When Eleisa Aparicio and Thomas Wolter were wed, they had an audience of millions and Bad Bunny for a witness during the Super Bowl LX Halftime Show. Then they decided to share the story of how they got to Santa Clara in California with a famous Puerto Rican rapper attending.
Eleisa and Thomas first met in a hospital emergency room in Los Angeles, where they both worked. However, when Eleisa decided to take things further, she sent him an Instagram DM in December 2022, four years after they originally met.
Meanwhile, in October 2025, Aparicio and Wolter took a chance again by mailing a wedding invitation to Bad Bunny’s record label, Rimas Entertainment, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The engaged couple still had around 15 extra wedding invitations and decided to send them to companies they liked, including Trader Joe’s In-N-Out Burger, Sephora and Pokémon, while hoping to receive some freebies for their wedding.
However, Bad Bunny, Thomas’s favorite artist who they bonded over on their first date, was also sent an invite. They weren’t shooting for the moon, but did hope they would at least receive a signed postcard to frame.
Fast forward to January 15, and Aparicio was shopping for photo frames for their wedding photos when she received a call from a Puerto Rican phone number. She assumed it must be spam, and after rejecting the call, Eleisa received a text message from that number, saying it was a member of Bad Bunny’s team. She was excited and they talked on the phone and were told about a forthcoming offer they couldn’t yet reveal.
Wolter recalled that they were then asked for their sneaker and apparel sizes. “We were like, ‘Oh my god, he’s going to give us a T-shirt or something,” Wolter recalled. However, they were then asked if they had any travel restrictions, and Eleisa and Thomas assumed they would get an invite to a concert.
However, during a Zoom call a couple of days later, the artist’s team told the couple that Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio) had invited them to get married at his Super Bowl LX halftime show in Santa Clara, California.
“We both looked at each other — I’ll never forget the feeling,” Aparicio said. “They were like, ‘Benito wants to capture real people, real emotions, real love.’”
While Aparicio wondered about how it would work, they did agree. However, they didn’t yet know that Lady Gaga, who coincidentally is Eleisa’s favorite artist, would perform right after they wed onstage. They also had no idea that Bad Bunny, Thomas’s favorite artist, would sign the wedding certificate as their witness.
Meanwhile, as they told the New York Times, they didn’t expect the attention they would receive following the performance. As viewers watched the show, they picked up subtle hints of what to expect in what was a joyful celebration of Latin culture. Some realized that the couple who were wed onstage were a real-life couple and not just a part of the amazing choreography that was Benito’s halftime show .
Much like the people who featured as sugar cane throughout the halftime show, Eleisa and Thomas experience two weeks of rehearsals, with one in Los Angeles and the other in Santa Clara. Their friends and family knew the engaged couple were somehow involved in the Super Bowl, but had no idea of the details.
The couple joked that they would be dancers, and Thomas told his mother to “bring your magnifying glass. See if you can find us. We might be there somewhere.”
Aparicio tried out six dresses from the designer Hayley Paige, eventually choosing a strapless, corseted gown. She did her own makeup, while Mariah Montes did her hair.
Before their live performance, Benito signed the couples’ marriage certificate as the witness and while the three of them had a moment, the couple gave him Pokémon cards, as he is also a fan, and they wrote him a card in Spanish.
It was about five minutes into the halftime show that Eleisa and Thomas had their shining moment after a classical group played the opening strings of “Monaco.” At that moment, the camera shifted to the wedding ceremony, where the couple, both dressed in white, held hands and looked at each other with smiles on their faces. The couple were then pronounced husband and wife by Antonio Reyes, a pastor at Project Church South Sacramento, and they kissed.
“Just looking at him, it just took away all the nerves,” Aparicio said of Wolter. “I forgot that there were 70,000 people.”
“I was so locked in on her,” Wolter added.
When the newlyweds and the white-clad dancers parted, they revealed Lady Gaga and the band Los Sobrinos, performing a salsa rendition of “Die With a Smile.” “I almost passed out,” Elesia said of learning about the guest performance.
At that moment, Bad Bunny joined in, announcing, “Mientras uno está vivo, uno debe amar lo más que pueda,” or, “While one is alive, one must love as much as one can.”
They danced salsa to “Baile Inolvidable” in a scene reminiscent of a vibrant wedding reception. The newlyweds took a massive slice from a three-tier cake while a child slept on some chairs in a corner.
Wolter and Aparicio then kissed to “Baile Inolvidable,” which they had planned as their first song at their wedding reception. Meanwhile, a little later in the show, a Jumbotron announced the message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
“There were a lot of cool things that happened,” Thomas said, but “the thing that I’m most excited for is that I have a wife now. A partner for life and a best friend for life.”
At 9 am the following day, the couple headed back home and returned to their nursing shifts and regular lives. But what an experience to celebrate their life together in an amazing show with an audience of millions.
