Brides are supposed to be beautiful, angelic creatures...but that's not always the reality. The stresses of planning the wedding day, appeasing all the relatives, and committing yourself to one person for the rest of your life can get the better of even the most mild-mannered woman, turning her into a total Bridezilla. Then again, as these stories proves, some people are just born that way...
1. Well Of Course They're Hideous
The bride asked me what color her bridesmaids should wear (I was one). I told her that given all five of us were redheads, a pale, pastel lilac is the only color that should be avoided, as it makes us look lifeless. Guess what dresses she picked? Floor length silk, pastel lilac. I assumed she'd forgot. Her sweet husband later told me, completely nonplussed, that of course the bride has to put bridesmaids in awful dresses because she had to be the prettiest on the day.
2. Just Walk Away
My brother's fiancé went off on my mom in front of my sister and me, all because he was 45 minutes late to the rehearsal due to his best man's car tire blowing out. "Where is your jerk of a son?!" she screamed. The dude should have never shown up for the wedding. Then, it turns out, not only was she a bridezilla, but she was also a total utter sociopath.
She had completely fabricated her life. Her parents—who didn't show up for the wedding—called my mom to tell her the truth about it the day after the ceremony. She had a rap sheet a mile long. But my brother, who just wanted to believe that people can change, stuck it out for seven years. Don't ever, ever do that.
3. Bride’s Day, Bride’s Way
I attended the wedding of a family friend's daughter, so I didn't really know her. It was a night-time reception, with the ceremony immediately preceding. When we went into the reception, we were expecting a buffet or something to be set up, but there was nothing. Later, we found out that there was no food for the 120 guests.
Instead, there was a cheese spread, a fruit platter, and vegetables with dip. After an hour, people were really hungry and some people started to leave because they were expecting to be fed and didn't want to stay. When the bride found out, she absolutely lost it. She ran across the room in her dress and blocked the doors, screaming about how everyone was ruining her wedding.
She kept screaming, "Bride's day, bride's way!" It was such a scene that her father had to peel her off the door. I don't know where the husband was; probably cowering. After that, the people who didn't know her all left. I heard through the grapevine that she was inconsolable the entire night... She got trashed and threw up—hopefully on her dress, but I’m not sure. Oh well, Bride's Day, bride's way!
4. Read The Room
I knew a woman who was a bridesmaid at a relative’s wedding. She was married and had been trying to get pregnant for a while. Finally, she and her husband got lucky and she conceived. The bridezilla got furious and kicked her out of the wedding because she would be pregnant in the pictures. But that's not even the most tragic part.
Three months later, sadly, the woman miscarried. The bride called her with a response along the lines of "Good riddance. Now you can be a part of the wedding again". Needless to say, she did not even attend it.
5. Start The Way You Mean To Go On
This was a groomzilla. A friend of my father was remarrying, and it was both his and the bride’s second time around. They were both in their early 40s, and it was an arranged marriage. The guy was an utter mess. He demanded that every event be at top-notch hotels with obscenely expensive catering and hired string quartets and whatnot for the entertainment.
This was mostly paid out of the bride’s family’s pocket, I might add. The parties on the nights leading up to the main wedding event were opportunities for him to make a rather public jerk out of himself, talking at the top of his voice everywhere he went and showboating the entire time. But the kicker came the next day.
The bride was missing from her own wedding reception. Obviously, it was very odd and conspicuous, and the few relatives from her side made some non-committal excuses about her not feeling well, etc. Turns out, this idiot had divorced the poor woman right after he had his wedding night fun. He said that he “didn’t like her enough,” and that’s an almost literal quote.
The marriage was officially over before the festivities even ended.
6. Family Matters
I am a wedding and special event planner in a major city. I own my own planning company, and I have been in the industry for about eight years. I have so many horror stories, but this one takes the cake. I had a bride who openly spoke utter and complete trash about the groom’s family, in front of his face. She would say that they were "crazy, unclassy, and annoying".
Well, come the wedding, her family was actually the hardest family I ever had to deal with, and the groom’s family was absolutely lovely. On top of all this, the bride yelled at all of the vendors all day, resulting in the videographers leaving after just one hour of filming and the photographer crying in the bathroom. The groom and the bride’s cousins apologized to me for her behavior all night.
7. Do Not Disturb
I married a groomzilla. I wanted to elope because I didn’t like the idea of being stared at by people. He demanded a wedding of 200+. He had my parents build a giant gazebo on our farm and said he’d help pay for building costs. My dad and I built it by hand with our neighbor, and he wasn’t anywhere in sight for what was a year-long project.
Shortly after the wedding, we retired to our hotel and he didn’t want to get intimate. I was like, okay; it was a long day, I get it. But later, three months into a dry marriage, I walked into an awful sight. He was getting it on with our 60-year-old male neighbor. I opened my bedroom door, saw him, and said I was sorry. I then shut the door, got my dog, and drove home to my mom and dad who lived a state away.
Why did I say I was sorry and not yell? I will never know.
8. See Spot Rage
I’ve worked as a caterer for decades and this is my favorite wedding diva story. The mother of bride found a single spot on a knife on a single place setting. She then made an obscene demand. This woman expected the entire $60,000 reception to be free. She was not writing the check so she got shot down pretty quickly. But there was much rage.
9. It’s The Little Things
I worked for a catering company that catered for super, super rich people's weddings and events. There were a lot of little things that happened at the weddings we did, mostly rude rich people who thought that because we were the help, we should be treated like dirt. The one that sticks out in my mind is a wedding that we did at night.
We had been there for hours, and our main duties were done. However, we still had to clean up, and to do that we (of course) have to gather all plates, cups, silverware, and napkins. Well this one rich witch of a woman had been a piece of work all night. Complaining about everything and just being a pain in the butt to all of us.
We were all very polite and put up with her, but when we came over, she refused to give up her place setting—where she had gathered all the dishes and napkins, and would not let us take them. That meant we were stuck there. After an hour past when we should have left, we were all just sitting around, exhausted at 12 am and waiting to leave.
Every time this woman would take a step away from her seat, one of us would dash in and grab as much as possible. And every time, she would dash back to her seat. Finally, she had only one napkin left...she got up to dance, with the napkin in her hand! My boss was a 65-year-old, amazing woman who was sweet and wouldn't say a foul word to anyone or do a thing to offend a soul. Until that one moment changed everything.
She marched up to this woman, looked her straight in the face, grabbed the napkin, ripped it from her hand, smiled sweetly, and wished her an amazing night. I will never forget the anger and disbelief on that witch’s face. She immediately made a beeline for the mother of the bride, while we all made a run for our cars. Good riddance to you, lady.
10. A Whole Lot Of Baggage
My sister was a self-centered jerk during the six months before her wedding, with her coup de gras being the wedding day itself. I know it was all nerves so I don't harbor any grudges, but ugh, I wouldn't relive that day for any money in the world. My strongest memory is her holding a bag of her stuff and SCREAMING on the church steps:
"Why am I holding something? WILL SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY I AM HOLDING SOMETHING ON MY FREAKING WEDDING DAY??? Someone better take this out of my hands immediately".
11. Don’t Harsh My Vibe
I work for a planning company, and we had a "dadzilla". He was the father of the bride and he was pretty much an idiot all night. Toward the end of the evening, he asked that I play "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. They didn't have a DJ; I was using my phone hooked up to our ancient sound system to play music for their reception.
I obliged, and he decided that he wanted to sing along. Whatever. Well, my co-worker decided to unplug the mic because he was, in her words, ruining the song. I didn't care one way or the other, it was no skin off my back if he wanted to warble along, but whatever, my co-worker clearly disagreed. She cut off maybe the last 30 seconds of the song. I came to regret this deeply.
Cue months of angry phone calls and demands of a refund because cutting off the song "ruined" his daughter's wedding. This in spite of the fact that his daughter had both warned us about him and apologized to us for him. He showed up one day to pick up the remainder of a few decorations they had left behind and claimed that my boss was supposed to have left a $450 check for him and he wouldn't leave until we paid him.
I had to deal with this guy harassing me for money for probably 45 minutes before he finally gave up and left, claiming that he was going "straight to the courthouse" to sue us in small claims court. We haven't heard anything since then—he was probably put off by filing fees, would be my guess—but my husband still asks for "microphone guy" updates every once in a while.
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12. Money Talks
My first marriage was to a bridezilla. She 1) drank before the ceremony, 2) wouldn’t dance because she was “too anxious that people would make fun of her,” 3) tried bragging to my cousins during the dinner that our wedding was better than theirs, and 4) invited her “ex” boyfriend to the ceremony. I later found out she had been sleeping with him both before and after our wedding. But that wasn’t even the cherry on top.
She later took the money we had received as gifts—money we were planning on using for a house down payment—and spent it on random stuff. Actually, she had a ton of debt she kept from me. I left her a year after I found out and never looked back. Now, I’m happily married to a great woman. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but there were a lot of red flags I should have noticed.
13. Who’s Your Daddy?
Wedding DJ here. For me, it wasn't the bride—it was a Groomzilla. Some background info: This was the bride's second marriage and for some reason, the newlyweds decided to invite her ex-husband, I guess because he was her kid's father and they wanted the kid to see the wedding as a thing the whole family was involved in? I don't know their reasons, I just know that this was a HUGE mistake.
The dance floor emptied out early and everyone was having fun in the photo booth or mingling outside…Except the baby daddy and the groom. They're sitting at a table alone and appear to be having a raucous, laughing conversation. But then it took a grim turn. Suddenly, their faces are getting angry. Groom now has his finger in the daddy's chest, "HE CALLS ME DAD NOW! I'M HIS FATHER!" Groomsmen come running in to hold them both back. Groom flips the freaking table over. Bride is now in tears. A magical night.
14. Let’s Go To The Tape
I used to shoot wedding videos for a business that covered anything related to a wedding. So one day, I heard that I'm getting assigned to another wedding this weekend. No one told me there anything was special about the ceremony, so I show up and see it's an Indian wedding. No big deal, I think, I can handle this. I did not handle it.
In a typical wedding, we would mic up the groom, and the bride and groom would stand in front of the preacher and the one mic would get everyone's audio. Except in this wedding, the bride and groom sat on a swing and the person officiating the wedding was pacing back and forth. So my audio was completely messed up—loud one second and quiet the next.
On top of that, the bride and groom had eloped months earlier and this was all for show. So what did the bride and groom do? Sat there and talked about all their guests behind their backs. So not only could I barely hear the guy talking, I had way too much audio about how the bride's mother's cousin was a promiscuous alcoholic.
