It’s understandable that people want the most special day in their lives to go exactly according to plan, and sometimes it’s that very feeling of wanting everything to be completely perfect at all costs that turns a lovely bride into a Bridezilla. Other times, it is the lack of that feeling that causes a guest or family member to not take the day seriously enough. Maybe at times a wedding planner or two even undermined a bride’s grand plan—or vice versa.
No matter who the culprit was or what the cause was, here are 42 wild and unbelievable stories about people who turned the big day into a big nightmare.
42. This One Leaves Me Speechless
I went to a wedding where it was actually a rule that guests weren’t allowed to talk directly to the bride. Her mom and maid of honor were the only ones allowed to.
41. Room for One More?
I was helping decorate a wedding when the bride came storming in and literally threw a chair through a window. She was pissed that there had been one chair extra in the back of the room...
40. Having a Cow Over Cutlery
I’m a caterer. One time, the mother of the bride found a single spot on a single knife on a single setting. She demanded that the entire $60,000 reception be free. Luckily, she was not the one writing the check, so she was shot down pretty quickly. Still, there was much rage.
39. Delegator
This is a story of a groomzilla. The bride would set out a list of tasks for him to complete. Then, the second she was out of earshot, he'd turn to one of the planners and say, "You heard her. Get it done." He was also just generally useless, coming to meetings late, always getting drunk with his groomsmen and expecting his bride handle all the work herself.
38. The Naked Truth
At one wedding I attended, the church ceremony was delayed a full hour because the groom's mother only started getting dressed when the ceremony was supposed to start.
37. Take a Chill Pill
A couple I knew were getting hitched and I had no warning that his mom was totally crazy. She rolls up to rehearsal late and proceeds to be inappropriate at dinner. I have to escort her out. The next day she cancels most of the guests and catering in protest, then eventually assaults the bride’s dad, who was dying of cancer. Cops got called and the venue tried to sue me over it.
36. Priorities
One bridezilla got mad that people didn't stay for cake and started cussing guests out over it in the middle of the event. It's 11 pm on a Tuesday and you’re just getting to the cake now!? People have jobs to go to and we all got here at 10 am. But I know, how dare people leave before the cake…
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35. With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
I’m a commercial photographer and my best friend since childhood asked me to photograph his twin sister's wedding because they didn't have the budget for an expensive wedding photographer. So I figure out my costs and tell them I'll do it for a break-even fee of $400—about 1/4 of what they'd pay otherwise. They agree.
On the wedding day, the bride starts panicking because she doesn't have her checkbook. She promises to pay cash later instead. I follow them around from 9:30 AM to 1 AM, hearing from both the bride and groom that they got enough cash as gifts to pay me later on. They never did.
A week later, I'm about 10 hours into what would become 30 hours of editing 250 final photos and still no money, bills from my expenses coming due. Text them, no reply. Turns out they took off on a month-long honeymoon in Europe.
I had to call up her dad and get him to pay me instead. No one ever even bothered to thank me for doing them this favor. My buddy and I now have a strained relationship as a result of this whole ordeal.
I don't shoot weddings or offer friend discounts anymore, with no exceptions.
34. Little Sister, Don’t You Do What Your Big Sister Done
I was my sister’s maid of honor. During a peak planning time, our aunt passed away. I kept trying to get in touch with my sister that entire day. When I finally reached her, I explained that I had been trying to speak with her all day to let her know that our aunt had died. I got blasted about how busy she is, and then she ripped into me about where I stood with my tasks. She was pretty rotten on the day of the wedding, too.
We are no longer close…
33. Long Term Investment
I was my sister's maid of honor and her unpaid wedding planner. She was a Bridezilla. Not only did I plan and pay for her wedding shower, but she also wanted a private gift from me—from her super expensive registry where I couldn't afford a darn spoon.
Everything had to be perfect and meticulously planned, right down to our toes, weight, and how much we ate and drank. She's a micromanager by personality.
The marriage didn't end up even lasting three months.
