A wedding can be a wonderful day when two people bring together everyone they care about to witness and celebrate their love. But not every nuptial works out that way. These weddings were so awkward, their guests were regretting their RSVPs.
1. Sister Act
At a wedding I once attended, the groom gave a speech thanking everyone for coming. Somehow, the speech devolved in the space of about two minutes into a straight-up roast of his new brother-in-law. They were friends, and the brother-in-law seemed to take it in good humor, but there's only so much implication of “I'm for sure going to be sleeping with your sister tonight” that you can take before it becomes really cringy.
It didn't help that, first of all, I barely knew anyone there because I was a plus one and, second of all, I was at a table with the elderly relatives from that side of the family, who were less than amused, to say the least.
2. He Shoots, He Scores
When I was in high school, one of my hockey teammates had a kid with his girlfriend when they were juniors. They decided to get married and the wedding was officiated by my teammate’s dad, who also happened to be our head coach. The entire wedding party consisted of the bride and groom's direct family and the hockey team.
It took place at a Golden Corral. Then the reception was held at...the same Golden Corral. Then we had a hockey game that night right after. The other team we were facing that night somehow found out about what had happened and started to hound the guy about it for the entire time. Even though it was a super cringy situation, those guys were the worst.
For anyone wondering about how that game went, I honestly don’t remember if we won. Hockey season is always a long one with a lot of games, and this was a pretty long time ago. Now, about seven years later, this couple has a second kid, the guy is an officer in the Air Force, both of his kids play hockey, and he coaches and refs for their league.
He and his wife look very happy together, so I’m glad it all worked out for them. And, just for the record, I really did not mean for this to be a rip on the couple. They’re amazing together and are doing an awesome job of raising their kids in a loving household where they want for nothing. They haven’t had the easiest lives, but they’re doing the best they can and absolutely killing it.
I haven’t spoken to my former teammate in a while, but I’ve seen his dad, who was our old coach, at alumni games and they’re such an awesome family. They’re the perfect living example of the fact that you don’t need a giant, expensive, fancy wedding to be happy in life. As long as you have each other, family, and friends, it’s a joyous occasion that should be celebrated.
3. Smell Ya Later
At the reception line after the church wedding ceremony, I once witnessed a bride standing at the entrance with a large bottle of her favorite perfume; and spraying each guest with it as they walked in. Female and male, whether they wanted it or not, every single guest. No exceptions. They literally could not enter the banquet hall without being sprayed.
Some guests complained that the smell of the perfume was so strong that it made them lose their appetites and they couldn't partake in the banquet as a result.
4. Baby You’re a Dumpster Fire
I once attended an outdoor wedding where the couple had arranged for fireworks to go off during the ceremony. Unsurprisingly, they also arranged for the song “Firework” by Katy Perry to be blasting out over a speaker while this was happening...over and over again. By the third or fourth time the song played, I don’t think a single person there was thinking about anything other than wanting it to stop.
5. This One Takes the Cake
I once attended a classmate’s wedding. They were both young, maybe about 22 or 23 years old. There is apparently a “caking” tradition in some parts of the country where, when they cut the wedding cake, the couple feeds each other a little bit of it and smears some onto each other’s faces as a joke. The bride had absolutely made it 1000% clear to the groom that she did NOT want to be caked.
He did it anyway. And not just a small smear. He full-on smushed the entire slice into her face. She was stunned initially, then got up, with her face full of cake, and yelled “I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT!” She then ran as fast as she could to a back area near the reception. The groom tried to follow her, but the bridesmaids and the mother of the bride stopped him.
So, the groom ended up sitting awkwardly at the head table by himself while half the wedding party rushed off with the bride. She stayed back there for like an hour. They eventually did let him go back there to check on her. We could hear her crying and them arguing. The rest of the reception came to a screeching halt until one of the bride’s aunts emerged and directed the servers to clear the tables and put on some music.
They got divorced two years later.
6. Tonight’s Gonna Be a Cringey Night
I was a banquet manager at a hotel for years, and have worked hundreds of weddings. The worst one by far was the time the bride was at least twenty years younger than the groom. It was almost definitely an arranged marriage. Only about twenty people were invited to the reception, and the only decoration was a lousy quality massive blown-up picture of the bride and groom in the shape of a heart.
When the bride and groom walked into the room, someone put the Black Eyed Peas’ "Tonight's Going to be a Good Night" on over a CD player. Then the song played again, and again, and again for three hours straight. The only time it stopped was when the CD ended, because apparently no one had learned how to use the repeat feature. So, they had just burned a CD with the same song on it twenty times in a row. When it did stop though, someone just got up and restarted it.
Also, there was no drinking at this event.
7. You’ve Got a Friend in Me
I knew a couple who invited all of their Facebook friends to their wedding. They were expecting about 700 people to show up, and they prepared the banquet hall accordingly. In the end, less than a hundred showed up. I guess they learned the hard way that not all of their Facebook “friends” were actually their friends in real life. Awkward!
