{"id":342573,"date":"2025-10-30T07:05:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/342573\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T07:05:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T07:05:12","slug":"lord-of-the-rings-star-elijah-wood-crashes-couples-wedding-in-hobbiton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/342573\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood crashes couple\u2019s wedding in Hobbiton"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lord of the Rings<\/a> star Elijah Wood<\/a> shocked one lucky couple when he appeared at their nuptials held at the Hobbiton film set in Matamata, New Zealand<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The 44-year-old actor rose to fame in the early 2000s playing hobbit Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson\u2019s films based on JRR Tolkien\u2019s novels. He reprised his role in the subsequent The Hobbit film trilogy (2012\u20132014). <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just finishing the signing of the paperwork when all of a sudden Elijah Wood started to walk down the aisle,\u201d Rotorua couple Sharik and Jessica Burgess-Stride told the Waikato Herald<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Sharik recalled that he did a \u201cdouble-take\u201d when he saw the actor because he didn\u2019t believe Wood could actually be at his wedding. \u201cAt first I thought, nah that\u2019s not him \u2013 then oh s***, it is him!\u201d said Sharik. <\/p>\n

Wood took the couple\u2019s hands, congratulated them and posed for a few photos before rejoining the group of people he was attending the tourist attraction with. <\/p>\n

The groom said it had been \u201cthe perfect day\u201d, adding that he had considered the rainy weather to be a \u201csign of good luck\u201d\u00a0\u2013 a prediction that turned out to be true given Wood\u2019s unexpected appearance. <\/p>\n

The couple, who are originally from Australia, met at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales where they became best friends and dated for seven years before tying the knot. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sharik shared that he has been an avid Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fan since childhood, revealing that their wedding ceremony and his vows included several references to the films. <\/p>\n

Per the Waikato Herald, Wood and other Lord of the Rings cast members were in New Zealand for the Armageddon Expo in Auckland. <\/p>\n

The star was reportedly encouraged to crash the wedding ceremony by the couple\u2019s photographer Cath Ullyett after he had stopped to watch Sharik and Jessica sign their certificate. <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the couple had finished signing, I rushed around to meet him and asked him to come and have a few photos with the couple,\u201d she shared on social media. <\/p>\n

\u201cBeing the gentleman he is, he didn\u2019t want to interfere, however, with some friendly encouragement he stepped in and was welcomed by all.\u201d<\/p>\n

The photographer signed off: \u201cThank you Elijah for making their special day that much more memorable. We all loved it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":342574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,53,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-342573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115461850782427695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}