Planning a wedding is incredibly stressful, and no matter how low-key your event is, things are guaranteed to go wrong.
Hopefully those mistakes will be restricted to unimportant factors, like the cake, your sister-in-law’s choice of dress, or an outraged toddler, but more often than not it’s far more pressing matters that encounter hurdles. By the time your day is done those hurdles will have transformed into lifelong stories, thankfully, but few brides have a story quite so strange as the one shared by TikTok user Tara Porter (@tara.porter1214), who received an odd item in the mail less than two weeks ahead of her wedding.
The content creator was just looking to order a guestbook for her big day, in hopes of laying down some memories to look back on later, but that’s not what she received. It’s sure to make plenty of memories anyway, but the book Porter received is a far cry from what she ordered.
“Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to open,” the TikToker explains ahead of the big reveal. She’s right, and viewers everywhere were equally as gobsmacked — and amused — when Porter revealed the book she ended up with instead.
Some poor soul, out there in the world, is missing their fittingly titled “shoulder meat” book, sadly replaced with a boring wedding guestbook. The options, upon seeing the book’s title, are seemingly endless, but even knowing the book’s name won’t be enough to prepare you for its contents. Maybe it’s a workout book, I hear you pondering, or a sensual visual guide stuffed to the brim with bulging shoulders. It is very much not, I am sorry to say, instead containing countless images of… well, shoulder meat.
Images of meat tossed upon dozens of shoulders decorate the pages within Porter’s new book, detailing some oddball creative’s strange journey through a photographic escapade. The meat varies in style — some appears to be bacon or prosciutto while others are clearly salami or an alternate cured meat — and the results are honestly iconic. Unbelievably strange, but iconic none-the-less.
Mixed-up orders result in people receiving the wrong items plenty often, but rarely does it result in such an unforgettable mix-up. Viewers, still reeling from the book’s big reveal, contributed their own extremely online brand of humor to the tale, gleefully informing Porter that she’s actually found the ultimate guest book.
“Hear me out: use this as your guestbook,” one person urged, alongside frequent comments noting that “I would be using this as my guest book now! ‘Please pick your favorite shoulder meat and sign there.’”
Tying the story up in a beautifully fitting bow, Porter did, in fact, track down the intended owners of the shoulder meat book. Their meeting was documented in a separate TikTok, in which the meat-loving family celebrates the return of what I can only imagine is their holy book, and showed off a glimpse of the gorgeous guest book intended for Porter. The final lore drop in this truly strange TikTok saga serves as a perfect way to bid farewell to the treasured app, and a satisfying conclusion to a distinctly original experience.