Then we go to the reception. The reception lasted eight freaking hours. 8 hours. I brought enough batteries and tapes, but Jesus that was a long time. I sat a camera up at one end of the hall for a long shot, then a slightly closer shot from over the DJ booth, and I was doing handheld camera work. Every few songs, I'd move my long shot camera to get a different angle.
Now we go into the edit phase. This is really the only time I ever interact with the couple and where we spend any amount of time together. So I'm editing and we have a standard format we follow. A montage in the beginning, ceremony footage, first dance, father-daughter dance, mom-son dance, cake cutting, random footage of people dancing, testimonials and well wishes, etc.
Basic stuff. It usually ends up being about two-four hours once everything is done. Theirs was five hours long. We gave them a copy, and the next day all heck broke loose. The bride stormed into the store, demanding the rest of her wedding. I have no idea what she's talking about and besides, I don't get paid for any re-editing work.
We gave her an hour longer than any video I'd ever done, but that wasn't enough. She wanted all eight hours of the reception. Edited together. So I loaded all my shots up, and did huge cuts where I'd stay on a shot until it sucked, then I'd change it. Some shots wouldn't move for three songs. Basically, there was no way I was spending a lot of time on this.
We finally finished and exported the video to DVD. But she had one more nasty surprise in store for us. We called her in and she wanted to watch it in the store...and she brought a note pad. As she's watching, she's making an "edit list" of things she wants me to change. That list ended up being three pages long. I stood up, looked her in the face, and said, "This job isn't worth it. I quit".
That was the last wedding video I ever edited.
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15. Someone Needs Therapy
My worst bride was an Ivy League-educated shrink. She tried to play head games with absolutely everyone involved in the planning of the wedding. Frequently had fits. She and I butted heads because she wanted a carpet running straight from the bottom of the stairs to the doors of the chapel. I told her it wasn't possible, since they didn't line up.
She kept on asking me if I was sure, even after I showed her exactly what I meant. Her response chilled me. She narrowed her eyes and told me she thought I had a problem with the truth. She was very controlling with the groom as well. I remembered their names and looked them up on Facebook a while back. They're divorced and he appears to be happily remarried.
16. No Such Thing As A Free Bride
I had one horrible bride who I planned an amazing wedding for. She raved about how much she loved the food all evening, but the day after the wedding, she enacted her diabolical plan. She wrote a bad review about the caterer on Yelp and told me she wouldn't remove it unless they gave her a discount. She's a horrible person.
17. Just Say No
I work in a mobile bar that travels to different weddings in our region of the country. We had this couple that were a bit strapped for cash, so we did their wedding for cheap. Anyway, they were so nice to begin with, but a lot of their guests brought their own drinks to the venue, which wasn't allowed. We confiscated them and promised to give them back at the end.
One of these guests was the groom's father, who brought a whole keg of ale. At around 10 pm, most of the guests were leaving, even though the party was supposed to go on until 1 am. That’s because the bride and groom had gone off the deep end. They had obviously partaken in substances and were pretty smashed and out of it.
We weren't selling any more drinks so we decided to leave early, refund the customers a bit of money, and leave all the confiscated booze behind. The bride (who booked us) was cool with this so we proceeded to head out. Well, it turns out that the groom was not okay with that. Just after we packed up, he started demanding drinks and the phone numbers of all our female staff.
We said no, of course. Eventually, we had packed everything in to my boss’s trailer and were ready to leave. We all ran to the car park as the groom was getting really angry at this point. It was about to get so much worse. My boss pulls away just as the groom comes out of the venue and starts hurling chairs at her car and trailer, screaming nonsense and swearing.
But I was in another car, and he hadn't noticed me yet. I turned the key in my car, which of course didn't start. He noticed me then. I kept trying the engine, and after a few tries it finally started. I turned on my headlights—and there he was. 6'2" of messed up groom standing with lock-eyes in front of my tiny car. I couldn't get around him as he kept running in front of me, so I decided to drive straight at him and hope he moved out of the way.
He didn't. Instead, he jumped onto my car and eventually fell off the curved hood. Never looked back. Screw that guy.
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18. Food Fight
I had one horrific couple that didn't care about anyone. The groom was 30 minutes late for the ceremony, but it was no big deal, because the bride was TWO HOURS late. After the ceremony, we had to shorten cocktail hour to make up for lost time. We hoped the couple would hurry up and treat their guests with respect, but nope. While en route to the reception, they got hammered in their limo, and both ended up falling asleep.
They were both so late for their own reception, I had the venue serve dinner without them. Their parents were furious. The bride’s parents left early, and the couple didn't arrive until 11:00 at night. Half of their guests left before they arrived, and they yelled at me for allowing dinner to start before their arrival. This was a 400 guest wedding.
19. Married In A Snap
I had a bride rent our facility for her "classy" wedding. She was a TOTAL nightmare, easily the worst bride I've ever dealt with. She refused to make eye contact with any staff member and got people's attention by snapping her fingers at them. Oh, but she got her comeuppance. She made a complete and total fool of herself when she and her groom showed up plastered to the reception. But that wasn’t all.
A rumor had started to spread that she was pregnant, which is why they were getting married. She furiously denied this in a speech to everyone gathered at the wedding. The baby was born five months later, and weighed a healthy 10 lbs, so no one bought her story that he was premature. It now costs a lot of money to get married at my place of work, and all brides must sign an eight-page contract basically promising not to be a jerk.
20. The Bodyguard
My sister-in-law was trying so hard to keep from going Bridezilla on her wedding day, but people were going full idiot on her...Here she is with one person doing her hair, another painting her face, and her doofus cousin is asking, "How do you operate a coffee machine? Because I am 26 and have never learned to make my own coffee and feel NOW is the time to learn and the BRIDE is the one to teach me".
Then someone else comes in and says they've run out of parking directly outside. Should they park further down the road? No. Just stay in your car, you tool. Then she tries to present all of us bridesmaids with matching jewelry she bought us, and her cruddy friends are saying stuff like, "I like my own jewelry better". I realize she is starting to go squinty in one eye...I knew what I had to do.
I suddenly realize she doesn’t need to be a witch on her wedding day, because she has ME. I tell the bridesmaids how lovely the matching jewelry is and of course we will wear them, regardless of what we brought, because none of are thoughtless selfish witches who would insult a bride’s gift that way. Right? Right?
Then I parked my butt in the dining room doorway, popped out a bosom for some preventative breastfeeding of my four-month-old, and made anyone who came down that hall run their stuff by me before they got access to her. And if it was something stupid like, "I've somehow forgotten how to find my own parking and I think someone being prepped by a team of expensive consultants should hold my hand through the process of accepting this," I told them to get real and screw off.
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21. Picture Perfect
I work at a facility that we rent out for weddings. We probably host like eight weddings a year, and weddings bring out the worst in people. You can have the calmest, chill person on your first meeting, but by the time that the wedding rolls around, that bride will be a witch on wheels. But nothing compared to this one horrible Bridezilla.
She was obviously on her second or third wedding. She kept trying to use everything for free, even though she had signed a very specific contract that stated what she could and could not do. She pitched a fit over that. Then, on the day of the wedding, she threw a nuclear meltdown fit when her bridesmaids got tired of taking photographs after three hours and went somewhere to get warm.
She started screaming at the photographer that she was going to keep taking pictures and to heck with all of them.
22. You’d Better Sit Down For This
I had a mother-in-law-zilla one time, who, after seeing and approving of the chairs that we provided, caused a scene of epic proportions after she decided that the chairs weren't good enough anymore. The bride was sobbing by the end of it, being consoled by the monster-in-law, who simply kept telling her, “It'll be alright, even though everything is ruined by these GREEN chairs".
23. The Ghost Of Girlfriends Past
I have extensive experience as an events coordinator, including private events such as weddings. The worst I've personally witnessed had a groom’s baby mama (and ex-fiancée) come to the reception uninvited. She grabbed the wedding cake, chucked it at the newlyweds, and began screaming about how he was an absent father while she smashed bottles of wine on the ground.
Everyone was stunned at first, but the ex-fiancée was ultimately restrained by the groomsmen. We called the authorities, and she was charged with assault and destruction of private property. No cake was salvaged sadly. The bride was a huge fan of donuts since childhood, though, so we ran out, grabbed boxes upon boxes of them, and they celebrated “cutting the donut” during their midnight lunch.
They ultimately enjoyed the remainder of their night, but the bride’s gown was destroyed, and a good amount of the linens were ruined. At least their wedding was definitely memorable. In the end, the parents of the groom asked me to arrange a lovely (and secret) private dinner for the newlyweds and their bridal party to make up for the fiasco.
As a side note, when we had the private dinner, I found out the outrageous truth. See, the ex-fiancée was a close friend of the groom’s cousin. I guess the cousin was recently divorced, and always felt passed over by the family, so she took the ex fiancée’s side. The cousin ended up giving the wedding info to the ex, and well, she showed up.
Honestly, the cousin probably would've gotten away with slipping the information if she didn't start spurting off that the groom “got what was coming to him". I think the mother of the groom paid for the dinner as an apology for insisting the (now married) couple invited his entire family, including crazy cousin Gemma. As well she should have!
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24. Penny Pinching Princess
I’m a caterer. One bride who just got married is a lovely girl and fun to talk to and work with, but I feel like every conversation I have with her leads back to "I want to do [really cool thing], but I only want to pay [less than 1/4 of what [really cool thing] would reasonably cost]". I've made some suggestions to her, but it's like she's waiting for me to offer her something for free just because she wants it. No...doesn't work that way.
25. Kissing Cousins
My cousin got married to this horrible woman who wouldn't let me and him take a picture together because she was jealous. I was eight years old, their flower girl, and also HIS COUSIN. She also got into a screaming match with her sister-in-law because she had a bigger engagement ring. Oh, and the Bridezilla was from New Orleans, and wanted to have the wedding there. There was just one problem.
She insisted on having the wedding there even after it got screwed over by Hurricane Katrina. Finding a hotel was a delight, according to my parents. She then made her husband, my cousin, skip our grandmother's funeral because she "didn't like her anyway". Honestly, no one has forgiven him for going along with this. But then the piece de resistance came.
She cheated on my cousin with her high school sweetheart after my cousin paid for her lap band surgery. She was a treat. I don't miss her at all.
26. Maid Of Dishonor
My sister made me her maid of honor. This was a little weird, actually: We never talk. We grew up together but barely know each other, and she never spoke to me in high school or while she was in university. But she calls me one day, while I’m away for a debate tournament in university, so I’m a poor student at this point.