8. A Scheduling Conflict
I once witnessed a bride show up almost two hours late to her own wedding. This was in Southern California, in an open field with no water and no shade. She shows up and wants to get married in her yoga outfit. The groom got very angry and shut the whole thing down. When she refused to change her clothes, the groom decided to just leave her there looking stupid and they never got married.
I spoke with my uncle and it turns out that the groom had been having some suspicions that his fiancé was sleeping with her personal trainer. When she showed up to the wedding in her yoga outfit, it was all he needed to see to call off the wedding. She ended up getting married to her personal trainer shortly after, and then they got divorced soon after.
9. Music Makes the World Go Round
I once attended a wedding where the bride and groom sang their vows to each other. Neither of them had a singing voice. The vows were also totally crazy and inappropriate. She promised to do whatever he wanted in the bedroom, and he promised not to always ask where she was going whenever she left the house.
The autotuned microphones were also a terrible idea. Their vow songs shared a chorus and it was awful, yet they expected all the guests to sing along with the chorus. The singing of the vows lasted more than twenty minutes. Calling it twenty minutes of pure cringe would not be an exaggeration to anyone who was there. Kids, don’t sing your wedding vows!
10. How Do You Like Them Apples?
I once attended a wedding for a couple who had bought an apple orchard to live on after leaving the city, to live a simpler life. They really doubled down on the apple theme at their wedding. There were apples everywhere. On the tables, in baskets all around the venue, on the podium where they got married, pictures of apples hanging everywhere, small fake trees with apples tossed under them, etc.
For cryin’ out loud, the priest marrying them even had an apple tie on! To make matters even more ridiculous, there were apples somehow incorporated into every single dish that was served at the reception. The wedding cake was even shaped like an apple. It was really bizarre and unnecessary. They ended up selling the apple orchard a couple years later because they had no idea what they were doing.
11. Cleanup on Aisle One
The most awkward wedding that I have ever been to was one where the bride decided to sing as she walked down the aisle. She was not a particularly talented singer, and she was singing over a Carrie Underwood song, so we could all hear the original vocal track at the same time. She finished walking down the aisle about halfway through the song.
She then stood there and sang the rest of the song at the groom, and all we could do was sit there and watch.
12. Everybody Dance Now
My cousin and his wife are both super religious, and they may also be the two most awkward people that I've ever met in my entire life. At their wedding, they did one of those "fake out" first dances where it starts off with a slow song but then transitions into a choreographed dance routine to an upbeat song.
Not only is that naturally cringeworthy in and of itself, but the upbeat song was also five minutes long and the bride and groom just kept repeating the same few dance moves over and over again for what felt like an eternity. There were no intoxicating drinks allowed at the wedding either, so there was nothing to dull the pain while the audience was sitting through this spectacle.
13. Food for Thought
The most awkward wedding that I’ve ever been to was one where the bride and groom flew away in a helicopter at the end of the ceremony, but then they only served appetizers for food and no meal. Come on, guys! Don’t do that to your guests!
14. Money Is No Object
After spending ten thousand dollars on four dresses, custom decor, a two thousand dollar custom cake, and then another ten thousand dollars on a honeymoon, a friend of mine didn't offer to pay for the limo she hired to transport the wedding party to the reception. So, on the ride to the reception, she and her new husband acted like they had no money and collected cash from the wedding party on the bus to pay the driver.
It cost $500 for the 10 of us to go about ten minutes away. Then, at the reception, there was not enough food and probably about thirty seats too few for the number of guests.
15. A New Meaning to Throwing a Party
I once went to a wedding where, instead of throwing rice, confetti, sprinkles, or anything like that, the bride and groom asked their friends to save all of their empty Juul pods and throw those at them instead as they walked down the aisle. The friends obliged. And it was extremely bizarre and cringeworthy to watch.
16. It’s All About Me, Myself, and I
When I was eleven years old, my cousin got married for the third time. I never really liked her because she was 37 when I was 11, so we didn't have a lot in common. Also, she was pretty full of herself. The wedding itself was fine. Pretty boring, but fine. Then we get to the reception. We were told we had to sit down as soon as we got there.
Some people found this instruction weird and out of the ordinary, but I had only ever been to one other wedding before this one so I personally didn’t think anything of it. Her other weddings were when I was little, and no kids had been allowed to attend. We all sat down and the bride and groom then made a huge dramatic entrance.
Everyone awkwardly clapped for them as they strutted around the room with actual crowns on their heads. The bride then gets the microphone, hands it to her mom, and asks her to say something she loves about the bride. She then tells her mom to pass it on and says she wants everyone in the room to say one thing they absolutely love about the bride.
Not the bride and groom. Not their relationship. Just about the bride herself. It was one of the most painful things I've ever seen. Everyone was awkwardly trying to come up with things to say about her when it came to their turn. When it was my turn, I just said, "Your eyeshadow is pretty." I felt so awkward and wanted to be anywhere in the world but there.
