Weddings are stressful. That’s why bridesmaids and groomsmen exist: to help the bride and groom on their big day. But can a lovestruck duo ever ask too much of their entourage? Reddit asked the beleaguered groomsmen and bridesmaids of the Internet to dish on the most outrageous things they were ever asked to do in the name of (someone else’s) love. From costly decisions to downright dirty work, here are wild stories from wedding helpers pushed to their limits.
1. It Never Hurts to Bring a Back-Up Beau
My sister addressed my invite to me and a male friend I had known for about 10 years. A male friend whom she had always had a huge crush on. Even better was that I had been dating my boyfriend for 2 years at this point, and my male friend was engaged. When I asked my sister why she put my friend as my plus-one and not my boyfriend, she said that she didn't want some random guy in her wedding pictures. I went to her wedding solo. No surprise, she and her husband divorced 2 years later, and I have been happily married to that "random guy" now for 15 years.
2. Too Cute for Comfort. Literally.
I was a bridesmaid and my S.O. was a groomsman. We were banned from looking at, speaking to, or dancing with each other for fear of "out-cuteing" the happy couple. We'd been together for 5 years at this point. We didn't do it, but the request alone was outrageous.
3. Bros Before Crimes Against Fashion
I was asked to be a groomsman (and declined). This was in the early 90s...the groom asked us to get matching tuxes with top hat and tails, and ditch the pants and shoes. He wanted us to substitute them for these ridiculous matching Ocean Pacific skater shorts and sneakers instead. I didn't want to ever be photographed looking that ridiculous, and at the time I couldn't afford the $300 or so that this costume was going to cost me, so I made up some dumb excuse about a prior family commitment that weekend. Worth it.
4. Bridal Duties Are Thicker Than Blood
The bride kicked off at me when I couldn't attend her SECOND hen-do (complete with over-night stay) because it was too far away from the hospital my dying grandmother was staying in. The friendship ended when she said: "We've all got sick relatives. My grandad's got dementia!" Needless to say, we don't talk anymore.
5. I Now Pronounce You Cheapskate and Wife
My college roommate invited me to his wedding in Vegas. I live in Colorado, so attending this wedding already required me to travel and pay for a hotel. The invitation specified that the group should book their reservation at Aria under a certain group code to receive a discounted rate. Their discounted room rate at Aria is over $300/night.
When I told him I simply could not afford to pay for round trip flights and a hotel room for three nights at $300/night, he flipped his lid. He said that we all needed to be in the same hotel for ease of plans or some nonsense like that. He expected me, a then 24-year-old female, to come out to his wedding in Vegas alone and pay over $300/night for accommodations. The kicker? He did not even give me a plus-one.
I later found out that the groom was so pushy about everyone staying at Aria because the bride and groom received a free hotel room if seven hotel rooms were booked under their discount code. It was really scummy of them to pressure their friends into booking expensive hotel rooms at their destination wedding and lie about the reasoning. But it didn't end there.
The bachelor party was scheduled for the night before the wedding. The groomsmen had put a lot of effort into planning an awesome bachelor party, and they had pre-purchased tickets for everything. Well, the groom is simply a no -show for his own bachelor party. So, I got to attend the bachelor party in the groom's absence, which was pretty awesome. We had a blast. Also, the night after the wedding, the bride was kicked out of the Britney Spears concert for trying to climb on the stage.
6. You Can’t Cook up This Crockpot of Demands
I got asked to stand up for a wedding during culinary school for a high school friend. She said she didn't want us to buy presents, but wanted us to help with various wedding things since it was a backyard wedding, like someone help with the flowers, another would do favors, table settings, etc. She wanted to know if I could help with dinner.
I said sure, and asked her what she wanted help with, figuring it was prep work for someone else to do. No, she wanted me to handle the whole dinner. As in cooking for 200 people, as a 19-year-old having only done a year of culinary school. She also wanted me to help pay for the food I'd be making, as their gift.
She wanted me to make Caesar salad, potatoes au gratin, and roast enough ducks for 200, by myself, and pay for about half of it. I was learning how to be a pastry chef. I explained this, and she just stared at me blankly. I told her I could do the cake easily enough, but she insisted she wanted a "real" cake, from a bakery.
I told her there wasn't any feasible way I could do it, not only because that's freaking crazy, but because I literally wasn't trained to do it, and I got disinvited from the wedding. They apparently served bagged salad, boxed potatoes, and roasted chicken from Walmart.
