My Baby Went Viral at a Paris Wedding and I Didn't Even Know It Was Happening

And why our travel NCS is the reason any of it worked.

Adrian and I had made a very reasonable, very mature, very united decision.

Our dear friends Madison and Matt were getting married in Paris. Three months after our first child was born. And we had decided, thoughtfully and together, that we simply would not be going. Paris would be there. The baby was brand new. Postpartum is not a season for transatlantic flights. We were at peace with this.

Then they asked for a call.

We sat in our living room, completely aligned, totally resolved. And then Matt's voice came on, warm and sweet, and he asked Adrian to officiate the wedding.

Adrian and I locked eyes across the room.

I mouthed it before I could stop myself: say yes, let's go.

And Adrian said yes. And then we were off the phone, sitting in the same living room, smiling at each other with this kind of wild, slightly terrified energy. Because what had just happened was not simply a yes to a wedding in Paris. It was a yes to three weeks in Europe. A week in Paris. A week in the Costa Brava. A week in Barcelona. Two formal events. An infant. Three months postpartum. Transatlantic travel with what I can only describe as an ungodly amount of luggage.

What is this even going to look like?

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What it looked like was Amanda.

We found her through our network- a dear friend we've known 10+ years, a travel NCS flying in from Arizona, and she was exactly what we needed. She caught a nap between flights, landed in Paris, and got straight to work without missing a beat. We had secured a beautiful place up in Montmartre, which I had chosen from fond memory and which I will discuss separately because the stairs deserve their own story. Amanda settled in, got her bearings, and from that point forward was simply unflappable.

There was a lot to be unflappable about.

Before any of it even started, I had pulled both Amanda and Adrian aside and been very clear: I did not want Nash on anyone's personal phone. No candid videos, no content, no strangers' Instagram stories. We knew there would be influencers at the event. We knew phones would be out constantly. I was not being precious about it, just intentional. The wedding photographer was welcome to capture whatever felt natural. But I wanted to keep Nash off the internet, at least for this trip.

I want to be clear that I said this out loud, to both of them, more than once.

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The rehearsal dinner was on a boat on the Seine. Beautiful in every possible way. At some point I excused myself to use the restroom, which, when you are postpartum and in heels and navigating a boat bathroom with a formal dress, is not a casual errand. Twenty minutes later I made my way back up to the deck, where Adrian greeted me with a smile and introduced me to an absolutely stunning woman standing beside him.

"She just did a little video with Nash for her Instagram," he said.

I smiled. I looked at Adrian. He understood the look.

I let it go. It was probably fine. She was warm and lovely, and Nash was clearly unharmed, and we had a whole wedding ahead of us.

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It was not until the next evening that I found out who she was. Liam Payne's girlfriend. And that the video she had posted to TikTok was climbing past millions of views.

Nash. My three-month-old. An influencer. Because Adrian cannot be left unsupervised for twenty minutes on a boat in Paris.

The video was genuinely precious. I will give her that. And she was so kind throughout the entire trip, both evenings, just warm and genuine and wonderful. Nash being in a viral TikTok with millions of views is now a permanent part of our family lore, and I have made my peace with it.

The wedding itself was at a stunning chateau about 45 minutes outside Paris. We loaded into a van, navigated traffic, changed the baby in the back seat, and arrived at one of the most beautiful venues I have ever seen. Candles everywhere. Flowers. Guests who had clearly not recently given birth and were dressed accordingly.

I had spent real energy finding the right dresses for this trip. Plural. Because the rehearsal dinner was black and white themed and formal, which meant sourcing something that would fit a postpartum body, in a specific color palette, for an event on another continent. And then a separate dress for the wedding itself. What I had not fully thought through, in the chaos of all of that, was whether the wedding day dress was going to be remotely compatible with breastfeeding.

It was not.

The dress was beautiful. It was also, structurally, a full commitment. So when the moment came, Amanda and I found a quiet back room, she helped me get the whole thing up over my head, and I sat in a corner of a French chateau nursing my son, in a state that can only be described as extremely informal.

And then the door opened.

An influencer walked in, camera rolling, doing a piece on the venue. She swept her gaze around the room, registered me immediately, and then simply continued past, filming the architecture, moving on with her life. I sat completely still, dress over my head, praying I was not about to appear in a viral reel. Amanda stepped slightly in front of me, which was equal parts practical and heroic, and we made eye contact with the intensity of two people trying desperately not to laugh... and keep my boobs from being in the background of her video.

We laughed about it later. A lot.

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During the ceremony, Adrian was at the front officiating, which meant I was on my own, holding an infant who could erupt crying at any moment, on castle grounds, 300 yards from the nearest building, in the middle of France. Amanda stepped in without being asked. She took Nash and walked him through the grounds (and out of earshot) while I sat and watched two of my favorite people get married. I cried through the whole thing.

And if you happened to look over toward the gardens during that ceremony, you would have spotted Amanda in a beautiful gown she had chosen specifically for the event, a coordinating Artipoppe carrier on (pastels galore), champagne in hand, walking a sleeping baby through the most stunning setting imaginable. She had dressed for the occasion because that is who she is. She was not staff hovering in a corner. She was part of the day.

She caught some of the sweetest pictures of the whole trip. I'll be sharing a few of them here.

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The chateau turned into something close to a nightclub as the evening went on. Candles across the lawn, fireworks, a crowd that kept growing. I was hot and tired and navigating everything postpartum bodies navigate at formal events (I had switched into my flats by this point), and at what I can confidently say was my most unkempt moment of the entire night, I was introduced to a man in the ballroom. The bass was loud and I couldn't quite catch his name over the music.

"Sorry, what was your name again?"

Liam, he said.

And I, with complete sincerity and zero awareness of who I was talking to, told him that Liam was one of the most popular baby names in the United States right now. He laughed. We stood there in this castle turned nightclub and just talked, the way you do when the music is too loud and the night is long and someone turns out to be genuinely easy to be around. He told me about his son Bear. I told him how much I loved that name, that I had a thing for four-letter names, that my own son was Nash. We were just two parents comparing notes.

There was no star power in it. No moment where the energy shifted and I was supposed to understand I was in the presence of someone famous. He was just Liam, warm and funny, talking about his kid.

I did not find out until later that it was Liam Payne of One Direction. Amanda was right beside me the whole time, Nash in tow, and apparently recognized him before either of us did. She said nothing. Just stood there, baby on her hip, completely composed, letting me explain baby name trends to a member of one of the most famous bands in the world.

His girlfriend, who had by that point already made Nash a viral sensation without my knowledge or consent, sought me out multiple times throughout both evenings. Warm, down to earth, clearly someone who genuinely loved children. Nash was taken with her. I was taken with her. She was just good people, the same way he was.

Liam Payne passed away not long after this wedding. That knowledge sits alongside the memory of that conversation and changes the texture of it somehow. I am grateful we got to share that moment, even not knowing who he was. Maybe especially because I didn't know.

Madison and Matt got married in the most beautiful setting I have ever witnessed. Adrian officiated with so much love that I would have cried even if I weren't still operating on newborn hormones. Nash slept through most of it, blissfully unaware that he was already a viral sensation with better TikTok numbers than most adults I know.

And Amanda was there for all of it. Every chaotic, sweaty, hilarious, tender moment. She made it possible for us to say yes to something that mattered deeply to people we love, even when the timing made absolutely no sense on paper.

I am so glad we went.

I am so glad we had her.

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