My older brother said "Pass," which made her force a fake laugh and urge him to say something. He ignored it and she kept insisting, so he said, "Your parents," and passed the mic on. To make matters even weirder, she then had the staff set up a booth where we could all pose and take pictures with a life-size cutout of Donald Trump.
She has since begun posting photos of herself with the cutout on Facebook constantly. She seems to think it looks so realistic, which it doesn’t. She even made a post pretending that she had been caught cheating on her husband with the cutout. She has posted pictures of herself kissing it and of it standing in her room.
These posts are always accompanied with captions like, "Oops, I just got caught with my side piece!" or some other cringy stuff like that. But that's not even the worst part! Even weirder, the husband laughs about it and encourages it. Meanwhile, her daughter from one of her previous marriages deleted her from Facebook.
Nowadays, this daughter often stays with her dad because she just can't stand her mom anymore. Anyway, my cousin and this new husband ended up divorcing a few months after the wedding. The reason was that she had caught him cheating on her with an eighteen-year-old girl who was still in high school at the time.
Since the first time I had met him, I could tell that this guy had always given off bad, creepy vibes. This was to the point where even strangers noticed and wanted their kids to stay away from him. She married another guy a few years later, and they are still together and living happily ever after. I guess fourth time’s the charm!
17. Belting It Out
This was completely the fault of the bride's family. When I was about 19 years old, one of my first classmates to get married had a small reception, mostly with family and friends from high school in attendance. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But then, they decided to "auction off" the bride’s garter belt in the middle of the reception.
They announced that whoever won the auction would take it off the bride and keep it. Most of us were poor college students, so the only people bidding were her dad and her uncles. It was super uncomfortable to watch. In the end, the bride’s very intoxicated dad "won" the auction, to the tune of more than $500. Hopefully they at least used the money to help pay for the honeymoon expenses.
18. A Bad Time to Call
I dated a girl back when I was in my 20s and once went to her friend’s wedding in upstate New York. In the middle of the service, the minister’s cell phone rang. He answered it and said it was God calling. Apparently, God wanted to talk to the groom and give him some tips on what marriage would be like. This awkward, staged conversation lasted a couple of minutes, and then the ceremony continued. I don’t think there was a single person in the room who wasn’t cringing at how silly the whole stunt felt.
19. Tears of Joy?
The most awkward wedding that I’ve ever attended was one where a friend got married to the boy her parents had made her break up with several years before due to family and cultural differences. Her mother in law full-on sobbed throughout the entire ceremony. We all just had to sit there and awkwardly watch it. There weren’t even any drinks to blame the behavior on, as drinking is against their family’s religion.
Other than that, the event was beautiful and the food was awesome!
20. What’s in a Name?
I once went to a wedding where the bride and groom surprised everyone by announcing that their ceremony was also going to be a "Name Reveal." In other words, they were informing all of their closest friends and family members that, as a married couple, they were going to be changing their last name to something totally new so that they wouldn’t be “stuck to their heritage” or have anything “holding them back.”
Turns out that, in reality, they had changed their name thinking that doing so could erase their mountains of debt, or at least hide themselves from those trying to collect on it. However, it wasn’t too long before they quickly learned that the government doesn’t tend to allow you to live under two legal separate identities...
21. Stand Up Act
At the beginning of a wedding reception that I once attended, we all had to stand up and sing the national anthem. To be clear, this was in another country that I had never been to a wedding in before, so I thought, "Okay, maybe this is just a tradition here that I've never heard of before!" But when I told other people about this, including people from that country, they were all like "No, that's just really weird."
Also at that wedding, the father of the groom ended his speech with what I'm sure he thought was an amazing joke about how it's easier to build a bridge to Hawaii than to understand what a woman is thinking at any given moment. That would have been awkward enough had the man not also been standing right between his ex and his current wife as he was delivering it...
22. Encore Performance
The cringiest wedding that I’ve ever been to was my own. My brother and our wedding band surprised us with a beautiful rendition of a very romantic song by a guy called Juan Luis Guerra, which just so happened to be me and the missus' favorite song ever. This induced lots of happy crying and was one of the best memories from that day. What happened next was definitely the worst.
Unfortunately, my mother-in-law doesn't like to be one-upped, so she quickly got a distant second cousin from her side of the family who we did not know to immediately sing an impromptu version of "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. He was not a good singer and used a lame YouTube karaoke track to sing along to.
This led to some very awkward slow dancing, followed by fuming from her after we cut the performance short. We had to, though, because there was terrible feedback blaring over the loudspeakers from him trying to play the track into the mic from his phone's speaker. This whole scene just completely deflated the beautiful moment we had just had from my brother's singing.
At least I'm happy to say that we're still going strong and have been married for more than ten years at this point. It should go without saying that this little poop nugget of singing was NOT included in our wedding video.
