What happens when your "happily ever after" isn't all it's cracked up to be? These true accounts of weddings gone wrong make love even scarier than it already is.
1. Oh, Sisters!
My sister's wedding album looks like her sister-in-law was the star. Nearly every getting ready, speech, cake cutting, bouquet toss, even the I do's...She's either directly in the middle, has barged in and is smiling straight at the camera, or is standing there with her boyfriend of the month. And that's not even the worst part.
My sister didn't even want her as a bridesmaid, just did it because the sister-in-law was invited to be one to the guy the sister-in-law was “'engaged” to before that boyfriend.
2. Suffering For The Big Day
I was super young, but my mother dragged my sisters and me to a wedding of an old college friend of hers. The groom was either Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox and the bride was converted during the mass held before the wedding ceremony.
The bride was in some sort of traditional headdress that looked amazing and weighed a ton in addition to the polyester wedding gown and corset. The church was inhospitably hot (that's mostly what I remember), and the services were in a different language.
Part of the wedding ceremony involved the bride and groom circling the altar several times at a brisk jog. Well, I could have predicted the disaster that happened next. The bride passed out on lap two, and the groom and her bridesmaids held her up while the priest (who didn't drop the beat at her fainting) kept droning on.
When it came time for the actual verbal exchange of vows, the bride was slapped lightly and wakened long enough to mumble incoherently. Her father told the priest that she agreed to the wedding and voila.
The poor girl was summarily carted outside by her parents to await the ambulance that someone thought to call, and her mother half took the bride out of her gown and corset and ripped the headdress off with such force that it tore out a chunk of hair. Good times.
3. Family Matters
While in high school, a recently graduated friend got pregnant and "had" to get married. Both sets of parents were incensed that their good religious children slept together before marriage, and both sets of parents were convinced that the other parents' child was to blame.
His parents thought the bride was loos, her parents thought the groom was an "opportunistic” jerk. Then there were the cultural insults thrown around—mostly by his family, since they were white, and the bride's family was Hispanic.
When the father of the groom asked if the bride's family planned on serving "dirty rice, heh" at the reception, I thought the grandmother of the bride was going body slam the idiot out the door.
So, we get to the day of the wedding and the bride's six brothers spend of the day skulking around. The groom's family continued to try to convince him that he should "at least wait until the kid is born so you can find out if it's yours or not" right up until he went to stand at the altar.
After a very quick ceremony, the whole crowd heads off to the reception being held in the rec room of an apartment complex. The bride and groom try to make the best of it, but there was no dancing or even music (because of their religion) and the food was just snack-type stuff.
It was a whole room of unhappy family members sucking down red punch and bad attitudes.
But it got so much worse. The groom's sister (who was a good 15 years older than the groom) had volunteered to provide the wedding cake, as she'd been making really fancy cakes for family birthdays for years.
The bride was kind of excited about this since it was really the only gesture of welcome she got from the groom's family. Well, the sister took off right after the ceremony to go and pick up the cake, and after an hour, she had still not shown up.
After another thirty minutes, the bride was ready to just break a chocolate cookie with the groom and be done with it. Then the sister arrives—and when they saw what she was carrying, they gasped. She was carrying 3 store-bought coconut cakes. There were also three of the smallest store-bought cakes ever in existence AND they were obviously not fresh cakes.
Like, they had discount stickers on the boxes. Each cake said it served 6 people and there were over 70 people at the reception. Here was the kicker. Again, they were coconut—which the bride was allergic to. The groom's sister had obviously spent an hour or so driving around to different stores looking for the worst of all cakes for this wedding.
She never even tried to explain why she did not make the cake herself as she had offered to do. I don't think the bride stopped crying for days and the groom just looked like he wanted to shoot his whole family. This wedding was 30 years ago but after some internet snooping, I believe the couple is still together and had several more kids.
4. In Sickness And In Chaos
My friend got married and decided to have a private ceremony, but an open reception in a massive hay field in Vermont. They invite a huge number of people, over 300 show up and it's a predictable apocalypse now from 10 am until around 6 pm when everyone finished their glasses.
For example, people were in and out all day, with four constant groups; the direct family of mostly tipsy adults, the bride's sister's college friends—from the women's studies major, and the Model UN team—the groom's home friends, who are all either farmers or animal breeders, and the bride's friend's, the guys I came with.
There are some minor altercations between the home friends and college friends, but it's a crazy party in the middle of nowhere, so some yelling and ideological disagreement was expected, and encouraged by many by saying "He was calling you a feminazi, you going to sort him out?" and stuff like that.
However, it came to a head when a heated discussion turned to a girl getting hit with a hot coal shovel.
Utter chaos, multiple emergency calls, officer cruisers from three different departments, and a couple of ambulances later, we had been given the order to disperse. The problem was that we were all very tipsy and shouty, so after a few incidents we put several people to bed well beyond the acceptable limit and sent home a lot of questionable people.
What about the girl hit with the shovel? Well, the guy had no idea it was the recently used coal shovel and just wanted to smear a little dirt on the girl. He's a veterinarian and dragged her off, apologizing profusely, and fixed her up within an hour.
Unfortunately, you can't undo 15 near-simultaneous emergency calls. Both of them being too tipsy to drive they stayed the night, and we found them in the same sleeping bag the next morning.
DocPhotos, Shutterstock
5. Nice On The Outside, Ugly On The Inside
My cousin’s wedding was in October in the north of the US. It was an outdoor wedding, and it was about 35 degrees and windy. Bridesmaids weren't "allowed" to wear jackets, and the groomsmen were only in vests and dress shirts, so everyone was freezing.
Having planned the wedding in the summer, the programs were printed on fans. There were no microphones, so no one could hear the service over the wind. Oh well. The reception was super nice and was clearly very well planned out by the bride, with cool centerpieces, handmade favors, nice food, and all that.
The problem was that the bride (not my cousin) was such a stereotypical "bridezilla" the previous months that no one wanted to be there. For instance, in the previous two weeks she uninvited her sisters and parents two or three times and then re-invited them.
So, after dinner, the dancing starts. That’s when the revenge came. Within 15 minutes, literally, the bride’s entire family leaves. My wife and I are two of maybe 6 people dancing. We take a break, and the DJ comes over and asks us what we want to hear and begs us to keep dancing.
After an hour, there are only about 30 people still around. Of 200 guests. The bride spends the next 20 minutes dancing alone, as my cousin doesn't dance. Finally, she approaches the DJ, gesturing and slicing her throat, and the reception abruptly ends.
Only 8 people are left. All from the groom’s family. I've been to "worse" weddings, but this was the worst experience because everything was so nice-looking and set up to be a blast. I've never felt so uncomfortable.
6. Does Anyone Have A Plan Here?
I was invited to the wedding of a girl who I went to high school with. We weren't particularly close friends, and we hadn't kept in touch, so the invite came as a surprise. I guess I don't even really know why I went.
The wedding was in a church, and the guest turnout was significantly smaller than I think it was meant to be. The priest said the bride's name wrong at least twice during the ceremony and joked about how the groom might have been better off becoming a man of the cloth than getting married.
The reception was in the church basement. There was assigned seating (as is the norm at weddings), but within ten minutes, everyone from my table had relocated to a table that was meant to have been for guests who did not come.
My date and I sat by ourselves for over an hour and a half while we waited for the bridal party to make their way downstairs to the reception. When they showed up, the DJ seemed confused and sort of rushed through the announcement.
Then the bride and groom argued (quietly, but near my table) over whether the mother/son or father/daughter dance should happen first. They decided on mother/son, and that dance commenced without any sort of announcement or warning—and since the dance floor was basically behind the tables, no one even knew it was happening until it was practically over.
Right before dinner was served, two of the three bridesmaids left. The bride was in near tears the entire time. We waited until the buffet started, and we snuck out the back and went out for dinner instead. Worst four hours of my life.
7. Bad Vibes Only
This was not really ruining the wedding, but it certainly ruined the vibe leading up to the wedding. I asked my brother to be my best man at my wedding. My brother and I are Catholic, my girlfriend is Episcopal.
He says "Yes". Months after saying yes, he comes to us and tells us that he can't be the best man or even be at the ceremony because his priest tells him it will be unacceptable for him to be a witness to the ceremony because I am not asking for dispensation and getting married in an Episcopal church.
Okay, understood...sad, but if that's the way you see it, we'll deal with it. At this point, I ask my best friend to be my best man, and all is good. Or so we thought. A couple of months before the wedding my brother started a campaign calling my entire family and telling them they will go against their religious customs if they attend my wedding and explaining how my children will be unacceptable in the eyes of God and anyone who even sleeps under the same roof with us.
What? I find all this out through cousins and friends and am in complete shock. Luckily, I have a few cool family members and they all show up for the wedding. Everyone had a "What is wrong with your brother?" question on the day of the wedding, but it was a great time with an open bar and live band.
Here's the kicker of it all: my Mom is Catholic, and my Pop is Episcopal—no divorces or any unhappiness, just your normal suburban family.
8. Supremely Bad Timing
I was at a wedding two years ago where the happy couple-to-be was also best friends with another married couple, so naturally made the other couple the best man and maid of honor. Three weeks before the wedding, the other couple ended dramatically through him cheating and were going through a nasty divorce by the time the wedding rolled around.
The whole wedding became centered around the best man and maid of honor and their dismal attempt at looking happy for the new couple. The best man even had his new girlfriend rock up at the reception. Awkward as heck, but there was definitely a sense in all the guests of “Oh my God, what's going to happen next?!?”
9. Bride Cosplay
It didn't ruin the wedding, but for a while things were a little tense.
For a little background, my high school boyfriend apparently called his wife by my name during an intimate moment. His parents told my parents when explaining why I wasn't being invited to the family party that year when I came home from school for winter break.
I made sure to keep my distance since that had the potential for more drama than an episode of Maury. Well, then he showed up to my wedding reception in another state with his wife dressed in a white lace gown with what I can only describe as a bridal hairstyle.
She kind of charged up to the bridal table and announced that she needed to meet me. She was just standing there, refusing to move, and looking confrontational. I grabbed a couple of chairs and asked someone to bring a couple of plates of food.
Then I warmly asked for an introduction and complimented her hair and dress. For a moment I thought she was going to hit me with the chair. Instead, she sat down, ate some food, and calmed down a lot.
My wedding planner stopped by a couple of times to make sure I was okay, but aside from a late arrival asking if we'd had a double wedding, the rest of the reception had very little drama. The happy couple chatted amicably with us, and the wife called me a lovely person before they left.
It was a bit surreal, but I didn't want a fight on my wedding day. I refused to engage in that, and through some happy circumstances that worked out for me.
10. Stay Away From The Little Girl
Not my wedding, but my boyfriend's aunt's second wedding. His cousin Beth, the bride's daughter, got tipsy and accused a 12-year-old girl of 'coming onto her man' although her boyfriend wasn't even there.
She shot glares at the kid the whole ceremony and rolls her eyes during the vows. At the reception, Beth cornered her in the bathroom, slurring her words and screaming and threatening she was going to 'knock her out'. The poor girl was just crying, asking her what she did wrong.
When her mom finally asked her to leave, Beth got mad that no one was taking her side. I don't know about you, but it's hard to feel bad for a crazy woman screaming at a frightened 120-pound girl. It really brought the reception down, since there were only about 30 people who stayed after that fight.
Wedding and lifestyle, Shutterstock
11. Oops!
I ruined a wedding one time, but it wasn't my fault, I swear it wasn't. I was a friend of a friend of the groom, and I had an F150, so I got asked to bring some chairs and a table to the reception hall as people who own trucks are often asked to do.
