Weddings are supposed to be a celebration of love, but sometimes things can turn ugly real quick. Whether it's a bridezilla gone wild or an unexpected turn of events, these shocking wedding moments are proof that everyone's "big day" is NOT made equal.
1. What Was She Thinking?
I worked as a wedding decorator for five years. Two years ago, we handled the decor for a beautiful ceremony, and halfway through the day, we found out it was actually a “surprise wedding.” And honestly, it was even worse than it sounds. They weren’t engaged at all, but the bride had planned the entire thing, and the groom arrived at the golf course thinking he was just there for a normal round of golf. He wasn’t.
He walked into his own wedding, saw her standing at the altar, and immediately turned around and left. Which, honestly, was completely understandable. It was one of the most unbelievable things I’ve seen in all my years working weddings, and I’ve seen a lot.
2. An Honest Mistake
Priest here. Where I live, the only kind of objection that matters is a legal one. It doesn’t matter if someone simply disapproves. I had one wedding where a guest objected and claimed the groom was already married. That’s enough to stop the ceremony right there. As it turned out, they were Serbian—which I already knew—but they weren’t very familiar with our laws.
The groom hadn’t realized the church wedding would also count as a legal marriage, so the couple had already married each other in a civil ceremony a few days earlier. That was an interesting problem to untangle.
3. There Will Be Blood
The ceremony started with the groom playing an out-of-tune guitar and singing to the bride. They were sitting in chairs in front of everyone—a crowd of at least 400 people—and the bride looked obviously uncomfortable the entire time. Naturally, once people noticed that, everyone else started feeling uncomfortable too.
That same wedding also included a foot-washing ceremony, and when the bride put her shoes back on, she tripped on her dress and fell flat on her face. Everyone was stunned. They hadn’t even done the vows yet, and the ceremony had to pause for a full twenty minutes while they dealt with the nosebleed she gave herself.
4. It’s A Doggone Shame
I work at a wedding venue, and one couple wanted to include their dogs in the ceremony. On the wedding day, every staff member has a long list of things to do to prepare for the event. My coworkers and I were handling everything so the families could relax and get ready. We set up the chairs, decorations, flowers, tables, silverware, dining room, arbor—everything.
The only thing the family had to do was keep track of the dogs. Spoiler: they didn’t. We had finished all the indoor setup that morning and were nearly done outside when we suddenly heard a huge crash from inside the main event room. It was the dogs. One had gone straight for the wedding cake and the decorative cupcakes.
The other jumped onto the beverage tables and broke around 80 champagne flutes, 60 stemless glasses, and roughly 120 other glasses, plus four crystal punch bowls and all the drinks that went with them. And all of this happened in just a few seconds. As it turned out, the dogs’ “handler” was the couple’s 15-year-old nephew.
In what must have seemed like a great idea to him, he decided to let them run around for a bit before the wedding. When the bride came out of the dressing room and walked down the hall to see what the noise was, she was furious at the disaster in front of her. She completely lost it, blamed us for everything, and kept yelling, “Why did you let the dogs into the room?” and so on.
She said she didn’t care how we did it, but everything needed to be ready again before the reception or she would sue us for everything we had. We took the “I don’t care how” part seriously. We called every business within a 10-mile radius and bought, borrowed, traded, and did whatever we could. We replaced the glasses, the wine, the drinks—everything. I was sent to drive my boss’s car to the nearest bakery and somehow convince them to make a decent replacement wedding cake out of whatever they had available.
I got back a little late with the cake, but everything else had been cleaned up, reset, and restored before the ceremony was over. After the night ended and the couple left, we returned what we had borrowed, packed up what we had bought, and started calculating the losses. We added up all the damage the dogs had caused and the total cost to the venue.
It ended up being in the five-figure range. The couple was, understandably, upset by the bill, so they really did sue us…and they lost. As far as I know, they’re still leaving 1-star reviews for us on every review site they can find.
5. Too Little Too Late
A couple of years ago, I went to a wedding that started at 7 p.m. on a Friday night. Once the ceremony ended, there was a receiving line with about 150 people, followed by a 20-mile drive on dark local roads to the reception, where dinner wasn’t served until 10 p.m.
By 11:30, they still hadn’t cut the cake, so we left—along with most of the other guests by then.
6. Get Your Fists Up
This happened at my aunt’s wedding. It had been stormy all day, but people always say rain on your wedding day is good luck, right? Well, when the priest asked if anyone objected, thunder crashed really loudly. Everyone laughed, and the priest said, “Let’s try that again—any objections?” No one objected the second time, but maybe someone should have. The groom was deeply unstable, refused to take his medication, and eventually stopped living with my aunt.
After the divorce, he showed up at my cousin’s birthday party and tried to lock my aunt out of her own house. That turned into an argument with my grandfather, and he even tried to hit him. Maybe that thunder really was a warning sign.
7. What A Waste
Half the people who RSVPed to my wedding never showed up. My brother-in-law had volunteered to DJ, but he didn’t bring any actual DJ equipment, so the reception music ended up coming from Pandora. He also said he’d record the ceremony and put together a highlights video, but he forgot his camera too. The florist only delivered about half the flowers. That was already enough to deal with, but somehow things kept getting worse.
The reception venue took everything we had discussed and basically did the opposite. There weren’t enough tables, there was no dance floor, and several other details were wrong. When we tried to get them to fix it, the man sent to swap out the tables stood outside the reception hall window angrily drinking from a bottle. The whole thing was a complete disaster, and no one seemed to care.
Later, I talked to a friend who had worked with that same man, and he said that kind of behavior was pretty normal anytime he was asked to do anything. We had also made a CD with a few songs for my brother-in-law to play before the ceremony started, but he insisted he had something better. His “better” turned out to be two songs on repeat for nearly an hour.
