David Henrie opens up about why he couldn’t attend Selena Gomez’s wedding and the thoughtful advice he shared with her before her big day.
The Wizards of Waverly Place actor, who now stars again alongside Gomez Wizards Beyond Waverly Placeexplained during an appearance on The Zach Sang Show on Wednesday, October 8, that work commitments kept him from being there.
“Unfortunately not,” Henrie said when asked if he made it to Gomez and Benny Blanco’s wedding on September 27.
“I’m about to announce a project that I was out of state for, and there was no way I could get back. I literally tried every way possible to get back.”
He added: “Breaks my heart.”
Henrie had told it before magazine Parade in August that he “100%” planned to attend and was “very excited” for the California ceremony unless family or work took him.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened.
Before the wedding, Henrie and his wife, Maria Cahill, talked about the event and all the details of it, from “the dress” to “the planning.”
Even though he couldn’t be there in person, he still made sure to share some heartfelt advice with Gomez and Blanco.
“The best advice I got right before my wedding was someone pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey dude, hold your wife’s hand and just look around the room. Look at your wife and say, ‘This is our minute,’ and look around the room and just remember,” Henrie said, recalling his own 2017 wedding.
“To this day, that is my only memory of my wedding: that moment.”
He said he passed on the same advice to Gomez, adding, “Take a moment to absorb it because everyone will come up to her and everyone will say hi and pull her in all directions. I hope they did that.”
In an earlier interview with PEOPLE in September, Henrie shared that he and Cahill spoke with Gomez and Blanco about wedding planning as the couple prepared for their big day.
“Because [there’s] There are so many different ways to go about a wedding these days, and there’s so much to it [you’ve] gotta know what you want,” he explained.
Although Henrie couldn’t make it, some of him Wizards of Waverly Place costars were there to celebrate the happy couple, including Maria Canals-Barrera, David DeLuise and Jennifer Stone.