I agreed and was told I would be met there by a couple of women and a few guys to unload everything and place it. Cool. One of the women was pretty hot. I flirted a bit, and she flirted back. She asked if I wanted to take a walk along the river that the reception hall was on. Sure!
We walked for a while and talked, and it got hotter and hotter. We ended up making out on the riverbank for a bit and walking back to the hall, where I invited her to go for a ride in my truck. This was in rural Indiana, so in about ten minutes, we were along some numbered county road in the back of the truck laying on a blanket and going at it.
It was late evening and there was no one around. Then a car comes towards us. We laid still and waited on them to pass, but the car stopped and the girl from earlier got out and started screaming at us. Yep, the girl I was with was the bride.
The wedding got canceled, and my friend punched me in the face—he found out later that I had no idea who she was and apologized, we are good now—and it was quite the scandal for a while.
12. Nickle And Diming
My cousin’s wedding was the WORST. My cousin and her husband live about three hours away from her and his respective families. So, everyone gets to the reception and finds out there is no dinner, only hors d'oeuvre. And by that, I mean there was a tray of cold meatballs, cold mozzarella sticks, and two turkeys for around 120 people.
Half the guests left for about an hour to go get something to eat. The cash bar was crazy expensive, like $6 for a bottle of Miller Lite. Then, they start SELLING dances with the bride and groom for $50. Sadly, I saw people finding the envelope of cash they were giving as a gift and taking money out.
13. Kathy Would Like To Be Excluded From This Narrative
The bride doesn't show up after 2 hours of waiting and then calls to tell the groom that she changed her mind. The groom starts crying and his mom shouts "Shut up! I told you to marry Kathy but noooooo Kathy was too fat huh? You just had to chase a model! She couldn't even wipe her butt with those nails, much less cook your dinner. Why would Jessica want you? You're broke and you're ugly. Kathy wouldn't have stood you up because she is ugly too. Serves you right".
The groom continues to cry while the guests stared in shock. But here’s the “best” part. Yes, Kathy was there. Just like everyone else, though, she was afraid to confront the mom. She did hug him afterwards.
christinarosepix, Shutterstock
14. Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong
My uncle's wedding, many years ago, was so awful that the whole thing was sort of beautiful.
An hour after the wedding was supposed to start, neither the bride nor the groom was there. All of the guests were there though, among them my cousin, a young handsome athlete who'd injured his leg and was on crutches.
The bridesmaids, the bride's sisters, got into the sauce. They started relentlessly hitting on my cousin, who tried to get away from them but couldn't escape them on his crutches. My uncle finally showed up. His car had broken down and he'd had to hitchhike, in a white tux, to his wedding.
The bride eventually showed up even later. She'd apparently stepped off the curb to leave and broken her heel off. She'd had to go back and try to fix it with glue. On her way back out the door the SECOND time, she'd stopped to give her hair an extra spray...and accidentally sprayed it with a can of Lysol instead, causing her to go shower and entirely redo her hair and makeup.
When the bride and groom were FINALLY both there...they realized no one had brought the music. So, everyone walked down the aisle in total silence with woozy bridesmaids and half of the original guest list present.
…The wedding went better than the marriage.
15. Going Wild
I am not sure if she ruined it, but it is a fun story. At my wedding, my best friend was our best man. His wife who is now divorced, was a very hot lush mess. It had been this way for years. She promised him that she wouldn't drink during the wedding or reception.
So about halfway through the reception, she is out there on the dance floor grinding on my 50-year-old 300-pound uncle, just giving him the tongue. It seems she had a flask hidden someplace.
She then starts trying to make out with just about every guy she can find. My friend then collected his wife and had to leave. Now, on the way home she gets angry and jumps from the car in motion and dashes down the street. She's a marathon runner, and my buddy lost her while turning around the car.
She proceeds to go to a local bar and meet up with some women she knows from her work. They drink more and she gets in an argument with another woman she knows that was at the bar. That woman leaves after my friend's wife attempts to get her to fight her.
So, my friend's wife in her work friend's car chases them home. She ends up trying to kick in the woman's home door. This woman finally opens the door and beats my friend’s wife. Her work friends had to take her to the hospital where my buddy finally got the call to go pick up his wife.
Monkey Business Images, Shutterstock
16. The Sister-In-Law Show
My husband and I got married 12 years ago and he and his sister ruined my wedding.
To start, we lived in Oregon at the time and all of my family live in Georgia so since I have a huge family who don't have the financial means to travel, and his family is very small, we went to Georgia to get married.
The craziness started as soon as we started planning. The sister-in-law would make comments telling us we should just get married like she and her husband on Christmas in a tiny church with a couple of people. She made a lot of other suggestions about how we should do things.
Then, while at my in-laws on Christmas morning, nine months before our wedding, my husband asks his dad to be his best man. It was a very touching moment, his mom cried. Of course, nothing good ever lasts when she's around—later that night, his sister corners him and asks why he doesn't make her husband his best man.
The fight about that between the whole family on Christmas day was really great.
Lots more happened, but I'll move on to our wedding day. We are all getting ready at a rented beach house. Admittedly, my sister-in-law can really bring out the worst in my husband. He's stressed while getting ready. She's being passive-aggressive and making everything about her.
For photos before the wedding, we are meeting at a park. I am riding with my friend, and he is going to follow me. On the way to the park, we get lost. No worries, we will just go to the wedding venue.
Somehow, my husband and his sister start fighting, with guests arriving in front of everyone. She's manipulating and pushing buttons; he's blaming her for my not showing up at the park for photos. I finally arrive at the venue with my very soon-to-be husband, hands in pockets and saying, "What the heck!”
My sister then tries going between my husband and his sister to diffuse everything with my sister-in-law calling her an idiot and then the minister threatens to leave because of the fighting.
So, after the ceremony, my sister-in-law has a horrible face in every single photo that includes her and then had the nerve to tell me during my reception that her day was ruined, and she would never speak to her brother again.
It was bad—but things were about to spiral even more.
Two days later as I am packing to leave the beach rental, she comes into my room to tell me how hard the week has been for her. She goes on to say that there was "God knows who sleeping on the couch" who was my best friend since 4th grade and she complains about "Unruly, undisciplined children running around" who were my nieces and nephew, who really are great kids.
Yeah, my husband brings up renewing our vows occasionally and while we do have a very happy marriage now, I have no desire for a vow renewal.
17. Chill, Mom
I recently had my wedding, and we woke up together happy to be getting married, then my soon-to-be husband received a text from his mother. Disclaimer, his mother had waist-length black hair. It's a photo of her, she cut and colored her hair exactly like mine.
Shoulder length, brown with blonde streaks. I was livid! Of all days to color your hair! And to do it on my wedding day. Fine, I let it go and decided to just forget it. Finally, it's the moment we all have been waiting for, I'm walking to the aisle, and we reach the front. The parents were called up so we all could recite a vow together.
Our wedding was held in front of a riverbank mind you. His mother then proceeded to walk around me near the pastor, instead of being with the other parents near the groom. She proceeded to loudly scream and fall, as she fell, she grabbed my hair and I fell with her inches away from the riverbank. My moment... Ruined. She got up and laughed and walked away while I was on the ground trying not to cry.
To be honest I don't remember anything else from the ceremony. I was seeing red. We no longer speak to one another, and I will forever refuse to speak to that woman. My husband stands by me on that decision. To this day when I think about my wedding, I tear up.
She ruined it and didn't even feel sorry for it. And those of you who say she fell and couldn't help it, after watching our wedding video her husband and the pastor were holding her arms. She deliberately stepped back and fell.
18. A Whole Lot Of Nothing
My brother-in-law’s wedding was a disappointing sham. Everyone on our side of the family had to drive three hours to the bride’s hometown so her whole family could attend the wedding. When we get there, the bride and Maid of Honor are cooking the reception meal because the Mother of the Bride decided last minute that she didn't want to.
The ceremony starts, and absolutely no one from the bride’s family is there. The reception has no drinks, no music whatsoever, and we had to watch a 20–30-minute belly dancing performance because one of her friends was a belly dancing instructor.
My boyfriend and I were the only guests out of about thirty that had brought them a gift, literally. There was a gift table with no envelopes or gifts at all on it. The bride’s mother left the reception early " because the thrift store was closing soon".
By the time the reception ended, my boyfriend and I ended up helping the bride and groom clean the reception hall because everyone else left. But the most devastating revelation was yet to come. We later found out that it was just a ceremony and no real marriage because the bride wanted to stay married to a previous husband for financial reasons.
This wedding was just a sham to convince her family that she had finally settled down with a good guy.
19. What Happens At The Bachelor Party Should Stay There
As a waitress, I've seen a lot of stuff at weddings. Amongst my favorite is the best man who got up and started his speech, re-telling all the details of the bachelor party night. The bride's family had flown in from Africa (unsure of the nation).
They were all in traditional dress and we were only serving drinks to certain tables because of their religious beliefs, I believe. The poor bride was hiding her head in her hands while the best man talks about the groom climbing on stage at a trashy joint and eating a banana out of a bikini bottom.
Rule number one of giving speeches at weddings: Never re-tell bachelor party stories.
20. Getting Cold Feet
I once attended a wedding of a couple that objected to Vatican 2. That is, they didn't believe in doing the service in the vernacular, so the entire service was in Latin for like, three hours. I could have been fine with that, but there was more.
First, it was in winter, and the church didn't have heat. Everyone was freezing. Second, after the wedding, the bride freaked out and got an annulment. She had other fiancés before, and they would always fall through before the wedding. This was the first one she actually went through with.
We think she panicked before the consummation. She didn’t believe in it before marriage but wasn't ready when she did tie the knot. She is finally married though and just recently built her dream house with her husband. Most of the immediate family ended up skipping that wedding after the last one.
21. Can We Say “Cheese” Now?
Not a guest, but the photographer. She didn't really ruin the wedding, but she wasn't the greatest photographer in the world. She's a friend of a family member and runs her own photo company. She gave us a good deal, and at rehearsal, she had a lot of good ideas.
Towards the end of rehearsal, I pulled her aside and told her specifically one picture that I wanted. My wife had no idea that I picked out and got her wedding ring joined with her engagement ring.
She was under the impression I picked up her engagement ring from getting polished and cleaned up for our day a few days before, and I gave it to my mom. In reality, I had the ring for weeks. stashed away in my safe. It was gorgeous, and she was going to be so surprised. I wanted her reaction caught on camera.
Well, the photographer said she would sneak up behind the officiant and grab that moment. Where was she when I was putting the ring on my wife? In the back of the hall. Furthest away from us as possible. I was irritated, but a family friend caught my wife's reaction, so I brushed it off.
Next up were the after-ceremony pictures. This lady had us standing on a hill, she was at the bottom, and people around her taking pics as well. No biggie, but as a professional photographer, you need to make sure that people stay focused on your camera, not the third aunt of my twice-removed cousin's boyfriend's dad. That was irritating.
Another thing: Do you know how there's supposed to be a whole bunch of just candid shots of people hanging out and having a good time? Yeah, we got maybe 50 of those. Where was the photographer? Oh, she was busy talking to the family member that she's a friend of.
She even put her camera away. I was livid. I didn't show it, I didn't bring it to my wife's attention because I didn't want her to freak out. She was having a great time. So instead of really great pictures from a lady who runs her own company, we got mediocre pictures from her, and way better pics from the cell phones, and my sister's Canon DSLR that was floating around.
