1. From Trapped Teen to Torn Dress
The worst wedding I've ever seen was for a girl I went to high school with. We weren't friends at all but she asked me to be a bridesmaid because no one would support her horrible decision to get married the summer after graduating.
Bride had purposefully gotten pregnant in high school to trap a guy. Totally backfired and he broke up with her when she told him. Married the first guy that would have her because she wanted someone to watch the poor kid for her while she enjoyed her youth. I agreed because there was no way that shit wasn't going to be hilarious. I was right.
The bride bought a dress several sizes too small. She was a 24 and bought a 16 because she insisted she wanted to lose weight and not be plus-sized for her big day. Unsurprisingly, she didn't lose any weight in the 4 months between her dress purchase. It was form-fitting with cheap, thin fabric to show off the curves she thought she'd get.
While she was walking back down the aisle at the end of the ceremony, her dress blew out in the seams on the side around the stomach, and her fat poured out. She wore the groom's tux jacket tied around her waist for the rest of the day.
The family support was hilariously underwhelming. Dad refused to walk her down the aisle so she had her son do it. Started wailing halfway through the ceremony because he'd messed his big boy pants because she couldn't bother to take him to the potty while she was getting ready on her special day.
Priest was a family friend who pretty much said he thinks young marriage is a mistake but divorce is a sin so they're stuck with it now. Her brother made fun of her for wearing white in his speech at the reception (which was held in the church gym immediately after the ceremony and served bologna sandwiches on white bread with dollar store soda and ice cream instead of cake, all served by the groom's mom).
The groom and his friends disappeared after the ice cream and sandwiches. We found them hiding out playing Magic in another part of the church. The bride requested they return, and while the groom obliged, his groomsmen declined.
AluminumAlmamateur
2. When Health Crashes the Celebration
I recently attended a wedding this past September. The bride and groom have been together for 11 years, high school sweethearts, and could not possibly be more excited to marry each other. The ceremony went great, quick, and emotional, everyone cried. They used the same venue for both the ceremony and reception and the bridal party was taking pictures when my boyfriend (who was at the wedding) asked if I could bring him out for a drink.
As soon as I got out there all the groomsmen were standing around while the bridesmaids and groom were flocked in a circle around the bride. She was sick to the point where she couldn't stand and had to be helped into the reception.
This came out of nowhere. So they came in and did their first dance, danced with their parents, served dinner, and made an announcement that they were going to the hospital.
They missed their entire reception. The wedding continued well into the night (because that's what they wanted) and as we were getting ready to leave we ran into them coming back to the hotel. Turns out it was a kidney stone.
Not so much a disaster but....Just....after 11 years and all the days for that to happen...what bad luck.
kmp514
3. From Shades to Bandage
This story comes from my wedding. I wouldn't call it a disaster, but it definitely could have turned out that way.
As the bridesmaids and groomsmen were lined up to walk down the aisle, I noticed my brother-in-law (a groomsman) had sunglasses resting on his head. I motion to him to take them off and he tosses them to me (no idea why) from 20 feet away.
I caught them, but it kind of hurt my thumb. I set the sunglasses aside and didn't think anything of it. 10 seconds before my Dad is supposed to walk me down the aisle, I feel trickling from my thumb. The sunglasses had cut my thumb and left a huge gash that was now running down to my elbow.
My dad saw this and sprinted to the bathroom, coming back with 20 feet worth of paper towels. He and the wedding coordinator wipe it all up, make sure there's none on my dress, then my dad creates a makeshift bandage out of paper towels, wraps it around my thumb, applies pressure to it as hard as he can, tells me how beautiful I look and how proud of me he is, tucks some paper towel out of sight in my bouquet in case I need it during the ceremony.
He then looked at the people keeping the door closed and said, "Let's go."
Pretty awesome of my dad the more I think of it.
Nobodyackedu-prince
4. Love, Lies, and Lunch Regrets
I'm a wedding photographer, fairly high-end, in the Connecticut area. I do a lot of weddings for people that are... let's say well off.
2 years ago, there was a spring wedding ceremony in a fairly large group. The bride and groom are in their late 20s, and the best man is the groom's uncle in his 40s or 50s. The ceremony starts without a hitch, the bride is all done up in an expensive white gown, and makeup. the usual, and she looks nervous as all hell. It's a wedding day, right?
I try to get the photos where she looks happy but she's not giving me much to work with at all.
Halfway through the ceremony, she starts to sway slightly, they get to the vows and she starts into hers. She's not three words in and she loses her breakfast all over the groom, and herself.
A commotion stirs of course as the bridal party tries to rush to her aid and she starts sobbing. I of course stopped taking photos at this point and started listening to what was going on. I figured she was sobbing about ruining her wedding, but no, through her wailing she admits she didn't puke because she was drunk or nervous, it was morning sickness
She continues wailing as the groom repeatedly points out they haven't slept together yet. As another wave comes out, the groom asks her whose baby it is and she just gives a long guilty stare at the uncle.
The groom turns to the uncle, and without missing a beat socks him right in the face. Uncle goes down. Chaos ensues.
PreggersBrideTosser
5. How Love and a Drive-Thru Chapel Changed Everything!
One of my best friends met his wife in this prison pen pal program. He was in for getting 4DUIs in less than 12 months. Landed himself in jail for 12 months. I visited him a few times and he mentioned her, but it didn't seem serious. The day he got out she was there waiting, having driven from out of state to meet him.
3 days later I got a drunken call from him at 2 a.m. and he said he was getting married and blah blah blah I needed to get downtown in the morning and be a witness and so on. I thought it was a joke or something, but sure enough the next morning they were going ahead with it.
We live in Vegas, so they did the stereotypical Vegas chapel with a drive-thru type wedding and were married by an Elvis impersonator. My buddy was wildly hung over and had to stop during the ceremony twice to run out to the street and puke. It was hilarious and pathetic and sad and weird as hell.
We never thought it would last but she straightened his ass right out. Got him to quit drinking and got a job, started their own business, and 6 years later they are still happily married. Go figure, right?
bongwaterblack
6 . When Champagne Showers Take an Unexpected Turn for the Worse
I went to a wedding a couple of years ago, the groom and groomsmen had been drinking since 9 a.m. I wasn't at the wedding party but about an hour before the wedding,g I got a call from the best man. The officiant had stopped by and said that if they didn't sober up he wouldn't perform the wedding.
I head up to the room and they are all wasted. I started having them do anything I had ever heard about sobering them (I know it doesn't work but I had to try.)
The officiant said that if the groom reached the front without falling over, he would consider him sober enough. (They were that drunk). Somehow they sobered up enough, got dressed, and headed to the wedding. Poor bastards stood up swaying but somehow made it. The bride was not happy.
Then came the reception. About 10 minutes in, one of the idiot groomsmen decided he needed a drink to calm his stomach. While looking toward the bride and groom, he started to …well, you guessed it. All I’ll say is he covered the bride, groom, and best man in it.
I'm not sure how he is still alive after that
aud7
7. Toddler Tantrums, Fishy Business, and Maternal Mischief
My cousin's wife was a piece of work. To be fair, we all knew it from back then because his girlfriend (now wife) is completely psychotic.
Anyway, their wedding was in the middle of August in the sweltering heat. In the middle of the woods. Mosquitoes as far as the eye can see. Most people didn't have a place to sit and those that did, had a nice splinter-filled wooden table. Like you'd set up for camping.
Their toddler was screaming throughout the entire "ceremony". She (the bride, not the toddler y) was 9 months pregnant, cursing the entire time how hot it was (No problem). She smacked her dad as they walked down the aisle because he stepped on her toe.
My brother's job was to walk up two goldfish to put into fish bowls as a "sign of partnership" or whatever the heck it meant. Except one of the fish was dead. So he dropped one live fish and one dead fish.
Need I say more?
autumnx
8. A Saga of Woodland Wedding Woes!
I supposed any wedding where the bride and groom successfully get married can't be considered a complete disaster, but this one came pretty close.
A couple of friends of mine had already been JOP (Justice of the Peace) married but wanted to have a nice reception with all the trimmings. I started to have a bad feeling about it when the bride insisted that this January wedding in Virginia should take place outside under canopies.