7. Don’t Wig out, But Actually Please Do
My friends were getting married, and my girlfriend and I were both in the wedding party. The bride's mother suggested that my girlfriend get hair extensions to be in the wedding to not "ruin the photos" for her daughter. My girlfriend has very short hair, because she has Grave's disease. Her hair has become very brittle, and started falling out in clumps. I'm sure it wasn't intended to be rude, but telling somebody that have to put on a wig because you don't think they look good enough to be in your daughter's photos seems pretty terrible to me.
8. I Put the “Groom” in “Groomsman”
The groom asked me to "keep an eye" on his tux for signs of dandruff (he had a bad case of it at the time). I told him to choose a light-colored tux, but the bride insisted the guys wear black—a color that, of course, showed every particle of dandruff. So I placed a small brush in my pocket, and every so often would "dust him off" as discreetly as possible throughout the day.
9. Final Destination (for This Friendship)
My friend decided to get married at a resort in Aspen. We don't live in Colorado and he wasn't offering to pay for flight, hotel, tux, etc... for anyone except him and his wife. They were broke 23-year-olds just like us. Neither parents had the money either. It was a noon wedding and a 2-hour reception immediately following. That's it. Everyone fly home. The bride and groom didn't even stay the night. He got so mad at me when I told him we wouldn't be able to make it. 5 years later, he still doesn't talk to me.
10. Life Will Be Great When You’re Brown-Town
My best friend asked me to dye my hair from blonde to brown because her other bridesmaids all had brown hair and she wanted to be the only one with blonde hair. She did pay for me to get it done at a professional salon, so I didn't mind too much, and her photos did look amazing after. However, I definitely have a few friends who thought I was crazy for agreeing to that request.
11. Some Extravagancies Are Lost in Translation
I'm from Asia and I went to college in the US. I was SHOCKED when I found out that bridesmaids here have to pay for their own dresses. So, if the bride told you to wear this specific dress from Vera Wang, you actually had to pay for it yourselves? And I think plane tickets are also not provided if it's a destination wedding? It's so bizarre.
12. The High Cost of Friendship
My friend was set to get married in November of 2016. He got engaged in October of 2015. From the time he got engaged until April 2016, he continued to add things on to my to-do list for the wedding. It seemed like once a month he'd say, "By the way, I need you to do this and buy this for the wedding." My wife was also a bridesmaid.
The bride had picked out very expensive outfits for the bridesmaids. $300 dresses, $150 shoes, and $75 costume jewelry. There was also a weekend at the beach planned for the summer, and my wife was responsible for the food at the bride's shower. I still have no idea what they meant by "being in charge of food," as no matter how much we asked, they acted offended. Does that mean provide food? Organize food? What kind of food was expected for the 40 people who were expected to come? No answers were given.
In March 2016, my friend had pneumonia and was hospitalized. In total, he was down with it for about three weeks. During that time, my wife and I talked about the wedding and totaled up how much it would cost us. We ended up with a figure of about $1,500 for a wedding an hour away from where we live, which we thought was absurd. My wife and I both worked, but didn't make enough money to drop that much on someone else's wedding.
So, when my friend healed up, I went by his house and told him my wife was going to drop out as a bridesmaid as the cost had risen too high. We were also upset with how they had been treating us as friends. He was initially surprised, but then we continued talking. The next day, after getting an earful from his fiancée I'm sure, he called me and told me I was out as the best man and to never speak to him again.
13. Doing the Bridezilla Tango
College "friend" got engaged to an absolute witch of a woman. She was crazy, crazy insecure and would do things, lash out, and make comments when those insecurities bubbled up. She would even make comments about how she didn't really want to marry the groom based on his physical appearance and how much he made almost every time she got a little tipsy.
Before the wedding, the groom and bride recently moved into a new house that their parents purchased for them, and furnished said house with expensive furniture that their parents also purchased for them. My fiancé and I had just moved into a rental, were dead broke, and watching TV on a mattress we had pulled into our living room.
When I couldn't afford to attend the bachelor party, we offered to have them over for dinner to celebrate in a way that we could afford. Instead, we were lectured by the bride on how we "should" be spending OUR money and that we had to get our priorities in line. I mean, screw eating and housing yourself when you can spend a couple grand on two days of drinking, right? It gets worse.