I'm so glad we weren't the ones paying her. I would have snapped.
22. I Was Gonna Throw That!
My wedding planner ripped my bouquet out of my hands as soon as the ceremony was over, plopped it in a vase, and placed it on a random table. An unwitting guest took it home thinking it was a centerpiece! I had no idea what happened to my bouquet until I went looking for it at the end of the night.
23. Back Off Woman!
My wife's co-worker who she was on excellent terms with at the time got married. It was a lovely ceremony. Nice little reception. I was alone because I was a +1.
Apparently, the bride was super nervous before the wedding. Her bridesmaid's sage advice was to do a few shots beforehand to loosen her up and all that. It worked! She got through the wedding.
Well, they had plied her with 100-proof bottle and had been a little liberal in doing so as they did the drinking right before the ceremony.
By reception time, she was pretty sloppy—and she ruined everything.
She's going around, looking kind of inebriated, laughing too loud, and being pretty wobbly. My wife and I were sitting down talking to some of the other co-workers who had come when the bride comes up.
She decided that today was the day she would let me know what a wonderful guy she thought I was, and how good she thought I was for my wife, and the best way to do that was to give me a great big hug.
In a strapless dress that was a little low riding, to begin with. She didn't let me get all the way to my feet before hugging me.
So, me, being caught totally unawares, basically got my head grabbed and shoved right smack into her dirty pillows.
My first thought was: “This is going to be awkward”. Second thought: “How am I going to react to this?” and third thought: “Well I can breathe but she's holding on a little too long for even this type of hug”.
I finally extricated myself and she does this whole “Oops” slouch and giggle and sort of stuff herself back in there. She hangs on my shoulder to apologize in an entirely inappropriate manner, and lucky me the table is silent.
She finally gets pulled away by her new groom who shot me a “Jesus, that was awkward” look that matched mine and they went off to get her fixed up.
The table is still silent. My wife isn't mad, she's flat-out flabbergasted. Finally, her boss goes “So. yeah that happened. All in favor we don't bring it up with her?”
Unanimous agreement.
24. Relatives Are Trouble
When my uncle got married 26 years ago, he originally planned to have three of his eight siblings directly involved in the wedding. About four hours before the ceremony, he found out that his future bother-in-law, who was supposed to do the reading had gotten sick and couldn't come.
He then asked the next person he saw—one of his sisters—to do the reading instead, thus having half of his siblings be directly involved in the wedding.
Three of the siblings who weren't directly involved in the wedding had a great time at the reception and wished Uncle and Aunt happiness. The fourth, Aunt Mary, who prides herself on always being proper and polite, I think she could probably recite everything Emily Post has ever written, called him out in the middle of the reception demanding to know why she hadn't been chosen to do the reading.
Two months ago, my Uncle's daughter Melissa got married. Melissa wasn't sure whether she wanted to invite Aunt Mary to the wedding because Aunt Mary is still holding a grudge against Melissa's parents and Melissa herself. She did decide to invite her though.
As soon as she got the invitation, Aunt Mary called me to rant about it. For some reason, I'm the only niece of 18 nieces and nephews that Aunt Mary actually likes. I think it's because we're both the only natural blondes in the family which is a bizarre reason; I don't like her at all.
She complained to me that she had gotten the invitation late. She hadn't though; Melissa sent out all the invitations six weeks before the wedding, as Emily Post says to do, so I talked her out of that notion and did not mention the save the dates
Aunt Mary also told me that she just didn't think she could attend the wedding unless I drove down with her. She couldn't afford a plane ticket even though she and her husband both make six figures, and she's just too old to drive all the way by herself. I politely explained that was simply impossible for me.
Then Aunt Mary decided to rant about how her sister Ellen seems to have known about the wedding forever and, "I just don't understand why Melissa would tell her before me".
Um...maybe because Aunt Ellen and Melissa have had a special bond forever...which you would know if you paid the slightest bit of attention to anyone else in your family at any point in the past 22 years...
Thankfully, Aunt Mary was unable to attend the wedding. She didn't RSVP until the morning of the wedding though which resulted in Melissa's mother worrying quite a bit that Aunt Mary would show up at the last minute and try to ruin her daughter's wedding as well.
25. A Nervous Groom Is The Worst
I saw a groom ruin his own wedding.
My fiancé's cousin was getting married. He and his now-wife are nice people but have trashy friends. The trashy friends had way too many glasses, were very rowdy at the reception, and kept pressuring the groom to drink with them and bring him full glasses of straight Hennessey.
Fast forward to the end of the night, and the DJ calls the groom to the cake table to do the cake-cutting. A couple of minutes pass. The DJ calls him again. I turn and I can see the groom seated with his back to me, and I wonder why he hasn't noticed his name is being called.
Turns out, Groom hasn't made his way to the cake because he is obliterated and can't even walk. Two of the groomsmen have to carry him to the cake, where they are just barely able to get him to cut the cake, or at least feign a cake cutting for the photographer.
Eventually, he threw up on the bride and had to be carried, chair and all, to the bathroom for a hosing down and then to the car.
26. Good Enough
My cousin got married in an Eastern Kentucky small town. It was at least an hour's drive from any hotels. Their wedding was in late June. In the middle of a field. In full sun. His wife "designed" the flowers and decorations, which amounted to some really sad-looking shade plants wilting in the sun, still in their plastic pots with hooks attached, just sitting in the aisle.
It was above 90 degrees out, and they were forty-five minutes late starting the ceremony. While we were sitting there, cooking in the sun, sweating through our nice clothes, they provided bottled water to help us cool down. But no one brought ice.
The bottles were stored, warm, with no ice, in bright orange 20-gallon buckets with rope handles. Which were placed on either side of the aisle. They did not do any kind of insect treatment in this field before the event. Mosquitoes and chiggers, are everywhere.
The reception was held in the middle school cafeteria just down the road. They reused the prom decorations for their reception. Because in this town, apparently, the high school prom happens in the middle school cafeteria.
It smelled like old macaroni and cheese. The provided meal was quartered squares of bologna and ham sandwiches on wonder bread with a spread of condiments. The wedding cake was from Wal-Mart. I should specify at this point that money was not an issue. They had a fairly large budget. They just thought this was good.
27. The Gift That Keeps On Taking
When I was stationed in California for language training, my then-boyfriend and I had a couple of mutual friends who decided to get married. Now these two were some of the sweetest, kindest, and most generous people I have known, but darn they were not very intelligent.
I mean that in the sense that they both were book-smart but just kind of vague and ditzy. The bride was white, and the groom was mixed, a Black father and white mother. The bride's family was very “Southern” and did NOT approve of their perfect little girl marrying a Black man.
They would not pay for anything and didn't even give them a gift. The wedding was held in a small church that both the bride and groom attended, and the reception was held in the parking lot with food being served from the back of a truck.
Now, it sounds like it could have been a cute country wedding, but it was not. There were maybe 15 total guests including the families. My boyfriend and I were the only ones who brought a gift, and I am so glad I splurged. We bought them a complete bathroom set with the rug and bathroom accessories and stuff, so it was a big basket that looked so out of place with no other presents.
There were no chairs or tables for the reception, no music, nothing. It was literally a bunch of people awkwardly standing in a parking lot, eating some BBQ from a local BBQ shack, and watching the bride's family members try to ignore the groom's side.
It was sad, but the bride and groom seemed to be oblivious to all of the tension and sincerely seemed joyful about their wedding. Last I heard, he was still in the service, and they had 2 kids together and were happy.
28. Mail Order Mess
My dad's wedding to his second wife. She was a mail-order bride from Ukraine, and just married him for a green card and to get an education here. Once she did, it went downhill fast. She divorced him and took half of his assets and their house.
The whole thing was a sham, and everyone knew it from the get-go. The ceremony was bad because everyone was apprehensive about the whole thing. It’s hard to be joyous and happy for their union when you're trying to convince the groom not to go through with it.
29. Nobody Does It Like The Mormons
I went to a Mormon wedding ceremony and everything about it was strange. The pastor unraveled this crazy long scroll and claimed to have a family tree tying him back to Adam. Then he randomly picked a young man in the audience to start the ceremony with a prayer.
The guy looked around and said, "who, me?" It was so wheels off.
Oleksandr Yakoniuk, Shutterstock
30. Never Tell Snoop To Turn It Down
When my mother married my stepdad, I was only five or six, but I remember very clearly what happened that day.
My twin brother and I were walking our mom down the aisle when we heard a loud rapping from outside the church doors.
Everyone kind of stopped for a minute, but no one said anything or knew what to do, so we just kept walking and pretended it didn't happen. It stopped for a few minutes until it was time for the bride and groom to say, "I do".
Before my stepfather could say the words, the loud rapping sound came again, and this time it was booming throughout the entire church.
My uncle was super angry, so he sprinted to the back doors and swung them open just as the rapping was getting so loud that everyone was forced to cover their ears. When he opened the door, we all saw what was making the noise.
It was just Snoop Dogg practicing his craft, and he was unaware that he was disrupting a beautiful wedding. He kindly apologized to the congregation and promised to take his rapping elsewhere to a more appropriate and perhaps soundproof location.
31. Grumps
My grandfather. Less than 30 minutes into the reception, he broke my heart. He decided that he was ready to leave. In an effort to "hurry my gram along", he went and sat in the car. And she let him. She didn't decide to leave until over three hours later!
My gram didn't normally have this shiny spine, but I was not only the oldest grandkid. I was also the first to get married, so she wasn't letting him ruin it for her or me! My gram is easily one of my favorite people on this planet, so I choose to remember her shiny spine more than my grandfather's stupid behavior on that day.
32. Whose First Dance Is This?
I attended a real horror show a few years ago. I worked in the same building as the bride but barely knew her and was surprised to get an invite for the whole day.
It started at the church—the father of the bride and bridesmaids who were the bride’s two sisters—think the two famous characters from Cinderella—were clearly in a very bad mood, but things went as expected and everyone moved on to the reception venue.
At the reception, at a service station next to a very busy motorway, we made the usual small talk with our tablemates. Like me, no one really knew either the bride or groom very well. One person had met them on holiday three years ago.
This was not a big wedding, with four or five tables of eight or ten people each. I was surprised at the lack of close relationships because the couple were nice people, albeit a little odd. Things took a turn for the worst when the wedding party entered. The party was short a father of the bride.
Turns out that he had decided to go home. The departure was explained in agonizing detail, along with the story of the father's irrational and intense dislike of the groom—a man who never said boo to a goose, a bit wet but essentially harmless—by the bride's grandfather, who took it on himself to pick up the mic and make a speech.
It was actually quite touching as he was hugely apologetic about his son's behavior and made some beautiful comments about the not-so-happy couple, but he kept going back to how much the groom was disliked. The atmosphere was awful—everyone felt they were intruding on what was obviously a huge family argument.
Now, this is where things got especially awkward for my wife and me. The bride was nervous about her first dance and had agreed with her sisters that they would come in and join the dance almost as soon as the song started. However, the bridesmaids had now decided to leave the wedding in support of their father.
The bride was now without her sisters and so she asked my wife and me to fill in. We agreed, just hoping to be as help salvage something from the day. We should have said no.
The dance was timed so that it took place just as the majority of the evening guests were arriving. The meal had run slightly late so there were now several people gathered at the back of the room, along with everyone still at their table. The first dance started and within seconds the bride gave us the nod.