23. A Match Made in Heaven
I was a photographer for a wedding once where the bride was marrying a man with two kids from a previous relationship. I was in the bridal suite when the bridal party was getting ready, and all of the bridesmaids were wearing matching silk robes. The flower girl, who happened to be the groom's daughter, was there too.
They asked me to take a group photo of the bridal party, and one of the women in a silk robe was standing awkwardly off to the side. I thought she was just shy or something, so I waved her into the photo. The room instantly got dead silent. The bride was like "Oh no, we don't want her in the photos!" and glared at me like I should've known that!
Apparently, she was the groom's ex-wife and was only there to take care of the flower girl. But WHY DID YOU GIVE HER A MATCHING BRIDESMAID ROBE?? I wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.
24. Preach!
In this case, the cringe was not the groom or bride’s fault. It was the fault of the pastor marrying them. He decided to talk about his own marriage and his kids for more than twenty minutes. He was obviously trying to show a preview of what marriage would be like, I guess. But he straight up was talking about how his daughter, Kelsey, learned to walk a certain way, while his other daughter’s first words were this and that.
Oh yea, and he also made sure to tell us all about how he and his wife make love throughout the house, because that’s what you do when in love. The poor bride and groom had to stand there holding hands for twenty minutes right in front of him as the other 150 of us had to listen patiently to the details of his bedroom habits and his kids’ lives.
23. And the Award Goes To...
I was at a wedding once when I was eight years old and, instead of the bride and groom getting up to make their speech thanking everyone, they had done it like an awards show. So the DJ would open up an envelope, announce someone’s name from the audience, and the person would then come up and be handed an “awards statue.”
The award statues were actually just Barbie and Ken dolls. The people accepting the awards then proceeded to thank everyone in the form of an awards speech. In the right hands, this routine would have been funny, but the bride and groom are incredibly shy by nature so the whole thing was just very awkward. I’m in my thirties now and I still remember this experience and how weird it was to watch.
26. Losing It
I once went to a wedding where the best man performed a skit in which he pretended to have "lost" the groom at the reception. He then proceeded, with over the top gestures and his hands on his hips, to ask the audience, “Hey guys! Aren't we forgetting someone? Well, where can he possibly beeeee???” The acting was like what you would see at some high school musical.
None of the guests were prepared and silently fussed around with their drinks and silverware. After a couple minutes of suspense, the groom eventually popped up from under a tablecloth. When the whole thing ended, they anticipated like a standing ovation, but instead the whole thing just went over the heads of everyone. A lone voice from the crowd muttered out, "Well, that was kinda weird..." as they made their exit quietly.
27. A Lukewarm Reception
I once went to a wedding where they did a potluck. I guess that could be okay depending on the type of wedding, but the reception was at a fairly nice and upscale venue, so it felt a little strange. In addition to that, the wedding couple showed up something like an hour and a half late. Then, to make matters worse, their best man didn't have a speech prepared, so he decided to improvise one. It went even worse than you would have expected.
The speech went on for a very painful fifteen or twenty minutes, during which time he repeatedly stated that the couple was going to have a great time in bed that night now that they were married. This was a devoutly religious Christian wedding with many of the family’s guests being friends from church, including myself.
Because of the potluck thing, once mealtime came, each table took a turn going up to grab whatever food they wanted out of what people had brought. I was at Table 15. By the time my turn came around, I was lucky if I could get my hands on anything that was kept warm in a crockpot. Everything else was room temperature by this point.
We were given time to go home and grab our food between the ceremony and the reception, but I am fairly certain that most of the food had been sitting in people's cars since that morning. Oh and also, the church that she moved to did the whole "no kissing before marriage" thing. As a result, she started aggressively making out with her new husband on the altar to the point where the pastor had to say, "Okay, that's enough."
Long story short, the whole thing was weird!
28. Bad Things Comes to Those Who Wait
At one wedding, the bride entered to the Braveheart soundtrack blasting on a boombox. It was a civil service that only lasted a few minutes, starting at around 1:00 pm. She then leaves to the same blasting music. The mother announces that the reception will be starting at 5:30 pm. There is no food and no bar, but trays of candy bars will be served. We are also told that the venue is locked until then, so there is no place for us all to wait.
My girlfriend and I then leave with a crowd of people and go to an Irish pub across the street for a few drinks. A bit of a party breaks out there. When the mother finds out about this, we all get told to knock it off and come wait back at the venue in the hall. So we sit in the hall on the carpet for a few hours without drinks or dinner.
The bride and groom finally arrive and enter the venue to an “honor guard” of floor hockey players wearing hockey jerseys and holding sticks above their heads like swords at a royal wedding. More dramatic Braveheart music is playing, of course. The place emptied out pretty quickly, as people either left to go back to the pub or to the fast-food place a bit further away.
Our dinner was lemon squares and a can of Coke from a vending machine in the lobby. Fun stuff.