After this episode early on, they essentially stopped talking to us or trying to include us in anything up to the wedding. At the wedding, the bride was belligerently drunk, slurring her words slightly, and randomly breaking down into tears. Uses her time at the altar during the ceremony to essentially ad-lib with what the preacher was saying. Trying to crack jokes and making weird noises throughout. It still gets worse.
The ceremony ends and the wedding party heads off for pictures. The bride, being drunk and impatient, begins berating the photographer until the photographer is in tears. Fast forward to introducing the new couple. The entire wedding is essentially waiting for them at their tables, which are at the bottom of a long hill.
The bride and groom are at the top while the DJ begins to announce the new couple. Only problem is, the bride is currently yelling at her new husband about what a piece of trash he is and telling him to go screw himself. They stop for long enough to walk down the hill and take their seats. One of her bridesmaids was concerned and asked if there was anything she could do. To which the bride replies, "You can go screw yourself!" but there was a final nail in the coffin.
Throughout the entire wedding, family from the groom and bride kept coming up and telling us we were SO nice and nothing like how the bride had described us. Yes...screw her, screw her very much. Additionally, the groom’s family KNEW how much of a psycho she is. The groom’s sister literally pulled me aside during the reception and begged me to stick around, knowing that her brother’s wife was terrible, and it would only be a matter of time until they were divorced, and he would "need me."
14. Love Has Credit Limits, Honey
My future sister-in-law has made it very clear that she wants her bachelorette party to be a week in California. We live in New Jersey. That means I would have to take a week off from work, my husband would have to take a week off from work to stay with our children, I would have to pay for my airfare and hotel and all the week's activities. But that's not all.
I'd also have to pay my share for her, since "everyone knows the bride doesn't pay for anything on her bachelorette party." When I said I'd have to see if it's something that we could make work, she basically just said, "Well, only the people that really love me will be there, I'm only going to get married once so I have every right to be selfish." Good luck marrying that.
15. Blondes Don’t Always Have More Fun
I was a bridesmaid for a high school friend. Not a super close friend, but whatever. At the time, I had lightened my hair color and it didn't turn out well. Before the wedding, I had it cut and changed back to my original color—the color I had all my life except for the awful month or so of bleach. Figured the least I could do was not subject the wedding photos to my hair disaster.
I showed up for the wedding ceremony, and suddenly the bride had an absolutely epic meltdown. Because NOW all her bridesmaids wouldn't be BLOOOONDE! Apparently, I wasn't asked because she wanted me, just my blonde hair. I guess, in retrospect, that explained those awful candy-pink dresses we had to wear (and pay for).
16. “I Do…Not Take No For an Answer…”
It was my wife who was one of the bridesmaids. The couple was way oversexed or trashy, I'm not sure which, but they wanted the entire wedding party to do a group photo in just their lingerie/boxers (except the bride and groom, "of course"). She noped out of that, but apparently, the other two girls and the groomsmen went for it.
Then they wanted the groomsmen and maids to pair up and kiss for a picture—none of them knew each other. Apparently, she was the only one who didn't. Then they basically shamed her for opting out of both of those to the point she came and found me crying, so we went home.
17. Wallet-in-Law
I worked for a country club during my college years and I recall one wedding party that thought it would be a brilliant idea to give their 300+ guests the option to order their own steak and have it cooked to their preference as their entree. This may not sound like a big deal, but custom cooking 300+ Steaks meant that it took FOREVER to get everyone served.
Since there was limited capacity with the stove tops in the kitchen for this type of cooking, the food came out in intervals. This was chaos as a result for me and the other wait staff because half the party had eaten and were drinking and dancing. The other half was still sitting at the tables waiting for their food. During the point when the bride and groom were getting ready to cut the cake and have champagne poured, we were finally serving the remaining guests their steaks.
To add to this, this delay pushed the event an extra hour and a half over its expected time frame, and resulted in us having to keep the venue and bars open longer than the agreed-upon time, enraging the father-in-law. By 11:30pm, the man was shouting at the manager to close the freaking bar so people would begin to leave and was chasing the bride and groom around, telling them to get in the freaking limo and go away, as it was costing him about 7K an hour extra to keep the staff and venue open. I was paid $8.75/hr, and I also didn't get gratuities as I was a seasonal hire.
