The dress was a bit snug -- zipping up the back wasn't happening -- but by the 8th inning Ryan Woody admits, "I almost forgot I had it on."
Huddled in the outfield seats Saturday night at Turner Field, Woody's cousin proposed the dare -- as if wearing a wedding dress to a baseball game wasn't bold enough.
The 26-year-old Decatur resident thought about it a good 30 minutes before turning to his cousin: "You got my bail, right?"
And with that Georgia's second-most famous runaway bride climbed the outfield fence -- fortunately he eschewed matching heels -- and leaped onto the warning track to cheers from the near-sellout crowd.
"I thought for a split second about juking [the guards] but figured it would be better to just let them take me down," Woody told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
They didn't go easy on the July bride, wrestling him to the ground with conviction. "I had so much adrenalin going I didn't really feel anything," said Woody, adding he was only slightly buzzed.
"The funniest part of the whole thing was when they were escorting him out one of the guards said to him ‘Man, you're not even drunk, are you,' " said friend Brent Grems, 28, of Knoxville.
Though he spent the night in Fulton County Jail, law enforcement showed the University of Tennessee graduate some mercy, allowing him to remove the dress before he was booked.
"What happened, happened," said Woody. "I guarantee you, it won't ever happen again."
The idea was born on a camping trip in Tennessee. Grems, weary of his friend's smack talk, challenged him to a tin can shooting contest. He immediately regretted the bet.
"There was no way I was going to beat him," Grems said. "I do not like guns, whatsoever."
Somehow, "I won," he said. "That is to say, he [shot worse] than I did."
Woody, a man of his word, started looking for a dress. A co-worker provided the gown. Finding the courage to put it on wouldn't be so easy.
As game time approached Saturday Woody "looked like a ghost," Grems said. "He was so nervous."
But the Turner Field crowd was welcoming. "Everyone wanted to get his picture," Grems said. The positive attention relaxed Woody, perhaps too much.
Major League Baseball rules prohibit fans from going onto the field, with violators subject to criminal prosecution. Security was heightened after an incident nine years ago at Chicago's Comiskey Park when a drunken father and son assaulted Kansas City Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa.
Atlanta police charged Woody with trespassing. No court date has been set, he said.
As for the dress, it's still in police custody. Woody said, "I've got to call the jail and see if I can get it back," grass stains and all.
"There's definitely part of me that's a little jealous," Grems said. "I'll never have a story to top this one."
Somewhere, Morganna the Kissing Bandit -- the buxom Ohio woman who gained fame by running onto big league fields, kissing unsuspecting ballplayers -- is smiling.
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