"But January is cold," I told her, and she said, "We will have space heaters though." The tents she wanted were canopies without sides, so essentially she intended to heat the entire Earth with a space heater.?
Well, the date came around and it wound up being one of the big storms (that struck 6~ years ago, not this most recent one) -- Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon, I can't remember. I was not able to attend the wedding because I couldn't make the trip in the snow, but according to what I saw on Facebook, one of the outdoor tents collapsed in the snow and the other had to be taken down as it started to blow away.
The wedding and reception were instead held inside the house whose yard they were originally intending to use, which was the groom's aunt's hoarder house.
So the bride in her beautiful gown was photographed standing in front of a stack of boxes filled with trash. Those are her wedding pictures. I felt bad.
patentspatented
9. The Nuptial Nightmare
I know this is supposed to be 'Serious', but is it okay if it is also hysterically funny? The wedding was at a Napa Valley winery, during the tech boom of the 90s. Groom was a frat-boyish VC funder on the climb. The bride was a Blonde, brittle, glossy girl.
Both are prone to using marketing/tech speak in conversation ("Let's right-click on that and drill down," "It's not an IRL shop, more of a clicks-and-mortar thing", etc.).
The wedding invitation was in the form of a merger announcement in a mocked-up Wall Street Journal page. As in: "Smith Global announces merger with Jones Limited. The combination delivers the significant potential to drive long-term affection growth and market share of love." That kind of thing. Still, the guy was a friend, and my date and I went to show our support.
The first really weird thing that happened was that the bride's twin brother came out before the wedding, got the bride to perch on a stool in front of everyone, and serenaded her, on his knees, with a guitar. He wrote the song. It was a love ballad with such barely concealed incestuous longing that everyone was frozen with discomfort.
He sang of how beautiful his sister was, how any man would be lucky to have her. I can't remember the whole thing, but this lyric seared itself into my brain: "Lips touching... tongues dancing... They give each other the look that can mean just one thing...".
It was not done for laughs; he was crying as he sang, and everyone watching looked like they wanted to drop through the floor. Then the wedding. Two sets of chairs set up in a lovely courtyard garden, aisle down the middle leading to a bower. We all seated ourselves, on the chairs, which had white upholstery.
The ceremony itself wasn't that bad - my date and I thought things might be picking up. It didn't last too long. There were no more lurid songs from Bride's bro, but as it ended, and the minister said:
"And now, I ask each of you to reach under your chairs for the small, white envelope you will find there. Each one contains a live Monarch butterfly. We will release them into the air and let them soar free, as a symbol of the love these two have for each other."
Everyone Froze. Whoever had set up the area had put the envelopes on, not under, the chairs. White envelopes. Little white envelopes, on snow-white chair seats. Open-mouthed with horror, all the guests reached down and found the envelopes. We opened them.
Most were dead - squashed into blood smears. But a good amount was just horribly maimed, these poor butterflies that had been sat on for the better part of 45 minutes. We watched in shock as these broken-assed, mangled butterflies, missing a wing or some legs or a tail, flopped onto the ground and twitched out their death agonies.
Anne_Hedonia_11
10. When Storms and Showers Crashed the Meadow Wedding
My second cousin got married in Vermont in the springtime and the weather report called for a "chance of showers." As a result, they rented a huge, circus-sized tent to put up covering the entire meadow where they were going to have the reception. It easily covered all 80 attendees and tables and chairs. It was massive.
The meadow was also next to a pond, which will come into play a little later. Their ceremony beforehand was in a church about two miles away. The bride arrived via motorcycle as her dad was in the local Harley Davidson club.
During the ceremony at the church, it started to rain outside. Just a drizzle, no big deal. The bride and groom hopped on the backs of their motorcycle Harley's and rode off to the reception venue. About a minute after they started, the drizzle turned into full-on tropical storm winds with sleet and hail. They did not turn back but rode through the storm to the venue. When the rest of us arrived, we found quite a scene.
The tent had come off of its moorings. The groom and groomsmen all had their shirts off and were wrestling the tent back into place. The bride was completely soaked through her white dress and was covered in all of the groomsmen's jackets while she waited for her change of clothes to arrive (she was very calm and cool the whole time, even laughed it up a bit - she's a pretty rad chick).
The wind was blowing so much that the pond had two-foot waves crashing over its edge and splashing one of the tables near the bridesmaids. The rest of the guests and I all ran up to help with the tent, and just as we were getting it back in place, the wind gusted in the opposite direction and blew one of the bridesmaids into the pond.
So things did not go as planned. The bride and groom, however, remained jovial the entire time; they were terrific and never stopped smiling. The wind died down about 20 minutes later and we were able to have the reception, with the only downside being that there was about an inch of water throughout the meadow for a while.
Everyone got drenched but we all had a good time, and two beautiful people got married.
Kahzgul
11. When 'I Do' Became 'I Can't'
I was a groomsman at a wedding where the chapel was in the middle of a golf course. To get to the chapel, you have to take an elevator down from the clubhouse. If you live in Missouri you might know I'm talking about Big Cedar Lodge.
So wedding time rolled around and all the groomsmen had spent the day drinking at the clubhouse. I had about 7 beers and I drank the least. Everyone is ready to go but we're running a bit late. We took the elevator down and it got stuck between floors.
Ten groomsmen and a groom are now stuck in a standard-sized elevator. We call for help and the person answering tells us the mechanic has gone home so it will be some time. One of the groomsmen is claustrophobic and does not handle this news well.
After about an hour of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a controlled panic, we all really freaking have to pee. My best friend had an empty flask and pissed in it and filled it to the brim. There were really bad vibes in that elevator. Finally, the mechanic comes and does his magic and we get to the floor of the golf course.
We sprint across the golf course to get to the bathroom. We're about an hour late at this point.
As we're sprinting across, the groom gets struck in the freaking head by an errant golf ball, and screams-creams plop to the ground. He's lying on the ground dazed with a bloody head.
We call his dad, who comes running over from the chapel. Around this time the golfer who hit the ball drives over in his cart. He says "You ok?" And hastily drives off leaving 11 drunk dudes and one we will later find out has a "cranial hemorrhage."
Dad runs over, not acknowledging us, and helps his son walk to his car and drives him to the emergency room.
The wedding was canceled.
PM_me_a_dirty_haiku
12. A Wedding Day Saga of Nature's Fury
Elaborate outdoor ceremony, they had tents set up and a string quartet playing. Just as the bride and groom reach the altar dark clouds start rolling in with distant booms of thunder.
We were in huge tents, about 200 people so we felt safe, then as they were about to take their vows it started hailing golf ball-sized hail. For the most part, they bounced off the tents, but the downpour was so heavy and the winds so strong that you couldn't hear a word they said.
The lawn turned into a slippery mud pit, the dance floor was floating away. As they got to the I do part lightning hit nearby and everyone's ears were ringing. Part of the tent collapsed and everyone ran for the main house or their vehicles.
They finished up the vows in the main hallway, and the marriage lasted 6 months. I think someone was trying to tell them something and they wouldn't listen.
MadLintElf
13. A Best Man's Toast That Set Off Armageddon
I was asked to be the best man for my (then) girlfriend's brother.
He was a mostly unemployed house painter in Portland, about 30 years old, who was marrying an 18-year-old stripper.
I was asked to be the best man at about 10 AM that morning.
Her family was springing for a beautiful home rental and all the trimmings, so I decided I had better come up with a toast.
I couldn't think of a thing. She was about as bright as a box of hammers, had hit on me drunk a couple of times, and was just a shallow little fellow who thought the world owed her something.
He was a drug addict, a deadbeat dad, a drunk, unemployed,d and living off the 18-year-old stripper he was marrying.
At the moment of the toast, I spoke a little about their finer qualities and wished them both all the happiness they deserved.
Well, someone found her being intimate with one of his cousins in a side bedroom. He proceeded to destroy all of the wedding gifts, while screaming about how she had given him genital warts, and then stole her father's car and totaled it two blocks away by running it into a tree at about 60.
I actually cannot describe how awful this was
DiZeez
14. A Tale of Unintended Embarrassment
One of my (ex) girlfriend's relatives was getting married and she decided to bring me along so I could meet the entirety of her very terrifying, very Irish-Catholic family. I was the brown, butch lesbian elephant in the room the entire wedding, so things were already awkward enough. There was this drunk old dude who kept trying to talk to me the whole time. He thought I was a boy so he kept on calling me "son."