My immediate family was late to the wedding, including my sister, who was a bridesmaid, and both my parents. They had offered to help set everything up that morning, but I guess they got a late start. My veil went missing the night before the wedding and has never been found. After dinner and cake, I dimmed the lights in the reception hall to make things feel more fun and get people dancing. Instead, everyone got up and left.
It wasn’t a great wedding, but my husband and I still got married and we’re very happy together. That’s what matters most. Still, I sometimes wish we had saved the money and just gone to the county clerk instead.
8. Tuxedo Junction
This was at a friend’s wedding. The bride wanted to sing a song to the groom, so she did a karaoke-style performance. There’s regular bad singing, and then there was whatever this was. It was painfully awkward to watch. On top of that, the groom had asked a professional photographer friend of ours to photograph the wedding about a year earlier, got a very vague answer, and never followed up.
Somehow, he was completely shocked when the photographer didn’t show up. Later I found out our friend had actually declined the invitation because he was going to be in another country. The groom also had all the groomsmen rent very expensive tuxedos. Fine, no problem—we all rented the nicest tuxes we could find.
Meanwhile, he was having his own tux custom made and requested something flashy and over-the-top. Then, when they gave him the price, he said it was too expensive and insisted they do it for about a quarter of that amount. They tried their best to match his design within his budget, but it turned out terribly. At the wedding, all the groomsmen looked fantastic, while the groom looked completely ridiculous.
It was probably the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever seen, not just at a wedding, but anywhere.
9. Get A Room
I used to work in management at a resort in a popular tourist town. When weddings were booked through our event coordinator, we could reserve a certain number of rooms for guests. A manager always had to check in the bridal couple, and the coordinator had already warned me that this bride was a total nightmare.
First, they wanted a room on the highest floor and closer to the beach. The problem was, they were already booked in the Honeymoon Suite, which was on the third floor with an ocean view. That still wasn’t good enough. She wanted higher and closer. She had a full meltdown at the front desk when I explained there was literally nothing higher or closer available.
One of my coworkers went to get the event coordinator when the bride started yelling at both me and her fiancé. To his credit, he was apologetic and kept trying to calm her down. Eventually she settled down and left with her keys, but less than half an hour later she came back demanding that we empty the rooms next to hers and the one below it.
Those rooms were $640 a night, and we were fully booked. Luckily, I wasn’t working the night of the wedding, but I heard all about it later: she screamed at the wait staff, threw the band out for playing a song she didn’t like, and got into a shouting match with her mother-in-law. What a delight. The whole wedding cost around $40,000, and she made everyone miserable.
The groom left a big tip for the front desk staff to apologize for her behavior.
10. The Hunger Games
I went to a wedding that just would not stop with the speeches. After an hour and a half or more, they paused to play a game where they asked questions, and if your table got one right, you were allowed to go eat. By that point, everyone was starving and irritated.
Then came round two of speeches. Some of the speakers were around 80 years old and took forever just to finish one sentence. But it still didn’t end there. After that, there was a game for the bride and groom, and then we had to wait for the bride to change into her second dress before the dance floor could even open. At that point, we just left.
You could see it on everyone’s faces—this was the most boring wedding they had ever attended. The only people who seemed able to sit through hours of speeches were the wedding party, who had all been friends since kindergarten, and most of the stories were about them.
Honestly, it was about three hours of speeches, not even counting the games you had to play just to eat. My own wedding was coming up a couple of months later, and after attending that one, we made very clear rules about how many speeches there would be and how long they could last.
As a result, our wedding was short, sweet, full of snacks, drinks, and dancing. Everyone had a great time. So I guess we should thank them for showing us exactly what not to do.
11. Evil Stepmother
My father-in-law’s wife at the time did everything she could to sabotage our wedding. The week before, she emailed my mom saying that I, the bride, was too good for her stepson. Then she messaged me to say she had decided not to wear the dress we had picked out together. She skipped the rehearsal, and on the wedding day she showed up in a flashy, very revealing outfit.
She barely spoke to anyone and spent the whole day sitting with her arms crossed. We tried to ignore it, even after she threw out all the leftovers from the brunch after the ceremony that my husband and his groomsmen had catered—they’re all chefs. My father-in-law divorced her the next year.
12. Quite The Trade
My friends and I didn’t see it happen at the wedding itself, but after the engagement. Our friend’s future father-in-law offered to buy him a house if he married his daughter. We had already seen a long pattern of controlling, jealous, and manipulative behavior, but he went ahead with the wedding anyway. The father-in-law did put money down on a house, but that was it.
She didn’t work for eight years while he worked two jobs. We hardly ever saw him. Later, the father-in-law tore into him about the house, said his daughter needed a new car, and complained that he wasn’t giving them a better lifestyle. We knew it would be rough, but it turned out even worse than we expected. She works now, and he’s cut back some.
I don’t talk to him anymore, so I’m missing a lot of the details. They’ve been married around 18 years now and seem happy enough. Still, I can’t imagine what it was like for him during the first half of that marriage.
13. With a Little Help from Her Friends
I once went to a wedding where the minister had dated the bride before, and during his speech he went on and on about how amazing she was. Then he told the groom that if he ever died, he shouldn’t worry because he would step in and take care of her. I was stunned listening to it. I really wished I could come up with a believable reason to ask the couple for a copy of the wedding video, but I never could.
14. The Water Works
I own a gift shop and also sell flowers. It’s inside a small hospital, so we don’t do a lot of floral orders. Usually it’s just small arrangements, since most customers don’t want to spend more than 20 dollars. One day, a woman who worked at the hospital asked if we would make a bridal bouquet for her future daughter-in-law.
We agreed to do it as a favor for her. We made a beautiful bouquet exactly the way she wanted, and even added a few extra touches. She picked it up the day before the wedding, and I told her to lightly mist it with water from a spray bottle to keep it fresh. I even showed her how. The mother-in-law came back in the next Monday and told me what happened.
Apparently, the night before the wedding, the bride had put the bouquet in the sink and completely soaked it, which of course ruined it. The bride wanted to ask for a refund, but the mother-in-law told her no because it was clearly her own doing. After that, I decided I probably wouldn’t make wedding flowers for brides again. Too much stress.