32. Executive Decision
This is kind of the opposite, but my friend’s wedding planner flat out refused to use the bride’s hand-made decorations. She hid them in a box under the guestbook table. I was assigned to go down from the suite and check on things while we were getting ready. I asked the planner why the decorations weren’t hung up, and she told me she didn’t like them. I had the boyfriend of another bridesmaid hang them up because I knew the bride would be upset if they weren’t in the reception hall. We had spent hours the day before finishing them.
31. The Ten Commandments
The following is an excerpt that was posted in a Facebook group for people attending this wedding:
“Please arrive 15-30 minutes early. Please DO NOT wear white, cream, or ivory. Please do not wear any hairstyle other than a basic bob or ponytail. Please do not have a full face of makeup.
Do not record during the ceremony. Do not check in on Facebook until instructed. Use official Wedding hashtag when posting all pictures.
DO NOT TALK TO THE BRIDE AT ALL DURING THE CEREMONY!
Everyone will toast with Rémy. No exceptions.
Lastly, you must come with a gift of at least $75 or you WILL NOT be admitted!”
30. Marrying on Borrowed Time
My step brother’s wife-to-be waited until my dad flew in for their destination wedding, and greeted them at the airport with “We need $12,000 for the location or there’s no wedding tomorrow.” Over 150 people had flown in for this wedding, many of whom couldn’t actually afford to go but came anyway because she bullied and degraded them into going in to debt to attend.
29. A Matter of Faith
My friend didn’t even take the time to tell her mom that she had found a Catholic deacon to officiate at her wedding. It was just a surprise to everyone on the day of the wedding. Mind you, she is Muslim and the groom even converted from Catholicism to Islam in order to marry her. SOMEONE clearly lied about their faith here!
28. Tough Crowd
The groom at this wedding had been married before and his best man was his older brother, who had served as best man in his previous wedding as well. He began his speech with “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back! Same occasion, different lady.” That was bad enough. Then he ended with “Cheers, and I’ll see you all again at the next one!”
Both bride and groom were both understandably pissed and asked the best man to leave.
27. Happy Hour
My sister’s wedding started late because both the bride and the groom were day drinking. The bride gets mad that her new husband is super drunk before dinner—so instead of helping him sober up, she proceeds to get pissed drunk herself too. Makes perfect sense.
26. Tough Love?
I used to work weddings in college, including one that was a complete nightmare. The bride and groom were from NYC and were getting married in the South. He was her boss at a news station. When I first saw them, I legit thought he was her dad. The entire night, she kept yelling at him—telling him to leave conversations she was having with her friends and stuff like that. She was just awful to him.
I sometimes wonder if the couple is still together. I’m assuming not.
25. Maid of Dishonor
I am supposed to be a maid of honor at my best friend’s wedding, but she told me that since I'm ugly, she won't let me be in any pictures. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life.
24. Old Maid
I’m a photographer’s assistant. All of the brides and grooms I’ve had the pleasure of working for have been incredible, but the groomsmen and bridesmaids have been some real pieces of work.
One wedding, the maid of honor wanted to control the formal portraits, told the main photographer how to do her job, freaked out at the caterers because the cake was late even though they weren’t connected to the bakery at all, told one of the other bridesmaids she should have lost weight to fit into her dress better, and was really just an all around idiot who stressed the bride out all day long.
23. Skin in the Game
The bride for a wedding I attended made all of her friends sign a contract promising we wouldn't get any fake tans because no one was allowed to be tanner than her. Also, no tan lines on were permitted anywhere on our lesser tanned skin.
22. This Takes the Cake
The bride insisted that her mom make the wedding cake. The wedding planner warned them that you need to include a stand in the middle of the cake for support if you are going to use a wedding cake topper. The mother insisted she knew what she was doing and that her three cakes piled on top of each other were sturdy enough to support the large figurine cake topper.
Fast forward to them setting up the reception. I was speaking to the planner about something and, the whole time we were meeting, she kept apologizing for having trouble focusing because something about the cake was looking off.
We were wrapping up our meeting when, suddenly, she screams and bolts out of her chair. The topper had collapsed through the three layers of cake, then through the front—leaving the entire front of the cake a pile of crumbs with frosting.