For context: I'm Hispanic so our wedding traditions are very different. Things were fine up until after the bride tossed the bouquet. I guess the groom was supposed to toss the garter next and the men were supposed to catch it. I had assumed that this was just another cute game and that, just like the bouquet, whoever caught it was going to ~get married next~ or whatever.
The old drunk guy comes up behind me, puts his hand on my shoulder, and says, "Son, they're all drunk. The groom is going to toss the garter in the air and they're going to jump up and catch it, but they'll all miss and it's going to fall to the floor. That's when you swoop in and grab it."
Everything happened the way the old drunk guy predicted and I caught the garter. The room fell silent. I had no idea whether to put it on the lady who caught the bouquet or not.
I tried to pass the garter off to one of the guys but no one would take it. The poor lady looked mortified and so uncomfortable. I went up to her, mouthed "sorry," and gave her an ankle bracelet.
All the old people were pissed and my poor girlfriend at the time had to hear a mouthful from everyone. The couple that was getting married ended up divorcing a year later.
adinferiori
15. Pizza, Wings, and Moonshine
After dating for 4 weeks and another 4 weeks of being engaged, a girl from my high school decided that long enough for the wedding. Emails out invites on Tuesday for the Sunday wedding - in her mother's 'backyard' which is the common area for the trailer park.
Great start, let's go! Starts at noon on Sunday (to be finished before the football game starts). No chairs for the guests to sit on. The ceremony takes about 45 minutes as each bride and groom reads 3 different sets of vows/poems/inspirational thoughts they found on Google. The groom is in camo and jeans, the bride wears a traditional white - t-shirt that wasn't even stained!
For the 'reception' that only had 15 minutes left before football started - we delivered pizza (4 pies), supermarket fried chicken wings (2 boxes of 20 each), and 3 bags of chips. There were close to 40 people there. No silverware, plates, napkins, drinks (but one guy was selling pretty damn good moonshine).
At 3 p.m., the dad of the bride comes yelling for people to leave so he can focus on the game.
I wanted to stay around, figured a pig wrestling match or something was up next, but everyone else left so I went to get lunch. The couple 'divorced' less than 3 months later. I use quotes, b/c they never realized you had to file for a marriage license - the state just magically knew.
CripzyChiken
16. Heat, Tears, and a 500-pound Sister
Outdoor wedding, in June, in SE Texas to start. It rained all day up until about 20 minutes before the ceremony. 100 degrees and humid as hell. The poor bride and her entire party looked wilted with makeup and hair wide, and the guests were talking about the heat. She still looked beautiful even if she was wilted.
Grooms white trash 500 lb sister who showed up in jean shorts flip flops and a Budweiser t-shirt caused a scene by screaming at the bride and throwing red wine on her when the bride told her she couldn't sit at the table reserved for the bridal party, because she wasn't a part of the bridal party. Screams in front of the whole reception that the bride is a whore and to go mate herself.
During the sparkler send-off, the bride's dress caught fire because an inattentive guest hit her with the end of their sparkler.
She filed for divorce 4 months after the wedding date. We told her for two years that they were engaged, that he was a jerk and she could do better, and that we were afraid she was making a mistake.
Wasted 40k of her parent's money on a 4-month marriage.
disclaimer_necessary
17. When Wedding Dreams Turn into a Feathered Nightmare
I went to a wedding last year that was a literal blood bath.
They had it in a barn. The barn door was open through most of the pre-reception setup and into the ceremony itself. At the end of the ceremony, they released a dozen doves. They didn't realize that if you're going to release doves, don't release them anyplace near open ceiling fans.
Half of them flew back in, hit the metal fans, and exploded. Blood was everywhere.
The bride was sobbing, the groom was pissed at the dove guy. It was chaos.
My wife and I kinda just left. There was no saving that.
popemichael
18. Love, Labor, and a Wedding Gown
A friend of mine told me this story last year about a wedding she had attended the weekend before. I know she wasn't making this up because I saw the photos:
The bride and groom have been together for a long time, and have been trying to have children for years with no luck. They get engaged and begin planning this massive wedding when they find out that she is finally pregnant!
The day of the wedding comes when the bride is about 7 months along in her pregnancy. Everyone is having a blast at the reception and then they realize that none* of them has seen the bride or groom for a while. They go looking for them, with no luck.
A few minutes later the groom comes out, carrying his new bride in her completely blood-soaked wedding gown. He carries her out to a waiting ambulance that he had called from the bathroom he had been in with her.
The bride gives birth to a baby that is very premature, but alive. The bride suffers a massive amount of blood loss and is unconscious. The baby is taken to a nearby hospital that is better equipped for preemies. The mother is taken to a different hospital, which is pretty far away.
The groom spends his wedding day going back and forth between the two hospitals. When the bride wakes up, she insists on going to the other hospital to see her baby. The first pictures of them as a family are of them looking down at their teeny baby, with the bride still wearing her tiara.
This was several months ago now, and the baby is home and doing well.
panda_nectar
19. A Tale of Wedding Mishaps and a Nando's Feas
I was the best man's date to a wedding. Through this, bear in mind, that I was only the best man's date and knew nobody at the wedding.
There were 7 bridesmaids. Three of them got into a car crash on the way to the rehearsal dinner. Fortunately, no one got hurt but the car was totaled. One of them went home and didn't go to the wedding. They didn't arrange transportation for the wedding party from the hotel to the rehearsal.
I offered to drive, but was kicked out of my own (new and first ever) car to make space for another bridesmaid, because "that's what the bride asked for". The rehearsal dinner didn't start until 11 pm and most of the bride and groom's families didn't come because they couldn't wait and ate early.
The bride was several hours late to the ceremony. It turned out that the horse and carriage that were supposed to transport the bride to the wedding had gone to the wrong hotel. This delayed it by over an hour. Eventually, they made it to her hotel and picked her and the wedding party up.
The carriage was drawn by two horses. On the way to the wedding, one of the horses fell into a ditch and broke its leg. The other one watched this, had a heart attack, and died! The flower girl was on the carriage and was told that the horse had gone to sleep.
Also, the bride's sister had a severe allergic reaction to the food at the reception and had to be rushed to the hospital.
The rehearsal ceremony was almost half an hour away and they were already late. I expected my then-boyfriend to stand up for me, but he didn't. So I felt ambushed and didn't want to kick up a fuss (good old-fashioned Britishness).
I got one thank you text after the wedding. I was a pushover back then and agreed to a bunch of other favors (which I wrote but deleted) over that weekend. Also, the bride and groom's families ate at Nando's.
EatGymLove
20. Bridesmaids' Car Crash, Carriages, and Chicken
My cousin got married in an Eastern Kentucky small town (more of a holler, really). 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 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. 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 holler 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 wonderbread with a spread of condiments. The wedding cake was a sheet cake from Wal-Mart with the Broncos logo on it.
I should specify at this point that money was not an issue. They had a fairly large budget. They just thought this was good.
FreckleConstellation
21. When Best Men Go Rogue
A gf of mine's friend was getting married to the most obnoxious, drunk, douche ever.
At the reception, all was going well when the best man decided to make his toast. He was already drunk at the ceremony so he's completely plastered now. I'll give you the gist of his beautiful message.
"First I want to thank freaking Father um, what the heck is his name?, yeah you father down there! Anyway, Dave, I remember when we'd go out all night and take chicks home and sleep with them. It's all over now. Only 1 stranger from now on. You could cheat though I guess. Anyway, happy freaking marriage!"
Groom thought this was very funny. The whole place was crickets except for the groomsmen, who were lining up to give their speech as well. The mic turned off, music turned up. Divorced a few months later.
Luder714
22. Grievances Galore
I've attended a wedding once that was pretty ok. The party went well, and although a few people got a tiny bit too drunk, everything was just as a wedding party should be.
Then a few days later... a letter arrived to all who attended. The letter contained a bunch of complaints about how the guests had behaved.
The bride and groom had been sitting for a couple of hours thinking of everything that they, in hindsight, thought had not been 100% perfect... and then wrote this as a complaint to all guests.