15. Escape Plan
I traveled to New York for my cousin’s wedding, along with about 30 other relatives and maybe 100 guests total. We had a big rehearsal dinner and stayed up partying pretty late. Around 8 the next morning, my sister woke me up and said our cousin had gotten cold feet and slipped away during the night.
The bride and her family were furious, especially since they had spent tens of thousands of dollars on the reception. He wasn’t actually missing—he called and said he was on his way to the beach.
I felt awful for the bride. The whole thing was a mess, with a lot of yelling and hurt feelings. I quietly left for the airport and flew home. Needless to say, they never got back together.
16. The Big Grift
My cousin went to a wedding where the bride and groom got cheated by the wedding planner. An hour before the ceremony, the room was completely empty—no food, no decorations, just a few tables and what looked like an unused ballroom. The couple realized the planner had tricked them and taken their money, apparently to buy a huge house.
17. Ignoring Red Flags
This happened at my friend’s brother’s wedding. The bride’s father pulled the groom aside and said, loud enough for people to hear, “If I couldn’t handle her, what makes you think you can?” The rabbi kept going like nothing had happened. Four years later, the father died of a heart attack, and three years after that, my friend’s brother got divorced. So maybe the father-in-law knew what he was talking about.
Lesson: if someone gives you a serious warning about marriage and they’re a reliable source, pay attention.
18. Some Things Just Don’t Mix
I DJed a wedding for a couple who kept giving me reasons I shouldn’t have taken the job. For one, they kept asking for a discount in exchange for a good review. I didn’t want a fake review. Another warning sign was that they wanted me to live-mix their special dance.
Now, I’m totally capable of mixing live—that’s part of my job. But these two were not trained dancers. Still, I did what they asked, and they performed their dance. It wasn’t perfect, but their family and friends seemed to enjoy it anyway. Right after the reception, the groom tipped me and they both told me I did a great job. I thought that was the end of it. It definitely was not.
The next morning, probably while they were still hungover, the groom emailed me with some “constructive criticism.” After a few more emails, he was demanding an apology and saying he wasn’t going to pay the rest of what he owed me. Then he disappeared. A few days later, the wedding coordinator contacted me and said I needed to give them a discount because they were so upset about how their first dance turned out.
These two people were not professional dancers. They awkwardly made it through a rough first dance, and nobody there even knew how it was supposed to look in the first place. But somehow they blamed me for feeling embarrassed themselves. I told the coordinator exactly what I thought they could do with their money.
19. The Mother Of All Insults
Not a wedding store, but we sold kitchenware—china, cookware, that sort of thing. Think Williams Sonoma. The bride, the bride’s mother, and the groom’s mother were shopping together and building the wedding registry. The groom’s mom pointed at something and said a comment to the bride. The bride’s mother turned to her and snapped, “Your job is to be quiet and wear blue.”
We immediately started taking bets on how long that marriage would last.
20. Maid Of Dishonor
This was a friend’s first wedding. I was friends with both the bride and groom. From everything we’d seen in the two years they’d been together, the relationship seemed happy and fun. She was incredibly sweet, genuinely kind, a little sheltered, but strong and excited about life.
He was funny and easygoing, though he could be moody sometimes. Still, he usually got over it quickly, and he was smart and fun to talk to. We were all a bunch of nerds and had met through school competitions.
The wedding started with a very formal religious ceremony that seemed to go on forever. By the time we got to the reception, the bride seemed happy, but I could tell something was wrong.
The groom acted cold and distant toward everyone. That stood out because we’d all been friends since grade school, and it wasn’t like him. The bride was only 20, so she was too young to drink, but the groom was 22, so at least the reception wasn’t dry.
I left soon after they headed off for their honeymoon, and then I didn’t hear from her for six months. When she finally came back, she told me what had really happened. They had divorced just a month later.
The groom had been sleeping with the maid of honor for months because my friend wanted to wait until marriage. He confessed during their honeymoon, after they’d slept together, by handing her his phone with text messages from the maid of honor and then going to take a shower.
Nobody talks to the groom anymore, including me. Honestly, I don’t even know where he lives now. But there is a happy ending: about a year later, she met a wonderful man, and they’ve now been married for around six years. Their wedding was amazing.
Easily the best wedding I’ve ever been to—and I usually can’t stand weddings in general.
21. You End How You Start
It started with the best man completely tearing into the bride and her parents. He basically called them gold diggers in front of hundreds of family members and friends. Then came the cake cutting. Apparently, the groom had been clearly told not to smash cake in her face. He did it anyway, and she stormed off for 20 minutes. And that still wasn’t the end of the mess.
The reception kept going, but she got completely drunk and passed out in the street later that night while still wearing her wedding dress. Very classy. They’re divorced now.
22. Nature Calls
I was on a cruise in 2015 and ended up watching a wedding from the casino lobby. I could see the ceremony from where I was sitting, so I was just relaxing, enjoying the view of the sea, and watching everyone get ready. I did notice that people were drinking a lot, but before the bride came in, everyone seemed to be laughing and having a great time.
Once the ceremony started, the bride walked in and everyone was smiling. Then, when she got into place, the pastor said something like, “If anyone has any objections, please speak now and stand to share them.” Right then, a tipsy man stood up and loudly said, “Sorry, I don’t object, but I really need to use the bathroom!”
As you can imagine, people were not impressed. I still don’t know whether he was serious or trying to be funny, but I watched him hurry out to find a restroom. I was laughing so hard.
23. From Weird to Worse
I once went to the wedding of a friend of a friend. She was a young, very religious, small-town, innocent girl. Then she met a much older married man with two kids and fell for him. He eventually left his wife for her, wanted no custody of his children, and agreed to marry my friend’s friend.
