Welcome, friends, to the first in what I hope will be a recurring column in which I investigate whether recent celebrity news is real or a PR stunt. Now, you might be asking yourself what gives me the right to judge the intimate details of a complete stranger’s life and decide for myself if their most recent headline-making dalliance is real or something cooked up by their publicist? Well, I have been recapping The Bachelor for the last five seasons and seeing as how that show is a modern-day Ringling Brothers Circus that specializes in creating Kris Jenner-worthy storylines for the sake of our Monday night entertainment, I’d say that’s all the certification I need. Mmkay?
Moving on. Today I thought we’d focus on a headline that is dominating entertainment news feeds as well as five of my personal group chats. I’m, of course, talking about the selfie seen ‘round the world of Kristin Cavallari and her ex-Laguna Beach lover Stephen Colletti. Last night Kristin shared a selfie on Instagram of her SITTING ON HER EX’S LAP for the entire world to see with the caption “2004 or 2020?!” Subtle, Kristin, veeery subtle.
As you’ll recall, in March, Kristin and Jay Cutler announced that they were getting a divorce after 10 years of marriage. Soon after their very chill, very “we love co-parenting” divorce Instagram announcement, headlines started popping up accusing Jay of some alleged “misconduct.” There were cheating rumors, rumors that Jay was holding the family’s bank account hostage so Kristin couldn’t find another house to live in, and other wild accusations. In May they finally reached a joint custody agreement and have been laying relatively low ever since.
Which brings us to Tuesday night and the Instagram that launched 1,000 ships speculations. Are Kristin and Stephen back together? How long have they been talking? Will she plan a vacation to Cabo for old time’s sake and, more importantly, will Stephen get drunk and call Kristin a slut for dancing on the bar?
Ah, young love! So cute! So healthy!
These are the questions that keep me up at night. But is this for real or is this a mere PR stunt? Well, let’s take a look at the evidence.
From the outside (and probably all sides, tbh) this looks very much like a PR stunt. As we’ve mentioned, Kristin’s marriage is over. For those of you who watched Very Cavallari (guilty), you know that her marriage was arguably the most interesting thing about the show. What we used to love about Kristin during her Laguna Beach era (her mean girl antics, outrageous love triangles, and ability to make choppy bobs look chic) have been completely abandoned on Very Cavallari in favor of interviews about her pilates schedule, b-roll of her pretending to cook family meals, and modeling microscopic jewelry for her Instagram followers. Jay carries the show with his bare minimum personality while Kristin maintains the stage presence of a Cobb salad.
Speaking of Very Cavallari, in May Kristin announced that we wouldn’t be getting another season of the hit E! show and was instead focusing on this “new chapter” in her life. Booooo. I’m assuming this next chapter is going to focus on growing her jewelry “empire” which consists of mid-level expensive midi rings and layering necklaces. Let’s be honest here folks, the girl could really use a PR boost.
And she’s not the only one whose publicist is probably thirsty for more media coverage. According to Stephen Colletti’s IMDb page, his last television appearance was on a show called Everyone Is Doing Great about washed-up heartthrob actors “struggling to reclaim their previous level of success and relevance”, and the pilot appears to have been filmed in his basement during quarantine. Brb just going to copy and paste that entire entry to share with Merriam Webster in case they’re looking for a sentence to illustrate the definition of “rock bottom.”
Now, I can already hear some of you coming for me in the comments section with “bUt WhAt iF tHeY’rE jUsT fRiEnDs??” and, yes, they could just be friends! In fact, sources tell TMZ that the two have remained “good friends” since their break-up many eons ago, and that’s why they were seen together Tuesday night. Good friends that in the last 16 years have never posted or spoken about each other unless they’re in the midst of promoting their latest book or a trailer for the upcoming season of their show.
Final verdict: this is 100% a PR stunt. This wasn’t a nostalgic get-together with old friends or—and I hate to break my eighth grade heart—an epic Laguna Beach romantic reunion. If anything, it was a casual dinner and drinks situation that maybeee ended in a hookup on Stephen’s futon couch that triples as a bed and dining room table (IDK, I just feel like he has one of those), and Stephen pretending they’ll “totally do this again sometime” as he responds to a random’s DM on Instagram. Good luck, kids! Ever happiness to you both!
Images: @kristincavallari /Instagram (3); SheKnows.com (1); Giphy (1)
Whether you hate the wedding-industrial complex, are a bride planning a wedding and want to feel better about your own demands, or just need something to read, we’re doing a new series where we share the craziest, most out-of-touch wedding story we found on the internet that week. Submit your own crazy wedding stories to [email protected] with the subject line Crazy Wedding Story, and we just might feature yours. And make sure to follow @BetchesBrides on Instagram and subscribe to our podcast, Betches Brides.