29. Just Making a Quick Stop
For me, the question of the most awkward wedding I’ve ever attended is a tie between my sister breaking her knee at her own wedding while dancing to “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and my stepsister having her reception at a truck stop while six months pregnant. In my stepsister’s defense, the food was really good, but wow! Was it ever weird walking through a gas station in formal wear!
30. Battle of the Bands
I once attended what started out as a normal wedding for a very religious couple. Then we got to the reception and the food was all sandwich trays from Walmart. When it came time to dance, they put on what was probably a "Now That's What I Call 90's!" CD and the first song was the very mild “Semi-Charmed Life.”
A few seconds into the song, the mother of the bride turns off the CD player and puts in a CD of her own, full of nothing but children's Bible songs. About a minute later, we hear “Semi-Charmed Life” come back on. Then, a few minutes after that, the children’s songs again. They each kept switching CDs every time they had the opportunity.
They repeated this process about two or three more times, as the mom desperately tried to control what her adult married daughter could play at her own wedding. We left.
31. There Will Be Blood
They began the wedding with the groom playing an out of tune guitar and singing to the bride. They were sitting on chairs in front of everyone, a crowd of legit no less than 400 people, and the bride was clearly uncomfortable with the situation. Naturally, seeing that made everyone else feel uncomfortable, too.
That wedding also included a foot washing ceremony and, when the bride put her shoes back on, she tripped on her dress and fell flat on her face. Everyone’s jaws dropped. They hadn’t done the vows yet, and the ceremony had to stop for a full twenty minutes so that they could deal with the nosebleed she gave herself.
32. Tuxedo Junction
Friend's wedding. The bride wanted to sing him a song, so she did a kind of karaoke thing. Now, there's bad singing, and then there's whatever the heck this was. It was soooo awkward to watch. Also, the dude had asked a professional photographer friend of ours to photograph the wedding about a year before. He got a super non-committal answer and never followed up.
Somehow, he was absolutely SHOCKED that the photographer didn't show up. I later learned that my friend had also specifically declined the invitation because he was going to be in another country. He also had the entire set of groomsmen rent ridiculously expensive tuxedos. Which is fine. Cool. Happy to be here. We all rent the fanciest tuxes we can find.
Meanwhile, he's having his tux custom tailored and asks for something ridiculous and gaudy, but when quoted the price says he can't swing that and insists that they do it for about a quarter the price. They do their best to meet his specifications within the given price range, but it's bad. Really bad. So, at the wedding, the groomsmen all look amazing, while the groom looks like a clown that didn't put on his makeup.
It was probably the cringiest thing I've ever seen anywhere, not just the cringiest at a wedding.
33. With a Little Help from Her Friends
I once went to a wedding where the minister used to date the bride and gushed throughout his whole speech about how wonderful she was. He told the groom that if he ever croaked he shouldn’t worry, as he would step in and take care of her. I was shell shocked while listening to this. I so wished that I could think of a reason to ask the couple for a copy of the video of their wedding, but I couldn't quite find a legit one.
34. Some Things Just Don’t Mix
I DJ’d a wedding for a couple who were constantly throwing up red flags as to why I shouldn’t DJ their wedding. For example, they kept asking for a discount in exchange for a positive review. I don’t want or need your fake review! Another red flag was when they wanted me to live mix their special dance number.
Now, I’m fine with mixing live. It is what I do professionally, after all. But these two were not professional dancers. In the end, I obeyed their request and they did their dance. It wasn’t entirely smooth, but their family and friends seemed to love it anyway. Immediately after the reception, the groom gave me a tip and they both said I did an amazing job. I thought that was the end of it—I was so wrong.
Cut to the next morning, likely while the bride and groom were still intoxicated. The groom emails me with some “constructive criticism.” A few emails later, he is demanding that I apologize and that he isn’t going to pay me the balance of what I was owed. He then ghosts me. A few days later, the wedding coordinator contacts me to say that I have to give them a discount because they are so mad at how their first dance went.
These two people, who are not professional dancers, who awkwardly pulled off a terrible first dance with nobody who was present knowing how the dance was “supposed” to look, blamed me for...themselves feeling awkward?? I just told the coordinator where I thought the bride and groom should stick their money...
35. From Weird to Worse
I once attended the wedding of a friend of a friend's. She was a young, super Christian small town naive girl. She meets a much older married man with two kids. She falls in love with him. He does eventually leave his wife for her. He doesn't want any custody of the kids. He agrees to now marry my friend’s friend.
The wedding was held in her hometown church. His vows were over the top about how he has never felt love before, how she is the only woman that he ever wanted to marry, how he's been so lonely his whole life until now, etc. He was literally sobbing through it all. Then, her turn to say her vows comes along...and here I thought it couldn't get any worse.
She's standing there saying nothing for at least three beats. Then, she is handed a microphone and the piano starts playing. Apparently, she has made up her own song to sing to him in the place of reading her vows. So that was interesting to watch, to say the least. Especially in contrast to the heartfelt spectacle we had all just witnessed.