The wedding took place in her hometown church. His vows were incredibly dramatic—about how he had never known love before, how she was the only woman he had ever wanted to marry, and how he had been lonely his whole life until now. He was literally crying through the whole thing. Then it was her turn, and somehow it got even more uncomfortable.
She stood there in silence for several long seconds. Then someone handed her a microphone, and the piano started playing. Apparently, she had written her own song and decided to sing it instead of reading vows. That was... something to witness, especially right after his emotional performance.
By then, the awkwardness in the room was impossible to ignore. After the ceremony, everyone went down to the church basement for a dry reception. Once we got there, I somehow got pulled into serving the groom’s cake. It was made up of two NASCAR-shaped cakes covered with an edible photo sheet.
There was no way to cut through the image without destroying the cake, so I ended up awkwardly peeling it off in front of a crowd of confused, hungry guests. At the same time, my friend was cutting the bride’s cake and serving slices that had more than an inch of decorative icing on top of plain cake underneath. No frosting in the middle at all.
The “buffet” was just a potluck put together by her family—basically food you’d expect at a kid’s birthday party. Pink punch was the only drink option. There was also no dancing because of her religion. Then they left for their honeymoon at the town’s only hotel, which was basically a run-down motel. Still, they arrived there in a fancy horse-drawn carriage.
24. A Wandering Eye
I worked at a church in the DC area that hosted weddings. The worst bride I ever dealt with was part of an extremely wealthy couple. They arrived in what I think was a Lamborghini, and the groom kept asking whether it was safe to leave it parked out front. It really felt like he just wanted everyone to notice it. He also asked whether his father’s Bentley would be safe in the alley behind the church.
This was DC, so honestly, he was lucky we had any parking at all. Meanwhile, the bride walked around commenting on all the expensive things she wanted and pointing at details while saying, “This will never do.” The worst part was that every time she turned around, the groom kept staring at my chest.
It was bizarre. His bride looked like a model, and he was very attractive too, so I have no idea why he felt the need to act creepy toward church staff. After dealing with them and a few other demanding couples, I told the church I was done helping with weddings. Now the volunteers handle them.
25. Welcome To The Family
I once had a co-worker who had a thing for Asian women. He was on his third mail-order bride and invited all of us to the wedding. It was held in the back of a convention center, while a poker tournament was happening in the front.
One of our co-workers actually left to join the tournament. So the rest of us sat around in this smoky venue while waiting for the bride, who was running late. He had flown her in that very morning. A few of my co-workers had already started drinking, mostly because they were treating the whole thing like a spectacle.
She finally showed up, and she was tiny. He was a very tall, 300-pound man, so the visual contrast was striking. She got dressed quickly in a broom closet. I don’t know who the minister was, but he clearly had never done a wedding before, and he may have started drinking early too.
During the vows, the groom actually said they should hurry things up so he could get to the buffet. He had specifically requested a waffle bar, and his mother and sister were angrily making waffles for everyone. There was also one of those rotating hot dog rollers like you see at convenience stores.
The next night, he was back at work talking about how tired he was because he hadn’t slept on his wedding night—wink, wink. But it turned out he had actually slept on the couch because his new wife had taken over the bedroom with her cousins.
26. In It To Win It
My own wedding was a mess. It rained, so it was freezing, and nobody bothered to turn on the lights. The few photos I have are dark and blurry. My parents had divorced earlier that year, so my dad couldn’t stand seeing my mom there and left before taking a picture with me. My husband’s mother didn’t even take time off work to come.
The bright side is that we just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary.
27. The Wrong "I Do"
This happened to me. I met my wife after she had gotten out of a bad relationship. Apparently, the guy was always asking her for money and could never keep a job. Even after they broke up, he would still show up every now and then asking for cash. So at our wedding, when we said our vows and the minister asked if anyone objected, we heard a voice from the back: “I do.”
It was her useless ex-boyfriend. I was furious. He wasn’t really dangerous, but he was making a scene on our wedding day. People started whispering, and what should have been a happy moment was ruined by his nonsense. I asked him what he wanted, and he said, “About $3.50.” I told him, “There’s no way I’m giving you $3.50, you monster!” and eventually he left.
28. Some Not-So-Friendly Competition
The most awkward wedding I’ve ever been to was probably my cousin’s. The food was awful—and I mean really awful. Things that were supposed to be hot were ice cold and still undercooked. There was music, but nobody was allowed to dance because, as they put it, “we don’t want people getting distracted by dancing at our wedding.”
There were no drinks either. Not one. But the strangest part was the seating plan. They didn’t keep families or friends together at all. I still have no idea what they were thinking. I was placed at a table with complete strangers. They even sat our grandparents separately for no reason.
After about an hour, my grandmother stood up, walked over to my grandfather’s table, and the two of them announced they were leaving to go eat at the restaurant down the road. I went with them, and so did my parents. It didn’t take long for people to notice our seats were empty. That was easy enough, since no one was allowed to dance or even really move around.
A little later, one of my uncles called and asked where we were. After we told him why we left, he said, “You’re right. This is ridiculous.” We ended up with 20 wedding guests in that little restaurant, actually enjoying the evening together. Let’s just say the newlyweds didn’t invite us to any more of their events for quite a while.
29. A Bull In A China Shop
Do groomzillas count? I used to work as a bridal registry consultant at a large department store. I dealt with several difficult couples and family members, but this one guy always stands out. The bride was pleasant and very polite. She was excitedly talking about the wedding plans, while the groom just looked uninterested.
She was especially excited about choosing fine china—and that’s when the groom snapped. He yelled at her, called her an idiot, and said there was no reason to waste money on expensive things like that. He said they’d never use it, while she insisted she would make a point to use it so it wouldn’t sit untouched. She also explained that her family wanted her to pick a pattern and planned to contribute toward the set.
She was so patient with this jerk that she kept asking what he liked. But the groom didn’t like anything and kept shouting that she was “wasting his time” and that she was stupid. At that point, things got very uncomfortable. I tried to step in as much as I could, but this groom was awful.