She lets me know that “Since her fiancé’s brother is getting him his wedding band, wouldn't it be so cute if I bought her HER wedding band?!?!?!" It wasn't a question—she demanded it. All of a sudden I'm "her sister," meaning I guess that I have to do all these things that she's seen in movies and in magazines for her.
Plan this party, plan another party, help countless hours doing this, buy the dress she wants you to buy, etc. The best part is that she let me know that "at least she was letting us choose how we were going to have our hair for the wedding—a lot of people don't actually let their bridesmaids choose!" Thank God, am I right? So generous!
It was the tip of the iceberg, and it was all awful. She went back to not talking to me ever after that, then she had a baby, and it was the same thing again. Worst of all, although I was angry about it openly to my parents and to her, no one heard me, or more importantly, everyone decided I was being a brat. That doesn't make any sense and isn't fair, but it’s how it is.
I was 18, and this was a turning point in my relationship with both her and my mom—I've distanced myself a lot. It makes me sad, but it's what I had to do.
27. Worth Every Penny
I married a bridezilla and she ruined my life. After the wedding and vacation were over, I told her we needed to pay the debt we just accumulated—she wanted a huge wedding and she got it. We had a budget for the wedding and we should have had no debt at the end, but in the last few weeks before the wedding, she suddenly had to spend a ton of money on wedding stuff I had never even heard of before.
And when I say she spent a ton of money, I actually mean that it all came out of my pocket. So yeah, I wanted to start paying it off. She said she didn't have much on her credit card and I could easily pay it off in a couple of months if I just picked up some of her bills. I agreed... but that ended up being the worst decision of my life.
Three months later, she had her credit card paid off and she told me she wanted a divorce. You’d think we could get an annulment, but no. Annulment is very uncommon where we live. We looked into it, but we didn’t meet the criteria for one. Instead, we had to go to a quickie divorce lawyer who just puts paperwork together, and then we had to do everything else.
Maybe the worst thing about all this in retrospect? She comes from an upper-middle-class family and has a trust fund.
28. Seasons Of Change
A bride once called me, having a meltdown, because her friend got engaged as well and was planning to get married in the same year as she was. Apparently, it was her special year and not just her special day. She threw a huge fit that this girl was only getting married to “steal her thunder". Yes, because no one else can have a life at the same time as you.
Her friend’s date wasn't even in the same month or season. Hers was in October and her friend’s was in June...
29. Unfashionably Late
I freelance as extra help and event management for a wedding planner in Nashville. The worst wedding that we ever worked was a Persian wedding. The ceremony was held in a Baha'i faith center, and the reception was an hour away in a Jewish community center. The family was neither of these religions. They used the venues because the groom's family was cheap. Like really, really cheap.
They also decided not to pay the extra money to have full kitchen access, which meant that the Kurdish Kebab caterers were getting hot water out of the coffee machines. It was a disaster from the beginning. The groom's sister, who was a raging witch according to the planner, got in a car accident on the way to the reception.
The bride and groom showed up at 10:00 pm instead of 7 pm. The wait staff was only contracted until 10 pm, but thankfully were happy to stay and work with the wedding planning crew. But the invitations said 6 pm, so all of the American guests showed up at 6 pm and were waiting for the newlyweds for four hours! We were also given strict instructions to wait for the couple before we started serving food.
My boss asked me what my opinion of working with the family was. I told her that I wouldn't recommend them to Satan himself.
30. Perfect Timing
The Bridezilla pulled the “you'll do it if you really love me" card and demanded her fiancé rent a massive equestrian park with stables, vast fields, riding rings, and the whole nine yards—as if her $20k diamond ring wasn't enough. Only problem is, a massive rainstorm rolled in, and the stables only had one small building to cram into.
Oh, and did I mention her several dogs? They all peed and pooped inside the venue, all over the velvet carpet. One even pooped while they were walking down the aisle.
31. If The Dress Fits…
My mom worked in a bridal salon when she was in college, and sizing was a nightmare. One day, a woman named Sandra came in to try on gowns. She tried on the large sample dress, and had it pinned to see how it would look on her if it was her size. She said this was it, so my mom took her measurements, and figured out what size she needed to order.
When my mom told her dress would be a size 8 based on her measurements, Sandra threw a fit. "That's impossible! All of my other dresses are a size 4! I have been a size 4 since I was 14. I am not an 8! Order me a 4!" My mom tried to explain how sizes vary from designer to designer and that, while she may be a 4 normally, with the designer of her dress her measurements are considered an 8.
She said it's just a number, and if it's too big it can be taken in. However, a 4 couldn't be taken out...Sandra took none of that. Despite all protest, she demanded a 4. A couple of weeks before the wedding, her size 4 dress arrived. It wouldn't zip (duh). Bride had a meltdown. Mom had to apologize and reorder a larger dress at the bridal salon's expense.
32. Rogue Relative
How about a Momzilla? I was the planner for a wedding and had been working with the bride and groom. A few months into planning, the groom’s mom calls me to change the date of the wedding. I thought it was kind of weird and called the couple to confirm the change. NOPE! Couple did not know anything about the date change and said to completely ignore the groom’s mom and call them if she tried to get in contact.
33. Warning Signs
My cousin married a bridezilla. He comes from a very poor area but has become successful after moving out of his hometown. His wife, however, was already extremely wealthy; you even could say excessively. They married after a year of knowing each other, and boy was it a surprise to hear about their horrific wedding plans.
They spent $250K on the wedding, including catering by seven different restaurants. Their food was from different cultures and cooked in front of you, almost like a hibachi buffet style. They even had servers in tailed suits and white gloves serving Taco Bell after midnight. Basically, it was the most lavish wedding I’d ever been to, and she was OBSESSED with the details. Well… that ended up being a HUGE red flag.
Once they got married, she was spending more money than he could make. She was getting mad because he wasn’t making enough, while she wasn’t working at all. When they got divorced, she gave him a cruel ultimatum. He could either get his ring back or keep the dog. He kept the dog. Oh, and there was one more parting gift.
Her sister, a lawyer, helped her file a restraining order on him and they haven’t spoken since. Screw her, but man, did he dodge one there. They finished the divorce papers exactly one year and one day after their wedding. Once a bridezilla, always a bridezilla.
34. Bite The Hand That Feeds
My sister fired her wedding planner and canceled the rehearsal dinner. The poor photographer ended up stepping in to be the one to tell us when it was our turn to walk down the aisle, time to cut the cake, who should toast, etc., because my sister was toasted and the rest of us were just clueless. He was also a top-notch photographer.
So what did my sister do to the man who saved her wedding? Betray him. My husband and I were considering buying some of the photos he took of our family, but he ended up taking all of my sister's pictures off of his site because she was screen-capping and sharing them with the watermark cropped out instead of buying them. So classless.
35. We Don’t See Eye-To-Eye
I worked a wedding where I basically had to play a game of telephone all day long. I'm a photographer and came onsite the day of the wedding to meet with the planner/coordinator, who promptly told me to be careful around the bride. Now, let me tell you, planners have seen it all, and this doesn’t usually happen. But this Bridezilla was beyond nightmarish.
Apparently at the rehearsal the prior night, the bride thought the coordinator was taking too much of her time (after two questions), and relayed through her bridesmaid that the coordinator was no longer allowed to speak to the bride or even look her in the eye. All communication would have to go through a family member from there on out.
I had worked with this coordinator in the past and knew her to be a consummate professional and pleasant person to be around. She had actually assumed the bride would get over her tantrum the day of the wedding, but nope, still no talking or eye contact. The coordinator tried her best to keep the wedding day going smoothly and on time, but it was really tough to do so through proxy.
Taking photos took forever because I had to make sure a bridesmaid or sister was always with us to tell the couple where to stand and how to pose. It was one of the most awkward jobs I ever had. I also should mention that when I came onsite for the wedding, I was able to locate the bride by the sound of her screaming at her hair and makeup artists.
By the time I came into the bridal suite, she had switched to screaming at her bridesmaids for looking prettier than her and made them change their hairstyles to "look uglier". After I was done with the getting-ready portraits, I found the groom outside on a balcony just staring into the sun with the longest sigh I've ever heard in my life.
36. All Eyes On Me
My mother-in-law and my mother were turning into huge Momzillas, so my wife and I shut them both down and took over. Planned and executed the whole thing ourselves. Printing, decorations, the works. But then my mother got a horrific revenge. Upset that the whole day wasn't about her, she outed my deeply in the closet gay brother at the wedding.
Suddenly, everyone was talking to her about how she had this terrible burden to carry. My wife and I encouraged them to leave the reception and kept our friends there to carry on the party. And my brother. Great party. If you need any more information about my horrible mother, here’s more: she forgets my birthday; she once gave me a gift of flip flops....both left. From a dollar store. Weddings don’t always bring out the worst in people—sometimes the people are just awful already.
37. Buyer’s Remorse
I work at a fancy country club. The weekend I started working, we had a large and expensive wedding for the daughter of one of the club's members. Just this past week, we got an email from the groom—three months later—wanting to "adjust the invoice" due to X, Y, and Z that had gone wrong with his wedding. As I read the list, I burst into laughter.
Pretty much everything that he mentioned was either a) out of our control, b) corrected when it was mentioned to us, or c) never mentioned until now. I'm honestly not sure what my manager is planning on doing about it because...how are we supposed to correct something that happened three months ago? It seems like a blatant money-grab.
Oh, and the parents of the bride had nothing but wonderful things to say about the wedding for weeks afterward, so...yeah, my guess is money-grab.
38. I, Bridezilla
Okay, I'll admit it. I was the bridezilla at my first wedding. What can I say? We were young, and we had more money than brains. My then-husband was also a horrific jerk, but I was in love with the idea of being a picture-perfect bride. I tried not to go full Bridezilla but eh, I managed to do so anyway. The stress was incredible, given that we were doing a high-falutin' wedding in a beautiful but resort-y location.
Everything had to be just so. I believe the final cost of that darn wedding was somewhere north of $17,000...in 1990s money. I can't even imagine or calculate what it would be today. I remember getting to the altar and wanting to pitch a fit because the groomsmen were wearing vests that were minutely the wrong color—a plum-ish color instead of the ocean blue I'd requested.
