It turned out, she and the couple had a mutual friend. It made mingling easier, plus the bride and groom were totally fine with the crashers identifying themselves as such to other guests when asked the quintessential wedding question: "How do you know the couple?"

There were two tables of crashers at the wedding, Halfant recalled: The couple sitting next to her was retired and saw the experience as something fun and new to do together. What made this wedding experience different from others, Halfant said, was the lack of pressure and expectations.

"It was fun to see the variety of people there," Halfant said.

Gedeon said she recognized the risks while selecting guests for her own wedding.

"No matter how much I may vet these people and check out their social media, who knows what may happen," she said. "Maybe they might be a little bit too drunk; you don’t really know their personalities."

But, she pointed out,   family member or friend present similar uncertainties.

Time to celebrate

In the end, the crashers were a perfect addition to Gedeon and England’s celebration, the couple agreed. England, whose family is based in the United Kingdom, anticipated some “culture shock” when his guests experienced their first American wedding. Ultimately, “they loved it, and the wedding crashers were a really good social glue that brought everybody together,” he said.  

The crashers were “absolutely the life of the party,” Gedeon said. One brought an instant film camera and gave the bride a collection of photos at the end of the night; another presented a DVD of the 2005 comedy “Wedding Crashers” with a monetary gift inside.

Gedeon was surprised by the display of love from total strangers.

"I didn't even really know them, and they just showed me so much support,” the bride said. “Honestly, I wish I had invited more wedding crashers.”

The company is still new, and Besen has even asked some guests to create content to show what their experiences have been like, to spread the word. That’s what Halfant did. She said she would attend another wedding as a crasher "in a heartbeat," and she would fly solo again too.

Her advice to anyone interested in using the service: "Don't let the fact that it seems crazy stop you."