Since all the complaints were really small things and lots of them didn't even happen, but were mere rumors. This led to a lot of angry guests calling each other on the phone, more angry letters as replies, etc.
Even though this is more than 15 years ago today... All that we remember from the wedding today is the aftermath. We never talk about it though... because that wedding has turned into "the wedding that must not be talked about" :-)
Timusius
23. The Unforgettable Nicoya Peninsula Wedding
I haven’t typed this out before but here goes. It was my wedding, and I wouldn’t call it a disaster, tragic.
We had our wedding in Costa Rica, a remote part of the Nicoya Peninsula. About 30 friends and family came along for the beach destination wedding, including 2 childhood friends of mine who were now together.
Everything was going great when about 2 hours before the ceremony my friend went for a quick swim. He got caught in a riptide, was pulled under, and drowned. After someone from the hotel staff got him out of the water it had been about 15 minutes, and he was gone.
Myself, the man from the hotel staff, and my friend’s girlfriend started CPR while we waited for an emergency crew with a defibrillator to arrive. I alternated with the worker doing compressions while the girlfriend did the rescue breaths. It took just over an hour for the crew to arrive, check him, declare his death, and get ready to transport him. Over an hour of CPR.
After that, we had about an hour before the ceremony. I went to a quiet yoga room, meditated for 20 minutes, got cleaned up and dressed, then got married.
The ceremony was beautiful. Somewhat hippy/spiritual and has a lot of love. My sister married us on the beach in the center of a circle of friends and family. Everyone there was so emotional, it was very much a celebration of life and love. Very intense.
As I said, I wouldn’t call the wedding a disaster, but the day was very tragic. I lost an amazing friend, and the world lost a great guy.
ThaiKick
24. Celebrant Catastrophe
The celebrant had asked if he could attend with his wife- they were in their 60s and desperately in love, and we felt dreadful about the prospect of splitting them up.
Celebrants show up with a sound system straight from the nineties to set up in the park where we had the ceremony. It doesn't bother us too much, it's just to play songs before and after we get hitched. We wanted the ceremony to be short and sweet, vows, and then get the hell to the champagne.
The celebrant starts reciting this long, dreadful poem about marriage. We suspect he wrote it himself. My husband and I giggled because it was so ridiculous.
Then the sound system starts to cut out, and the celebrant's wife starts yelling. "Can't hear. It's cutting out celebrities!" We soon realize she is raging drunk. It's 4 in the afternoon. She heckled us all during the ceremony.
Nobody could stop her. She had a flask of something in her bag that she kept swigging from. My husband and I could not stop laughing, it was so ridiculous.
magdejup
25. Of Chocolate Cakes and Allergic Mistakes
My SO was self-absorbed and inconsiderate. I didn't realize how bad it was until we were around others, especially his family. Our wedding day and the 2 days prior were a cluster check of him being a jerk, and me assuming it was something like "cold feet".
Everything was about him and his preferences, which included what I wore and how very small our "wedding" was. He didn't want friends at the ceremony, and it was obvious why - he didn't have any friends ( or ones good enough to come to this embarrassing little wedding).
We had a chocolate cake - I have an allergy to chocolate.
His family was rude and awful throughout the whole day, and he did nothing about it. His mom brought a date (a man she met online and was meeting for the first time), but he argued that my stepdad shouldn't come because "he's not technically related." His brother and mom made a scene at the reception that included a mess, and both later refused to clean at all and turned into broody teenagers while my friends and family dealt with it.
Everyone saw what a jackass he was, and he was a special kind of douche on that special day. I tried to make the best of it at the time, and we separated 6 months later.
I still cringe thinking about the few friends of mine that came to the reception; how incredibly thoughtful and polite they were, in the face of him acting like a fool and me smiling like there was nothing wrong.
mmhmoist
26. Dress with Grease and Epipens
I've posted this before, but here we go. We had a fair number of surprises at my wedding. On the day of the wedding, we had the following "adventures":
There was a time I forgot that they carefully made up wedding programs and the bubbles at the hotel. My brother's girlfriend at the time (now wife) and my cousin went to the hotel to retrieve them. They got lost and caught in bad traffic and didn't make it back until the ceremony was over.
There was a mix-up with the rings, and we almost didn't have them in hand by the time the priest called for them. (They were in my wife's mom's purse at the back of the church. Thankfully we noticed in time and my sister got them during the ceremony and handed them to the best man about 2 minutes before the priest asked for the rings.)
In between the wedding and reception, my wife got grease from the door of the antique rolls on her dress as we were getting out for pictures.
My wife had an allergic reaction to the shrimp during the reception and broke out in hives all over her face. We had a couple of doctors in the place, so we got some Benadryl and an Epipen for the honeymoon.
To maximize honeymoon time (I was in the middle of my 3L year in law school), we got a 6:00 a.m. international flight to Cancun the day after our reception that ended at noon. That meant we had to be there at least 2 hours early and the airport was about an hour from home. We got less than 2 hours of sleep that night
It was not the rainy season, but it rained every day the day we got there and the day we left.
And through all this, my wife smiled and was positive and still views it as a perfect day. She will say to me: "Remember how perfect it was?"
Even when she was sitting in the bridal suite covered in hives from the shrimp, she just didn't want people to fuss with her, she just wanted to go back out there and have fun and dance.
As an aside, she had never really reacted that way to shrimp before. It has only happened a couple of times since. The allergist tested her negative for shellfish allergies, but said some things trigger allergies you don't normally have, like stress or vigorous activities such as running or dancing). We have since noticed that if she does any type of active physical activity after eating shrimp, she will get hives. If she eats shrimp, she is ok. if she eats shrimp and then goes for a jog, she will react.
The__Imp
27. Mismatched Vows and Blaring Trains
I have officiated a few weddings. Only one of them went badly, but here we go.
The bride was raised Jewish but was an atheist. The groom was raised Catholic, but an atheist. He only proposed because his family pressured him, she only said yes because he asked in front of her family. Her family was quite wealthy, and they hired a wedding planner who turned the event into an expensive circus. The only aspect the bride and groom got to control was hiring me, their friend, to conduct a custom ceremony. We wrote something together that they liked and signed off on.
For the rehearsal, we arrived at the Memphis Botanical Gardens, and it's beautiful. We did not get time to rehearse the ceremony because the ballerinas were having issues nailing their choreography, and the violinist took a while to set up. This is the heart of what was wrong with the whole ceremony.
The next day we started the ceremony, and twenty minutes before the start the wedding planner told me they were going to mic me, but we didn't have time to do a sound test. There was also an A/V crew filming the whole affair from multiple angles because they were going to make DVDs of this.
When the couple got to the altar, I started talking, and a train drove by blaring its horn. I wanted to wait until it stopped blasting the horn to start the ceremony, but it kept going, and going, and after a minute I had to start talking and get the show on the road.
When I began the ceremony, we had a giant burst of feedback that momentarily drowned out the train. When it finally died down, I started the ceremony in earnest, but there was an awkward time delay with the speakers so I could hear my voice (always awkward at first) with a delay playing a few seconds after I acted it.
I had the ceremony memorized, but at that point, I just started reading off the paper and trying to think straight. The train continued to honk the horn. Then there were these awful performances during the ceremony with a bunch of ballerinas, their performance was a wedding present from some aunt. It felt like it took forever, and the couple just stood at the altar and watched five minutes of dancing. There was also a violin solo, another wedding present during the ceremony. The train blasted over both of them.
I will concede, I also screwed up a line - I read exactly what we'd written, and asked the bride, "Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded wife?" The train was still blaring, but I could hear a few snickers in the crowd. So I figured I mispronounced something, and went back and read it again louder and more slowly for emphasis, and made the same mistake reading what was written.
But we got through it, and to the reception. Folks laughed at my mistake. I had just read what the couple had written. The reception was all about the family, and they had no regard for the couple or what they wanted. The bride's family had a whole PowerPoint about how great they were, there was a musical tribute to an uncle.
The bride had learned a song to play on the piano, just for him. During the cake cutting, the family noticed the bride had switched to more comfortable shoes and the wedding planner declared she had ruined his wedding.
I enjoyed my dinner and found out the next morning that the couple had agreed to split up the moment they got home.