The levels of awkwardness and cringe were already well on the rise. You could feel them in the air by this point. After the ceremony, we adjourned to the church basement for the drinkless reception. Once there, I'm somehow roped into serving the groom's cake. It's two NASCAR car-shaped cakes made with an edible photo draped over it.
It was impossible to cut through the image without mangling the entire cake, so I had to awkwardly peel it off in front of a whole crowd of confused and hungry guests. Meanwhile, my friend is cutting the bride's cake and is serving it with a full inch or more of decorative icing on top of plain cake. No frosting.
The "buffet" was a potluck from her family. Food you'd expect at a kid's party. Pink punch was the only option available to drink. There was also no dancing because of her religion. Then they left for their "honeymoon" at the town's only hotel. This hotel was essentially like a Motel 6 level dump. Nevertheless, they rode there in a fancy two-horse drawn carriage.
36. Some Not-So-Friendly Competition
The most awkward wedding that I’ve ever attended was probably my cousin's. The food was really bad. And I mean REALLY bad. Things that were supposed to be warm or hot were ice cold and completely undercooked. There was music, but nobody was allowed to dance because "we don't want people to be distracted by dancing at our wedding."
There were also no drinks served. Not a single drop. But the worst thing was the seating arrangement. They didn't plan on families or friends sitting together. I don't know what they were thinking. I was sitting at a table with complete strangers. They even separated our grandparents from each other. None of us had any idea why.
After an hour, my grandmother stood up, walked over to my grandfather’s table, and they both declared that they were leaving now to the restaurant down the road to have something good to eat. I joined them, as did my parents. It didn't take too long for people to notice that our seats were empty. It was really easy to figure out, since nobody was allowed to dance or walk around in general.
We soon got a call from one of my uncles asking where we were at. After we explained why we had left, he said "You are right. This is ridiculous!" We ended up with 20 guests from the wedding in that small restaurant having a fun evening together. Let’s just say the couple who got married didn’t invite us back to any other events of theirs any time soon…
37. What a Nut Case!
I was at one wedding where the menu for the reception was advertised as nut-free, coconut-free, and lactose-free in order to accommodate a whole host of allergies among the many guests and children in attendance. Despite all that, the chef for the buffet arbitrarily decided "Contracts can’t tell me what to do!"
He took the liberty of putting nuts in EVERYTHING. There were almonds in the salads, pecans in the desserts, walnuts in the chicken. Nuts everywhere! It got really awkward really fast when the bride found out. See, the bride and all of her sisters have severe, life-threatening nut allergies. As a result of this, she ended up having to eat a take out meal from Burger King at her own wedding.
Meanwhile, her sister, who was eight months pregnant at the time, shot up her epipen and snuck out to rush to the ER with anaphylaxis. The cringey, awkward thing was watching the groom try to soothe and cheer the bride up after all this. It was all kinds of awkward. She was seething with just pure unadulterated rage and the guests could only look on helplessly.
The day was saved some two hours later when the bride and groom's kids got silly and hyper, distracting the bride from her anger. It was really tense though, to the point where a lot of people left early because they couldn’t handle it anymore.
38. Hungry Eyes
I went to one wedding where the food didn't get served until 11:30 pm because of some mistake in the kitchen. The entire event turned into a steady decline of starving people really trying not to ruin the wedding while also wanting to know when the heck they were gonna get fed. Meanwhile, people got over-the-top plastered because they were drinking on empty stomachs and had nothing else to keep themselves busy while they were waiting.
39. Branching Out
In November 2018, I attended the wedding of my in-laws' friends. They were an older couple in their 60s who had been dating for decades and finally decided to tie the knot. The husband did a stint in the Navy and so, given the timing of their wedding, he invited a lot of his veteran buddies from across the different military branches.
During the reception speech, the guy instructed the DJ to begin playing the military hymns for each of the various branches, and he asked all the various veterans from said branches to stand up and be recognized. I get where he was coming from, wanting to pay his respects given the calendar proximity to Veterans Day.
The problem was that absolutely nobody knew that he was planning to do this. Including the veterans themselves. They all kind of stared amongst themselves and awkwardly stood up. The civilian guests just fidgeted for the five minutes or so that this went on for. His heart was in the right place, but darn if it wasn't cringey as you can possibly imagine.
Later that night, the bride got extremely intoxicated with her girlfriends and spent a while dancing barefoot on the dance floor. At some point during this intense dancing session, she took a wrong turn somewhere and wound up rolling her ankle pretty badly. She ended up in one of those mobility boots for about a month.
40. Country Boy
My cousin's wedding featured the groom driving a small tractor around the outdoor venue while the bride rode on the back, to the tune of Kenny Chesney’s “She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy” on repeat for about 30 minutes after their vows. The guests just hung out and waited, thinking it would be a quick stunt and then we could enjoy some refreshments and food.