So, we are not dancers and so awkwardly swayed around the floor with the bride and groom. No one else joined in. The crowd seemed to think we were in fact trying to spoil the sanctity of the dance and draw attention to ourselves. We spent the whole song staring at each other, horrified at what was happening. The bride's grandmother actually booed us.
We left as soon as the song finished, safe in the knowledge that no other wedding we would ever attend would be as heart-wrenchingly sad or personally awkward.
33. Slim Pickings
One was in Atlanta in the middle of the summer and the venue had no AC and not enough chairs. So, we ended up standing for the entire "wives must serve and obey their husbands" type ceremony.
After that, we go to the reception, which was dry, and it was a buffet, but with servers serving the food. I go up with my dinner plate and there was a meatball station with two types of meatballs. You got to pick one type and then the server asked if you wanted one or two.
Think tiny cocktail meatballs, not big meatballs.
Next was the veggie station, where I had my choice of one or two asparagus spears. There was no dancing or anything either. People ate their two meatballs and left. It was brutal.
Kubatina Katerina, Shutterstock
34. Poor Lil Sebastian
My brother's wedding was pretty bad. The ceremony was small, very religious, and an hour from the reception venue. The reception was doomed from the start. they decided to have an "open house" style reception. When pressed for a count, they estimated roughly 300 people.
This would be fine, except the reception was in our parents' backyard which does not have parking for 300 people. Also, they decided that since it was open-house style, they would just serve appetizers. Oh, and it was a dry wedding.
Me and my other brothers flasked it and my brothers are lightweights, so they got obviously tipsy really quickly. They didn't really do any decorating until the night before, and that mostly involved making the backyard look like a giant tulle monster had thrown up.
They didn't help my parents get the backyard landscaping looking decent at all in the weeks leading up to the wedding even though it definitely needed it, so they left it all for the rest of the family to do without even asking.
My mom was freaking out because all of her friends from church were going to be there. They also decided to hold the reception in the early afternoon way before the backyard usually gets shade and they had metal chairs so nobody could sit down at the tables they had put out without burning their butts.
Everyone just tried to squeeze into the small spot of shade that was there and spread out slowly as it grew. But there was one more ridiculous thing. For some reason that I still haven't figured out, they had a mini horse there.
They never explained why, and they were pretty much the only ones who took pictures with it, so while people were milling about the saddest mini horse in the world was just in the background chewing on some hay by its lonesome.
35. Angry Brides
I went to a church wedding in Korea. I had been to other Korean weddings and knew that most people just show up to drop off their gifts (money) and then hit the buffet. Attending the actual wedding ceremony isn't really required/expected for most guests.
What surprised me about this one was sitting in the church for the actual ceremony and how nobody who even came in was paying attention. Everyone was on their iPads or smartphones. I saw lots of people just playing Angry Birds and a few just full-on having phone conversations during the ceremony.
Just blew my mind. These weren't children, these were middle-aged adults. Why even go inside if you are just going to text message or play cellphone games?
36. When It Works, It Works
Two friends were married with little planning. The wedding was to be held in a lovely park in Ohio, but it was pouring rain that day, so it was quickly moved to the bride's dad's tax business office. Someone was posted at the park to direct people 10 minutes down the road to this place.
Once we arrived, we found that the bride and her dad were having a tiff. He decided that he didn't want this to happen. He hadn't supported it much throughout, but this was the last straw, I guess. After some whispered drama in front of the guests, it was decided my dad would walk her down the aisle.
Someone played a cassette tape with the wedding song. But then the bride (a legally blind albino) lost her flowers. I will never forget the sight of her patting around to find them. Someone else found her flowers for her…but it was a funeral spray from Walmart.
Anyway, the tape was restarted. As she started walking up the “aisle,” the tape ate itself, and someone else managed to scrounge a classical music CD from a desk. Somehow, she managed her way up the aisle.
Although the groom was a much bigger dude than her, they managed to mix the bands up and hers got hopelessly stuck partway down his chubby finger. His finger started swelling, and there was a bit more panic and drama.
After the wedding, we gathered in the gray and blue lobby of the tax firm and started to cut up the only wedding food—a Kroger cake. My dad was incensed that there'd be a wedding with no food, so he gave my cousin $40 and told him to go get some KFC.
My cousin got lost, and we stood around in this partially darkened building for over an hour waiting for KFC and chatting with the family. It was surreal, but you know what? That was over 14 years ago, and they still look at each other with the same amount of tenderness in their eyes. Screw fancy weddings.
37. Sorry I’m Late
I, the groom, kind of ruined it. I was late.
I had a few jobs in the morning to prep for before I got ready. Set up mainly. I had to go to the castle, set up, meet the flower woman help her out with all the flowers or/and get the other corsages before I go home to get myself ready. The flower lady doesn't turn up.
My wife had arranged it and I'm not calling her. She mentioned her brother has the same one. I got a number from her, she said she is on her way.
I got sorted, and headed home to get ready as me and my companions get in the limo, I turn my phone off for some reason. This is the point a few people wondered where I was and tried to call me. Well eventually someone phoned my wife and said I hadn't turned up and they couldn't get me. I got there, sleeper let the wife know, and all good. Phew.
38. Au-Naturel Bridesmaid
One of my bridesmaids was talking to an elderly guest. He was sitting down, and she was standing in front of him, bent so she could speak directly to him. Another guest walked up behind her, grabbed the zipper to her dress and yanked.
The bridesmaid’s dress fell completely off/down in one swoop. As a side note the same guest came from out of town with a plus one. However, her ex-husband was a guest as well, he was local. She ended up hooking up with the ex in her hotel room and left the plus to fend for himself.
Rest of the wedding was completely uneventful and just a nice time…
39. Dangerous Duo: The Cousin And The Imam
So, at my cousin's wedding, the Imam was the officiant and he ended up being late to the ceremony, which caused a domino effect to all the post-wedding rituals. We had to scramble through the fun games to make time for the dinner.
In Muslim weddings, the couple has to give their verbal consent and sign the wedding registry, instead of exchanging vows at the altar. The Imam was so busy rushing to his next job that he forgot to take the bride's signature on the wedding papers.
They had to visit the local wedding registers twice to correct their mistakes, with their birth certificates and other documents, and their witness. Why twice? My cousin forgot to take their certificates the first time, and they were admonished for not bringing a witness along with them.
40. A Big Imbalance
My mother got married to a man from England when I was four. We immigrated over there (we're originally from Canada) and the way it works is you have to get married within six months or something or your marriage visa expires, and you get kicked out.
They had decided to have a really small, no-frills wedding due to a lack of time and the fact that none of my mom's family could afford to come over. My mom didn't even get a dress; she wore the white suit dress she had from her high school convocation.
It was agreed that I would walk her down the aisle as I was her only family, and her husband’s friend would be her maid of honor. We opened the door to this big ugly church. When the doors opened, my mom was horrified. The groom's side was filled with people, while there were two people sitting on her side.
I remember holding her hand and walking down the aisle and feeling absolute dread even at the age of four. We were so alone and so alienated. Anyway, they got married, and then for a “reception,” her husband left us at the church without a ride home while he rushed off to play a game of rugby with his mates that he absolutely could not cancel.
We walked home in the rain. Their marriage did not last.
41. Copycats Don’t Prosper
A friend of the family, Sarah, was getting married and informed all of us that she absolutely loved my cousin's wedding and wanted to copy the venues, caterer, and DJ. My cousin's wedding was beautiful, practically perfect, and went off without a hitch. This was not the case for our friend.
Sarah's maid of honor was her sister, Lindsey, and she was the biggest attention seeker I’ve ever seen. You could just tell that it physically hurt her that her sister was getting married and getting the spotlight for once. The wedding starts and Lindsey comes down the aisle wearing high heels that she clearly can't walk in.
She managed to make it to the altar okay, but during the ceremony, Sarah accidentally stepped on Lindsey's toe. Her reaction made my eyebrows shoot up. Lindsey throws herself on the ground and starts screaming "MY TOE!" Over and over again in her deep smoker's voice for several minutes.
After she realized that she wasn't getting the attention she wanted she just stands up, curtseys, and says, "Okay, Carry on”. Just when we thought the ceremony was getting back on track, people start whispering and pointing at one of the groomsmen, who is white as a ghost and swaying back and forth.
Three seconds later, he passes out and just barely misses hitting his head on the tile floor. So, they sat him in the first pew and gave him some water. He managed to get back up for the vows though. Then the limo that was supposed to take them from the church to the place they were going to take pictures and then to the reception venue showed up half an hour late and had no air conditioning.
This was the middle of July in the Midwest. Sarah pretty much sweats all her makeup off and her hair was ruined. The caterers didn't show up for cocktail hour, apparently, they got lost and couldn't find the giant hotel or the banquet hall right inside the main door.
Then at the reception, the DJ had technical difficulties and could only play CDs. It didn’t let up. People got food poisoning from the chicken entree. Sarah got a glass of cabernet spilled on her dress. And the cake collapsed before they got to cut it.
At least they had an awesome 2-week honeymoon in Bora Bora. Apparently, nothing went even slightly wrong after the ceremony and reception ended. But the whole wedding was like a scene from a movie, it was so bad.
42. To Have And To Hold Off
I attended a female co-worker's wedding. She and the groom were both very young (teenagers) and very religious. The father walks the bride down the aisle, and it looks like we're in for a beautiful ceremony. Nope. Once they arrive next to the groom, the father proceeds to give the groom a lecture on how he will now be responsible for the spiritual well-being of the bride.
How he (the father) has been her "spiritual leader" her whole life up to now, but the groom is taking over. While giving this speech, the father managed to strike a terrifying figure, one of those, "You take care of my daughter or I will hurt you" types, only the message was "If my daughter falls off her Christian path, I'm coming after you, buddy”.
The groom began to cry as he was being lectured, and it could not have been more awkward for the entire congregation. We watched the father dress down the groom, speak as if the bride had no control over her own life, and cause the poor boy to spend the rest of his wedding red-eyed and runny-nosed.
43. Bouquet Feud With The Babysitter
At my best friend's wedding, I'm a bridesmaid and the groom grew up in the same town as the bride and me but was slightly older so none of us ever met in school.
One of the groom's best friends turns out to be a neighbor boy that did unspeakable things to both me and my sister for years.
I first hear second hand that he pitched a fit about not being a groomsman. He hadn't been picked because he was going through or had just gotten divorced from his wife and the mother of his two children because he was cheating with any piece of tail, he could get his hands on.
Next, I find out that not only is he dating women in her very early 20s, we are all in our 30s at this point, but that he is dating his sons' babysitter.
This young woman then inserts herself into all sorts of social functions with us and tells everyone that he's going to marry her and give her a baby soon. It's painfully obvious to everyone except these two that we are all in a very different phase of life than her.
Back to the wedding: So, the MC calls for all the unmarried ladies to come out onto the dance floor for the bouquet toss. I haul myself away from my martini and cheesecake to join them and jump around to 'Single Ladies' by Beyonce.
My best friend throws the bouquet and tries to aim it towards me and her sister just to give our partner a friendly nudge.
So, flowers whirl towards me and hit the floor and I go to pick them up and the non- groomsman's barely not-a-child date is there also holding onto the bouquet. We're standing there, both holding these flowers. Everyone is staring at us and whispering, “Why won't she let go?”
I'm also staring at her, she grabbed onto the bouquet after I had already picked it up. Like come on, that's not how this works lady.
The stalemate ends as she rips the flowers out of my hands and almost hits me in the face with them and yells “I caught the bouquet”'
The face on the non-groomsman falls. She goes back over to him and announces loudly that they will be the next to get married does he like this wedding venue? His friends are all sort of snickering at him on the side as she gushes that they are “So committed!”