My groom, who hadn't yet graduated into full-on physical aggression, gave me a warning shake of the head. And since we were at the altar, I managed to rein myself in and not make (more of) a jerk of myself. If I could talk to my 26-year-old self now, I'd smack her silly for being as dumb as a stump. That custom-made dress you insisted on? A $299 David's Bridal gown would've worked just fine.
Boutique wine with custom labels? Right. Buy a couple of cases at the local discount store. Nobody cares; they just want the free booze. Passed hors d'oeuvres followed by a gourmet, plated luncheon? Yeah, go with the buffet, because after all those drinks with the custom labels, nobody is going to remember what the heck you served anyhow.
I have since learned my lesson—making sure you're with the right person is so much more critical than trying to impress people with some stupidly fancy wedding that nobody will remember in a week's time. You want to be a princess for a day? Buy a costume and hit up Disneyworld.
39. Trainwreck Right On Time
I worked for a few years as a wedding singer. The worst disaster I've seen was directly caused by a bride being a Bridezilla. If you've ever been to a wedding, you know that weddings run behind schedule. This bride was adamant that everything be exactly on time. Of course, it being a wedding, everything was running behind about 30 minutes.
At 7:55, she could no longer handle that the wedding was running late and decided to skip ahead to the Hora, the traditional Jewish wedding dance. The Hora was scheduled for 8:00 pm. We (the band) and the wedding planner suggested that we should not skip ahead, but she was having none of it.
With her face red with effort, she screamed at us that the Hava Nagila would start at 8:00 pm and not a minute later. Well, she was paying us, so we did what we were told. It went so wrong, so fast. We started our Hava Nagila at precisely 8:00 pm. The guests rose and began to form a circle as they have done countless times before. But something was amiss…
The groom was nowhere to be found. The bride was alone in the center of the circle. As if on autopilot, the guests danced and sang on while the bride's expression changed from confused, to horrified, to crushed. It was a train wreck. They finished the dance without the groom ever arriving. The bride was sobbing uncontrollably.
The groom was outside because the wedding was running 30 minutes late. He knew the schedule and thought he had time. In the end, it was the bride's own stubborn insistence that led to the tragic ending. She was the captain on her own Titanic, and we were the band playing as it sank. I sometimes wonder how that marriage worked out.
My #1 advice to people getting married is to enjoy their wedding day. No matter how much you plan ahead, things will always go wrong. Instead of trying to control and manage everything, spend your wedding day celebrating with your guests. No wedding ever goes perfectly. Considering you ideally only do it once, do your best to enjoy the ride.
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40. Music To My Ears
I’m a musician, and I played a wedding last year where the bride and groom were fantastically lively, beautiful people. I couldn't help but like them even though in the lead up I probably only spent an hour in their company. Anyways, the bride wanted me to play at the ceremony, just acoustic guitar and singing outside the church, for the guests as they walked in.
They invited me to the wedding and reception so I wasn't just there for an hour and then went home. About a week before the wedding, the bride asked if I'd also mind playing their first dance song. I of course said yes, since I was going to be there anyway. She wanted me to play “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran. So fast-forward to the day of the wedding.
Everything is going according to plan, and about 10 minutes before the first dance is due to happen I go and get my guitar. This is where it all unraveled. The groom’s mother followed me and basically confronted me, telling me not to play that song. Instead, she wanted me to play “Can't Help Falling in Love” because it was her favorite song. I very politely informed her that my agreement was with the bride and groom and therefore I'd play the Ed Sheeran song.
She wasn't happy, went on a rant, and she ended it with “I'm paying for this wedding, and I don't care what that witch wants, you will play what I tell you to or you won't get paid". So I told her, of course, I would play her song, after all me being a poor unemployed musician I couldn't possibly have any other gigs or a source of income, and was desperately relying on the $150 that an hour of singing at a wedding ceremony would bring me.
And then I got up to play, did what the bride wanted, and made sure to stare at the mother-in-law for a good 30 seconds. I figured it was best to not ruin the happy couple’s day, so I waited until they got back from the honeymoon before I told the bride what had happened. And bless her cotton socks, she transferred me $300 on the spot for my troubles.
41. A Father’s Love
I've worked as a waiter at one of the more fancy wedding reception venues in my city and we get a lot of old Italian, Greek and generally European family weddings. For this one wedding, the groom got mega plastered and smashed a bottle of cognac on the dance floor and literally tried to set it on fire. The function supervisor tried to tell him very politely that he couldn't.
He got upset about that and started screaming "This is my wedding and if I want to burn this place down I will". Officers were called. At that same wedding, it was speeches time and the bride gets up to say a few things about how her deceased mother was an inspiration to her, etc. General heartfelt wedding stuff. Her father stands up after, and ruins the moment with just a few words.
"You ungrateful little witch, you're the spitting image of your mother. Never thanking me for anything. I paid $40k for this and I don't even get a mention in your speech? Screw you and your dirt husband". Security stepped in at this point and tried to calm him down, so he takes a swing at security and gets kicked out.
42. Everybody Just Calm Down
I briefly worked in event production. I had the pleasure of being at this event working a plain old photo booth at a beautiful church. It’s a simple gig. The weather was gorgeous, the view was gorgeous, and everything was great. The second I get there, one of our photographers comes up to me with a glass of champagne, chugs it, and says, "I’ve been here since noon".
My jaw dropped. It was now 8:00 pm. In the distance, the bride was screaming and cussing up a storm. I talk to the photographer a bit longer and I find out that the bride punched her mother in the face during photos, the bride kicked out the groom’s best man, and she cussed out our videographer. This woman was going mad.
To put it in perspective, halfway through the reception the bride shouted for her “idiot husband to get our money’s worth at the photo booth". Later that night, I watched her shove a groomsman to the ground when he asked her to calm down. She eventually broke into tears randomly at some point. At the end of the night, she tipped me $150. When she wasn't having a breakdown, she was chill.
43. Detail Oriented
My cousin’s friend has forbidden her bridesmaids (my cousin is one) to use anything other than a very specific brand of fake tan any more than a set number of times in the month preceding the wedding. They aren't allowed to be more tanned than the bride, artificially or naturally. They also have to wear a very specific pair of tights—a set thickness and color—or the bride will lose her mind.
44. A Rollercoaster Of Emotions
My co-worker married a crazy bridezilla. Here’s just a taste of what happened leading up to, during, and after the wedding. The moment he proposed, she lost her desire to sleep with him. According to him, she also basically stopped acting like the woman he fell in love with and started acting like her real self.
A week after he proposed, she quit her job. According to her, her full-time job was now planning the wedding. The wedding was horrible, but I'm getting there. She then had a fight with his mother because she demanded that she pay for half the wedding while getting zero input on anything.
Like, the groom’s family wasn’t even allowed to contribute to the guest list, which ended up being 95% of the bride's friends and family. The bride, who was 30 years old, subsequently egged her future mother-in-law’s house. When the bride and groom had a spat about the egging, he went to work the next day. That's when he received a disturbing video.
The video was of her screaming and sobbing as she buzzed her hair off in the bathroom. I worked with him, so he showed me the video. I strongly urged him to have her assessed by a psychiatrist. In response, he made a stupid joke about how intimacy with a crazy girl is the best kind and I pitied him. There's no amount of patience in the world that would help me survive a relationship like that.
Now we get to the juicy part: the wedding. It was in a pool "clubhouse" in summer, and it was much too small for the 150+ people they invited. Someone forgot to turn the AC on until after the place was packed. A lifeguard showed up in a swimsuit to turn it on, but it did little given it was already sweltering.
Two rows of chairs in the clubhouse were ribboned off with “reserved” signs on them, so no one sat in them. They were later occupied by the six bridesmaids, leaving about a dozen chairs open once the wedding started. The one groomsman, who was the best man, stood by the groom and didn't sit, while elderly people were left standing as there was no way to get to the chairs once the ceremony started.
The bride showed up 90 minutes late. She was unhappy with her hair and makeup, so she took it all off and did it herself. All the guests were standing for 1.5 hours just waiting for her. The groom was literally standing at the altar sweating his butt off in a wool suit, and he was clearly not sure if she would show up.
He looked like he felt sick. When the bride did show up, it somehow got worse. She burst into the clubhouse, marched down the aisle, and snapped at the officiant to "hurry up and get started". During the prayer while the religious groom had his head bowed, she turned to wave at everyone (I don't pray so I was looking up), then she told her mother to go get her some water.
She drank a bottle of water during the prayer and kept grinning and waving at people in attendance, paying zero attention to her groom in front of her. When the ceremony was over, tables were crammed into the clubhouse…and apparently only family and immediate friends of the bride had seats at the tables. The rest of us were to stand outside during the reception. I didn't see a dance, a speech, the cake cut, nothing.
The food was served outside where there were bugs everywhere. The bride made the groom get her food over and over. He meekly stood in line with the other 150 people, until people insisted he go sit and let them get food. Nope, she told him to do it, so he said he had to be the one to get it for her.
She never left her table to greet any of her guests. And when it was over, it went nuclear. Apparently, they had a massive fight as they were leaving the following day for the honeymoon, with the bride laying all the failures of the wedding she planned at his and his mom's feet. She threw his luggage out of the car and tried to drive to the airport by herself.
However, he had their tickets and jumped on the hood to stop her from driving off in his car. He then got fired about a month after the wedding because he kept showing up late and leaving early to deal with her personal crises. One year after the wedding, I got a thank-you note for my wedding gift, and it revealed the whole story.
It was signed by just the bride with a note that said, "As you may have heard, Ryan and I have had a bumpy start in our first year as a married couple, and we're separated now. Thanks for the lovely gift". They divorced a couple of months later.
45. Who Am I Without You?
We had one groom who was an hour late to his own wedding. Yes, this is a jerk move, but the bride’s response made my jaw drop to the floor. This woman, who had seemed perfectly reasonable before, laid down on the floor, pulled the back of her dress over her head, and started singing nursery rhymes to herself until he could be located.
46. You Can’t Choose Your Family
I had a momzilla; my mother-in-law. She had insisted that she was a "traditionalist, so since I was marrying her daughter, she said she would be paying for the whole deal. That was fine with my wife, so it was fine with me. My mother-in-law took no further role in the planning process.
Then, very late in the game—after 18 months of planning—my wife sent her the seating plan just to make sure it would be workable. After what sounded like a robust discussion over the phone, my wife came to me and told me that her mother wasn't happy with the seating plan. She was demanding that she sit at the bridal table, or she'd pull her money.
I called my mother-in-law back and asked her to explain the problem to me. She got very emotional, ranting about how it was the "tradition" she wanted to follow. She was threatening to withdraw her money if she didn't have her way. I took a second to consider my options and told her that it was fine—fortunately, a seat at the bridal table had just opened up. But then I continued with a slam dunk.