Eventually, he stormed off, and I tried to keep things cheerful for the bride. I really hope she didn’t go through with that wedding.
30. Good Plans, Bad Execution
My cousin’s wedding was a hot mess—literally. For starters, it was an outdoor summer wedding. It had to be at least 90 degrees, humid, and it was held in a park on top of a hill with barely any shade.
There was an air-conditioned building, but it only held 24 people, and there were well over 100 guests. They rented tents to extend from the building for extra tables and chairs, but the rental company set them up in the wrong place and no one fixed it.
Even though the bride kept saying she didn’t want help, on the wedding day everyone was running around trying to decorate, set up the food, and handle last-minute problems. I even had to go to the store to pick up the flower girl’s shoes about two hours before the ceremony started.
She had this big vision of tulle, fresh flowers everywhere, and lanterns hanging through the trees. It was just too much to pull off without enough time or help. They spent so much money on a beautiful venue with a city view, food trucks, charcuterie boards loaded with expensive meats and cheeses, a candy buffet, and more—and they barely got to enjoy any of it.
She and her husband spent nearly the whole time taking photos. They hardly talked to the guests and only grabbed food when the food truck staff said they were about to leave.
And after all that, she barely got any photos with her side of the family. There’s even a group picture of all the cousins that she and her husband—the actual guests of honor—aren’t in. But they do have photos with every one of his guests.
She’s never shared her wedding pictures. According to my grandmother, she hates them, and the only photo she has with her dad from that day is one I took. But that’s not even the worst part. There was no music, no dancing, no toasts—none of the things you’d expect at a reception.
Eventually, someone connected their phone to a speaker so there was at least some kind of entertainment. Her husband comes from a very formal family, and she already felt like she didn’t measure up. The first thing she told me after describing the wedding plans was that her future mother-in-law thought it all sounded tacky.
The whole wedding felt like one big photo shoot for the couple and a party meant to impress his family, and it seemed like she wouldn’t have cared whether her own family was there or not.
The whole thing lasted maybe three hours, max. Near the end, someone started tearing everything down and carelessly throwing away food, decorations, and even guests’ personal belongings.
31. I Don’t Get Paid Enough For This
I was the DJ at a wedding that was honestly a mess from the start. The groom wanted the Raiders logo projected on the ceiling during the reception. They had hired both me and a live band. The groom’s family insisted the band go first and play only cumbias, and that my set be only Latin music. The bride was upset about it, but she wasn’t the one who hired me, so I did my best to meet everyone halfway.
Then the bride got really drunk and started dancing a little too closely with some of the guys. The groom tried to confront her. She took a swing at him and missed, hitting the maid of honor instead and leaving her on the floor with a bloody nose. After that, it turned into a full-on fight, and at one point people even pulled out guns. I packed up my equipment and left just as the police were arriving.
32. A Song For The Ages
My cousin stood up and objected at the wedding of the woman he loved while she was about to marry someone else. Somehow, it actually worked. They’re still together now and have kids. He even wrote a country song about it called “Crazy” by Thomas Martinez. So I guess ruining a wedding for personal reasons doesn’t always end badly.
33. What a Nut Case!
I went to a wedding where the reception menu was clearly planned to be nut-free, coconut-free, and lactose-free so it would be safe for the many guests and children with allergies. But despite that, the chef running the buffet apparently decided the contract didn’t matter.
He added nuts to almost everything. There were almonds in the salads, pecans in the desserts, walnuts in the chicken—nuts everywhere. Things got uncomfortable almost immediately when the bride found out, because she and all of her sisters had severe, life-threatening nut allergies. In the end, she had to eat Burger King at her own wedding.
At the same time, her sister, who was eight months pregnant, had to use her epipen and quietly leave for the ER because of anaphylaxis. The hardest part to watch was the groom trying to comfort the bride through all of it. She was absolutely furious, and the guests could only stand there awkwardly, not knowing what to do.
Things finally eased up a couple of hours later when the bride and groom’s kids started acting silly and distracted her from how angry she was. But the atmosphere stayed tense, and quite a few people left early because they just couldn’t take it anymore.
34. Horsing Around
I used to work for a small regional newspaper. It must have been a slow news week, because my editor sent me to cover the wedding of the son of one of our biggest advertisers. I got in touch with the family and was told to meet them in a parking lot behind the community hall, because the bride would be riding a horse up the main street to the charming little stone Anglican church.
So I arrived and found the bride in this huge, fluffy white princess-style dress. To get on the horse, she had to hike the dress all the way up to her armpits and ride with it bunched around her waist, while her legs from the knees down stuck out underneath. Apparently, the horseback entrance had been a pretty last-minute decision. But then I noticed there were two horses.
It turned out the mother of the bride also wanted to join in on the attention—I mean, be part of her daughter’s special day. She was wearing a lovely lilac jacket, a white blouse, and a very tight knee-length skirt. The kind of skirt that barely lets you walk, let alone climb into a saddle.
And she was wearing towering stiletto heels, which she refused to remove, even to get on the horse. In the end, she had to roll her skirt up to her waist while two strong men lifted her onto the horse. Then they pulled the skirt back down enough so she could sit without exposing herself as they rode up the main street. Off they went.
It was early afternoon in a busy tourist town, so the sound of the horses brought people out of cafés and shops to stare. It took some very creative photography to capture that scene without making it look even more ridiculous.
35. The Loneliest Time
My own wedding was the worst one I’ve experienced. It happened right at the beginning of lockdown. In the days leading up to it, the rules kept changing—from allowing 10 people, to four, then two, and finally no one except the official and my husband. We also had to wait half an hour because we arrived early and the official was late.
The ceremony lasted ten minutes, and then we were married and sent right back out the door. I still wish I hadn’t gone through with it. I wanted my family and friends there. When I told him I wanted to postpone, he said, “If you don’t marry me now, then you don’t need to marry me at all, because that means you don’t love me enough.”