44. The Bride Next Door
It was another bride. I’ve talked about this before, but we were in a venue with two ballrooms. We had an open bar and I guess the other wedding had a cash bar. The bartender started to suspect people from the other wedding coming in and taking away free drinks from ours.
He said he suspected because they didn’t tip, and we had been. Our groomsmen were dealing with it.
Then the bride in her full gown and train walked up to our bar to get one. The bartender shut her down, and the event manager canvased the bartender and the groomsmen who saw and asked for an estimate of how much they took, and it was a lot.
They had been doing it more subtly all night and this was later. But eventually, there were about 30-35 people from there, much smaller wedding doing it one at a time. We had 150 people, so it was easy to not get seen. This was pre-COVID.
The bride walked past me with the manager lecturing her about the extra charge and I just laughed. I didn’t mean to, but I was tipsy, and I just felt bad for this poor cheapskate who couldn’t even get someone to get her drinks at her wedding.
We were paying one price for dinner and unlimited drinks per guest, but she didn’t know that. So, she got a nice bill for like $500 afterward and I think her party shut down early, but I don’t think that’s why. Their party wasn’t even near ours, so they had to go searching for it. What a weirdo.
45. Ring Ring!
The groom's father answered a phone call during the ceremony.
That happened at the civil ceremony in the town hall. The mayor himself was officiating and was doing the formal part where he had to read some articles of the civil code related to marriage. Anyone who has attended a wedding here knows that at this stage, it is just a matter of minutes before the officiant will ask the question of the bride and the groom.
Then, we could hear a phone ringing with a very loud and annoying tune. Guests chuckled and looked around, and it turned out it was the phone of the groom's father.
He was sitting on the first line of seats, so he was very close to the bride and the groom, and everyone could see him; the guy then answered his phone and talked so loudly that everyone could hear him: "Hey, hello. What's up? Nah, not a good time to talk, but tell me”. He stood up and walked out of the room!
The mayor was kind and sensitive enough to then just make a couple of jokes and lose some time for a few minutes until the father came back, and then he moved on to the part where he asks the bride and the groom the much-awaited question.
The bride is an old friend of my wife, and she had complained multiple times that her future in-laws were real problems and that she actually hated them secretly but made her best to be civil with them.
46. Not The Right One For Me
I was 15 and at my 26-year-old cousin's wedding. We are an Indian family. His fiancée, also Indian, drank a ton at the reception and made out with the best man in a closet. Someone opened the door and pretty much everyone saw them walk out of the closet.
It was jaw-droppingly awkward. He got the marriage annulled.
47. A Blood Bath
My ex-wife's uncle. He was in his fifties, and his bride was in her twenties and younger than his daughter from his first marriage. The bride was also pregnant at the time of the wedding. There was an undercurrent of ill-disguised fury permeating the wedding venue.
It all got worse during the wedding party. The top table ate the ENTIRE buffet, leaving nothing for the other guests, so somebody was forced to take a run down to a local takeaway. About 20 minutes into the disco, one set of in-laws trod on the foot of the other set of in-laws, refused to apologize, and both sides came together like a battle scene in Game of Thrones, all to the sound of “Karma, karma, karma, karma” chameleon.
Blood was everywhere, the DJ pulled the plug, and everybody was thrown out of the community center. It wasn't even 6 pm and guests were still arriving. The guy sent out for the takeaway food arrived shortly after with arms full of fish and chips and a half-empty parking lot. Best wedding ever.
48. Raw Emotions
My cousin's wedding was a doozy. The ceremony and reception were at this gorgeous hotel on the top of a mountain. The ceremony was held outside. It was beautifully staged, but a gusty day. We couldn't hear a word of the ceremony.
The women were trying to keep their dresses and hair from flying all over the place, while the men kept getting smacked in the face with their ties. Then it was time for the reception. Our plates came to the table. When I started eating, I nearly screamed. We cut it into half-raw chicken.
We asked for new plates, only to be told they didn't have any extra, and the kitchen had been closed since the entrees were done. My husband and I were in from out of state for the wedding and had carpooled with another cousin.
We were starving, so she gave us her car and directions to a nearby Subway. We slipped out, as we didn't want the bride to realize what had happened and be upset. As we were finishing our subs, we get a call from my non-bride cousin telling us to get back there ASAP, as she needed to leave immediately.
We pull up to the outside of the hotel, and my non-bride cousin is outside yelling at yet another relative. An uncle then starts getting in my cousin’s face. At this point, my mother steps in and breaks it up. My cousin leaves.
5 minutes later, authorities show up as someone called about the fight. The groom then comes out and yells at everyone, and the officers end up leaving. Somehow, we kept all of this from the bride, who had no idea that all of this ridiculousness was happening at her wedding.
49. Turn Up The Music
I had a small wedding, still about 30-40 people showed up and we were in kind of a small space. Some people, I'm not sure who set up the music so the speakers were pointed to where we all were eating since later it was the same area where we would be dancing.
While we were "mingling" around trying to talk to our guests, the guys controlling the volume kept turning it up, so I pretty much had to scream at whomever I was talking to. I would ask them to turn it down and they would but then my husband's mother would go behind me and tell them to turn it back up, thinking it was funny to watch me get frustrated about it.
A week or two later were all gathered together, and she and I are talking, and she mentions how soft-spoken I am. I didn't hold back, and I responded with a sharp tongue: "Now imagine trying to talk to me with some rude person continually turning up the music during our conversation".
50. It Was My Brother Who Made Such Comments, Not Me
This was at the wedding of one of my long-time friends I have known since we were kids. I befriended him through my half-brother who was my best friend growing up.
Around the time my friend was proposing to his now wife, my half-brother decided to become an evangelical Christian. This ruined our relationship because I am gay, and he was now spouting anti-gay rhetoric. So, our relationship fell apart, but our friend still loved us and made my half-brother the best man, and asked me to be a groomsman.
The day of the wedding I show up at the venue, happy to see all the friends of our group as the groomsman. As I’m catching up with each person, one by one they ask me why I wasn’t at the bachelor party that took place in Vegas 1-2 weeks prior. My half-brother, the best man, was in charge of that.
He invited every single groomsman to go except me. Then he didn’t bother to mention me or tell them why I wasn’t there. From their perspective, I was invited and chose not to go. I made sure to tell the groom so he didn’t think I didn’t care about him and had I known I would have gone.
I dropped it for the rest of the day, so it didn’t ruin their wedding. When it was all over, I thanked everyone. My half-brother approached me to apologize, and I refused his apology. That was roughly five years ago, and I still haven’t spoken to him.
The groom and all the groomsmen are still a part of my life. We regularly make time to spend together and luckily my half-brother doesn’t join for any of it.
51. Why?
My sister.
She spent the whole day telling my now-husband to just.... not marry me. She told him that nobody would fault him. That I wasn't deserving of marriage or good enough.
Then she started taking down my reception tables three hours early, convincing people it was time to leave. I never even got to try my own cake that night because it got removed from my table during my first dance. By 8:30, most of my guests were gone.
My husband and I had our five-year wedding anniversary in September.
52. Cher Gets Married
It was an outside wedding in Central California during summer. It was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Bad music. No open bar. The maid of honor (the bride's sister) gave a really long and dumb speech in her "valley girl" talk.
Every sentence had that high cadence at the end and that kind of drags out the last word. Sort of like "I can't believe you found such a great guuuyyyyyy. I'm so proud of youuuuuu. This is a beautiful dayyyyyyyy. Blah blah blah blahhhhhh”.
53. God Help This Wedding
My cousin had a dry wedding because members of her church crowd were heavily against drinking. Keep in mind that our family enjoys drinking—we have been making our own moonshine for decades. After the food was served, her church friends hauled out of there as fast as they could, leaving only my family of drinkers.
The DJ we were tormented by was someone random from her church who had obviously never worked a wedding before. My family lingered around a bit but left soon after that and the reception was empty by 9 pm.
The people from her church that she had paid to help clean up had left right after the food as well. So, by the time I was leaving, she was cleaning up with her new husband. I stayed to help because I felt bad and she asked me to, but her wedding was awful. 0/10
54. A Beached Wedding
My cousin had to get married on the beach in Queensland in November and didn't have a rainy-day plan. Of course, it poured. The wedding still went ahead on the beach. Meanwhile, the reception was held at the local football club’s upstairs hall to save money.
Nothing wrong with that, except for one problem. They charged heavily for ALL of the drinks, including a markup on bottled water. There wasn’t enough food, a food bar that didn't have enough for all of the guests, a gender reveal cake cut (she was pregnant with her second child) that turned out to be wrong (it was a pink cake, she ended up having another boy) and there were only about a dozen chairs for a wedding with 50-ish guests.
We ended up sitting on the excess gym gear outside. About half the guests had to travel a minimum of an hour's plane ride to get there.
55. This Is Not The Place For A Political Propaganda
This year I went to a wedding where the sister of the groom was a bridesmaid, and her husband was also a groomsman. They walked into the reception wearing “Trump 2024” tights and the husband had dressed in this red, white, and blue cheaply made shorts and button-down shirt.
He also had a little banner saying, “Trump 2024”. Mind you the bride and groom were both anti-Trump.
56. Protecting Groom’s Feelings
One of the groomsmen danced with me and he gave me a startling warning—he said I better not break my husband's heart. At my own wedding. It came out as a threat, not like a funny joke. We just celebrated our 10-year anniversary and are happier than ever.
57. Cake Fingers
Ouch, I think I’d be the rude guest. I believe I was around four or so when my aunt got married. Being a young kid with little to no self-control, as soon as I heard I was supposed to stay away from the cake, I started running...
Right to the cake. I ended up sticking my tiny little finger as far up that poor cake as it could go. I’ve never felt worse hearing that story.
Nigmatulina Aleksandra, Shutterstock
58. Nobody Is On Their Best Behavior
The best man (20-something) was making out with the Justice of the Peace (she was at least in her 50s, maybe 60s). This was bad enough as is, but the fun really began when the justice's husband came into the reception hall and got a little ticked off.
Shoes were thrown and the best man was chased away by the old man. The marriage lasted about a year...I guess it really was a bad omen!
59. Don’t Save The Date
My two friends had a wedding on a Wednesday. Apparently, it was because that day was the bride's parents’ anniversary. However, everyone who attended had to work the next day. One of the groomsmen hadn't turned off his phone and we could all hear him getting text messages during the ceremony. That was far from all. It was a dry wedding and there was no DJ.
The groom just expected one of his friends to play some songs from his iPod. I think he played “Gangnam Style”, and something called “The Wedding Wobble” and then couldn't figure out what else to play, but it didn't really matter because everyone but the couple and me and my date left by 8 pm.
Oh, there was more. The worst discovery came later. We come to find out that the newlyweds have nowhere to stay on their wedding night. They lived in a tiny apartment with several roommates who they were fighting with, and the electricity had been shut off for days.
I watched the bride frantically opening envelopes, trying to scrape together enough money for a hotel room, and almost breaking down in tears when all of the envelopes contained Target gift cards. I ended up paying for a room for them to stay in at the hotel with me and my date.
I don't remember them even saying thank you. The marriage didn't even last a year.
Monkey Business Images, Shutterstock
60. Couldn’t Keep It Together For One Day
I went to a family friend's wedding and a bunch of us caught the groom with the maid of honor in the parking lot during the reception. Needless to say, that marriage didn't last.