I said that spot was mine, and I wouldn't be needing it. I then hung up the phone and handed it back to my wife. On the day of the wedding, my mother-in-law sat where she was told.
47. Better Off Alone
She told me she regretted marrying me a day after our wedding because it wasn't exactly how she wanted it to be. She also told me, on my birthday, that she was going to have an affair. When a few of my closest friends passed on in a short period of time, she told me to “get over it” because “life goes on". She then filed for divorce because apparently I never loved or cared about her. She wants nothing to do with me.
48. Sister Act
My sister was a bridezilla. She announced her two-year engagement and asked me to be the maid of honor. I then got the opportunity to move across the country to pursue my career. It was 18 months before her wedding, and her reaction was chilling. Instead of congratulating me, she said, "You're going to leave me here to plan my wedding all by myself?"
It was as if I had signed away my right to have a life for the “honor” of being in her wedding. Oh, but that was just the first salvo. She made us all spend hundreds of dollars on specialized dresses, and even the bachelorette party had a dress code and a steep price tag. For 10 years before her engagement, I had consistently had blue, green, and purple hair, but knowing that she is conservative, I let the color grow out.
I had natural color but a short bob with an undercut and even that just wasn’t good enough. She went on about it constantly. In the lead-up, we talked every few days to discuss her wedding—despite the problems, it was the closest we'd ever been. Then, as soon as she was married, I got radio silence. She even forgot my birthday.
Needless to say, we don't speak anymore.
49. Star-Crossed Lovers
I work at a men’s wedding rental store. One day, a young couple comes in and is picking stuff out. As usual, the guy is pretty “I don't care about this". Brides are never happy about this attitude. We go through for a bit, but when it comes to picking vest styles, they get into a huge argument right in front of my colleague and me.
Eventually, the groom throws up his hands and says, "If we can't decide what colors, then we just shouldn't get married!" He then walks out of the door and leaves in his car. The girl starts crying in our store, while we are just bewildered. My colleague asked if she was ok. She said she was having someone come pick her up and walked out the door crying.
Never saw them again. Hands down a famous story in our store.
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50. Nice Try, Honey
I make custom, one-of-a-kind, wedding dresses. One of my many notable interactions: A girl asked me if I would send her an $1,800 dress for free because "I'm really pretty and I'll send you pictures of me wearing it at an event". I explained that while I did custom dresses, I couldn't possibly make one that would fit over such large balls.
51. Sibling Rivalry
My sister was a bridezilla. She asked me to be her bridesmaid. The dresses were hundreds of dollars, and my mom ended up paying for them because she knew I couldn't afford them. 70 bucks in alterations later, the stupid dress finally fit. I lived in Edmonton at the time and my sister was in Abbotsford, BC, which is far away.
She demanded I fly down for her bachelorette party. Fine. 300-dollar for a flight there. I stayed with my mom until my sister kicked me out on the night before her wedding. Apparently, she wanted a "special night" with her TWO maids of honor and I was “just” a bridesmaid, so I couldn't be there. Whatever.
During the bachelorette party, I was told I needed to bring drinks for myself and the bride. Fine. I went to the store and she ran up 100 bucks on my card with what she wanted. Whatever, it's her wedding. She proceeded to drink none of it; then went to bed at the hotel early because she was angry for some reason. She then gave my bottles, all 100 bucks of it, to her husband for his bachelor party the next night.
But that's not all—she also got angry that my gift for them wasn't off her registry. I looked at the registry and there was nothing under 200 bucks. I mean, this witch even put a 900-dollar vacuum on there. When all was said and done, HER stupid wedding cost ME over a thousand dollars. She then didn't speak to me for years after, and even when she did reach out, she only wanted to tell me that she didn't actually want me as a bridesmaid and that I ruined her wedding.
She said she only asked me out of courtesy and that the spot was actually meant for her wedding planner, our cousin. At this point, we don't keep in touch. Her wedding ruined our relationship.
52. To Your Health
I worked at a venue for wedding receptions. One time, a groom wouldn't drink because he had severe "Asian red face" so he avoided drinks all his life. Well, the bride convinced him to drink the champagne toast. Big. Mistake. Turns out he was severely allergic and almost went into anaphylactic shock. The bride got into the back of the ambulance in her wedding dress.
53. Mr. Wrong
I married a groomzilla. I bent over backward to make the wedding as magical as he wanted, even though I would have been happy in someone's backyard with a potluck. In couple’s counseling seven years later, he made a disturbing confession. He admitted that he never really wanted to marry ME so much as he wanted a huge show and party.
Everyone liked and approved of me, so he wanted them all to see he was making a good choice and be envious of him. He wanted them to be proud of him. We used up most of the money I got from a car accident settlement on the wedding. It could have covered a down payment on a small house. After all that, he asked me for divorce in 2020.
54. That’s What I Want
A girl I went to high school with got engaged. Her parents offered her three options: $50,000 for a wedding, $50,000 for the down-payment on a house (and a small, intimate wedding), or $25,000 for the wedding and $25,000 for a house. She chose the $50,000 wedding. Weeks before her wedding, she told her parents that she was having second thoughts.
Parents said, "Everyone has jitters. The wedding is paid for. You're getting married". So she got married. The marriage lasted two months, and the reason was incredible. She had been cheating on her fiancé/husband for over a year with a co-worker. Why did she pick the expensive wedding?!
55. Little White Lie
I remember our wedding planner told my wife these insane stories, completely unbelievable, about Bridezillas. They were laughing, having fun about it, and my wife swore she wouldn't be like that. And it was almost like the planner was trying to push it as far as she could, like she was trying to see just how much my wife would believe.
After the first couple of stories, I stopped laughing and tried to figure out what I was hearing. And there was some whopper at the end about the Inn having to call the authorities because the bride was going to gank someone with the cake knife, all because some tiny little detail was wrong with the icing.
Anyways, my wife walks out and I said something to the woman like, "Was that all lies or just most of it?” She laughed and said, "I just tell them this stuff so they don't get any crazy ideas. You'll thank me later".
56. Tux-e-Don’t
I spent four years of my life working in a formal menswear sales and rental chain, where the average wedding gown from the bridal shop started at $3k. My most memorable bridezilla was this woman who came in with her fiancé. Poor dude never said a word. She wanted a very specific color of shirt to match her "diamond white" gown.
She also wanted it in a mandarin collar, with a mid-range shawl collar and two-button jacket. 14 of them. Okay, pretty straightforward...but when you're renting shirts, particularly these shirts because they were newer so some were closer to white and some were VERY ivory, I can't guarantee that every shirt will even be the same color, let alone that exact shade of "diamond white".
I explained this. Twice. And she still signed off—but she emphasized the shirts WOULD all be the same color, and they WOULD be the right color. Okay, lady. I'll do my best. Cue six weeks later, the Thursday before the wedding. Bridezilla comes in with her poor fiancé. We pull out the tuxes. OF COURSE, the shirts are exactly as I warned her they would be.
There were several shades, and only one was her perfect color—and it wasn’t the groom's shirt. She lost her ever-loving mind. Crying, pounding on our glass countertop, WAILING at the top of her lungs. She got so agitated she shattered our front counter with her pounding.
We called the authorities and officers detained her. The groom took his and everyone else's tuxes and left. On Sunday, I happened to be accepting returns. The father of the groom came back with 14 unworn tuxes. He explained that the bride spent 24 hours behind bars after my spineless manager refused to press charges.
At the rehearsal dinner, the bride threw some insane temper tantrum, complete with throwing glassware, swearing, and finally punching the groom in the face. He decided not to proceed with the wedding. I will never forget that woman's crazy eyes or her insistence on the perfect colored shirts from a $90 rental. It was truly wild.
57. Photo Finish
This bride was a very large girl, and insisted that her bridesmaids wear ridiculously bulky dresses in order to not make her look so big in the photos. The groom-to-be joked that maybe she should lay off the cake (ok, jerk move), and she berated him for a loooong time. Which, yeah maybe he deserved, but those poor bridesmaids didn’t.
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58. Servant Of Honor
My best friend, who is normally very sweet and quiet, was super rude when she got married. First, she told me when I would be having her bridal shower. She set a date without consulting me in any way and decided on all the details—it would be at my house, I would be serving so-and-so types of foods, etc. I was in the middle of my honors year of my bachelor's degree in another city that was a 15-hour drive away.
Well, she set the date to be right in the middle of my exams. She also planned on making all sorts of DIY things for her wedding to save money, like an aisle runner, centerpieces, arch, veil, etc. I came into town the night before the wedding and she said to me, "I didn't have time to get anything made, so I need you to do it". I stayed up all night sewing and arranging flowers while she slept. But it gets worse.
It was in the middle of winter, and when we arrived at the hall, the floor hadn't been cleaned and it was covered with salt stains. There was nothing to clean it with but a bucket and a cloth. So after staying up working all night, I had to clean a floor on my hands and knees. I was exhausted, sore, and I hated every minute of her wedding. I didn't talk to her for months after that.
59. Say Cheese!
My friend is a photographer who often does weddings. A groom once punched him in the face for the most insane reason you could ever imagine: because the groom decided that the photographer was "taking too many photos of the bride". Weddings seem to bring out the worst in humanity.
60. Cold Feet, Cold Manners
I’m a wedding planner. The bride was in her late twenties, while the groom was in his mid-thirties. From what I understood, they had never been in relationships before; at least, not serious ones. On top of that, they were in a long-distance relationship and never actually lived together. Since the groom was living in another city, consultations and communication were done with the bride only.
She seemed a little awkward, although generally nice and easy to talk to. When I got to the ceremony, the groom was very stressed. I figured it was the normal pre-ceremony stress and he would warm up to me later, but nope! Once we got to the reception venue, I wanted to chat with him and check if everything was okay.
I can't remember what I said exactly, but it was something like, "Hey! I could tell you were very stressed before the ceremony! How are you feeling now?" For some reason, he took it the wrong way and refused to talk to me for the rest of the evening. He asked his mom (remember, he was in his mid-thirties) to tell me to leave the reception because he didn't like seeing me walking around, even though I was just doing my job.
After asking the bride if that's also what she wanted, she reluctantly agreed and asked me to come back later. I ended up sitting on a chair in the hallway for 30 minutes like a child until he gave me permission to come back and complete my job. He also refused to do the couple portraits after the ceremony. The bride managed to convince him at first, but after 10 minutes, he was done and refused to cooperate.