21. Hypocrite-zilla
I went to a wedding that had no alcohol served. The bride was against anyone drinking and the wedding was in the middle of nowhere. The ceremony was several hours before the reception and there was absolutely nothing to do in between. There was no entertainment, no food, no drinks, nothing. We all had to wait for 4+ hours for the bride to finally be ready to come out. Then, the bridal party shows up and they had alcohol for themselves. Our entire group left.
20. Jumping the Gun
I do wedding planning on the side and offered to help a friend three days ago as a favor. Her wedding is not for another year.
One day, I’d just had a pretty invasive surgery. Five hours later, this chick sends a “You ok?” text. As I’m still typing my response, she starts prattling on about what she wants to do for her wedding plans in a year.
I’m fine, but at least wait until I respond maybe? What if I’d died and my husband was like, “Sorry, she’s dead,” then what would she have said? I can already tell she’s gonna be a blast to work with…
19. The Icing on the Cake
We had a guestzilla. An older aunt of the bride’s showed up wearing a white lace gown. She told the groom she didn’t want him in the group picture because it was only for “family.” When the caterer put aside the top tier of the cake and put it in a box for the couple to have on their first anniversary, she began to pick off and eat the icing with her fingers.
18. Crime Spree
I have a friend who is a wedding planner for a resort. She says that a surprising number of people steal gifts from the couple at weddings.
17. Rags to Riches
My good friend is a wedding planner and had one client where the groom had treated her awfully and made the whole experience absolutely miserable for her. A week after the ordeal, his lovely bride asks my friend for her address as she wanted to send a cake over as a thank you gift.
An hour later, she calls my friend to confirm that she had given her the right address. My friend says yes, not realizing that the bride and groom were personally delivering the cake. My friend is super humble, but she lives in a huge mansion, doesn't actually need the money from her event planning job, and doesn't generally attend high society events because her father thinks it's beneath them.
The couple was shocked, and the groom tried to be overly friendly and chummy with my friend—hoping that she wouldn't remember the disgusting treatment he'd given her last week.
She just graciously accepted the cake, wished the bride well and closed the gate on them.
16. Parental Discretion
In my experience, this one bride’s family was the worst I ever dealt with. She was marrying an Australian guy and her family made it immediately clear that they didn't want her marrying a foreigner. They even brought in an ex-boyfriend to try to seduce her before the wedding. It was ironic, because the ex looked like a barely 5'6” tall while the groom was easily 6'6” tall and looked like some kind of Greek warrior.
The worst part was that this wedding was just a formality because they actually got married in Australia. The whole point of this wedding ceremony was to make her parents happy, and the groom was even paying for most of it as a gesture of goodwill—yet her family was the reason it was a disaster. I felt pretty bad for the bride.
15. Wingin’ It
I had one maid of honor who didn’t write her speech beforehand, thinking she was going to improvise. She didn’t plan for the possibility that she would get totally trashed during cocktail hour.
When she got up there, all she managed to slur was “John and Jane...I love you so much!” Then she started sobbing. The bride was pretty upset at her irresponsibility.
14. Stepping All Over Him
I saw one bride who had bullied her step-dad into paying for her lavishly expensive dream wedding, only to then ask her biological dad to walk her down the aisle instead of him. She had to bribe him till he’d agree to do it, while the step-dad had actually wanted to.
When her step-dad finally put his foot down and refused to give her more than $15,000, she stole his credit card. In the end, the wedding was canceled because she couldn’t pay her bills—and the step-dad divorced her mom.
13. Going to Excessive Lengths
At one wedding, the bride demanded that nobody cut their hair or gain any weight before the big day. All their hairstyles had to be the exact same length. She had to control every aspect of what they did. Eventually, the maid of honor had enough of her behavior and dropped out of the bridal party a few weeks before the event.
12. Any Friend of Yours Is a Friend of Mine...Or Not
I was paying for my stepdaughter’s wedding at a venue which holds 250 people max. I gave her a list of 20 people that I wanted to be invited since, you know, I was paying for everything. She told me that it was no problem and that she'd take care of it. So, I let these people know they'd be getting an invite and that they should save the date.