Nope, they continued the stunt for like half an hour to make sure that they got good pictures and video of it from every possible angle. Then, they spent even more time posing for pictures sitting stationary on the tractor. It was blazing hot out with no canopy or cover and I was very pregnant, so I was especially miserable. He's not even a farmer! They live in an apartment...
41. Feels Like the First Time
I was raised in a cult. No dating was allowed, except for the purpose of finding a marriage partner. Even then, the dating process was completely monitored to ensure that no premarital touching occurred. The worst wedding that I ever attended was a small ceremony between two members of this cult. The attendees included only her family, his family, and my family in her grandma's living room.
What made this wedding so awkward was the x-rated kiss that took place at the end. When the official said to kiss the bride, the groom clearly wanted the bride inside his mouth hardcore. There was tongue in and out everywhere, saliva and hot breathing, complete with first date excited groping. Nobody knew where to look for five minutes straight.
42. A Few Words to the Wise
I'm in the wedding industry. I've been to over 3,000 weddings. Many of them were awkward for the same reasons. The “singing your vows” thing is never ever going to work out like you think it will in your imagination. Never sing your vows. Never attempt to sing any part of your wedding ceremony. It will not go as you visualized it. A wedding day is not a good time for surprises. Don't surprise your bride with an unexpected part of the ceremony.
Don't surprise your mom by the wedding itself. True story, one bride told her mom she was going out to an engagement dinner when she was actually getting married. The only exception to this rule is if you give the bride a surprise addition to her ring–grandma's diamond, a ring made from her parents' rings, or something else along those lines.
Jokes about the couple sleeping together later are never funny. They make people uncomfortable, and it makes you look like an adolescent. There will always be crickets after you make the joke. If you are going to be late, communicate that to EVERYONE somehow. Have your fiance, or your parents, or someone tell everyone that you will be late.
The staff needs to know, especially. If you forget the rings, don't stress it. It's a funny story. If you forget your vows, wing it as best you can. Just don't sing. Ask the officiant for help with last-minute vows. Finally, don't get intoxicated and act like an idiot. You don't want to be that guy! Plus, if you are intoxicated, you won't be able to make those jokes come true later!
Crickets...
43. Together Again
I once attended a wedding in the United States. This was both the bride and groom's fourth marriages. To each other. Yes, they got married to each other four times and divorced each other three of those times. They picked a dirty motorcycle bar for the venue of their fourth wedding. They were openly giving young children adult drinks, then laughing at them for being intoxicated.
Things were weird enough to begin with, but they soon reached a whole new level of insanity. I asked my friend if I could leave after the bride pulled a knife out of her dress and tried to stab the groom with it for having slept with another woman while they were divorced. I'm not sure if this is common in New Jersey. Other weddings I attended while in the USA were not like that…
44. Last-Minute Decisions
I once attended a wedding where the groom abruptly changed who his "Best Man" was, and didn't tell the original Best Man until the start of the ceremony. When the reception began, the bride and groom then realized that they hadn’t hired a bartender, so they asked a guest to bartend. The groom then "dirty danced" with his step-mom. Yes, his hands were fully on her butt.
The bride and groom then hauled their entire wedding party up to do a choreographed dance to Meatloaf's “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights,” but apparently had neglected to give them any pre-warning or teach them the dance moves. That song is eight and a half minutes long. Let’s just say the scene was a bit awkward to watch.
The wedding was held at a scenic boarding school campus during the summer. Guests were told that the dormitories were complimentary to stay in. Guests were not told that there would be no bedding provided, nor would there be any A/C in the building. The groom later emailed everyone who had stayed in a dorm asking for money.
45. A Man of the World
I used to videotape weddings, so I've seen it all. This one couple from New Jersey was the spitting image of two characters from the show Jersey Shore. They were super into appearances and very over-the-top gaudy. During their church ceremony, they had their very awkward 60-year-old uncle put on a culturally-appropriated costume, stand up, and chant around the church, giving what I can only assume was some kind of blessing.
It was so weird, inappropriate, and out of place. I assume they wanted to seem "deep" during their ceremony. They mixed some multicolored sand together in a vase, too!
46. Think of the Children!!
So this wedding took place in an Episcopal church. The priest had all his finery on and the church itself was decorated very nicely for the occasion. The bride and groom had made a point of asking everyone to wear casual clothes. We all took that to mean "semi-formal." Nope. They and their kids all came out wearing overalls and white t-shirts.
They stood next to the priest, who was in his formal robes. The other cringey part was when the groom, in the middle of the ceremony, started repeatedly talking about the Bible verse "let the little children come to me" and insisting it implied "and listen to what they're telling you." He kept saying that over and over again, even though most of us had no idea what he meant.
He then launched into an impromptu twenty-minute speech explaining about how he and the bride had gotten together. There were plenty of parts in the story where the groom was like "I wasn't sure she was right for me," but his son was pressing him because "he wanted a mom." It was a sad story actually, as his biological mom passed when the kid was only four and this was eight years later.