It took me two years to fully understand how awful he was. Now I’m happily divorced and slowly putting my life back together.
36. The Greatest Show On Earth
I’ve officiated a few weddings, and only one of them truly went off the rails. The bride had grown up Jewish, and the groom had grown up Catholic, but both of them were atheists. He only proposed because his family pushed him to. She only accepted because he asked in front of her family. Her family was very wealthy, and they hired a wedding planner who was impossible to deal with. The whole thing seemed doomed to become a very expensive circus.
The only part the bride and groom really got to choose was hiring me, their friend, to lead a custom ceremony. We worked on something together that they liked and approved. The rehearsal took place at a beautiful botanical garden. But we never got to rehearse the actual ceremony because the ballerinas were still struggling with their choreography, and the violinist needed extra time to get set up.
The next day, the ceremony began. About twenty minutes before we were supposed to start, the wedding planner told me they were putting a microphone on me, but there was no time for a sound check. There was also a video crew filming everything from several angles because they planned to make DVDs. As soon as the couple reached the altar and I started to speak, a train went by blasting its horn.
I wanted to wait for the horn to stop before beginning, but it just kept going. After about a minute, I had to start talking so things could move forward. The second I began, the microphone gave off a huge burst of feedback that almost drowned out the train. Once that settled down, I tried to start the ceremony properly, but the speakers had a terrible delay.
I could hear my own voice repeating a few seconds after I had already said the words. I had the ceremony memorized, but by then I gave up and read from the paper, just trying to stay focused. Meanwhile, the train kept sounding its horn. During the ceremony there were awkward ballerina performances, apparently a wedding gift from an aunt.
It felt endless, with the couple just standing at the altar watching five full minutes of dancing. There was also a violin solo, another wedding gift, right in the middle of the ceremony. The train was louder than both performances. Eventually we made it through and got to the reception, which was basically all about the family, with no real concern for the couple or what they wanted.
The bride’s family even had a whole PowerPoint presentation about themselves, and there was a musical tribute to one of the uncles. The bride had learned a song on the piano just for him. During the cake cutting, the family noticed the bride had changed into more comfortable shoes, and the wedding planner announced that she had ruined his wedding. The next morning, I learned the couple had decided to break up as soon as they got home.
37. Wrong Opinion
At my cousin’s wedding, the pastor seemed so unsure they actually wanted to get married that he asked them three separate times if they really wanted to go through with it. Based on the completely blank expressions around the room, the officiant clearly did not want to continue. I don’t talk to her anymore, but as far as I know, she’s still married to him six years later.
38. Hungry Eyes
I went to a wedding where the food didn’t get served until 11:30 p.m. because of some mistake in the kitchen. The whole event slowly turned into a room full of hungry people trying very hard not to ruin the wedding while also desperately wanting to know when they were finally going to eat. At the same time, people got extremely drunk because they were drinking on empty stomachs and had nothing else to do while they waited.
39. Don’t Bug Me
My brother and sister-in-law used to own a bakery, and wedding cakes were their main source of income. If a couple was having an outdoor wedding, we always warned them that the cake needed a net over it to keep bugs away. Most couples understood and either used a net or simply accepted the risk. But one bride wanted a very elaborate wedding cake.
The center section was a four-tier cake, with two tiers on bottom pillars with columns and two more tiers on top. Then she wanted four additional four-tier cakes, all connected to the middle section by staircases. On the stairs were tiny dolls meant to look like the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Each cake was also a different flavor.
And that still wasn’t all. At the bottom, she wanted a waterfall. In short, the cake was not attractive. The reception was near a creek, which meant lots of bugs. We strongly recommended putting a net around it. She refused. We also had her sign a waiver saying we weren’t responsible for anything that happened after the cake was delivered. We scheduled this wedding as our last delivery of the day because it was hot and we didn’t want the frosting melting while sitting in the sun too long.
We also freeze cakes a day or two in advance so that by the time they’re cut, the cake has thawed but the frosting still holds up. This is where everything started going wrong. We arrived to assemble the cake and I immediately noticed tiny gnats already on it. We did a quick fix and once again warned the people there that they needed some kind of protection for the cake.
We explained that by the time it was ready to serve, it would be covered in bugs. We showed them the issue, but they didn’t seem concerned. So fine, she had signed the waiver, we finished the setup, and left. Around 8 p.m. that night, my sister-in-law got a phone call from an angry bride. She wanted us to bake and decorate the exact same cake all over again and deliver it within an hour.
That was obviously impossible. Since I was better at customer service than my brother and his wife, she handed me the phone. I told the bride, “I understand why you’re upset, but you were warned about the risk of setting up a cake outdoors, in the country, without any protection.”
Then I asked if she had any other questions. She made a dramatic annoyed sound and hung up on me.
40. See You Later, Alligator
This happened at my mom and stepdad’s wedding. I was about seven or eight at the time and was one of several flower girls, along with my older cousin and my younger cousin.
After the wedding, we all drove toward the mountains where the reception was being held, at a large cabin with a small lake behind it. Naturally, since we were kids, we stopped hanging around the adults and went off to play by the lake.
We were kicking rocks off the dock and talking about random things when my younger cousin asked, “Do you think there are alligators in there?” My older cousin and I thought about it for a second and said yes, even though there definitely were not, and then we casually moved on to another topic.
Then I noticed a rock right at the edge of the dock, and my little kid brain immediately thought, “That rock is going to fly so far when I kick it.” So I confidently told my cousins to watch me kick it.
I stood at the edge of the dock, lined up my leg, and swung. That’s when everything went wrong. I completely missed the rock, and the force of my kick sent me falling face-first into the water.
While my cousins were panicking and I was trying to swim back, they decided to start yelling, “ALLIGATOR,” which completely terrified me and made me start crying while I tried to get out. Luckily, my aunt came outside right then and ran over to help. But that still wasn’t the end of it.
