Bride finds bloodstained dress after encounter with leeches on wedding day

An Australian revealed in a video that went viral that her wedding dress was stained with blood from an unexpected encounter with leeches.

The video was posted on TikTok last week by Madalyn Wise, who wrote, “There’s always something wrong with your marriage, isn’t there?” The post amassed more than 20 million views and thousands of comments from horrified viewers, many of whom said the video “unlocked a new fear” of leeches for them.

“What we discovered under my dress minutes after our first dance,” read the video’s text overlay.

The video opens with footage of Wise’s first dance with her husband. After a few moments, the footage is interrupted by a shot of Wise’s dress, the back of which is covered in blood. From the shot, it’s obvious that the source of the blood is Wise’s leg.

“It was a leech,” the overlay text continued.

In the following image, Wise shares a video of the crawling big leech, followed by a photo of the parasite wrapped in a paper towel.

Finally, the video ends with a shot of Wise’s bandaged leg.

“Wedding night [shenanigans]“, concluded the text overlay.

In a separate video posted the next day, Wise explained that after her new stepmom quickly escorted her out of the dance and told her, “There’s blood,” she thought she had started her period early because from the stress of marriage. But when her dress was lifted, she found not one, but three leeches under her dress.

There was one under my foot, one in the crook of my knee, the armpit of my knee and there was another just crawling up my leg.

madalyn.wise

“There was one under my foot, one in the crook of my knee, like the armpit of my knee, and there was another just crawling up my leg,” Wise explained.

She went on to say she believed the leeches attached themselves to her during a photoshoot in the middle of the “really long, muddy grass” – three hours before she realized it.

“I was the only one at the wedding that had this leech problem,” Wise recalled. “None of my guests had leeches on them, no staff…no one had leeches except me.”

Luckily, her wedding coordinator managed to blot the stain from Wise’s dress.

“We ended up ending the night dancing and mingling with the guests and I was showing everyone my bandaged leg,” she said.

TikTokers surprised

Considering the leeches were attached to Wise’s leg for several hours, viewers couldn’t help but wonder: How did she not notice?

According to Healthlinethe saliva of leeches contains “analgesic properties which numb the area where it attaches”.

New fear unlocked.

TikTok commenter

“This means you may not even smell the leech until you see it on you,” the website explained.

To safely remove a leech, Healthline advised individuals to first locate its head and mouth, then use one hand to “pull gently [the] the skin under the leech until it is taut.”

Once done, “gently slide a fingernail under the leech’s mouth to separate it from your skin” and “remove the leech” before it can reattach itself.

“You will see a lot of bleeding when you remove the leech. Clean the wound, then use a sterile dressing to cover it. Change the dressing frequently for the first few hours until the bleeding stops,” Healthline advised.

I don’t want a wedding outside anymore…

TikTok commenter

Many leech bites are “harmless”. Still, viewers were left with a sense of unease after watching Wise’s videos.

“New fear unlocked,” wrote MyPerspective.

“Suddenly my whole body is itchy,” River said.

“This makes me deeply uncomfortable,” jane4bert commented.

Chloe added, “I don’t want a wedding outside anymore…”

Newsweek has contacted Madalyn Wise for comment.

Other wedding stories that have gone viral recently include that of a couple who spent their wedding day looking for their lost dog, that of a woman who was vilified by her family for drinking half a gallon of milk at her sister’s wedding, and that of a bride who called out her cousin’s fiancé for his “inappropriate” behavior at her wedding,