61. Shading The Big Day
I've been to a few outdoor wedding ceremonies in summer here in Queensland, Australia. In case you don’t know, it's ridiculously hot and humid in the summer. For some reason, these weddings are always without chairs and just go on and on.
All dressed up in your finest, feet going numb in stupid heels, and dripping in sweat for hours is not pleasant. Dear god people, keep it short or give us shade and chairs.
62. Second Time Is Not The Charm
My friend got married just after high school. Her reasoning was "If you sleep with more than two people you're doomed”. So, she got married to the second guy. He quickly showed his true colors. The night before the reception, he blows her up over the phone because she didn't pick up the socks for the wedding day for him and now, he had to go out in the morning.
The other bridesmaid and I spent the night before consoling her. Her mom and dad tried to convince her up until the point we left the house that she could pull out. On the way in the car, we drive past an old house, and her dad suddenly remembers that someone he went to school with died in there and then he tells us that story ON THE WAY TO THE CEREMONY!
Seriously, time and place. She wanted an outdoor ceremony even though it was raining and there was no undercover area beside an old, corrugated iron roof. Everyone stood under there and couldn't hear the entire ceremony, so people just talked through the entire thing.
During the first dance, the last brutal insult came. Her husband interrupted the song with "AO technology" and crumped into it while the wife was mortified.
63. Please Stop The Music
My DJ was my rudest guest! A couple days before the wedding he was so scatterbrained that it was hard to keep up with what he was saying.
Then, he asked if I had to lose weight to fit into my dress! At this point, it was too late to find a new DJ and we decided we weren’t going to tip this man.
I’m glad we didn’t because at the wedding he refused to play some songs that he seemed were too inappropriate for a wedding. Then he yelled at me for being okay with WAP being played. He tried to mess up the order of the bridal party and my husband had to yell at him to do it right. To say he was a nightmare would be a huge understatement.
64. Stop Creeping Me Out
The guy that was “semi-stalker-ish” who was obsessed with me couple of years prior to my wedding was absolutely devastated when I got engaged. He told me he "wasn't coming to my wedding" which was fine, I didn't invite him.... but I was close to the family so his parents got invited.
He ends up showing up, sitting in the second row directly behind my parents, and takes photos on his IPAD for the whole ceremony. Yes, his face and his IPAD being held up are in every photo of the bridal party and me and my dad walking down the aisle.
65. No Children Allowed
I’ve got a good one.
We had an 18+ wedding reception. One of my husband’s “best friends” whom he hadn’t seen in years, not only failed to RSVP but when he showed up to our reception with his wife, they brought an unpleasant surprise—their four kids.
They allowed them to run wild, dodging under tables and playing tag in between guests. Their toddler screamed and cried during the entirety of my grandpa’s dinner blessing, and they made no attempt to respectfully remove him from the hall to allow for quiet during the speech.
I only see my gramps every few years because he lives cross-country and is frail, so every moment with him is to be cherished, and this blessing meant a lot to me.
Then when dinner was served, they wreaked havoc through our dinner buffet line. They stacked several to-go plates with food, gave my husband a side hug, told me my dress was pretty, and promptly left. No gift, no apologies for disrupting my grandfather’s speech, no quality time reminiscing with his “best friend,” just pure chaos then a dine and dash.
I have a picture my wedding photographer took of me, head bowed in prayer during my gramps speech, but I’m glancing up giving them the nastiest stink eye I’ve ever served anyone. I was livid, but at least they sort of got the hint and took off.
This guy has also made no attempt, before or since, to reach out to my husband for a reunion. Bad friend if you ask me.
66. Keep It Classy
I'll make this short. Camo vests on the groomsmen. Pause for the bride’s smoke break during the ceremony. Half the guests were in jeans or PJ pants. Finally, a make-your-own ham and cheese sandwich bar.
Oh yeah and it was at a fairly hillbilly "golf club," so there was nearly a fistfight between a young Black groomsman and some old white club members.
67. Crossing That Ex Off The List
My husband and I went to his ex-wife's latest wedding at the request of their kids. This was her 4th or 5th wedding with her grown children in attendance. Floor-length white Cinderella wedding dress with everybody in tuxes. This is from a woman who lived off disability, welfare, and child support.
The groom's sister realized the bride had been married in this same church before. She walked through the lobby shortly before the wedding and asked, "Come here often?" I nearly wet myself laughing. The photographer wasn't pleased about something so as his revenge, my husband and I ended up in a lot of photos…who doesn't want their ex-husband in their wedding pictures, right?
We made sure she changed her name, and the kids were happy; I think the bride and groom ended up cleaning up the rented reception hall themselves because his family was not cooperating. We came home grateful that we'd just run down to the courthouse.
68. If You Like Pina Coladas…
I worked at a catering gig at a wedding because I really needed cash. The night was pretty regular for a wedding, and it was all going smoothly…until we brought out Pina Coladas during the dinner. This is where all heck broke loose. The guests were going through bottles and bottles of this stuff.
The caterer I was working with seemed to have an unending supply. People started getting rowdy, and as I was bringing out more drinks on a large platter, this little kid, who must have been eleven or twelve, shoves a chair into the side of my knee, knocking me down and dropping fifteen glasses of Pina Colada, which I have to then clean up on my hands and knees, avoiding glass shards.
Later that evening, I saw that same kid going through glasses of Pina Coladas. I went to get some fresh air during a lull in the chaos with some of the other guys I was working with, only to see a wedding guest chunder straight Pina Colada all over the sidewalk, then stumble back into the hall.
69. Have Some Patience
I think I was the rudest guest at a wedding. The bride and groom were having a sundae bar instead of cake. I didn't realize this and made myself a nice sundae before even the bride and groom had done the ceremonial first scoop.
Literally, everyone at the wedding saw me. I was such an idiot. The bride and groom were extremely cool about it, but it was pretty bad on my part, and I couldn't apologize enough.
70. NFL Madness
During our reception, our parents, maid of honor, and best man took turns with their speeches at the DJ’s table. During this time, I noticed a guest—a male in his 50s—sitting next to the DJ booth wearing big headphones and looking down at his phone.
My first thought was he was sensory-sensitive and it’s admirable that he was here in the first place! However, only later did I learn he was a fully capable man who was just watching the NFL game. Not even discreetly.
At some points, he would even physically celebrate whatever was happening in the game. His entire table was mortified. I later learned that, to this day, his wife will not touch him and is still embarrassed by his actions.
Bogdan Sonjachnyj, Shutterstock
71. Hangry
It’s my wedding day. My oldest brother and I are talking about how we are starving. It’s before the ceremony and we are just getting started on pictures. “I didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast today”, I say, “No way, I think I am going to run out and grab something,” he replies.
He’s off before I really have a chance to respond, the problem is that we are just getting started on pictures. This 45-year-old man disappears for an hour while we struggle through the pictures that we can take without him, then shows up with a single item that he bought for himself from a Greek food cart.
Nothing for me, nothing for his pregnant wife, and nothing for his five children. He eats this mouth-watering, garlicky, chicken Kabob on saffron rice while he follows me around during and after the pictures without offering a single bite. He is weird about food, so I knew he wouldn’t want to share anyways, so I didn’t ask.
Not the worst thing ever but incredibly self-centered!
LightField Studios, Shutterstock
72. I Turned Red Just By Reading This
My friend's in-laws hated her and did not approve of her marrying their son. So, the traditional wedding dress color is red, and my friend chose to wear red. Everyone knew she was wearing red, including her in-laws. Well, the day of the wedding came, and the bride immediately cried a river of sad tears—because over 150 guests, all her in-laws, came dressed in red.
Red dresses for all the women and red shirts for all the men. They hated her so much that they wanted her to know they didn't approve. I felt so terrible for her. It would be like every single woman wearing a white dress to a Canadian wedding.
73. Playing The Waiting Game
My husband's youngest brother got married in a Mormon temple. While everyone else was inside watching the ceremony, we were standing outside—his entire family besides him and one brother are still Mormon.
It was April in Salt Lake City, so it wasn't freezing, but it wasn't exactly warm, and the wind was blowing. They were scheduled to come out of the temple at 1:30, so we got there at about 1:45 for pictures. They didn't come out until after 2:30.
We stood outside getting dirty looks from all the other wedding parties. Just as we are about to go back to the car to wait them out, one of his brothers calls and says they're on their way. His mother then gets offended that we didn't wait in the lobby with all the children who were too young to go to the temple.
Then we got lectures about all the blessings we missed out on. Another 45 minutes of photos in the shadow of the temple and on the stairs, and then we all headed to the reception at the bride's family church in Pleasant View, which is normally a 45-minute drive.
But because of the late schedule, we are at the beginning of rush hour. Then there was a big wreck on the highway. Those of us who knew the streets were able to take backroads and it only took about an hour and a half to get to the church, but many people got stuck and it took them almost 3 hours to get there.
So, all the time that was set aside for family photos before the reception was lost. In addition to all the regular downsides to Mormon wedding receptions (no drinks, thousands of children running around, being held on a carpeted basketball court), about 3 times more people than expected showed up.
The receiving line lasted for the entire reception and was occasionally interrupted for family photos as family members who had been stuck in traffic arrived. They did the receiving line until every single person had been greeted. It was almost 10:00 pm by the time they finished.
Then they crammed the cake cutting, first dance, and daddy-daughter dance into about 15 minutes because people wanted to go home. I don't even remember them tossing a bouquet or garter because people were leaving.
It was the longest freaking day and by far the worst wedding I've ever been to. On the upside, it made me realize how awful it is to be invited to wait outside someone's wedding and helped me conclude that I will never wait outside another temple. Ever.
74. How The Danish Do It
I had a good time at this wedding but that's partially because I was drinking the whole time. My college roommate, Lauren, met this guy in Denmark the year after she graduated college. They started a long-distance relationship and got married about a year and a half after meeting.
The majority of the guests were coming from out of state or out of the country (read: Denmark). This is when the wheels started falling off. It didn't occur to her to arrange transportation or even directions to and from the ceremony, which was at a state park half an hour away from the hotel where we were staying and where the reception was being held.
Again, 80% of her wedding guests had flown in from other states and COUNTRIES for this wedding. I found this out when I was helping her get ready and she asked for my phone so she could Google where the park was about the hotel because the groom's grandpa had asked her for directions.
I hitched a ride with my friend who had driven up, thank God. The ceremony was held next to a pretty waterfall, but it was hot as heck and mosquito season. Also, as the bride walked down the aisle, the ancient speaker that someone was sitting on a chair and holding a mic too so that it was amplified more went kaput, so she walked down the aisle in silence. It just kept getting more dire.
No food was served at the reception other than small bites and a chocolate fountain. The wedding ceremony was in the afternoon and the reception was all evening. She didn't even provide a small buffet of anything moderately substantial.
And trust me, money was not an obstacle. She spent $8K on her dress and $2K on her flowers. So, we stopped at a Dairy Queen Grill & Chill before the ceremony for chicken strips and shakes. She only had an open bar for 1 hour so all of us would wait in line, get the two-drink max, and then just get in the back of the line to drink while we waited our turn for the next drinks.
The dance floor was the size of a small walk-in closet but that didn't matter because the DJ would literally play one song and then the groom's uncle, the MC of the event apparently, would introduce a video from someone on the groom's side of the family who couldn't make the wedding but had put together a 5–7-minute video in another language congratulating them.
It went the song, GREETING FROM BJORN, song, CONGRATULATIONS FROM THE KNORKELSENS, song, HALLO AND LOVE FROM SURKIN AND MURKIN ABBALICIOUS for 3 hours. Anyway, I got to drinking and decided to shut down the club with an impromptu speech in which I quoted Jimmy Eat World lyrics.