She was also the wedding photographer, and before helping me, she thought it would be funny to take a picture. That made me furious at the time, and I stayed mad about it for years, though honestly, looking back, I probably would have done the same thing.
Since I didn’t have a spare dress, I had to wear my younger cousin’s dress while she got to change into an extra, more comfortable one. So for the rest of the reception I was stuck in a tight, itchy dress and in a terrible mood.
41. This Is A Wedding, Not A Frat Party
Our close friends were getting married, and our whole college group was there. There was an open bar, and one of my friends drank way too much and completely lost his indoor voice. The bride’s parents were introducing the newlyweds for their first dance when his voice suddenly cut through the room. The only thing anyone could hear was someone shouting a swear word at full volume.
He was actually talking to someone nearby, but the entire wedding went completely silent. Then he caught the garter and started running around with it on his head, yelling. Not long after that, he was arguing with a police officer after starting a fight at the hotel.
Shutterstock
42. Your Guilt, Not Mine
My wedding was wonderful, but a few months before we got married, an older relative on my wife’s side tried to tell me we were too young. He said there were too many attractive women my age and that I’d regret giving up all that fun. I was completely sure about my decision, so I brushed it off. Now I’ve been happily married for almost 13 years, and that same guy is divorced because...drum roll...he cheated on his wife with a younger woman.
It didn’t hit me at the time that he was basically talking about himself and may have been indirectly admitting what he was doing. Back then, he’d been married for 15 years, was very religious, and seemed like a devoted husband and father. Still, I never fully forgot that conversation, so finding out he had been cheating hit me hard. I wish I had warned his wife then.
43. Branching Out
In November 2018, I went to the wedding of some friends of my in-laws. They were a couple in their 60s who had been together for decades and finally decided to get married. The groom had served in the Navy, so because of the timing, he invited a lot of his veteran friends from several military branches.
During the reception, he had the DJ start playing the military songs for each branch and asked all the veterans from those branches to stand up and be recognized. I understood what he was trying to do, especially with Veterans Day being so close.
The problem was that no one knew he had planned this. Not even the veterans. They all looked around at each other and slowly stood up in a really awkward way. The civilian guests just shifted around uncomfortably for the five minutes it lasted. His intentions were good, but it was about as awkward as you can imagine.
Later that night, the bride got extremely drunk with her friends and spent a while dancing barefoot. At some point, she stepped wrong and badly rolled her ankle. She ended up wearing one of those medical walking boots for about a month.
44. Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children?
I worked at a wedding venue in college. This isn’t exactly a Bridezilla story so much as just a very, very strange wedding. It was a 70-person event, which was small for our venue and set up banquet-style, so it was actually a lighter night for the staff. We mostly just had to keep everything moving smoothly from the ceremony to the reception to the send-off. It should have been an easy night for us...just not for them.
First, they got married in our vineyard. One of the little kids was the ring bearer, and he dropped the ring. Several staff members spent two hours searching through the brush for it and never found it. We figured one of the geese might have eaten it. Then came the reception, which felt more like a daycare, because more than half of the 70 guests were kids under 10.
The groom was wonderful with them, almost like he was a teacher or something. The bride barely interacted with them at all and seemed to really dislike having them around. At one point, the groom somehow found a guitar and started a sing-along with the kids on the dance floor. Meanwhile, the bride sat by herself at the sweetheart table, eating dinner alone.
Finally, the cake. Usually, the bride and groom cut the cake out on the floor while guests take pictures and cheer, and then two servers bring the rest back to my station so we can slice it up for everyone. We set aside the top tier and pack it up for the couple to take home.
The idea is that they save it for their first anniversary, like most people know. Well, this cake disappeared fast, probably because of all the kids. As we were finishing up and packing the top, the groom came back and told us to cut that too. We checked with him to make sure, and it turned out he was doing it without telling the bride because the kids wanted more cake.
She didn’t seem happy with her wedding day, or with the groom. I barely saw them interact all night, and sometimes I wonder if they’re still together.
45. Dragged To The Altar
Looking back, I realize this wedding was awful. I was 8 at the time and had to go because my cousin, who was 20 years older than me, was marrying a complete fool. When we arrived, she was out greeting everyone instead of getting ready.
The groom was nowhere around at first, which seemed reasonable since they weren’t supposed to see each other before she walked down the aisle. But when we passed the bar on the way in, we saw him there getting drinks with his friends.
When the ceremony started, he looked unbelievably bored and kept whispering to his friends and groomsmen. He was still doing it when she walked down the aisle. She actually had to tug on his sleeve to get him to say his vows.
Later, during dinner, neither of them was sitting at their table. They were out in the main hall, and he was yelling at her for tugging his sleeve at the altar. Unsurprisingly, they’re divorced now, though they stayed married for about a month. He ended things because she wasn’t meeting his expectations of what she should be doing instead of working a full-time job. Good riddance, Mark.
46. An Unwanted Promotion
The best man checked himself into a psychiatric hospital the morning of the wedding without telling anyone, so I got “promoted” to best man about four hours before the ceremony. I had to put together a speech while also handling everything he was supposed to take care of. The wedding was at a park on top of a mountain, and there was no cell service.
The bride was more than an hour late, and nobody had any way to contact her unless they drove twenty minutes down the mountain to get signal. Everyone started thinking she had backed out, and some guests were even talking about leaving before she finally showed up.
47. Bad Call, Ref
My dad got remarried when I was 14, and most of his groomsmen were friends he knew from spending years refereeing local football games. When the pastor got to the part about objections, all of my dad’s groomsmen blew whistles and tossed yellow flags onto the ground. It took several minutes before people could stop laughing enough for the ceremony to continue.
48. Country Boy
At my cousin’s wedding, the groom drove a small tractor around the outdoor venue while the bride sat on the back, with Kenny Chesney’s “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” playing on repeat for about 30 minutes after they said their vows. The guests stood around waiting, assuming it would be a quick joke and then we’d move on to drinks and food.