Needless to say, they ended up with very few good photos! Something tells me he grew up very sheltered and didn't know how to act with people, but who knows. To this day, I have no idea if they're still together, but one thing is sure: I will never work with them again.
61. Can I Get A Rain Check?
I work for a florist and event coordinating shop, and we have several pretty high-end venues we are exclusive with. Lots of money breeds lots of entitlement, so we get pretty horrendous Bridezillas on the regular. One I remember was a woman who was very sweet up until after her wedding. We had to substitute peonies (every bride and their grandma's favorite flower) because they weren't in season.
To get them she would have needed to pay a ton, so she opted for garden roses instead. It rained on her wedding day, not like "maybe we should make a rain call," like tornado sirens and things falling over. The power went out and the hotel used all of their backup generators to light her ceremony and reception for the three hours the power was out.
The rest of the hotel guests just had to be rich by candlelight, I guess. None of that was her fault, but none of it was ours or the hotel's either. Nature gonna nature. She tried to sue not only us for “messing up her bouquet" but also the hotel for not letting her ceremony be outside and for not letting her ceremony be in "the prettiest area" of the inside of the hotel.
Thankfully, we always have two coordinators meet with brides from this venue, and we also record consultations and have contracts notifying all parties. So she couldn't do anything to us in a courtroom. She did, however, decide to blast us on Yelp, Facebook, and any other social media medium she could find while she rage-typed.
Thankfully, we threatened to sue her back for defamation and she removed them all. The hotel has similar practices but also a ton of money to throw against her in court, so they basically told her to bring it and she backed off.
62. Flowers Of Evil
I'm an event coordinator for an all-inclusive catering company. We manage rentals, staffing, food, venue set up and clean up, etc. However, we don't provide decorating or floral services. My story is with a mother-of-the-groom-zilla. We are preparing the venue early in the day, and I'm there keeping everything on track with the team.
She shows up in full makeup and gown (bedazzled, mauve, taffeta...Need I say more?), a few drinks in, demanding that we place the flowers and decorative plants pronto. I didn't want to distract my team from what we’re actually paid and contracted for, so I decide to appease her. She has several cut flowers and greenery in buckets that she wants me to pick up and disperse over all the banquet tables, head tables, all that.
About three minutes into this arduous task, I break out in burning red hives. All over my wrists, forearms, between my fingers. "Oh my god, what kind of plants are these? I'm apparently very allergic!!!" I ask. "I don't know, we cut them from the backyard". You're kidding me. She ended up mailing us a thank you note and a $10 tip. Thanks?
63. Master Manipulator
I was married to a manipulative narcissist. She got a hold of me in college when my parents didn't deliver on their promise to provide financial support. Now, that would have been fine since I could have made plans and changed how I did my schooling or something, but no. They promised a certain amount of money per month but only gave half.
I had rent to pay, so I basically stopped eating. I had no furniture in my apartment—I slept on egg crate foam. She saw this and I guess she felt bad because she started feeding me. Eventually, we would end up sleeping together in her nice warm bed. Then, later on, I moved in with her because things were going well…Little did I know that was when things would hit the fan. I owed her now and I could not get away.
She convinced me that she "needed" me and that I had to be there to support her in her every endeavor. Every single one. I went to her classes with her, I went clothes shopping with her, and I didn't go out with my friends because she needed me to sleep. She made me feel so obligated to her that my life almost fell apart. I felt so indebted to her that I let her treat me like garbage.
But the worst thing she ever did was emotionally blackmail me into getting married. "If you actually loved me, you'd marry me". She knew I was a sensitive person who genuinely cared about other people, and she used that to say if I didn't marry her I was an evil person who didn't care. The marriage lasted two years. She kept us financially off-balance by moving us around a bunch.
At some point, I got a good job and finally managed to get my own car and everything. I started building a new life, but she still tried to pull her old shtick on me. I had been going to therapy and she dropped out of our joint sessions because she didn't like that therapist. Eventually, we got divorced, but what's messed up about that was that after we were separated, all she wanted was to get me back in the sack.
I noped the heck out. That would be all I needed, to get my estranged wife pregnant. She never knew I was sterile…heck, even I didn't know at that time. All she wanted was a baby and she probably would have left me had she known. She got a new boyfriend and, get this—she moved with him out of state. One day, she called me up and said, "I want to thank you for breaking up with me in person, like an adult. My current partner just took the Xbox and disappeared".
She's a monster and I regret ever meeting her.
64. Love All Of Me
She paid for a life-size portrait of herself in her wedding dress. It was very important at the time. The marriage lasted one year before she cheated. I hope her future suitors take that as a clue.
65. Cutting It Close
I'm a bridesmaid in an upcoming wedding. So a few weeks before the actual ceremony, I decided to knuckle-cut off all of my hair because the heat was unbearable. When my friend, the bride, saw it, she was really upset with me because she envisioned all of the bridesmaids with up-dos, which I never knew about in the first place.
Still, if I had asked for her permission to cut my hair, I would have been denied.
66. The Wedding Planner
I think I was a reverse-bridezilla. I've been married twice—the first time around, I had a medium-sized, stressful church wedding. My parents probably spent $20k on the whole shindig, about 20 years ago. The marriage lasted less than five years. The next time I got engaged, I was like, yeah...been there, done that on the whole "big wedding" thing.
My parents had already been tapped enough and I still felt bad that they had to shell out for a wedding when the marriage was over so quickly. I said we should go to the court and maybe have a nice dinner at a restaurant afterward. However, my husband, who was a little younger, had never been married and his (huge) family was all excited over the idea of a big, white wedding for their only boy.
So he dug in his heels and told me that he really wanted a wedding. My compromise, which I did not expect him to take me up on, was that if he really wanted a wedding, he could plan and pay for it himself. This backfired on me so hard. He excitedly agreed. Well, folks...I'm here to tell you that he did as good as his word.
I was 100% checked-out of the entire wedding planning. Zero stress level. I was a few months pregnant and working, so this was very agreeable to me. I literally only showed up when he asked me to, like when he said I needed to pick out a dress at David's Bridal. I pointed to the first reasonably priced, reasonably attractive gown I saw, tried it on, and was out the door with it in 15 minutes.
Our wedding day arrived, and my husband-to-be had gone ALL OUT. His whole family had pitched in, and they had produced a band, a sit-down dinner, flowers, a cake, horse and carriage, photographer, everything. Considerably more fun than my first wedding, and less money spent overall. I never had so much fun in my whole entire life.
Everything was a surprise because I legitimately had no idea what he'd arranged. My parents were so thrilled that they didn't have to pay for a big wedding again that they sent us on a pretty nice honeymoon instead. So I guess I married a groomzilla? But it was pretty awesome all around, so I honestly have no complaints!
67. Better Without You
My ex was a bridezilla and our wedding was probably in the $20k plus range. She is very much a person who wants to appear like everything is going great. She wants to hear about your gossip, but she doesn't ever open up about herself. One day, all her secrets came tumbling out. She cheated on me after less than three years of marriage.
She seemed repentant and appeared to try. We had a couple of kids (that look just like me, thank goodness), but then she cheated on me again. I divorced her, which she is still furious about. I'm now happily married again to a woman who loves me and treats me well. Honestly, I didn't know love could feel this good or that I was worth this much.
68. If I Could Turn Back Time
My brother-in-law married a bridezilla. She made him spend something like $45k on the wedding, and within a month she was cheating on him. They managed to somehow stick it out to have two kids, but she left him for one of his high school buddies after three years. They're divorced now, but she's a giant piece of trash and ignores her kids most of the time.
69. Grimace For The Camera
I’m a wedding photographer; I've seen my fair share of crazies over the years. The worst situation I ever had was with a couple who started arguing right after the vows. Typically, you shoot the bridal party in the morning getting ready, and if you're lucky enough the men will get dressed on time and let you take a few snaps of them all suited and booted.
On this particular day, the men were already hitting the sauce pretty hard and they ended up at the church stinking of drinks. I could tell the bride was angry as I was shooting the ceremony. She wouldn't look at her husband throughout the entire service. The groom, in all fairness, kept himself pretty well composed, but he was still stinking.
The poor guy was nervous. Roll on to after the ceremony where the bridal party gather at the prearranged photoshoot location, right before the reception. At this point, the bride and groom had about 30 minutes of alone time in the limo to conduct a full-blown argument. When they pulled up to the location, I got them to roll the window down for a champagne toast.
All I was getting by then were smiles through gritted teeth. It was awful. I tried my best to ease the mood, but this bride was in no mood for any wisecracks or enjoyment. The moral of the story is, don't argue on your wedding day or you'll end up looking back at angry photos.
Shutterstock
70. Take The Money And Run
My uncle married this lady who was an insane bridezilla. She put him into an enormous amount of debt because she wouldn't settle for anything less than her perfect dream wedding. Then, she had the marriage annulled after the fancy honeymoon, saying she didn't want to be his wife but she always wanted to have her dream wedding. Witch.
71. A (Sad) Tale As Old As Time
My husband’s long-term, childhood friend married a bridezilla. She is Evangelical and religion is pretty much her life. Meanwhile, he was agnostic and a very big metal-head geek. They asked us to be part of their wedding entourage. My husband and I are both tattooed, and when we arrived at the wedding, we were his only friends present.
Everyone at that big wedding was from her church. The preacher kept saying to him that his old life was behind him now and his new life was just about to begin, yadda, yadda. But while he was giving his sermon, everyone kept looking at my husband and I like we were beasts. Worst day ever. She is that kind of person who wants to be an influencer.
EVERYTHING is on her Instagram. Their relationship seems perfect there, but he always seems so unhappy and so apathetic. When we actually talk to him, he always brings up how they are so different. She made him stop talking to us. Eventually, he got out of every friend group we had, and he stopped answering my husband, who is very sad he lost his friend. Even worse, I believe she is the one replying in the few weird messages he does get.
72. A Hair Don’t
As a hairstylist, I've seen a few bridezillas. This one affected me directly. So mid-week, a woman came in and asked about up-dos for a wedding for the upcoming weekend. She told my boss that she wanted something "funky" done with her hair. My boss then booked this witch with me. Saturday morning rolled around and she got in my chair so we could get started.
I was nearly finished when she started complaining that she wanted more of a classic Audrey Hepburn style. At this point, it was too late to change anything.... plus my next client had already arrived. She completely lost it. She said I wasn't listening to her and then called her mother to talk some sense into me. She was almost in tears wondering how she was going to explain her hair to her future in-laws.