Someone showed up in jeans. I did a shot in someone's hotel room with like 10 rugby players from the groom's side. I remember finding a cat somewhere. I woke up in my cocktail dress to QVC on my TV with my hand in between the pizza slice and the cheese that came on top of it. The end.
75. Resting Groom Face
My friend's wedding was a few years ago. Nothing extremely bad happened during the ceremony, but everybody noticed something strange on his face during the whole thing. He never smiled...NEVER.
This was supposed to be the happiest day of his life and he always had that angry face the whole time. This became even more evident a couple of days later when his wife posted several pictures of the wedding on her Facebook page.
When 10-20 people are smiling in a picture it's easy to spot the only person not doing the same...In this case, the groom. In all the pictures it's the same face.
Depiction Images, Shutterstock
76. The Silence Before The Storm
I went to a friend’s wedding and my wife, and I were with a few couples who got stuck with one guy who no one really knew. We were friendly enough to him and engaged him in conversation, but he was quite antisocial most of the evening.
He had a lot of glasses but seemed to be holding his own until we were all left to start dancing and he remained alone at the table. 15 to 20 minutes later we looked back and he had his head on the table and we had assumed he was sleeping. When we went to check on him, he had been vomiting all over his own legs, shoes, and under the table.
The venue was furious, the bride and groom mortified, and it was all quite an embarrassing turn of events. Not sure if the couple are still friends with this fella.
77. Mother Nature’s Bitter Surprise
I got married in June of this year. We did an outdoor venue. Needless to say, it rained all day, and that was fine. But what wasn’t fine was the tornado sirens that went off when I took my first step down the aisle.
It was awful and everyone bolted to their cars for safety. I was ugly crying in my parents’ car, sandwiched between my maid of honor and my husband. That was when my very rude aunt stuck her head through the driver’s side window to tell me that I shouldn’t be upset, there was a blizzard on her wedding day, and it delayed everything and made it so awful.
I mean I see where she was coming from, but please maybe this isn’t the time.
Eddie J. Rodriquez, Shutterstock
78. One Thing After The Other
Everyone ruined my wedding. I had a COVID wedding, so I had low expectations to begin with.
My mother-in-law helped me get ready and spent three hours crying about the divorce she asked for ruining her life. She then forgot to tell my husband to hide on the way to the venue, so he saw me in the car.
They then hid me in my husband's old bedroom before the ceremony. But no one stayed with me including my mom. So, I spent two hours sitting in his childhood room alone. I called my best friend in California and cried.
The wedding! His mom offered to make us a cake. I told her just a simple wedding cake. I’m walking down the aisle and see the cake out of the corner of my eye. It’s “Marvel-themed”, which is cute because I did Marvel centerpieces. But it’s topped with pop toys and it’s red and green. Oh, Lord. “Babiest” complaint of the night but it made me laugh.
The husband's best friend showed up in basketball clothes and his girlfriend of one week came in an all-Jean outfit. But I guess it’s better than the dresses showing most of her chest she wore to later weddings.
His other friend announced she was pregnant.
The caterer forgot all our appetizers.
Then God himself blessed us with a freak lightning storm with downpour so the night was over by 8:30.
Boryana Manzurova , Shutterstock
79. Jealous Of The Sick Father
It was not my wedding, but my sister's. A few weeks before the destination wedding, our dad got incredibly sick and was unable to travel to the venue. She asked his brother, whom neither he nor she was particularly close to, to give the toast at the rehearsal dinner and to walk her down the aisle.
He promised to work closely with Dad to compose the toast. He didn't and simply wrote his own toast for the rehearsal dinner.
The ceremony went without incident, but after the ceremony, he hopped into every family photo where my dad would have joined. At the reception, he noticed he hadn't been seated at Table 1 and lectured the wedding planner so severely she was shaking when she spoke to my sister about it.
Apparently, this was pent-up anger from where he had been seated at some of our second cousins' weddings. My sister had also booked a day-after photo shoot. We didn't tell him about it—but he found out anyway.
While he had the sense not to join, he sat by the entrance to the area where the shoot was held and watched the whole thing, sulking, so we could see him there when we left.
80. Too Fast, Too Furious
This past September, my older half-sister got married. Her younger sister is a total brat and was extremely jealous that her sister was getting married first. The younger sister was set to get married the following October but bumped the wedding up to a week after my sister's wedding out of spite.
My sister was eventually forced to kick her out of the wedding party because she kept complaining about how she hated the dresses, she wasn't wearing those shoes, etc. So, the younger sister’s hastily made wedding rolls around and it was just...ghastly.
The invitations were from the dollar store, and instead of gifts we were asked to bring food and drinks...as well as our chairs, since they were having the reception in the backyard. The dress she wore was a dress she wore to someone else's wedding two years prior.
The decorations were also dollar store-bought. The cake was made by a friend of hers and the icing was sagging off the side. We didn't even stay for the reception. I thought it was a very just outcome. She did it to herself and her parents got to save some money. Oh, did I mention it was Superman themed?
YAKOBCHUK VIACHESLAV, Shutterstock
81. After These Messages, We’ll Be Right Back
Let me take you back to January 2012. It was a really hot summer here in the southern hemisphere. The couple got a church reservation for a Saturday afternoon. The groom was a bit angry because his favorite soccer team was playing that day...this will be the center of the problem but let me explain the rest.
I remember we were driving to the church and listening to the soccer match because the team playing was one of the 2 big teams in our country and everybody was laughing at the situation. When we arrived it was half-time, so we enter the church, and the groom was waiting for the bride to walk down the aisle.
This church had some OLD speakers that the bishop used to talk to the people in attendance. As soon as the bride enters the room, they put the wedding music on the speakers but there was some heavy interference from…the soccer match! It was hilarious as you could hear the narrator's voice and the commercials. OH MY GOD THE COMMERCIALS
I remember I was in tears. The bride was red with anger, and everybody was trying not to laugh.
82. Seeing Double
My cousin’s wedding was pretty bad. She had been with her boyfriend for six years before he proposed, and they had waited until they were 28 and had their careers/schooling taken care of to get married because they wanted to do it right.
She had been planning her dream wedding for a YEAR; it was going to be perfect. And then it all imploded. Her little brother knocked up a girl and, as is tradition in my family, he had to marry her. So, a month before my cousin was supposed to have her perfect wedding, her parents decided to give the EXACT SAME wedding to her brother.
Same church, same reception hall, same EVERYTHING. They went all out and paid for an extravagant wedding for their son who had just turned 19 and had been with his girlfriend for 2 months, when their daughter was getting married next month!
To make matters worse, at her wedding a month later, instead of having a live band like her brother did, she had a DJ, and he was awful. He used CDs for some reason, and during the first dance with the bride and groom, the song skipped for a good 15 seconds.
She was understandably devastated and cried in the bathroom for the next 30 minutes while everyone waited around awkwardly, unsure of what to do.
83. Too Religious For Their Own Good
A girl I know was marrying a man in school to be a preacher. They wanted to get married young and quickly, for you know, to do the deed. The day of the actual wedding there was a big snowstorm, so it got pushed back a day, but they should have taken this as a sign to not do the wedding at all.
They postponed it to the next day, and hardly anyone was able to make it. When they got up to the altar, it was obviously a very religious ceremony, which is cool, but then it got weird. In his vows to her, he said “Bride, I wish I could say I love you more than anything, but I don’t. I love God more than you and that’s how it should be”.
They then did a feet-washing ceremony which was heavily focused on how this was basically his last act of service to her because now that they’re married, she is his “submissive”. I’m not trying to shame religion, but even as someone growing up in Deep Southern Baptist areas, this was uncomfortable for everyone.
Amazingly, this God-fearing man didn’t get a job in the ministry after graduation and had to take a retail job instead where he found the girl with whom he would have an affair and eventually leave and divorce my friend.
84. This Just Got Awkward
The bride was well known in the small town we grew up in. She invited 300 people knowing that the church only held 200 so it was really closed to being shut down by the Fire Marshall. She even invited our high school English teacher.
The bridesmaids wore white zebra striped dresses with every other stripe a colored stripe in the style of those blue cups from the 90s.
The reception was set up as long tables because the venue didn't have enough round ones so you couldn't mingle and there was barely any room to move. The DJ couldn't read the room and played inappropriate songs.
The groom and groomsmen did a dance for the bride which involved taking their clothes down to their undergarments which mortified the bride and shocked a majority of the Southern Baptist guests.
Shutterstock , Wedding and lifestyle
85. An Unexpected Turn Of Events
The bride sent out save the dates for a wedding in the spring of 2014, and the wedding date was in summer of 2015. They intentionally pushed their wedding date farther back than they had to because they had a quick relationship to engagement and didn’t want people to assume they were only getting married because she was pregnant or something.
Cue the bride actually getting pregnant and then sending out their invitations in December for a wedding in early January. They did not explain their plans to anyone, they just sent them out.
So, we arrived at the wedding. The ceremony is in the field of her family farm. No trees around to break the wind or anything and it was very cold and windy being a midwestern January. Groomsmen and groom roll up on four wheelers, play the music and start down the aisle, and then someone rushes up to the groom to let him know that the bride is late.
No idea how late, just that her and the bridesmaids will be late. She ends up being two hours late and the guests were not allowed into the barn where the reception would be to warm up. So, we sat there freezing cold for two extra hours. She then rolls up like nothing happened, they get married, etc.
We head to the reception where this old, reclaimed barn turns out to be open on one side and the only warmth is space heaters. So, everyone is having to trade turns huddling around them. We also find out at the reception that the groom’s mother made a joke about how the bride would “be late to her own wedding” because she’s always late, so she was two hours late on purpose to spite her mother-in-law. The rest of the reception is relatively normal, albeit cold.
The highlight of the evening was that the bride was fighting back and forth with her sister to be the one to stand in front of the space heater for some pictures—even though she’s in a long sleeve fluffy dress and bridesmaid sister is in a thin satin dress—and the space heater burned a hole through about half of her dress’s layers.
They announced their divorce a week after their first anniversary.
Hrecheniuk Oleksii, Shutterstock
86. What Happens At A Bachelor Party Stays There, Right?
My cousin's, female, second wedding. The night before the groom had his bachelor party—this was around 1999—his best man had way too many glasses, refused to give up his keys, got involved in a chase by Leo's and then drove straight into an electric pole after catching air at the top of a steep hill. The consequence was absolutely gutwrenching—he passed instantly.
My cousin insisted on continuing with the wedding. I can't blame her, but still, she ended up with a wedding video where the groom was loudly sobbing throughout the entire ceremony.
87. Better Have Been An Important Call
It was during the church ceremony, just before the couple exchanged vows when some guy's cell phone went off with a pervasive sound. He answered the phone and started talking in a FULL voice in the middle of the congregation.
The minister stopped the ceremony and asked the guy to please turn off his phone or take the call outside. The guy started YELLING back, creating a scene—and was escorted out by the ushers.
Although I couldn't see her face, I was told later that the bride was in tears, and that it pretty much ruined the ceremony for her. Judging by the look of disbelief on everyone else's faces, I can understand why.
Ignatios Kourouvasilis, Pexels
88. Not A Precious Moment
I didn't go to the ceremony, but I went to the reception. It was a precious-moments-themed dry reception, but here’s the kicker. No one knew it was a dry reception until after they got there. The bride and groom failed to mention this part.