18. Time to Prune Your Friend List
I was the maid of honor. She demanded I come pull weeds out of her parents' yard a day or two before the wedding because the reception was at her parents’ house. I had already gone through multiple ridiculous requests the week leading up to the wedding, so this one I put my foot down and said no. Got through the wedding. No longer friends. She did send a gift when I got married: A centerpiece from HER wedding, that I had helped make.
19. From Tip to Toe
I was a groomsman in a friend's wedding. I wasn't the best man, but I was closest geographically to the groom, so I was helping with various wedding-related tasks. Not a big deal. Was happy to help. The bride, however, was nearing Bridezilla status. She was fairly demanding and was fairly emotional overall. 48 hours before the wedding, she decides she does not like the shoes the groomsmen were going to wear. These are the shoes that came with our rented tuxes.
My friend, the groom, had been mentally worn down by all of the constant demands of his bride-to-be, and he was despondent trying to figure out how we were going to get new shoes for all of the groomsmen. I decided to step in and be the voice of reason. I pointed out that we only had 48 hours before the wedding and we still had a lot of important things to take care of.
I also pointed out that for men's formal footwear, there is a 2 x 2 matrix: Shiny or not shiny, laces or slip on. Finally, I pointed out that no one is going to care or even notice what kind of shoes the groomsmen will wear. My friend manned up and talked some sense into his bride-to-be. The wedding went fine, and no one noticed or cared what kind of shoes the groomsmen wore.
20. Not Worth Splitting (or Shaving) Hairs
My sister-in-law insisted that I shave off my beard for the photos—a beard I've had for over 10 years and will probably have on my dying day (I look like a toddler clean-shaven). She was eventually talked down by my brother, who pointed out that in a year it would look like they had a complete stranger in all their wedding photos.
21. The Best Man, Not Wingman
The maid of honor at my sister’s wedding asked me if I could sleep with her husband’s best man. In her words, "Jake's saying he won’t go unless there is a guarantee lay for him. I know you’re single and everything..." I thought it was a joke at first. It wasn’t. I, of course, said no. Surprise, Jake still showed up as best man without the promised booty. And boy was I glad I said no, because this guy was 300+ lbs of greasy hair and an odor that could only be described as diabetic urine.
22. Sixteen Candles? More Like Sixteen Future Ex-Friends
The bride asked 16 girls to be bridesmaids. In the year and a half between the engagement and wedding, all but 6 dropped out (3 were her sisters). She wanted 16 separate shades of blue and 16 different styles of dresses for each bridesmaid, then threw a fit when the store didn't have that many options. But she was just getting started.
She demanded everyone pay for a week-long bachelorette party in Vegas (including her share) and then got mad when some people opted out (I was a single mom/college student at the time). Her parents gave her a $20,000 budget, and she ended up spending $100k and demanding they pay for it. They took out a loan they are still paying off.
She also wanted everyone to have the same shade of hair, so she asked the two blonde bridesmaids to dye their hair (they declined). She paid for nothing for the bridesmaids (traditionally the bride pays for something—the hair/makeup or the dress) but demanded we purchase specific shoes, jewelry, dresses, etc. plus hair and makeup. And stay the entire weekend at the hotel she was getting married at.
All together, costs for the wedding—not including a gift—were well over $2k per bridesmaid. This was mostly amongst college-age women in a poor/middle-class area. She also had three separate engagement parties/bridal showers. The final straw for me was when she demanded to see my toast a month prior so she could edit it. She ended up rewriting it totally. I skipped the wedding and ended our friendship. They did end up getting married, and 6+ years later, he seems absolutely miserable.
23. A Joyous Day…or Else
I was almost in a bridezilla wedding. I had an ectopic pregnancy (baby attached to my tube, which then burst, and I almost bled to death). She got engaged shortly following my ectopic. When she asked me to be her bridesmaid, she told me that I would have to wait to have another baby until after her wedding in 1.5 years...not because there would be a small child at the wedding, not even because she didn’t want me fat at her wedding…but because if I lost another child, it would take away from her engagement and wedding. I was so shocked. I just declined and have never spoken to her since.
24. Gender Roles Die Hard
The groomsmen got to go swimming and play in the lake all day while the bridesmaids had to set everything up. Sums up their marriage today as well. She does everything for this fool.