Saturday, I saw one of my friends on this list at the golf course and asked if he was coming. He told me that he wasn't invited. He told me that he got an announcement in the mail, but not an invitation. He showed it to me and, sure enough, it was just an announcement—and my name was nowhere on it. It had her “real” dad's name and her mom's name, but not mine.
This led to a pretty big fight with my GF, as I found out that NONE of my list of twenty "made the cut" for the final guest list because "250 people is very tight." What a slap in the face, after all I’ve done for these people.
11. Purple Reign of Terror
I was definitely the bridezilla in my case. Our colors were purple and gold and, the day before the wedding, we get the deliveries to our venue and—brace yourselves—the napkins were the wrong shade of purple! I tore the delivery manager a new one, even though I knew it wasn't his fault.
Needless to say, this was not my proudest moment.
10. Discounted Opinion
I was helping a friend plan her wedding. We literally had everything planned, had called in favors with friends to do everything at cost, and she had personally asked my mom to officiate. This was going to be gorgeous. She was in on the entire thing, as she should be.
Then, her in-laws got involved and she started saying yes to everything they were asking without telling me. They started asking me to get my friends to do it all for free or give them a bigger deal than just cost. When I pushed back on the price, suddenly I was making her wedding all about me and being made out to be a nutjob.
9. Surf’s up
My friend was definitely a Bridezilla. She was having a destination wedding and decided to pick a petty argument with me right before the big day. I was uninvited from the wedding literally the day before. Since I was already at the resort, I just got drunk on the beach for a week, didn’t attend the wedding, and saw her for less than five minutes total the whole time I was there.
8. Sounds Nice and Rosey
My friend tried to get me to pay for everything on her behalf, and was a jerk to me in the meantime. So after the final straw, I canceled all the orders for everything but the caterer—since that was a favor to another buddy.
She ended up buying fake flowers and the ceremony was a train wreck. She got the Aisle 5 wedding she paid for and I got to save money on a dress.
7. Gimme Gimme
At my best friend's wedding, this one guest kept trying to steal or keep as much free stuff as possible—decorations, supplies from the table, you name it. Nobody cared since it was mostly just big empty boxes wrapped as decorations. In fact, he saved us from having to tear it all down after the ceremony.
6. 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.
5. 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 dead. 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.
4. The Mine Phase
My brother's brother-in-law was getting married. He had a daughter from a previous relationship who was 10 or 11 at the time of the wedding, and also had a second child who was 2 years old with this fiancée. The new wife wouldn't allow the older daughter to be at the wedding because, "She's not mine and I don't want her distracting people."
3. What’s Good for the Goose Is Bad for the Gander
A drunk groomzilla screamed at me and pointed in my face while his poor bride cowered behind him. Why? Because the venue ran out of Grey Goose vodka at 11:45 PM. The wedding ended at midnight. I filled up an empty bottle with water are served it to him and his annoying friends. They were satisfied.
2. Clearing the House
I sometimes work for a wedding planner as a waiter on the day of the event. There was one wedding that was humming along right on schedule. Then, about 45 minutes before the ceremony was supposed to begin, a bridesmaid grabbed me in a panic and told me that the bride forgot her shoes. She told me that the bride absolutely needed her shoes.
I asked where they were and she told me they were about an hour away. The wedding planner talked to the bride and told her that no one would notice if she didn’t wear her shoes. The bride pitched a fit and made an uncle drive and get them. It took him about 2.5 hours to get them. The whole time, we were trying to convince the bride to start the ceremony and she refused.
The worst part was that her family came from another country and didn’t really speak English, so they had no idea what was going on at first. They got super restless and some people even left. We even told the bride that people were leaving. She didn’t care, she just wanted her shoes. Everything was delayed by about an hour and half. People were pissed. By the time the reception rolled around, about 50% of the people left the venue.
1. Sensitivity Problems
I’m a wedding planner. We had an unexpected death in the family. Our 6-month-old nephew had passed away in his sleep. I knew the funeral was going to be the day of my client’s upcoming wedding, so 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 can hear her laughing with friends in the background. I get irritated and tell her I’ll call her back 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 had better be at the 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. That was the nicest way I’ve ever told someone to screw off.
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