Surprise Bill Murray appearance makes an engagement photo famous

Bill Murray continues to work the South Carolina celebration circuit, lending a little surprise celebrity to a couple’s engagement photo shoot in downtown Charleston.

Bride and groom Ashley Donald and Erik Rogers were roaming through downtown with their photographer back in April, stopping for pictures here and there.

“I set the couple down on that little staircase to get ready for a shot and I hear people talking in the back and as I’m looking through the lens, the couple seems stunned and distracted… I think to myself – oh great, someone is bothering them,” photographer Raheel Gauba explained Wednesday on the Fia Forever wedding photography website.

“I turn around and I see Mr. Murray standing there with his shirt pulled up and belly proudly on display which he is patting pretty loudly in an attempt to make the couple laugh.”

After being invited to join the couple for a quick shot, Murray posed for the camera and then congratulated the two, Gauba wrote.

The image went viral after being posted to social media Wednesday.

The “Groundhog Day” star also made his way into a South Carolina bachelor party in late May, delivering some impromptu wisdom to the assembled -- and excited -- guests.

He was invited spur-of-the-moment to that event as well, though he didn’t immediately say yes, making the appearance a surprise to all involved. Directing his advice to everyone except the groom, he suggested a sort of test to decide if a person is really “the one.”

“[T]ake that person and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of,” Murray said.

“And if when you come back, to JFK, when you land in JFK and you’re still in love with that person, get married at the airport.”

And as for Donald and Rogers? The couple will marry a week from Saturday, according to their wedding website. The ceremony is set to take place on a North Carolina beach, followed by a reception months later in South Carolina.

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