25. Who Says Marriage Is for Grown-Ups?
Bridesmaid to a bridezilla here. The bride spent a lot of time crying and carrying on whenever she didn’t get her way because “it was her wedding and we should all do exactly what she wanted.” Which is not to say we didn’t. We sure did. She wanted everyone to justify her irrational and horrible behavior because it was all about her.
She didn’t enjoy it much when I told her she was wrong for kicking someone out of her bridal party, terminating the friendship, and pitching a fit when a girl couldn’t make bridesmaid-dress shopping because she was sick and had to go to the hospital. This is also coming from the same woman who got angry and didn’t speak to me for months because I didn’t come see her to congratulate her on her pregnancy when I was home on furlough for a week at Christmas.
26. Trimming the Fat From Your Friendship
A friend of mine in college was getting married at 19 because she was super-conservative Christian and she wanted to have sex. Between the time I agreed to be a bridesmaid and a couple of months before the wedding, I lost some weight. She got super pissed at me because she wanted to be the skinny one on the stage, and threw me out of the wedding party. Oh well.
27. Putting a Down Payment on Loyalty
My best friend just got kicked out of being a bridesmaid because she couldn't spend the $1,500 to go to the bachelorette party. All the other costs were killing her. The bride told her to take out a credit card to pay for it. One of our friends made the best comment over the situation: “She [the bride] just did you the best favor ever."
28. There’s Some Holes in This Contract…
The bride bought us all earrings to wear on the day. I was met with a blank look when I told her the holes in my ears closed over a while ago…so one of the other bridesmaids (who happens to have quite a weak stomach for this kind of thing) and I went into the other room and re-pierced my ears. It was years ago and the morning of. I was in my early 20s at the time. I'm pretty sure it'd be a different outcome if I was asked to do it today.
29. Being a Bridesmaid Shouldn’t Require a Degree in Public Speaking
My friend forced her entire bridal party to write a speech for the rehearsal dinner. I couldn't enjoy the dinner I was so nervous, but I managed to sputter something out after 3 glasses of wine. Some of the others were so uncomfortable. They were either a few seconds long or had uncomfortable moments of silence.
She also wanted the bridesmaids to perform a dance routine. I noped out of that one though. For our wedding, we wanted everyone to enjoy themselves. Knowing my sister and my husband's brother would be so nervous, we said no one had to give a speech. By the end of the night, we'd received 2 spontaneous speeches from groomsmen, which was nice.
30. Such a Thing as Too Healthy
My better half was a maid of honor about a year ago—I'll call her Firefly. When our friends got engaged, Firefly weighed just shy of 300 lbs but had started exercising and eating better. About 6 months into the engagement and 2 months before the wedding, Firefly was told to stop all exercise and healthy eating.
She had lost almost 75 pounds at this point, and the Bride claimed she wanted to make sure her dress fit. Realizing the fitting was to be done a month before the wedding, Firefly offered to pay for any alterations needed instead. She is now at a healthy weight and continues going to the gym a few times a week. I am very proud of her.
31. Where in the World…Is Common Sense?
The bride wanted photos of the wedding party at EVERY, and I mean every, San Francisco landmark. Four hours driving around in a limo held together with duct tape to cheese in front of each corny tourist spot. She had a videographer along with us, and wanted only the natural sounds recorded, so no one was allowed to talk.
I had to pick up my wife and two-month-old to bring to the church ceremony immediately after. Bride left me little time (and no offer to pick them up in during the events). We get stuck in bridge traffic; I'm 10 minutes late for the scheduled wedding start time. She kicked me out of the wedding and drove around again to reshoot all of the pictures.
32. (Not) Seeing Red
Best Man here. Wedding is in two weeks. I am not allowed to drink any alcohol until the reception because I turn a deep shade of scarlet. Bride doesn't want to have a tomato in the wedding photos. I'm Korean, and to be fair I understand. I know there are remedies, but I don't want to chance anything on their day. I was incredibly amused when my best friend awkwardly tried to relay this to me.
33. Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold-Sliced
Typical not my story but someone else's (although I have been bridesmaid/maid of honor seven times in the last three years, luckily my friends were all very considerate). Anyway, when my parents were first married, they were invited to the wedding of one of my mom's close friends. My mom was asked to be a bridesmaid.
The groom didn't have a lot of close friends who could come for the wedding, and since he knew my dad pretty well, he asked my father to be a groomsman. My dad was told by the groom that the suit would be paid for, so he just had to grab it from the store and then show up and escort my mom at the wedding.