MrWorld
28. When Weddings Go Awry
My husband's stepmother approached me at the bridal shower and told me he was a loser and I shouldn't marry him. He'd never amounted to anything and had always been a mess up, she told me. She later gave money to the best man and asked him to take my husband to a strip club, and then pay for an escort.
She told several groomsmen to try and talk him out of it. My father-in-law asked why our wedding was so cheap. I said because we were paying for it ourselves. He said, "Your dad doesn't have a job? He can't pay for his own daughter's wedding?" I told him I was 26 and my father was ill. This was the morning of the wedding.
My brother-in-law brought a girl he was seeing, unannounced. The girl stood outside and smoked the entire time. The stepmom pulled me aside at the rehearsal and told me I needed to make more time to make the girl feel comfortable. I should "find a place for her" at the wedding, she said.
Later that night, my brother-in-law stumbled over to my hotel room, drunk, saying his girlfriend was angry with him and they'd had a fight. Also mentioned that he was a better catch than his brother, my husband, and I should give him a chance. He lunged at me and started trying to kiss/lick my neck.
During the actual wedding, stepmother and mother-in-law (husband's mom) both cried loudly because we didn't include them in the ceremony. They got into an argument at the reception.
My grandfather yelled at and shoved me when he saw I had a tattoo. He said they were forbidden in the bible and I should be ashamed of myself.
My husband was in the military at the time and we'd legally gotten married at a courthouse six months before. We only had the wedding because all these family members had multiple grandkids from a variety of unmarried partners and wanted "at least one" of their children to have a church wedding.
In retrospect, the whole thing was stupid. I wish we would've just eloped and had a tiny thing on the beach where he was stationed.
My stepmom and sister-in-law were divorced a couple of years later and my 15th anniversary is next month. Also forgot to add that one of the bridesmaids was a young woman who I'd worked with as a social worker for several years. She faced many challenges and was not capable of supporting herself. Still, she was like a sister to me and I needed to include her in my wedding.
Groomsmen asked why we had a "retard" in the wedding.
MrsAnthropy
29. A Wedding Wardrobe Malfunction
My poor husband and I had to attend a wedding last year where he had the dubious honor of being the best man.
The bride was dressed in what looked like a negligee but neglected to wear underwear - every pube was visible and so was every dimple on her arse. Even if she had had the figure of a supermodel, this dress was just too lightweight and see-through to go without underwear.
The ceremony was super quick but then came an interminable wait for the guests whilst they had pictures taken.
The father of the bride's speech consisted of "As this is the third time we've done this, I'll keep it short and just welcome the groom to the family" (yeah, and she was only just 30).
The groom's parents left by 8 p.m.
No guests turned up for the evening so it was only the daytime guests who were there. The bride had selected a playlist for the DJ. Mainly consisting of songs such as Nicki Minaj's Anaconda and like. Uncensored. With kids there.
Most of the guests had gone home bored by 9 pm but my poor husband and the groom's sister managed to keep chirpy til even the DJ got bored at 10!
It was awful. Awful. Even her friends were not quiet about how long this marriage would last her and how the groom would be chewed up and spit out in no time because she's such a jealous control freak.
Heck, my husband asked the groom if he would be his best man but he wasn't even allowed to come to our wedding, let alone be best man because he'd see other women there!!!
damnedhalo
30. From Orgy to 'I Do'
My friend called me around 9 pm and told me I had to go with her somewhere. I agreed, and she arrived and announced she was getting married in like 30 minutes. To the guy she met amid an orgy two weeks earlier.
So, my roommate and her BF wanted to go just to see what would happen because it was pretty surreal. We all pile in her (brides) SUV, and drive 20 minutes to this party house in the country. Didn't know anyone there but the people I came with and the groom.
Everyone was already wasted. The officiant had a joint in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other as he married them. It was actually kind of sweet just because of the obvious love between the two. I remember standing in a garage with everyone else at one point and throwing dry noodles or something at them.
My roommate's BF was scoffing the whole time and just came to watch a funny show I guess. He gave the marriage two weeks. His relationship with my roommate was over before that and the bride and groom are happily married 4 years later with a kid and they are as normal as can be.
Weirdest wedding ever, but the best in my opinion
Phenominimal
31. From Lobsters to Laughter
My sister's first wedding. To start, my sister was married into a snobby/posh family. My family isn't trashy or anything, but we're not up to these guys' standards, so there was plenty of tension with their whole extended family (around 40-50 of them) looking down their noses at the like, 10 of us.
So anyway, the wedding is at the groom's parents' place. Nice little house with a huge field in the back where the whole shindig is gonna go down. The only tension worse than that between the two families is that between my dad and my other sister's (the one not getting married) boyfriend who tagged along and, unknown to us, had just the night before asked my dad for my sister's hand.
The ceremony goes pretty well, and it's reception time and about time for dinner when the fed ex truck with our dinner shows up. They decided to have FedEx deliver the 60+ lobsters that were to be our dinner to their little mansion out in the middle of nowhere. That'd be fine if the fed ex refrigerated truck hadn't had its cooling power shut down halfway through the drive. This is in August heat, mind you.
Everyone sits down for lobster. Immediately recognizes that it is going to bring nothing but food poisoning to the table. Everyone realizes this except for my unmarried sister's boyfriend, who is going to town on his lobster before he sees no one else has touched theirs. He insists that if nobody else wants their lobster, he'll take them. The dude proceeds down like 12 bad lobsters.
About an hour or so later, a small party of frat-type guys rush into the celebrating crowd and announce a freaking witch hunt for whom they are now calling "The Phantom Puker". Turns out they just came from the bathroom inside the house which is freaking covered, wall to wall, floor, ceiling, door, tub, everything in vomit.
They start pulling people aside and interviewing them, checking people for evidence (I don't know what the heck they thought they'd find), and just any manner of ways they thought they could track down the phantom.
My sister and her boyfriend congratulate my now-married sister, and casually walk to their car and go there, back to the hotel. When my family was interviewed about the Phantom Puker, even though the majority of my family was not a fan of my sister's boyfriend, we all kept up silence pretty well and didn't give him up, and apparently, no one else saw his merciless attack on all our lobsters or was smart enough to put two and two together, because they never accused him.
To this day my sister's in-laws talk about the Phantom Pucker and how one day the truth will come out.
Sadly, the Phantom Puker passed away some years ago. I anonymously spread his legend while allowing him to take his secret to the grave.
mister-villainous
32. From Toddler Tantrums to Toast Troubles
My BF's cousin's wedding was sort of a mess. He had been with this girl for a long time, off and on for like 10 years I think, and they had 3 kids together.
During the ceremony, the maid of honor's daughter (2 years old or so) was bawling so loud, and nobody did anything to console or remove the kid from the ceremony. Not even her father, who was just sitting there laughing and saying stop crying" but that was the extent.
Eventually, the Maid of honor just goes over, picks up her kid, and is holding her now for the ceremony. This doesn't keep the kid quiet, instead, she rambles on loudly about wanting a cookie or "Mommy look at this!" Barely heard any vows or anything the whole time.
The reception continued kind of the same, with kids running around everywhere and crawling under tables and running around the wedding cake. It was a miracle it didn't get knocked over. The bride's son (8 years old or so) was crawling on the dance floor while his mother was attempting her dance with her father. Again, nobody tried to move the kid.
The emcee gives a terrible toast about how their relationship was on again and off again for years and focuses a lot on their struggles as a couple over the years and how her family didn't like him at first instead of celebrating the marriage. Just awkward.
This was followed by the bride's very mentally handicapped uncle wanting to sing a song for her, which was sweet, except he chose Lying Eyes. Not a particularly short song, and it went exactly how you would imagine.
The rest of the night remained pretty much the same, thankfully it was an open bar. The most awkward wedding I've ever been to.
Skillary
33. When Wedding Drama Takes Center Stage
My ex-sister-in-law's wedding! She was getting married to a guy on Facebook. Her family did not approve because he was black/Japanese & she was white, his family didn't like it either but everyone just went along with it & put on happy faces.
I was married to her brother and we were young & dumb and were fighting. We were both in the wedding though, but at the wedding when it was time to walk my then (drunk) husband yelled "I'm not walking down the aisle with that fellow again I already made that mistake once!"