It was tacky and incredibly boring. No one danced, apart from like 4 old people and a couple of kids. The precious moment's ice sculpture was nearly half melted by the time people started rolling in. It was a disaster.
I'd hate to be that couple because everyone probably knows their wedding as the most boring thing they've ever been to. Everyone left early.
TranStudios Photography & Video, Pexels
89. The Past Comes Back To Haunt Him
A male friend of mine got married. He had a prior conviction. The bride knew and had forgiven him. I was the only person on the groom’s side who knew about this. The bride's brother did not like my friend much, and a few weeks before the wedding did a background check on him.
The brother discovered the conviction and told everyone on the bride’s side about this. The bride told her family not to say a thing to the groom’s side, since most of them were pretty elderly and this information would upset them.
Well, the wedding turned out to be the most humorless and miserable affair ever. The hatred from the bride’s side was palpable. No one smiled, no one laughed or said anything nice about anything. No dancing, no happiness from her side. They went through the motions and did the least possible.
Some more savvy people from the groom’s side could see the wedding just tanked but did not know why. Fortunately, the groom’s mother never got wind of anything, and did her best to soldier through the debacle.
Soon after this, the bride got so fed up with her opinionated, interfering family, she simply cut off all contact and has not spoken to them in 8 years.
90. Somebody Wants The Spotlight
In lieu of giving a toast at the rehearsal dinner, my mother-in-law got up to announce that she was getting married that next Wednesday. She wore her winter-white micro-mini skirt wedding suit to the ceremony the next day.
This was a quiet, Methodist-church wedding in the upper South. My husband’s childhood best friend showed up with his girlfriend absolutely stoned out of their gourds, some cocktail of certain substances and a passel of pharmaceuticals and probably a few things snorted to top it all off.
His mom stood at the buffet table and ate more than half of the groom's cake. I've been told it was absolutely amazing, perhaps the best chocolate cake ever, but we didn’t get any of it.
Bogdan Sonjachnyj, Shutterstock
91. Masterplan By The In-Laws
My father-in-law, he was the best man, carried my ring in his pocket. He went outside to smoke before the ceremony and was fiddling with the ring and dropped it in the grass. It was night. The wedding was delayed as everyone got flashlights to help look for it. No one told me what was going on.
They couldn't find it, so my mother-in-law let my husband borrow her anniversary band, which was fancy and had diamonds in it. So, when the time came, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a fancier ring than we had chosen.
I thought it was a surprise for me. My mother-in-law approached me after the ceremony and told me there was no way I was keeping it. A few minutes later someone out in the yard actually found my ring!
At the reception, my father-in-law vomited on my dress.
92. Bummer
At my friend’s wedding, the bride’s mother spent the whole ten-minute speech listing all of the terrible things that had happened that year, tragedies in the family, unfortunate diagnoses and health issues, damage to property due to natural disasters, etc.
Then, every once in a while, she would go “So it’s nice to have had this wedding to look forward to!” before diving right back into it. It was bad—but she took it even further. At one point, she started hinting that her son could do better, adding their relationship to the disasters she was listing off. I mean, how rude and nasty can one woman get?
My friends still haven’t shown anyone the part of the wedding video with the speeches because it was filmed from the head table, and you can clearly hear the bride on the video saying “Oh my God. I’m going to end her. Right now. I’m going to do it, she must be stopped” and her new husband telling her “You can’t do it right now, honey, there’ll be too many witnesses”.
Bogdan Sonjachnyj, Shutterstock
93. Don’t Want To Miss My Shows
An ex-boyfriend's aunt got married in her living room once. It was the third marriage for each of them, and everyone was in jeans and T-shirts. The whole ceremony lasted about 3 minutes, and the god darn TV was on the whole time.
94. Runaway Bride
It was the wedding of my aunt. Everything was going great until we got to the "I do" part. When it was my aunt's turn, instead of saying "I do," she yelled "I can't do this!" and ran out. That's pretty bad, right? It got worse.
As she was running out her fiancé turned around and yelled "What about the baby?!" That was how we found out my aunt was pregnant.
95. A Bad Omen
I attended one last week where the bride said IN HER VOWS that she didn’t think it would last, and that they fought too much but she thought she would like to at least try marriage. Later on, when fireworks went off during their first dance, the base of the firework fell over and set the carpet on fire.
96. The Hospital Is The New Wedding Venue
I've ruined a wedding. I got pretty tipsy but not bad enough to pass out, just make stupid decisions. So I went to the bathroom—and next thing I knew, I woke up in a shock. I was in a hospital. Apparently, the groom had found me and had to perform first aid on me getting blood all over his suit.
What seems likely is I had leaned or sat on the sink for some reason which collapsed probably smashing my head in the wall/mirror and knocking me out cold. Talk about leaving in style.
97. We’re Heading Out Darling
My best friend and the only bridesmaid brought her new boyfriend to the wedding. Early into the evening reception, well before anyone else would have left, my bridesmaid approaches me and says, "Ah boyfriend wants to go now".
You know why? "Well, he wants to do it now".... that’s when I went bridezilla on him "Bridesmaid is here for my wedding, not for you. You are welcome to go but I want her to stay... And if anyone is getting lucky tonight—it's me!"
Viacheslav Boiko, Shutterstock
98. Beware Of The Cousins
They didn't ruin the wedding but did ruin a couple of pictures. An aunt and her family are notorious for showing up, eating all the food, taking away some bottles, and leaving. Her one son, the nice guy that he is, has serious problems and just can't keep it together.
Her daughter is trashy and has a new boyfriend every week. She will show up to family events, make a gigantic plate of food, talk to no one, and leave. My family has a free vending machine in the "man cave" style basement, and she will nearly empty it before she leaves.
So, when my wife and I were planning the wedding, we didn't invite the one cousin with serious problems because at that point, he was in rehabilitation, and we didn't let the girl cousin have a plus one because we were making some guest list cuts and she has trashy boyfriends anyway.
Well, you can guess who shows up at only the reception. We had an open bar so the cousin who is in rehabilitation gets blitzed immediately. At that point, we knew we were in trouble. He was jumping into every picture he could and becoming a real nuisance. My dad, who had no relation to this cousin, almost had to kick him out before other family members took him away.
German Campagnolo, Shutterstock
99. Going Out With A Bang
My father was the best man at a wedding once. It was a beautiful ceremony, and the bride is the last one of her family to get married. Her father is swelling with pride and clearly the happiest person in the world. It all went so wrong. Shortly into the reception, he has a heart attack.
My mother (the maid of honor and a nurse practitioner) goes along with the ambulance, doing CPR all the way, while the bride's mother pulls my father and the groom aside and insists that the celebration will continue, and it would be a happy day.
He ended up passing in the hospital. There could be worse ways to go out I guess though. My father ended up throwing out his prepared best-man speech. Somehow, he didn't seem to think it would cut it anymore.
100. That’s So Extra
There were no tables and chairs at this wedding. Like, none. They had an open bar but NO chairs. Everyone had to put their drink on the ground and hold their plate to eat. It was crazy.
Everyone just assumed that some sort of terrible thing happened when the tables and chair people didn't bring them. We soon found out the infuriating truth. Afterward, I asked the bride what happened, and she just said, "Oh we would have had to pay extra for that”.
101. It Was His Way Or The Highway
My ex-husband kept completely bulldozing the wedding plans. For instance, I didn't get to choose ANY of the music at all. He shut down things and made me feel small. I just kept acquiescing to his non-negotiable wedding ideas. He was also mad because people didn't execute them as he wanted. He wasn't smiling as I came down the aisle because the DJ got the music wrong.
All that should just have been a red flag that it was an unhealthy relationship. I was young, naive, and stayed way too long. It lasted 10.5 years, and those sorts of things never changed. We could never talk and compromise; it was either his way or the highway. If it didn’t go his way, I was a horrible human being for not giving him his way.
If I suggested a paint color for the living room, it was shot down. If he arrived at the same color on his own, it was great. I literally could not suggest something without being made to feel inconsequential. But, he expected me to jump, cater, and give in to anything he wanted, exactly as he wanted. He was always so critical of everything. Never again will I put up with that.
102. The Butterfly Effect
My husband and I were doing the catering for a small wedding of fewer than 50 people. They had actually had their first date in our restaurant and asked us to cater their big day, which was sweet. It was a seaside wedding, very DIY, and even my kids helped set up. Under each folding chair in the wedding "audience", was a box to be retrieved and opened by the guests when the officiant told them to do so.
The goal of this was well-intentioned. The guests would lift the tops of the boxes to free what would become a sea of delicate butterflies, symbolic of their marital journey "taking off". Well, it ended in a truly gruesome scene. The butterflies all died in their boxes due to oxygen starvation, and when the lids were collectively released, their limp bodies were swept up in a vicious yet timely gust of wind. In one glorious moment, united, they were whipped off forcefully into the horizon.
103. Plot Twist
I went to a wedding that my wife and I said will not last more than two years. The wedding was in the backyard of the bride’s house. They had all the chairs and wedding "arch" setup outside.
They setup a plastic tarp running down the aisle to walk on. Just before the wedding starts, there are darkening clouds appearing. It should have been a sign to move the wedding inside, but they invited too many people to the thing.
Just as they start the wedding, it begins to rain lightly. That’s when it all began to fall apart in the most hilarious way. The father of the bride is walking the bride down the lane and slips on the wet tarp and falls on his behind.
The bride is now at the front, and it's raining harder. People start to cover up with whatever they have. Some people start to get up too. I’ll never forget what happened next. The bride turns around and says to all, “THIS IS MY WEDDING, NO ONE IS GOING TO RUIN IT, YOU BETTER ALL SIT DOWN”!
We all sit back down and the wedding resumes. It is now raining pretty good. The grass is now turning into mud. A few ladies in the crowd and the bridesmaids' makeup is now running down their faces.
My wife has taken my jacket as a cover from the rain. They finish the vows and kiss, and then everyone runs to the house and garage to get out of the rain. Oh, remember how I said the grass was now mud? Yeah, lots of people slipped and fell in the mud on the way to the house.
We got to the house, many people look terrible from the running makeup, muddy clothing, and soaking wet. A few of the women had to cover their chests and waists due to wet clothing becoming see-through.
Most of the men were loaning their coats to the ladies to cover up. Dirty looks all around. The wedding cake was outside, and now brought in. The rain made the decorations on the cake turn all runny and it looks horrible.
The bride and groom began to cut the cake and feed each other. Cue the next disaster. They smashed the cake pieces into each other’s faces...then began a food fight with each other. My friend’s wife got hit in the face with purple icing cake.
The priest got hit with it too, putting yellow icing on his white robe. There was nothing left of the cake to serve. The food being served was still frozen in the middle, and the stuff that was not frozen was burned.
The dessert was supposed to be the cake, but as said above, there was nothing left. There was a goodie bag that people got on the way out. It had a lollipop, a coupon for ice cream cone at McDonald's, a pencil with the bride and groom’s name on it, and Halloween-size M&Ms.
My wife, whose dress was filthy, makeup was out of whack, and hair was a mess, said to me that she does not want to see those people again for six months, she was so mad—but the story doesn’t end there. The couple divorced 11 months later when the groom came home from work and found his wife getting it on with two guys.
104. The Cruelest Trick
When my cousin got married to her wife, her parents, grandparents and a few other older family members stood up and walked out. They didn't say anything or try to stop the wedding; it was just a show of their disproval. My cousin was pretty devastated because she thought their attendance meant they had changed their minds and wanted to support her, but it was just a trick.