Welcome back to another Crazy Wedding Story of the week. This one is especially crazy and convoluted. It has everything: a ridiculously demanding bride, angry family members threatening to sue, and a twist you definitely won’t see coming. You’re so welcome that I’ve brought you this juicy incident to brighten your Wednesday. I know, I know—I deserve a f*cking medal. Or, in lieu of a medal, I will also accept $30,000 in donations—you’ll see why in a sec. I can’t really give an introduction to this story without giving too much of it away, so let’s just cut right to the chase.
The Set-Up
Today’s crazy wedding story comes to us via the Choosing Beggars subreddit, which proves in and of itself to be gold. The premise of the subreddit is exposing choosy beggars, i.e., people who expect ridiculous freebies for no good reason. Highly recommend for your procrastinating-at-work pleasure. So when someone posted screenshots to r/choosingbeggars of a Facebook post in which a bride reveals she’s canceling her wedding after receiving a whopping $30,000 in donations, the post quickly went viral on the subreddit. Just in case we have some dirty deleting on our hands, here’s the screenshot of what went down:
HOLY SH*T. First of all, it’s nuts that this couple managed to raise $30,000 BEFORE the wedding. But that’s obviously not the real issue here. How in the actual sh*t does someone think it’s okay to collect tens of thousands of dollars from their friends and family, then pull a bait-and-switch? Then ask for MORE money and gifts?? The audacity of these people. I would be mildly impressed if I didn’t want to slap the sh*t out of them.
The thing with donating money to a cause is that you typically expect the money you give will, in fact, go to that cause. Sooooo flip-flopping and saying that you suddenly need to use that money for a lavish honeymoon BEFORE you’re even married (which, let’s be real, is simply a vacation) and to get yourselves financially stable, makes actually zero sense.
Here’s a hot tip: if you’re not financially stable, you probs shouldn’t be taking a $30k honeymoon. I’m no business insider, but that seems like pretty legit advice, right?
Also, you know that “rescheduled wedding” ain’t happenin’ and this is just a blatant cash grab. If I knew this person, not only would they not get another gift from me for their honeymoon, but they would never see another cent from me as long as we both shall live.
The Backlash
NATURALLY, every family member, guest, and wedding party member rightly freaked the f*ck out. The screenshots for you, my loves:
There’s so much more than even these, but can I get a rich uncle who just gives me like $12k? That’d be tight. Also, can we not with the one bridesmaid that’s like “I gave you $200 and I love you—I’m such a good friend”? Alright, Gretchen Wieners, take it easy.
The Plot Thickens
If the initial post and comments seemed a little wild even for the average psycho wedding story, you aren’t alone in being all, “hmmm.”
The detectives at Buzzfeed did some sleuthing and it looks as though this entire incident could have been a marketing ploy by some bullsh*t company. I mean, good job, marketing assholes. The post went up on Reddit on Monday and quickly was shared, like, everywhere because of how purely insane it is.
More screenshots of the family responses popped up on Monday night, but only via some f*cking website we’ve never heard of called CapturedIt.club, which seems a little weird. When it did go up, literally NOTHING ELSE was on the website. Sketch.
Any additional “comments” from family members had the Captured It Club watermark, which, like, again, seems a bit odd. If these are real screenshots, why are they watermarked with some rando website’s name? Damn, how did none of us pick up on this? I feel like a fool. Even more questionable, none of the Facebook posts had any reactions, which is pretty weird. You would think something of this caliber would be a sea of angry face emojis, wow faces, and dislike buttons. The nail in the coffin, though, is that GoFundMe has no record of a bride named Pam and her supposed fiancé, Edward. And despite mentioning an Amazon registry in her original post, no such Amazon registry for a Pam and Edward exists.
And, after Buzzfeed published their article exposing the fact that this whole story may have been a PR stunt, capturedit.club took everything down off their website and replaced it with this screenshot:
So… it looks like we’ve all been hustled, scammed, bamboozled, led astray. But now I have more questions than answers. Who/what is Ben Hobbs? What the f*ck is the point of this capturedit.club website in the first place? Why were we all so eager to believe that someone would scam their friends and family out of $30,000?
I guess I’ve got to hand it to the people behind this weird-ass website for fooling us all. But, honestly, I’m kind of sad this isn’t real. What does that say about me? Perhaps I’ll grapple with these existential dilemmas in next week’s crazy wedding story.
Images: Vitaliy Karimov / Shutterstock.com; Choosing Beggars / Reddit (6)