My dad gets to the store to pick up the suit, and he was told that he still needed to pay for it. The suit was fairly expensive, and my parents were living paycheck to paycheck at that point, so he was reasonably miffed because the only reason he agreed to be a groomsman was because he was told that he wouldn't have to pay for anything. So he came up with a revenge plot.
On the wedding day, my dad stood by the groom as a groomsman, but at some point in the reception he slipped away. He snuck out to the groom's car and put ham slices under the windshield wipers. It was raining, so when the bride and groom left for their honeymoon, they turned on the windshield wipers...and smeared ham all over the windshield. To this day, my dad says that it was worth it to have to pay for that suit to see the look on the groom's face when the ham coated the windshield. My dad is petty.
34. Not a Clean Getaway
The bride insisted that all the groomsmen be clean shaven for the wedding. Every single groomsman was a burly, mountain-man-looking guy who had been rocking a beard for years. We all argued to keep our beards. The groom even argued for us, but she was insistent that the pictures be beard-free. We all sucked it up and shaved, and we all look so stupid in those pictures. None of us look anything like what we look like in real life, and a couple of the guys even had beard tan lines on their faces. Never again...
35. Don’t Wig Out, Sis
I was matron of honor for my sister's wedding. I have a pretty alternative look and have for years and years. I wear my hair in some neon color and a mohawk. She insisted I grow my hair out or cut it to a pixie and dye it. I am not particularly close to my sister. I had been wearing my hair in the same way for 5 years; she had known her fiancé for all of 10 months before they were married. She told me the changes she wanted me to make only 2 months before the wedding! My dad ended up buying me a wig, and I bribed my sister to let me take the wig off after the ceremony was over.
36. Don’t Say “Yes” to the Dress at Any Cost
My older sister got married when I was 18 and a broke college freshman. She found a dress she loved that was way out of her budget. She tried to get me to agree to split the cost of the dress with her and wear it when I got married. (I didn't even have a serous boyfriend at the time.) She tried bullying, threats, and the silent treatment when I refused.
She was the oldest sibling, and I had spent my entire life getting pushed around by her. She is a "win at all costs" kind of person and will get revenge on anyone who crosses her. It was the first time I'd really stood up to her. I eventually cut her out of my life in my mid-30s. It's been about 5 years since I cut off contact with her, and I don't regret it.
37. The Road to Love Is Landscaped by Unpaid Workers
The night before the wedding, my sister and I were called over to the bride's parents' house to help build the altar. They wanted to have fresh flowers covering the full altar, and the flowers just arrived the night before. We stayed up all night stringing flowers, and then had to drive an hour away and be ready for a 9 AM wedding.
38. Vocation Over Vacation?
The bride (my cousin) told me to quit my new job so that I could be there for her after she decided to throw together a wedding in three months. I was already spending so much money and time, so she figured I could sacrifice my career, too.
39. Our Duties Stop at the Honeymoon Suite
Apparently, they wanted us (and their parents) to watch them consummate the marriage because of an old European tradition.
40. If You Wanna Be My Lover, You Don’t Gotta Get With My Friends
I was supposed to be a bridesmaid in a wedding of a male buddy. I had tried to befriend the bride because the groom was a childhood friend. All of the planning leading up to the big day was a total whack show. She used our wedding chat to constantly discuss all of her problems with the groom. And she had a lot of problems.
She said the ring was too small; they never talked about finances before getting engaged and now she's not sure he makes enough; can you get a prenup for children you don't have yet? Constantly telling us we were bad friends. Keep in mind, we were all friends with the groom for many years before she was in the picture. I could write a novel about it.
The final straw for me was when she asked me to plan a bachelorette party, but she couldn't tell me anything about what she was interested in doing (clubbing vs spa day vs beach trip, etc.) other than "nothing too wild, but definitely cost-effective.” When I presented her with a plan, she told me I was a terrible friend and that was the worst bachelorette plan she had ever seen. I was replaced as a bridesmaid, did not attend the wedding, and do not speak to either of them anymore.
41. Someone Took Their “Best Man” Duties Too Seriously…
Years ago, I was part of a wedding where the bride was actually fairly reasonable considering her biological father showed up very drunk, the preacher got sick, there was a storm that knocked out all the power to the church; her aunt and mother-in-law fought the entire time, two relatives wore white—with veils—in the audience, and the catering company was late. But really, that was just the beginning of the nightmare.
