Behold This Grown Man Who Slayed His Flower Girl Duties

Wedding season is upon once again — a time to celebrate true love, friendship, and seemingly endless hours spent sweating your makeup off under the hot sun, counting down the seconds until you can rush into the climate controlled reception area and enjoy a cocktail.

Let’s face it, as beautiful as weddings are, they can get a bit repetitive, which is why it was so refreshing this week to see adult man Patrick Casey serve as the flower girl at his cousin’s wedding.

Growing up, Casey, who runs a public relations firm in Appleton, Wisconsin, was extremely close with his cousin Andria, and when they were little, the two served as ring bearer and flower girl in a family wedding. So when Andria decided to get married this year, she knew she wanted her cousin in the ceremony. In honor of their previous wedding experience, Casey offered to be the flower girl, AND he carried the same basket Andria carried over 20 years ago, and no YOU’RE tearing up!

Casey told BuzzFeed the guests seemed surprised at first by the grown man walking down the aisle with a dainty, lace basket, but that “I’m pretty sure they were won over when I got to the end of the aisle and then proceeded to pull out flowers I had stocked in my pants’ pockets and did a LeBron powder toss with them. There was an ovation.”

Casey is not the first flower man. A 2011 New York Times article looked at the emergence of flower men, and the increasing subversion of gender roles in weddings.

“We continue to have the marriage ceremony, but we’re slowly changing it to represent the greater balance of the genders,” Robert Heasley, a sociology professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the president of the American Men’s Studies Association told the Times, “It’s a significant shift to have the male be the flower girl because it introduces a male who represents gentility, flowers, and femininity. It’s just another step toward the dismantling of the patriarchal formation of the marriage.”

The Times article also notes that while having a flower man can serve to break up the traditional mold of a wedding, they can risk upstaging the bride, something of which Casey was very aware.

“They FULLY encouraged me to do all of this,” he said. “I would have never done anything to take attention away from them if they didn’t want me to.”

And it seems like Casey feels pretty confident in his performance.

“I SUPPOSE it’s also possible (if extremely unlikely) that there are usually many children up for the job who are a lot cuter than me.”

It’s possible, Casey. But as long as you can walk down the aisle faster than a three-year-old, and I can get inside to A.C. more quickly, I’m totally on board with this flower man thing.