I was so embarrassed and hurt. I wound up paired with one of the groom's friends. Well, it became the talk of the wedding and everyone was just in a sad mood.
The ceremony came & everyone was extremely drunk & my ex-sister-in-law couldn't find her groom anywhere. I was still very upset over what my then-husband had said and was trying to lay low because of it. The guy I had walked with came over & just talked to me & cheered me up a bit.
The groom was eventually found, with some girl that came with one of his cousins … making out behind the building. All the anger the bride felt towards her groom was then passed to me because everything going wrong was my fault. So it ended in a huge argument.
The bride and groom split 2 months later but not before she moved 6 states away with him & got pregnant and caught him sleeping with their neighbor's wife. I left my husband and wound up with the guy I walked with at the wedding.
The bride has now been a single mom for 7 years and the groom just got out of jail for armed robbery. My ex-husband remarried and is with a complete freak.
I will be with the guy I walked with for 8 years next month & we have two kids together, so at least for me, the wedding led to happier times
Truleighscrumptious
34. Sister Showdown
My sister's (we will call her sister A) family-in-law has slowly been cutting our family out of everything. Her mother-in-law planned the bachelorette party at a time when my other sister (sister B) and I were out of town, and the mother-in-law specifically told sister A that our family was not to be invited to the bridal shower.
Look, our family isn't perfect, but none of us are criminals/drug addicts/abusive/crazy people. We're a pretty ordinary family. A clue to what was happening should have been when my mother took my Sister's dress shopping.
My sister had gone with her friends (and maybe the other family? we're unsure) earlier. When my mom suggested going to another dress shop, my sister flat out told my mom that she had already picked out the dress and that my mom was just there to pay for it.
Up until the wedding, sister B and I were bridesmaids. The rehearsal dinner was the first time I met my mother-in-law in person, and when I saw her... she was just the kind of person you look at and say to yourself, "That person is pure evil."
Both the mother-in-law and sister A ignored us the entire night. That evening while I was at the hotel bar with sister B, she texted sister A that she was hurt at being ignored. They are, with my brother, triplets, and have always had a strong bond. Sister A said she was uninvited to the wedding, but I calmed them both down.
Day of the wedding: Sister A was going to pick us up at the hotel at 9 am (our dates would drive over later) and we were all going to go out for a bridesmaid's breakfast and then get our hair/make-up done. At about 8:45 Sister A called me and said she was late and that she would just pick up breakfast. I send her our orders and Sister B and I go down to the lobby to drink some coffee and wait, as I assumed Sister A was on her way. At this point, guests are calling Sister B, my brother, and me about wedding details--like what to wear (most people were only invited to the reception, not the ceremony, and were thus confused).
The ceremony had also been pushed back an hour, so I decided to call Sister A to ask her about what guests should wear and whether the reception would still be on time. She informed me that she was going back to the house and wouldn't be there until 10:30. I said that we had already been in the lobby for 45 minutes, and then asked about the details/wedding attire. She yelled, "It's a wedding. People have been to weddings before," and hung up on me.
She called my dad and told him I was nothing to her, then my dad called me to ask what happened. I said I just tried to ask her a question when she flipped out on me. He advised me to tread lightly and just be nice (which I was already trying to do because of what happened the night before between Sisters A and B).
When Sister A and the maid of honor got to the lobby, I explained to her that I wasn't trying to offend her and that we were just trying to run interference between her and the guests. She started screaming that it was her day and she was tired of this nonsense and then left us there. We had been officially uninvited.
The only other phone number I had of someone in the bridal party was the officiant, a friend of the family. She was extremely nice and I felt so bad for putting her in the middle, but she tried to talk Sister A down, saying she would regret this later on. Sister A said we could come to the ceremony and reception, but we couldn't look at her or interact with her.
Sister B and I decided we didn't want to slink around the ceremony, but that we would attend the reception since our extended family would be there. The reception went surprisingly okay for the most part. One guest from Sister A's family-in-law came up to me and said that I should leave.
Another one came up to my mother and said that Sister B and I shouldn't be there after I did. My mom asked, "What exactly did they do?" and showed her a picture of the 24 dozen cookies I made for the wedding. The woman shrugged and said that she didn't know anything about that but that I was a threat and didn't deserve to be there.
I have no idea what lies Sister A has been telling this family, but it is something so heinous that it justifies a stranger coming up to the mother of the bride and telling her that her other daughters shouldn't be there. I cannot fathom in what scenario I would ever feel comfortable doing that. Who does that?!
I ended up getting completely drunk and sobbing in the parking lot. I sobbed harder than I ever had before. My dad, bf, Sister B, her date, and family friends were there consoling me. The new mother-in-law came out and sat down about a foot behind me and started saying nasty things about me under her breath. I drunkenly threatened her (admittedly this did not help the situation) and my dad told her to leave...that she was only there to instigate things.
My family is beside themselves. There are zero pictures of any of us--immediate or extended family. My mom is friends with the evil mother-in-law on FB and she keeps posting all the pics of my sister with their family, which is highly upsetting to my mom. Like...that would be normal except that there are no pics--not even of my parents--with Sister A.
konfetkak
35. From Elevator Confessions to Basement Living
Not a total train wreck, and a bit late to the party, but I went to a pretty bad one.
The couple had been dating for less than a year when they got married. The engagement was around the 5th-month mark.
They had no money for the wedding, so they asked guests to bring food. Potluck-style wedding. There were at least 200 guests (big families), maybe even 300. Some people were specifically asked to bring a (prepared) turkey. I can't think of anything tackier. We had to drop off the food at the reception hall (community center) before the ceremony.
There was no dancing outside of the bride/groom, mother/groom, and father/bride dances. The bride likes Disney, so Disney music was played, which the bride and some young kids danced to.
I was the best man, so these next ones came from my wife who was not part of the wedding party:
Between the ceremony and the reception, the hall was relatively unprepared. No food out to snack on, no music playing, and nobody who knew anything was around. There was a cash bar but they hadn't been instructed on what prices to charge. Several people walked down the street to bring their alcohol in while they waited for the pictures to finish up.
The potluck aspect went sort of well, in that the food tasted good, however, the lines were so long that people waited a very long time to be able to eat. And the ones that were last to eat had a vastly reduced selection of food available. I got to eat nearly first and my wife had slim pickings left over.
My wife attended the bachelorette party out of spite (because the invitation was given out of pity or guilt). At some point, my wife and half the bachelorette, including the Maid of Honor, were in an elevator. Maid of Honor wonders out loud: "Does anybody else think they shouldn't be getting married?" All agree enthusiastically. Nobody said anything about it after leaving the elevator.
They're still married but are too religious for a divorce and too proud/ashamed to go to counseling. They live in the basement of his parent's house.
ironicosity
36. Ambiance, Food Poisoning, and Teenage 'I Dos'
A Jehovah's Witness potluck wedding between two barely-18-year-olds took place in the basement rec room of a trailer park. Such ambiance. Such food poisoning.
JWs punish people for premarital relationships, so the couple was marrying to the bone even though their relationship was already so toxic that they weren't talking to one another on their wedding day.
The bride and groom both piled on weight during their engagement, and both had unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions (seams ripping, body parts spilling) during the ceremony as a result.
The bride freaked incessantly, jealous of all the guests she thought were upstaging her. Which were most of them. The audacity to show up in clothes that fit!
JWs also practice "headship" marriages, where the wife is to be submissive to her husband. The teenage groom was caught in the kitchen of the Rec center screaming at his new mother-in-law that he was the man now and in charge and "You women will do what I say or else".
Scary stuff. They immediately got pregnant and moved to rural Missouri. I don't think they're still together.
bearsdiscoverfire
37. Muddy Paths and Tornado Warnings
Outdoor wedding at a local park. It's a popular venue with a selection of places to have the service. It was held at a gazebo under some trees. It was nice.
As soon as the vows were started the rain began. A few people had umbrellas and others huddled under the trees. Not a good idea. The thunder picked up and lightning started. It began to hail.
They finished their vows and made their way through a fresh river of mud to their limo. We stayed in our car until it lightened up enough to start the drive to the reception. I had to stop the car because there was a dog covered in mud standing in the middle of the road. He looked shell-shocked.
I checked his collar and found he lived a few blocks over. I took him home and wound up covered in mud in the process (I was a MOH).