So, his speech was basically this long and unfocused story that boiled down to "I'm marrying this woman so that my kid can have a mom." That, and some more confusing Bible references mixed in here and there for good measure. Not a good sign when that's your main reason for getting married to someone. Nevertheless, I knew it, probably half the attendees knew it, and the priest definitely knew it.
That whole background story might have been okay to tell during the reception, under a certain kind of atmosphere, but I have no idea why he decided to tell it in the middle of the actual wedding ceremony. When all was said and done, I’m pretty sure this couple ended up getting divorced less than two years later.
47. A Lot of Energy in This One
My brother managed a gas station about ten years ago and had hired the soon-to-be bride as an employee. A little while into her employment, she requested a few days off for her wedding. The date was still a couple months out, so it was no big deal. About a week before her requested time off, she came into work and had the following exchange with my brother:
Bride: "Wanna see my new tattoo?" Bro: "Uh, sure." She lifts the back of her shirt to reveal a huge, green, Monster Energy "M" covering the whole upper half of her back. Bro: "Holy moly! Wow!" Bride: "Awesome, huh? And my fiance got the same tat!" Bro: "Really?..." Bride: "I know, I know what you're thinking. Copyright, right?"
"But what are they gonna do? It's already on my body! It's ALREADY ON MY BODY! Ha ha!" Bro: "Right. That. That is what I was thinking." Then, at the ceremony, the pair awkwardly gave the same demonstration to all their guests. There are even pictures of it. I'm working on getting a hold of those. It was a camouflage themed wedding.
She had an open-back camo gown with camo heels. She even had a camo veil. I really wish it had been ghillie suit headgear. The groom had camo pants with camo boots and a camo bowtie. He was, indeed, shirtless. He did wear a camo ball cap, though. I imagine them walking down the aisle, backs glistening in the sun with vaseline over a huge Monster logo.
Just the perfect day that every kid dreams about someday having. They were happily married for seven months.
48. Lap Dog
I once worked at a wedding reception and watched as the bride got intoxicated and sat on some other dude's lap for two full hours, flirting with him while the groom sat there by himself at the head table with a defeated look on his face. I could not have felt worse for this guy. I have no idea what happened to this couple, but I can’t imagine they lasted too long.
49. Leaving So Soon?
When I was in college studying photography, I got friendly with a fellow student who had a wedding photography business but was still studying to get his qualifications. After seeing my work, he asks me if I want to assist him at his next wedding. I agree to do so. The big day finally comes and I'm all prepared to go in and see the groom, the best man, the ushers, and a bunch of other participants to get some pre-event photos of them getting ready and whatnot.
To my surprise, the groom refused to be in any pictures, stating that he was feeling under the weather. I kinda thought he should just suck it up. It was his wedding day, after all. Nevertheless, he was insistent, so no pre-event photos were taken of him. A little while later, the ceremony comes and goes. It’s now time for the bridal party photos at the church.
Once again, the groom refuses to be in any photos, much to everyone's annoyance. We all get to the reception, the speeches begin, and, midway through the father of the bride’s speech, the groom just straight up leaves. He once again repeats the fact that he was feeling a bit ill. This is where the bride drew the line—she went into a full-on rage. She started pulling the small groom and bride figurines off the top of the cake and stomping on them.
She shouted, "I knew I shouldn't have married him!" There was a lot of hullabaloo at this point, with guests trying to console her. Everyone agreed that he was being dramatic and was basically a crummy future-husband. We got paid in full even though at that point we were done. I go home, put my feet up, drink a few beers, and then answer an unexpected phone call from my friend.
I was expecting him to just be calling to joke around a little bit more about how crazy that wedding had just been. Not even close. In reality, he was calling to inform me that the groom had died shortly after leaving the reception hall, and that our photo job would now be turning into a two-for-one wedding and funeral service.
50. Speaking from the Heart
The most cringeworthy thing that I have ever seen at a wedding was not the fault of the bride or groom, but of the bride’s father. I was the best man at this wedding, so I had a front-row seat for the entire thing. The couple was marrying young after the bride had fallen pregnant. It obviously wasn’t planned, but they clearly loved each other and it was the right thing for them to do in their eyes.
Anyway, come the wedding day, I’m sitting next to the bride's father at the reception and I can see he’s looking at his prepared speech repeatedly. I can see phrases like "not ideal," "would’ve preferred not to welcome you into the family under these circumstances," etc. Just before the groom gets up to give a speech, the bride’s father excuses himself to use the washroom, leaving his "speech" behind.
I knew that something needed to be done before he turned the entire wedding into a nightmare. I’m not ashamed to say that I swiped the speech and then pleaded ignorance when he returned and asked what had happened to it. In the end, he stood up and muttered a few generic words about love and then sat down without any issues. I never told the groom, and I’m happy to say that they’re still happily married twenty years later.
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