The groom was the one who lost his mind. He insisted on a Scottish-themed wedding of sorts, but it wasn't authentic Scottish, more like a fantasy in his head about Braveheart or some such thing. Some of the groomsmen apparently refused to wear "a dress" (tartans), so he threw them out of the wedding only hours before, including his best man.
He then switched his best man to his soon to be brother-in-law, who had a Mohawk and face piercings. This 17-year-old BIL was pretty stoked, but not taking it very seriously, and goofing around with a decorative sword until, inevitably, he accidentally hit the bride in the back of the head. She said she was fine, that she was hit with the flat of the blade. Remember this moment.
Even without the power, there was enough light from all of the windows in the small stone church so that you could see everything. And what you couldn't see was decorated by lit candles. But the groom was incredibly surly through the whole process, especially when it was discovered that the rings were still with the groomsmen who had already left after being thrown out. So the 17-year-old brother-in-law actually had rings on his hand, and loaned two of them to the bride and groom.
When the ceremony was over, they ran down the aisles to open the door in the pouring rain, only to find out that the limousine was missing. A few days later, we found out that the groomsmen had actually convinced the limo driver to drive them back to the nearby hotel, and due to a miscommunication, the limo driver thought that was all he had to do for that day.
Luckily, somebody had a Buick that could fit the bride's dress. While waiting to have the Buick cleared out, somebody realized that the back of her wedding dress was stained with a hefty amount of blood. It turned out that being whacked by the sword had actually cut into the back of her scalp, and like most head wounds, even superficial ones, it bled extensively.
Shortly after the bride and groom went back to the hotel, she got patched up, and only the back of the dress was ruined. The photos were from the front. They tried to make light of all of the rain, but it was really apparent that the bride was starting to wear down. Their photos looked terrible. The groom was grimacing, the best man was messing around, and the bride look tired.
In addition, all the added stress was making everybody else fight, the children were all crying and being bratty, and there was no food to be had because the catering was still stuck somewhere because of the storm. The hotel that they were at, which was a small and rather quaint small-town hotel, comped them all free food, mostly because their power was out in the kitchen, and it would've gone bad anyway.
That night, the honeymoon night, the bride and groom had such a big fight with one another that the bride actually packed her stuff and her maid of honor drove her back to her house, where she spent the night. The next morning, she came back, and everyone just kind of blamed it on her head wound. The marriage ended three years later. But not just because of their fighting: the groom ended sleeping with that brother-in-law and came out of the closet.
42. What to Not Put up With When You’re Expecting
I knew a woman who was a bridesmaid in a relative’s wedding. She was married and had been trying to get pregnant for a while. Finally, her and her hubby got lucky and she conceived. The bridezilla got furious and kicked her out of the wedding because she would be pregnant in the pictures. Three months later, sadly, my friend miscarried. The bride called her with a response along the lines of, "Good, well now you can be back in the wedding." Needless to say, she did not even attend it.
43. The Only Daddy Issue Is With Her
This was my sister’s wedding, so hold on tight. My sister had 10 bridesmaids. Most of them were her sorority sisters from college. They wanted to plan an elaborate weekend for the summer, while most of them were still in school without jobs. When I asked “Hey, who will pay for this?” my sister got angry that I even asked. But it gets worse.
I also reminded all the bridesmaids that our father, who has stage 4 cancer, wasn’t doing so well, and that maybe the bachelorette/bridal shower should be close by. They all flipped, thinking I was being insensitive to the bride. I was promptly asked not to be a bridesmaid to my own sister’s wedding over these two things. I was fine with this as she was a bridezilla, and I spent time with our dying father instead. He died 2 weeks after her wedding day, which he couldn’t attend because he was in hospice care. To me, she put herself before our ailing father, and it still makes me mad.
44. Change of Heart
Amazingly, I was at a wedding where the groom himself objected. He just stood up there and started crying, then announced in front of everyone that he had fallen out of love with the bride a while before but didn't know how to break it off. It was extremely uncomfortable, and they both stepped out. Ten minutes later, they came back in and got married—because she'd apparently told him she was pregnant. They're still together, with three kids now. I'm not sure about the husband, but I can confirm that the wife is having an affair. Neither of them are happy, but she has a comfortable life and he doesn't have the spine to leave.
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