Her mom showed up and basically told her that her hair looked beautiful. Then she paid me and dragged her out of the salon. A total what the heck experience for everyone.
73. Keep It Simple, Stupid
Kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. My wife and I eloped a few months before our "wedding" and kept it mostly a secret. Then, on the day of, we just focused on having an awesome party for us and our friends. Well, our pastor canceled last minute and stood us up for the rehearsal. My wife checked into the hotel the morning of.
Lady at the hotel counter: "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
Wife jokingly: "Yes, a pastor".
LAC: "...Our omelet chef is ordained"...
LAC: "Hey TONY! You busy tonight?"
Tony:…"NO"
Wife: “Ok!”
74. Honeymoon's Over
My first wife was a bridezilla, but I didn’t find out the true extent of her wrath until just after we were married. During the honeymoon, reality hit her like a truck. She realized she just wanted the big wedding, which she had, but not the marriage. The next two years were a nightmare until she finally tapped out. I was young and stupid, so the thought of divorce never crossed my mind.
I don't know why it didn't. I guess I just assumed I'd be miserable the rest of my life. When she told me she was leaving, it felt as if the weight of the world was off my shoulders. On a happy note, her parents were still paying off the wedding when we divorced. That's what happens when you give your daughter everything she wants…like two freaking wedding dresses.
75. Get Out, Girl
I married a groomzilla. This guy had costume changes planned for the wedding and reception. He would yell at the wedding planner over menial things like serving fruit kabobs so that people would maybe get enough to eat. There was zero compromise—he made a lot of promises for things I had been wanting after the wedding and they never materialized, like a beach vacation and such.
Turns out, no compromise at the wedding meant no compromise anywhere else, so I left him after four years of marriage. Best decision ever!!!
76. Fool Me Once
I married a groomzilla. He is a lovely, sweet, and thoughtful man; but boy did he lose it at the wedding. I would have been more than happy with a small wedding—literally, I would just three special people there. He needed 200+. As far as I was concerned, we could eat off paper plates and have a big bonfire to burn them afterward. But no, he needed personalized moist towelettes.
You get the point. He is a lovely person and I love him dearly, but I will never marry him again.
77. Monster-in-Law
According to my mother-in-law, I was the bridezilla. We had a maximum limit of 36 people, including ourselves and my son. My mother-in-law gave me a guest list that included—you guessed it—36 names. She assured me that not everyone would come, but that they would be very appreciative of the invite. I felt totally grossed out.
Still, I left the decision up to my husband, since it was his family after all. Needless to say, they all got invites. Then, I had asked for RSVPs to be given a few months before the wedding. Since the mother-in-law had used up all of the room on the guest list, I had to reduce my side to four people, with some on hold until I knew the exact numbers. I was starting to come to terms with it, but then she did something that made me absolutely livid.
I finally lost it two weeks before the wedding when I still didn’t have RSVPs. She said she would work on it and get back to me. A week before the wedding, she outdid herself in the worst way possible. She said one family also needed to bring nine other people because they were going on a family trip and our town was on the way so they would all be here anyway.
I flat out said no and called her out. I cut off the guest list and said that I was inviting the rest of my guest list and whoever hadn’t RSVP’d wouldn’t get a chair or plate. Right up to the day of the wedding, they were making changes. We got married at a Chinese buffet so that it would be the simplest planning and everyone would have something that they liked to eat.
My dress was $40 off Amazon. My flowers were $20 from Costco. We had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for the wedding cake. Yet she still makes it out that I was the bridezilla.
78. You Need More Than A Priest, People
As a minister, there’s only one ceremony I had to walk away from. I received a call from my sister-in-law that one of her friends was supposed to get married and the priest had passed the week before. They didn't want to change the date or move anything, so they asked if I knew anyone who could help out.
I said, "Sure, when is the wedding?" It was supposed to be in an hour. Okay, no problem—I was on my way home from work where I had finished up an important meeting, so I was already reasonably well-dressed. I called home to say I was going to be late. When I arrived, it went wrong almost immediately. The "happy couple" looked at me and asked if I had proper priest’s vestments.
Um, no, I didn't, and if I did, I probably wouldn't be carrying them in my car. This is, after all, was an emergency. Still, the bride asked if I was able to go buy some and come back. I told her that I didn't even know where to buy garments like that. The groom then told me that if I couldn't even try, then maybe I should leave. So I did. Oh, but it gets better.
My sister-in-law told me they later cornered a priest at the church and told him he had to marry them, or they would sue the church for a breach of contract and that it was the moral thing to do. They divorced nine months later when her "surprise" baby was of a different ethnicity than he was. It didn't help that he had a side-piece as well.
79. Mother Knows Best
The store I worked at was a women’s formalwear store, so I have plenty of bridezilla family stories. More than once, we had mothers physically fighting over dresses for their daughters, including two moms who were sisters. These ladies came to blows because their respective daughters ended up wanting the same dress.
The worst moms weren’t actually the obviously rude moms, though. They were the 40-something yoga moms who’d spend the entire time body-shaming their daughters. There was even one yoga mom who, instead of approving of her daughter as she tried on dresses, spent the entire shopping day trying on dresses herself. No, really.
80. Telling On Yourself
I have to confess, I was a bridezilla. It was a small wedding, like 50 people, and it was going to be a casual celebration in a park. Everything was handmade or from the dollar store. I only ended up with a dress from a David's because the first little bohemian dress I ordered was more of a shirt, and my mom refused to let me wear it.
At the bridal shop, my mom told the lady not to tell me any prices, but I told her I would only consider dresses under $200. I tried on one dress and cried because I loved it so much. My mom bought it, and I later looked it up and saw it was $3,000. That changed everything. No more wedding at a park. Instead, we booked a small venue. We served pizza and pies still, and the groomsmen were still wearing polos and shorts.
The bridesmaids were in some Rue21 dresses I bought for them. That’s when it all fell apart completely. I only became a bridezilla on the day of. None of my family showed up, so my husband's side was full and mine was empty. Even our friends sat on his side. I was already primed at that point, and then the wheels came off.
Our MC read the speech I wrote before we were even at the altar, and our camera lost battery so we didn't get the recording, I tripped going up to the altar, and I had herniated a disc a week before the wedding. I was miserable and in so much pain. I cried so hard afterward. It felt like it was terrible; like everything was ruined, and I took it out on everyone.
I did my best to hold it together as much as I could, but I was so relieved when it was over. If I could do it all over, I would change everything; especially how I acted. None of that excuses my snippy behavior or my crying constantly on the day. Being stressed and upset didn't give me the right to make others feel bad.
81. All About Me
My brother married a bridezilla. She yelled at my mother on the day of the wedding for asking her where she wanted certain decorations put at the reception site. For what it’s worth, there wasn’t a written plan, so my mom had nothing to go off of. She never thanked my parents for financially contributing to the wedding, either.
She also accused a bridesmaid of trying to upstage her by getting a spray tan before the wedding. My brother wanted me to be part of the wedding party, but she told him to his face that I was too pretty to be a part of it, and that all of her bridesmaids had to be less attractive than her. Oh, but she was just getting started. She yanked my sister-in-law’s jacket right off her back at the reception because one of her bridesmaids was cold.
The list goes on. Well, they got divorced about a year later because apparently her demanding attitude carried over into the marriage. Needless to say, the rest of my family had a little party when we heard about the divorce.
82. All In The Family
My mom was a mother-of-the-bridezilla. She’s generally pleasant, with her annoying habits here and there—but man, she was a nightmare during the wedding planning. The woman cried because we refused to have a receiving line...when we got married in our backyard. The reception was on the other side of the yard. Why the heck would we have a receiving line?!
She was beside herself for the better part of an entire year worrying what we would do if it rained—we had a giant tent, and we ordered like 20 umbrellas. She also had a cow that the hem on her dress had gotten pulled loose by the ridiculous rhinestone stilettos she chose to wear (to a wedding in a yard...on grass). I told my maid of honor to get her some duct tape and my mother, again, cried her eyes out.
To this day, she complains about the fabric runner we used for the aisle because her heels dug into it, saying how silly of a choice that was. Everyone in the wedding party was aware of it and wore wedges or flats, but she snorted that that wasn’t elegant. She LOATHED that I wore ballet flats. She was also appalled that our rehearsal dinner, which was at our home, consisted of takeout from our favorite local pizza and sandwich place.
She decried it for being “borderline trashy". Thankfully, following the ceremony, my brother gave her a talking to and all was well for the party thereafter.
83. My Way Or The Highway
My mother-in-law was a momzilla. My wife wanted a regular-sized wedding—nothing fancy, just a cozy celebration at a historic venue she loved. We had planned for about 100 guests at most, and we planned to do a lot of the work. Suddenly, my mother-in-law started to pressure us about having to invite tons of people, since she’s loaded and a social butterfly.
She also wanted us to change the venue, the photographer, etc. I didn’t care since I just wanted to make my wife happy. I did my best to adjust. Then, one day, about two months before the wedding, my wife had a breakdown crying because of all the changes from her mom. That's when I had enough. I told my wife I would handle her from now on.
I called her up and read her the riot act, telling her to cool it or we would just get a courtroom wedding and forget about the religious wedding, which was a huge deal to the family. She fought me for weeks. The whole family fought me. I told them all to pound sand. We had our original wedding; I was folding invitations and favors the night before until 3 am, but by heck we got it done.
Of course, my mother-in-law still changed the DJ and photographers without me knowing, so we had completely wrong music, and we have yet to see the pictures (16 years later). To this day, we have minimal contact with the family.
84. Total Eclipse Of The Heart
I ended a friendship with a bridezilla who desperately wanted me to attend her wedding. She had it scheduled for the weekend of the eclipse in 2017, which was something I had planned for literally a decade. She asked me what my plan was, and I told her that I would be flying to the Missouri/Kentucky area. She wanted me to fly to Idaho instead, which was where she lived.
I would have, but all flights, hotels, and rental cars in Idaho were completely booked out. I couldn’t get there even if I wanted to. In response, she said I didn’t care about her or her wedding and that I didn’t want to see her on her big day. She claimed I put the eclipse—something I had planned on seeing for 10 ten years—before her “Lenny,” who I had known for six months.
So I ended things really fast after that. But from what I see, she still posts photos of her wedding to this day. Like, every day she posts different wedding photos. It’s almost like she stopped living after her wedding.
