Emoji spider

Last weekend we attended an outdoor wedding reception in a very rural setting in Western Pennsylvania. When we sat down to eat I had a curious dinner guest.




I quickly took a picture with my phone before asking someone--ANYONE--to remove the spider please.

Two days later I was talking to my sister about weird spiders (a mutual friend had posted a photo of a magnificent specimen he found in his house on facebook that day). I pulled up the image of the wedding spider on my phone. I hadn't examined its features and markings to identify. As I magnified it on my phone, we were surprised by what we saw.



Wait, was that a.....



.....smiley face?

This strange feature appeared to have been drawn-on, rather than being natural markings. It made me wonder if the spider were really venomous and this was its poor attempt at deception. Who wouldn't trust a smiling spider?

I looked through a few spider-identifying sites online, and I didn't find a perfect match (maybe an orb weaver?). The striped legs did preclude it being a brown recluse, which was a relief. It may really have been as friendly as it looked.