The maid of honour at a wedding had everyone in stitches when she took to the dance floor during the reception to sing a special version of Abba's classic Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!
Lauren O'Brien had been best friends with bride-to-be Natasha Long since they were both little girls and knew only too well about her life-long obsession with the Swedish pop legends.
So when her pal's big day came she grabbed the mic to surprise the 25-year-old with a rendition of the 1979 hit song, the lyrics to which she's completely rewritten to tell the tale of their relationship and how she and her future husband Bradlee Harker first got together. "Tasha's Abba mad and always has been, so I knew exactly what I had to do," said Lauren, a former accountants supervisor from Bridgend, also 25.
"She's always got their music on every time I go to her house - she even had a Mamma Mia-themed hen party, for God's sake. I'm not such a big fan though and had to swot up on them before I was able to rewrite the lyrics.
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"As a result I had it playing on my headphones when I was at the gym, even in the background while I was in the shower - literally everywhere I went. So I'm a bit sick of them now to be honest," she laughed, adding that she didn't tell anyone at the ceremony about what she was planning.
Maid of honour at wedding sings her special version of an ABBA hit
"Other than the bridesmaids who I got to join in on the chorus and the wedding planner who was in charge of cueing the music, I kept it totally secret." Good job too, as Natasha's hubby Bradlee had, unbeknownst to Lauren, banned any mention of Abba from the couples' bash at Bryngarw Country Park, Brynmenyn, near Bridgend, earlier this month.
"I didn't realise that until the week before the wedding, by which time it was way too late to change my plan," she added. "I'd already written my version, with help from my sister, so there was no going back."
A video of the performance, uploaded to social media, has since been viewed thousands of times." In it Lauren charts her and Natasha's very first meeting at Tondu Primary School, right the way through the moment she heard she was getting engaged some two decades later.
"Let me raise a glass to my beautiful bestie/Thanks for all the times that you have been there for me," she sings in the rejigged chorus. "There's no one quite like you and I'm lucky to spend/20 years of friendship creating new memories."
And, while it may have proved a complete surprise for Natasha, it was an even bigger shock to Lauren that she manged to pull it off at all. "I'm quite an out-going person, but a singer I am not," she said.
"I just figured we're all here together, so why not have a laugh? Plus I'd had a couple of gins beforehand, which really helped."
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