85. Big Little Lies
They had the expensive $75k wedding. Afterward, they split—and the astonishing truth came out. It turned out the bride never turned in the paperwork to make their marriage official. The groom didn't even know he wasn't married until he wanted to file for a divorce. The bride never returned the gifts either, even though they never got married.
She'd just lied to everyone about it...
86. Happily Never After
I married a bridezilla. In the 18 months that we were married, she was such an unfit mother (too many instances to list here) that when the divorce was finalized, I got custody of our kid AND the kid she had prior to our marriage. Also, she was a blackout drinker and cheated on me with several different men. But the final straw was brutal.
I had to travel out of state to check on my grandmother. I came back a day early, saw used Marlboros in the ashtray—not her brand, and I don't smoke—and then I heard grunting and groaning in the bedroom. Yep, there she was. And there he was. And there HE was. Devil's Triangle. Contacted a divorce lawyer the next day, finalized it as fast as possible.
87. Toxic Waste
My ex-best friend was a bridezilla. She always had a short fuse, but I put up with that side of her because I cared about her dearly. I met someone who I was engaged to for three years, and even before that, we’d been friends for four years. Before we got married, she used to stay over at our house all the time, and we all got along.
Then she met a guy. After being together for about four months, they got engaged. That's when everything changed. She would talk to people in a really posh voice as though she was above everyone, and she even went out and bought a horse to appear like she had money. She asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, and of course, I said yes. I really wish I hadn’t now.
A couple of months after that, we met for coffee and I told her I was pregnant. I thought she’d be as happy as I was, as we’d been trying for a while. Nope! According, to her I got pregnant just to ruin her wedding and take the focus off of her. Um... ok. Once we got pregnant, we planned to finally tie the knot before the baby arrived. We decided to do this on our anniversary.
We envisioned a really small friends-and-family wedding. This was only three weeks after her wedding—not ideal, but we wanted it on our special day. When her wedding day arrived, she had it in a church. She’s not religious at all and he was a very vocal atheist. Still, she had an expensive wedding dress and booked out the most expensive hotel in our local city.
It was a huge affair. That’s fine, it was her special day. I was there for her through it all—I did everything a bridesmaid was meant to do even if I did have morning sickness. I kept a smile on my face holding her ridiculously long veil up for most of the day. Then my wedding day arrived, which was a very small registry office affair that was perfect for us.
She sat there looking like she was chewing a lemon and didn’t smile once. Afterward, she spoke with my mom who’d she’d known for years. My mom said, “You’re probably used to all this by now,” or something like that. She replied, “Yes, but mine was a lot grander". When she came to the reception, she accused my other best friend from childhood of playing footsie with her new husband under the table!
My friend was not like that at all, and she’d only caught his foot while crossing her legs. I let that one slide...but later on, when I finally had my baby, she did something that made my blood run cold. She visited for the first time in about six months and said, “Oh, it’s got red hair". She didn’t even refer to her by her name at all.
That was all she had to say, so I cut her off at long last. It was the best thing I ever did. I hadn’t noticed how toxic she was until that moment. Now my husband and I live in the same little house we did before we got married. We did not have any debt at all from the wedding and we are still very happy six years after our wedding.
She, however, got into loads of debt from her wedding. Her husband also lost his job for gross misconduct, and she had to sell her horse. Now, six years later, I heard they’re living in her dad’s basement.
Unsplash
88. Nothing Hurts Like Family
I worked at a popular bridal store and I dealt with a few bridezillas while I was there. The biggest issue we had was the plus-sized section. These women would come in convinced they looked awful in everything. They would find a dress they loved and we would talk them up, but it would unravel in an instant. They would come out and their family would act so vicious.
The disappointment and pain was palpable as their excitement melted away. They'd throw comments like, “Oh NO, you look ginormous in that,” or “You can’t wear that! Your arms show and you know how flabby they look!” You could kick out mom or talk the bride up in the dressing room, but you could tell they still were in pain.
89. And Your Little Dog Too
My sister decided to marry a guy she’d been with for less than four months. It was her second marriage and it was a spur-of-the-moment decision with less than one month’s notice. Flying across Canada is expensive...Anyway, I had just started a new job and it was imperative that I be there at work during her wedding. Like, there wasn’t the slightest option for time off, or I would have been let go.
She didn’t talk to me for over a year. Well, the marriage lasted less than the year, if that. She took him for everything—he lost his house and his car, and he drank himself out of his job. She took his dog and told him it had been run over. She’s a peach. Single, if anyone’s looking.
90. A Little Over The Top
I just worked a wedding this past Saturday where they had booked for 100 people. When they gave me the guest list—I work at a country club with a security gate and we need everyone's names so they can get in—there were 117 people. I told them that I would have to charge them for 117, because that's how much food we would have to prepare.
Cue an annoying phone call from the bride being all, "every time we talk to you it seems like there are more charges". Well yes, but every time you talk to me you add something, like guests or bar packages.
91. Age Is Just A Number
My uncle married a bridezilla. She had a huge spending problem. She still went clubbing in her 40s thinking she was 20 and ignored all her day-to-day priorities to party. She also acted like she was better than everyone else, which is probably why she had a hard time keeping friendships. The final straw was when she cheated on my uncle with a man ten years her junior. My uncle is now married to a different woman and he's the happiest he's ever been.
92. Harsh, But Fair
My sister was labeled a bridezilla by the staff at her venue—I heard them talking about her. The thing is, she was totally justified. The chair coverings were red when they were supposed to be brown. There was no mirror in the bridal suite. The photographer was late, and the make-up artist was very late, hence the issue with the mirror. And the issues didn't stop there.
Oh, plus the buffet was totally wrong—not a single dish she chose was there, and they charged $25 a person for what was supposed to be a four-tier chocolate fountain. It ended up being a small, plastic contraption that she saw the staff unbox from Walgreens on the day of. On top of it all, the wait staff was half the number stated in the contract, and the DJ refused to honor the playlist she selected.
So, yeah, she lost it at the venue.
93. Keep Your Friends Close
I worked in stationery design in the wedding industry a while back. Invites, wishing wells, menus, you name it. If it was wedding-related and on paper, we sold it. Some of the customers we got were class acts, I can tell you. The worst was a detailed consultation with the bride and groom about their invitation design. Over the next two personal consults and many phone calls, I primarily dealt with the bride and her maid of honor together.
After the last revision, the maid of honor came in to make a relatively major change, insisting that the bride wanted it that way. Idiot me made the change, and the order went to print. This turned out to be an enormous mistake. As it happened, the bride and her maid of honor had a falling out, and the maid wanted to get back at her ex-friend.
Apparently, she had approached several of the wedding services acting as an agent of the bride and pretty much screwed the whole event over...
Pexels
94. Party For One
I work as a hotel manager, and we see Bridezillas all the time. The worst was when a bride was so upset that she couldn't fit all of her bridesmaids on one shuttle back from the reception that she tried to physically assault the driver. He got his revenge immediately. He left her on the side of the road when she tried to BITE him. And here's the best part:
When the groom found out and came to get her with his parents, she was still in such a foul mood that they left her there, too.
95. One Wedding And A Funeral
This was my worst for sure. I’m a wedding planner. We had an unexpected passing in the family. Our six-month-old nephew passed on in his sleep, and I knew the funeral was going to be the day of my client’s upcoming wedding. I gave her a call to explain the situation. She’s clearly not paying attention to the call or the words I’m speaking, because I hear her laughing with friends in the background.
I get irritated and tell her I’ll call her later. I call back that night and again tell her what has happened and that I’d be sending an assistant to cover for me so I can attend the funeral. She tells me that I need to send my assistant to the funeral and that I better be at her wedding. It took me a few seconds, but I calmly stated that I’d be sending her money back and that no one would be covering for me.
Nicest way I’ve ever said screw off. I really wanted to smack her.
96. Don’t Take His Word For It
The bride wasn't happy with her husband’s vows, so she requested a "time out" in order for him to go to the backroom and come up with better ones. When the guy marrying them politely explained that he was on a very tight schedule, she called him a "lying jerk” and huffed back up the aisle into the room where her husband was.
We kept everyone else seated, and she appeared a few minutes later with freshly written vows for her future husband. He read them, and the wedding continued as planned. Again, uncomfortable.
97. You Get What You Put In
My ex-fiancé was super normal…until we got engaged. She went from wanting a small, simple wedding with less than 100 guests to a grand hall and wanting to invite everyone she ever exchanged more than three words with. She even wanted to import flowers. But the final straw was when she scheduled an appointment with a real estate agent to SELL MY HOUSE to pay for the wedding.
Also, her family was loaded but they weren’t going to contribute anything. I broke it off, and she got engaged again one year later to an attorney…Unfortunately for her, she didn’t read the prenup before signing. They got married and divorced one month later. She got nothing and is still alone.
98. The Grandmother Of Tantrums
I had a friend who threw a temper tantrum complete with screaming and foot-stomping because her grandmother had the audacity to pass a few hours before her wedding. She said it would throw off the seating arrangements since there would be a big empty space. She is currently halfway through her second divorce.
99. A Case Of Cold Feet
My friend is a wedding planner. He is a good-looking, straight male who has an amazing eye for design and detail. He can do everything from wedding dress design and execution to flowers, you name it. And his services are not cheap. He had a bride who called him up a few days before her wedding and told him she couldn't go through with it. Her reason why was terrifying.
She started by saying she was in love with someone else. Then the conversation went something like this: Bride: "I can't marry him, I just don't love him anymore, I think I'm in love with someone else!" Him: "What do you mean you're in love with someone else!? Your wedding is in 5 days!" Bride: "Well....I'm in love with you. You just GET me! I've never met anyone else like you!"
Him: "...Do you know how much your parents are paying me to get you?!" She ended up getting married five days later and it was never mentioned again.
100. Missed Encounters
At a wedding of a college friend of my husband’s, we learned that the bride (his old friend) had been in love with him for over a decade. We learned this from the women at our table at the reception. We introduced ourselves while we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. They were horrified that we were there—and extremely worried.
My husband had NO idea that she had feelings for him. She bee-lined right for our table after the "introducing Mr & Mrs" thing—ignoring her family and leaving her husband standing alone. She clung to my husband and sobbed—lifting her head to glare at me. She had to be pulled off of him.
She repaired herself, then followed us as we tried to leave quietly—her parting shot was to stare at my chest and say, "Well I guess I know what I was missing all along!" Her new husband was in shock and my husband was horrified and embarrassed—he was completely clueless and would never have gone to the wedding if he'd know she was obsessed with him. It was bizarre.
