COLUMBUS, OH — Wedding guests at the Saturday evening reception of Megan and Tyler Hanrahan reported that groomsman Brad Pesch spent the entirety of the ceremony locked in a stall of the Sheraton Capitol Square men’s room, watching NLCS Game 6 on a cracked iPhone propped against a roll of toilet paper, emerging only to deliver a thumbs-up and the verdict that the bride’s vows were ‘solid, really solid, top three vows I’ve heard this year.’
Pesch, 34, who served as Tyler’s roommate at Ohio State and was originally tasked with holding the rings, allegedly handed them off to a flower girl at 6:42 p.m. with the instruction ‘don’t lose these, the Dodgers have runners on the corners.’
‘He came back at one point to do the toast and just kept saying he was ‘monitoring a developing situation,” said Aunt Diane Mercer, who had driven in from Mansfield. ‘Then he held up his glass and said ‘to Megan, to Tyler, and to Mookie Betts.’ Megan’s mother started crying, but not in the good way.’
Sources at the open bar confirmed that Pesch returned to the stall during the father-daughter dance, the cake cutting, and a slideshow set to a Dave Matthews Band song that Tyler had personally selected, only re-emerging during the bouquet toss because he heard cheering and assumed someone had homered.
By the seventh inning, three additional groomsmen had joined Pesch in the bathroom, where they had constructed a viewing arrangement using a folding chair stolen from the coat check and a phone charger borrowed from the venue’s wedding coordinator, who described the setup as ‘the saddest thing I have witnessed in eleven years of weddings, and I worked the one where the DJ had a stroke.’
The bride, reached for comment near the dessert table, said she had made peace with the situation around the time Pesch missed the first dance to scream ‘GET DOWN’ at his phone loud enough that her 89-year-old grandmother asked if there was a gunman. ‘Tyler warned me,’ Megan said, sliding a piece of fondant across her plate. ‘He said baseball season ends in November and our marriage will hopefully last longer than that. So.’
Pesch’s girlfriend Karlie Voss, who attended as his plus-one, spent most of the reception alone at table 14 next to a woman she had never met, a retired oral surgeon named Pat. The two reportedly bonded over Aperol spritzes and a shared belief that ‘this is what they always do.’ Pat had attended four weddings this October. Three of them had a Brad.
Pesch declined to be interviewed during the reception, citing ‘a leverage situation,’ but did pause briefly to inform a reporter that he would absolutely be available to speak after the game, the postgame, the postgame analysis, and a podcast he likes to listen to on the drive home.
The Dodgers won 4-3. Pesch hugged the groom for a long time. The groom said it was the most emotion he had seen from Brad in fifteen years of friendship, and that he was a little jealous.