Turns out that while they were exchanging their do's a tornado touched down a few miles down the road. It was the retail district (located next to the hammock district) and several businesses were destroyed. We had no clue.
That tornado was a fortune cookie for their marriage. Except the tornado did less damage.
snakeoil-huckster
38. A Wedding Tale of Chaos and Coincidences
In 1997, I attended the wedding weekend of a friend in Stockport. His stag night was on a Friday night, the night before the wedding, and consisted of a pub crawl in Stockport town center. At the third or fourth venue - the student union bar - the groom (more of an acquaintance than a friend) became separated from the main party, and in the pre-mobile phone era unable to find them again by hopping around go-arounds.
In his drunken frustration and rage, he punched through the plate glass window of a Honda car showroom, cutting up his wrist quite badly, necessitating an improvised bandage made by removing his shirt (more of this later).
So... Shirtless, drunk, and bloody on a freezing winter evening, and unable to find our party, we walked (no cab would let us even touch their door) three miles to the friend's house where we were staying, assuming they would meet us back there. Shut and lock. We waited two hours for them to return, keeping warm by burning rubbish and plastic sourced from neighboring wheelie bins, on an upturned metal road sign in the backyard.
When they returned past midnight, a fight ensued between the groom and best man, necessitating both of them to attend the Emergency dept. at Stepping Hill Hospital. The groom's hand was severe enough to require admission and surgery for nerve damage to two of the fingers on his dominant hand, which (still drunk) he refused, and self-discharged with the patched-up best man at 0400 with a bandage around his hand the size of a labrador and an iv cannula still in his arm.
The wedding went ahead. After returning to the house the groom flaked out, to be woken a scant couple of hours later by the rest of the party. He dressed, unshaven, having altered the arm of his suit with scissors to accommodate the bandage, and the whole groom's party, myself included, arrived actually on time at the Stockport registry office at 10 am looking and smelling rough as hell.
The ceremony itself was a soulless bureaucratic formality in a meeting room and was over by quarter past ten. A loose 'plan' to bring all attendees for a nice pub lunch to raise a glass and celebrate the happy couple's union was stymied by the fact that nothing had been booked in advance (With an abundance of pubs to choose from in town, ringing somewhere in advance was dismissed as unnecessary in the 'planning' stage).
Overlooked, however, was that pubs in those days couldn't open their doors until 11 am - so the whole wedding party (thirty or so) was forced to walk round the vicinity, knocking on pub doors, until one consented to let us all in at about ten to.
The happy couple was supposed to drive to their newly acquired flat about forty miles away to spend their first night there as a married couple, before going on a short honeymoon to visit family in Ireland midweek. By early afternoon though, the groom - already in no real condition to drive due to the oozing bandage holding his hand together, was drunk again, and an alternative needed to be found.
A 'whip round' was organized, we pooled enough money together to get the newlyweds one night at the budget weekend rate at a business hotel over the road. When I left them, they were paying for the room at reception with coins and fivers from an upturned baseball cap, with their possessions and wedding gifts in a few plastic carrier bags and one massive bloodstained Nike holdall at their feet.
Subsequently, I learned that the groom had to return to A&E for treatment of his arm later that evening and was admitted immediately and went for the first of many surgeries. His bride spent the night alone in a travel lodge, and they missed the honeymoon. The groom can (years later) now make a proper fist, but still has no sensation in his little finger.
The marriage lasted eight months.
NishKlishBang
39. The Pug Parade
When I was about 12 my half-sister got married and I was forced into the wedding party.
Our parents were all poor/disabled with no income so the groom's family paid for the whole thing and dictated how everything was run. Most notably, they insisted on two limos for each side of the wedding party so the bride and groom were not able to see each other until they got to the church.
So the entire bridal party goes through the horrors of getting ready the day of the wedding and we climb in the stark white limo so we can get to the church. The parents forced us all into these god-awful updos and ugly 17th-century-inspired handmade dresses. We're all "picture perfect" and on our way to the service when the limo driver takes back roads and neighborhoods to "avoid traffic".
We ended up friending past a cul-de-sac thing and my half-sisters not allowed to speak for themselves all morning demanded the limo driver pull over and let her out. She bursts out the door and runs down the street.
Now, some of you might be thinking at this point that she's running away with cold feet. I wish it was that simple. The doctorive, she spotted an animal on the loose and wanted to save it.
The whole bridal party climbs out of the limo and sees my crazy half-sister, the veil over her face and everything, running in circles chasing not one, but eight baby pugs. We all yelled at her to stop and she responded
"I haven't made a single choice for myself since this engagement ring was put on my finger. Help me catch these freaking dogs."
So that's what we did. One by one we chased these pugs up and down the street. Every pup was safely in the limo and given limo water for their dehydration. We were filthy from these dogs and I got the worst of it because being the youngest, I was charged with staying in the limo with the pugs until the rest of the bridal party located the owners. Turned out they belonged to a very oblivious breeder whose stupid kid let them get out and didn't say anything.
We were four hours late to that wedding and my half-sister kept the runt of the litter. The groom's family was furious when we got there and started yelling about how their son would never marry such a careless woman.
My half-sister half-backed back off, pushed the mother of the groom out of the way, and walked down the aisle with her tattered, stained dress, a bouquet that the Maid of honor managed to keep away from the dogs in one hand, and her new pug in the other.
They said their I do's despite the very boisterous objections from his parents, and we all got to change out of our torn dresses before getting to the reception where I got to play with the puppy all night.
His parents have not forgiven her for "ruining their son's big day", but they are still married 11 years later.
rose_garden1992
40. Ring Mishaps and Tripping Hazards
My good childhood friend's wedding was a disaster. She and her fiance had only known each other for 6 months before she got engaged. Then her engagement lasted 3 months.
First off the wedding was a failed Pinterest wedding. It looked like they tried to cram everything the bride liked online into one small venue.
The minister who performed the wedding was completely out of his mind. He was cracking inappropriate wedding night jokes in front of everyone. He noticed the father of the bride was sweating while he was standing up there with his daughter, and the minister wiped the father's head with the same handkerchief he had been blowing his nose in.
The maid of honor forgot the groom's ring and had to not so subtly run out during the ceremony to get it. As the wedding party was walking out leaving the church, one of the groomsmen caught his foot on the white runner, and the minister followed him and proceeded to ball up the runner explaining loudly to everyone that it was a tripping hazard.
I later found out that they had gotten into a huge fight with the groom the morning of the wedding and the rest of the day the maid of honor was trying to talk the bride out of marrying the groom.
When the happily married couple went to leave, the groom jumped into the bride's vintage '77 Mustang as the getaway car and stalled the car 3 times before leaving the church. Terrible train wreck!
BigBadJohn13
41. When the Videographer Captured Too Much
The wedding was for my cousin. We arrive in the backwoods of Virginia to find out the wedding party hotel was a flea-ridden motel on the side of a dirt road.That's fine, I was young so I thought this was awesome.
On the day of the wedding, as we got there and greeted my Aunt and uncle (On my mom's side and technically my great aunt and uncle- two of the most messed up people I'll ever know. I love them) my uncle looks at my dad and shakes his head. My dad smiles knowing how my uncle is and asks him if he's excited to see his only son get married. He shakes his head again, leans in, and without whispering or anything exclaims, "She's white trash. This whole thing is white trash".
Now my grandma lectures him about speaking ill of his future daughter-in-law, but then we see her. She's huge, with Kool-Aid red hair and a massive tattoo of a heart with some other guy's name on her left boob. This girl fell into the moonshine and didn't know how to get out without drinking it.
The wedding itself was uneventful. The party afterward is forever etched in my mind. She had two kids who took a real liking to my dad and kept coming over to show him the frog they found or some weird fish they found in the creek. Every time they came by, my uncle would shake his head and make a loud grumpy noise.
Finally, my aunt (a different aunt, my sister has the same sort of messed up sense of humor as my dad has) and my dad leaned in and asked him what his issue was. She seemed nice, yes a little trashy but my cousin was happy.
He points to the two boys and again exclaims without whispering "See those two boys? They ain't got the same father". Now looking at the two of them you'd never tell, both looked like twins except one was a few inches taller. So my dad is NoNono, no way. There's no way." But, my uncle kept insisting.
Later on in the night after my aunt and uncle have had a few too many, they have us all in stitches about how trashy this girl is. How they didn't think they knew the person whose house the reception was being held in (I don't know the full story on this one I assume because it was a nice house), how the boys weren't from the same man and how my cousin just made a huge mistake.
All of this would be fine, except they and my family didn't realize the wedding videographer was filming the whole thing from behind them. The videographer got the whole bride's new in-laws "she's a trashy piece of mess" rant on the wedding video. Oops.
But ---there's more! The bride, near the end of the night, is pretty hammered and decides, "Let's watch the video". So she takes the video out of the camcorder and slips it into the VCR and presses play. And there, for the whole world to see, are her two new in-laws trashing the ever-living hell out of this woman.
Now I just need someone to create a Reddit that allows me to tell you if this bride was trashy, and did those two boys have the same dad. Because this is a story my family loves to tell.
xlxcx
42. A Wedding Saga in the Florida Heat
About 10 years ago I was supposed to go to an outdoor wedding in the town square in a small north Florida town in early Spring (the weather would have been beautiful). The 21-year-old bride had to instead give her wedding date to her 16-year-old sister who got pregnant by a 35-year-old man who took off when it came to light.
The little sister's 18-year-old boyfriend said he'd marry her and raise the baby like it was his own. The bride gave the date away so that her niece wouldn't be born a bastard (yes, the family was very religious).
Instead, the bride pushed her date back to mid-August but kept all the details the same. So it was outside, mid-day, in mid-August, with the temperature close to 100 degrees, on brown aluminum folding chairs. People's butts seriously got burned through their clothes. Everyone was sweating.
The groom was an unemployed 18-year-old high dropout. The wedding was delayed half an hour while everyone waited for the groom's father to show up. The ceremony lasted an hour, and by the time it was over people were getting very sunburned.
The reception was in the church. All the doors and windows were open but the AC wasn't on. The music was a CD player with the church PA mic put in front of one of the speakers. The food was potluck but no one organized it so there were 3 crock pots of chili and 5 green bean casseroles. Neither booze nor dancing were allowed.
The couple are still married. The bride had a public service job and is still there. The groom got a job as a tree trimmer and a few years later a branch fell on his head. He has some mental issues due to the accident.
I don't know about the little sister and the guy she married. Last I heard no one had seen nor heard from the guy who knocked her up.
GuiltyLawyer
43. Mother-in-Law Meltdown
It was mine. Issues with a drama hog of a mother-in-law.
The ceremony ends and my sister quickly flags down my mom for a quick picture with the bride (nothing formal, just taking advantage of the photographer still being there with a camera in hand.) Bride's mother sees this and starts a slow meltdown.
The bridal party takes the long way back to the venue to get more photos as the bride's mom gets sauced at the pre-dinner open bar. Nothing is wrong on the surface as the group enters, the best man and maid of honor speak, etc. Dinner is served and we look over to her parents' table - Mom is missing, as is her Dad.
No worries, she'll go check. Five minutes later, I stepped out into the lobby of the hotel to find the bride with her gown spread around her, sobbing on the steps leading to another level of the hotel. Turns out that the freaking new mother-in-law was upset that no one asked her for a photo and for whatever reason she didn't act like an adult and just said, "Cool idea, can I do that too?" at the time.
So, now we have a small scene as everyone else eats dinner and to keep the peace, the bride - between sobs - asks her dad what she can do to fix the problem. He says, "Nothing. You're a horrible daughter, but go enjoy your night..."
We're divorced now (it should surprise no one that her mother continued to be an issue for years and was a major reason for the split). To this day, one of my life's great regrets is not breaking that man's nose right then and there for saying that to his daughter
MattG34
44. From Sausages to Smackdowns: A Wedding DJ's Wild Ride
As a wedding DJ, I've seen weddings go south more than once. Especially when it hits the later part of the night when everyone has had more than enough booze. I've seen my fair share of fights, family disputes, the extent that people who are so drunk can't stand it, etc. My one favorite story is of a real Bogan/redneck wedding I did many many moons ago.
The bride and groom met with me before the day and seemed to be a nice couple but mentioned they were on a tight budget. Being the nice guy that I am, I give them the best possible price and start getting the details for the night.
The lead-up to the night was fine, the couple was great to work with and I was confident it was going to be a great night. I get to the venue early on the day to start setting up and notice there are already guests there helping set up the small community hall which they chose to hold their reception, as I'm kind of used to seeing family members helping out on budget weddings. I say hello and go about my business.
I go to the kitchen after loading in some gear to grab a drink and notice two big guys lifting two bathtubs into the kitchen... They fill them to the brim with beer and Passion Pop (the cheapest nastiest sweet crap money can buy). I started thinking that this gig was going to get a little messy...Man, I wish I could have been wrong.
Anyway, we get to the actual start of the reception and it's very very laid back. Most of the male guests were wearing wife beaters and stubbies and the girls were mostly drunk within about 5 minutes of the reception starting. We got through the meals if I remember right. This was a BBQ - sausage sangers and lamb chops.. we then proceeded to struggle through the speeches (Almost everyone was supertanked by now and several males had already thrown up in the male toilets). Finally, we get to the dancing part of the night. I think I'm home free cause everyone likes to dance when they're as sloshed as this lot was.
This is when it got interesting. About five minutes into my set I heard what I initially thought was a banshee scream and I looked up from the DJ box to see the bride looking at her Maid of Honor with a stare that would make Medusa recoil in horror. Next thing I know the bride is smashing a bottle of passion pop and trying to glass her.
The groom tries to intercede and gets a punch to the head from the bride's brother which sends him flying across the dancefloor. From there it dissolves into complete madness for the next minute or so with people punching on left right and center and more broken glass than I'd ever seen before in my life. As I later found out it turns out the Groom had banged the Maid of honor one week before the wedding and the Maid of honor had confessed on the dancefloor in a drunken stupor.
I pulled the plug on the music, turned on the lights, grabbed the mic, and said if people wanted the party to continue they had 5 minutes to sort it all out outside otherwise I was done... I must have had a really serious tone cause they all walked/punched their way out of the hall.
Somebody called the cops after about 5 minutes of it continuing outside and I noped the hell outta there. When I got outside to take a look around 4 police cars were carting off several people including the bride and groom (separately) and a couple of ambulances out the front taking people away.... Best gig ever.
JayDeeAust
45. Pine Needles, Disappearing Grooms, and Cake
My husband’s best friend, the man who introduced us, whom my husband made me postpone the wedding for, due to him being overseas with the military, decided three days before the wedding that he wouldn’t make it—because he planned his shotgun wedding for two hours before our own.
The ceremony/reception was to be held at a park overlooking the city. I’d called the city’s park department to ask about opening the service entrance for vehicles, so my handicapped guests could be dropped off at the top of a long drive. They agreed.
The day of the wedding, the receptionist who answered the phone said “No, we don’t have to do that.” My mom had to haul everything she’d already set up to the other side of the park so my handicapped guests could walk to it from a side street.
Because of the “move”, I was surrounded by dirt and pine needles. There was a drainage ditch 15 feet from my rose arch. There were pine needles in my wedding cake. Once it got dark, there were no park lights where we were, so we had to pack it in after two hours. No bouquet toss, no pictures cutting the cake.
We were so far from the bathroom that nobody filled my floating rose bowls, so I had glass rocks in a bowl on the tables.
Due to the same issue, my husband, who was having some gastrointestinal distress, had to leave when he found out the bathroom’s closed at dusk. Nowhere in my contract did it state that. He got lost without his phone and disappeared for two hours. He finally found the park after all my friends and family had helped me pack everything away.
An adult-adult day center dropped off a client. He then started taking the cans of sodas off the tables, sat down in the middle of my party with a plate of food, and tried to steal my shoes.
The first dance was an abomination because I had a combination of toe cramps, and my husband’s niece, who kept grabbing his hand so he’d play with her.
My wedding march song wasn’t played until I was two-thirds of the way down the aisle, and I had to make the “cut it” motion to have someone stop it. My friend (with good intentions) took wedding photos. They’re pretty bad, and I deleted most of them.
The savior of that whole debacle was my wedding cake
notastepfordwife