But no. They kept circling for around half an hour so they could get photos and video from every angle possible. After that, they spent even more time posing for pictures while sitting still on the tractor. It was incredibly hot, there was no tent or shade anywhere, and I was very pregnant, so I was especially uncomfortable. He isn’t even a farmer. They live in an apartment.
49. Family Feud
I’m a wedding officiant. The bride was a lovely young woman—short, a little heavyset, and somewhat plain-looking. But she was kind, joyful, and clearly very much in love. Her mother was the complete opposite: tall, slim, blonde, and wearing far too much makeup. After the ceremony, the mom arrived at the reception, and everyone looked over and nearly gasped.
She walked in wearing a very tight off-white dress. It was backless, with a slit running way up her leg. She had on stiletto heels that seemed more suited for a nightclub than a wedding. Once the ceremony was over, she made the whole reception about herself. She was the first one on the dance floor, worked the room nonstop, and flirted with every man there, including me.
It was sad to watch the bride slowly retreat into herself, completely overshadowed by her own mother on her wedding day.
50. Are You On The List?
This happened in 2014. I was invited to my best friend’s wedding, which was in the middle of July. It was already a brutally hot, dry summer, and I was expected to wear a tuxedo—something she knew I hated—but I figured, “It’s a wedding, so fine.”
I got to the reception, and people were being let in one by one. I showed my invitation to the guy I assumed was the best man. Then my friend came over.
Her: “Oh, hey. Sorry, I need to tell you something.”
Me: “What’s going on?”
Her: “You’re not allowed inside.”
Me: ...
I just stared at her for a solid ten seconds before asking why.
Her: “Because nobody here knows you.”
Me: “You invited me. I’m holding the invitation.”
Her: “Yeah, but you can just stay outside and wait.”
Me: “You do realize I traveled halfway across the country for this, right?”
Her: “Yeah.”
Me: “And now you’re saying I can’t come in. Is anyone else being kept outside?”
Her: “Nope, just you. Sorry about that.”
So there I was, standing outside in about 25 C / 77 F weather, wearing a black tuxedo in direct sun, and apparently expected to just wait there. I asked if I could just leave and go home instead of wasting my time. For some reason, that upset her.
She started saying that if I left, it meant our friendship didn’t matter to me. We had been friends for 12 years.
Me: “Fine. Then I’ll at least need food and something to drink.”
Her: “Sorry, we didn’t plan for you coming, so there won’t be enough.”
That was it. I left on the spot. Luckily, I had another friend nearby who let me stay over until I could leave the next day.
Her marriage lasted about eight months. She’s now on marriage number three, and I turned down the invitations to both of the later weddings—also in summer—because there was no chance I was going through that again.
51. The Show Must Go On
I worked as the planner for a wedding between two fairly wealthy families. The bride wanted a rural, “shabby chic” look and had chosen her family’s property, with the ceremony and reception centered around an old barn. That created a wave of problems. The barn needed a serious cleaning, and we also needed extra tents because it wasn’t big enough. On top of that, the property had no electricity or running water.
We solved those issues with a row of generators, large tubs of water for catering, and a side tent with portable restrooms tucked inside. The bride had been pretty demanding, but handling that was part of my job. The ceremony was over, cocktail hour was wrapping up, and the formal photos had been taken. We were just getting ready for the bridal party’s entrance.
That entrance was supposed to lead right into the first dance and cake cutting. Meanwhile, dinner was being staged, so everything was timed very carefully. I was talking with the caterer when I glanced over and saw a very unusual mix of expressions cross the bride’s face. She urgently waved my assistant over.
A moment later, my headset buzzed and my assistant said, “We have a problem.” The bride had an accident and needed to use the bathroom. She was wearing a huge ball gown with a fitted strapless bodice and embellished mesh. Under it, she had shapewear, hoops, and slips. We had already figured out there was basically no practical way for her to use the restroom.
We’d had trouble just getting her into the limo, and using a portable toilet meant someone would have to help her in a very hands-on way. That fell to my assistant. I radioed the team to expect a fifteen-minute delay, and they headed to the tent. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Finally my earpiece crackled again: “The earlier problem is worse than we thought.” I ran over and found my assistant looking completely stunned.
It turned out the bride had been drinking wellness shakes to try to reduce some last-minute bloating. Mixed with the earlier cocktails and a pretty solid breakfast, the result was disastrous. She had a major accident, and the smell was unbelievably strong. But that still wasn’t the worst of it.
The real problem was the shapewear. It was a latex-style piece that went from her thighs up to her bra line. It was waterproof, so everything had collected inside it. My assistant had opened the snap closure, and the mess spilled down the bride’s legs. She quickly fastened it again.
She and the bride tried to clean things up with toilet paper, but that only smeared everything around, so they stopped. Now I had a shaken assistant and a sobbing bride. You could smell her from several feet away. She was panicking because the guests were waiting and a choreographed dance was supposed to happen next. She wanted to be announced immediately.
There was still residue caught under her manicured nails. I started cleaning it out with a fabric-safe wipe while she kept insisting we move forward. Eventually, I gave in and signaled to begin the introductions. The groom seemed a little unsettled by the smell, but I told my assistant to keep him occupied until they reached the dance floor.
The introductions happened, the dance began, and then things somehow got worse. It was a choreographed routine, and when the groom spun her with a hand at her waist, the pressure forced the mess upward inside the shapewear and out through the back. We watched an oily stain spread across the middle of the back of her gown.
Then, as if that weren’t enough, the groom placed his hand directly on the stained area. At that point it was obvious I had to intervene as soon as they left the floor, so I left my assistant in charge while I made arrangements. She kept radioing me to say the stain was spreading and that she could smell it all the way from her post near the DJ.
Then the couple moved on to cutting the cake. They fed each other while both clearly realized something was very wrong. As soon as they stepped away, I had someone rush wet wipes to the groom and sent the bride to me. I had my staff close the support tent and pulled a tub of clean water from the catering area.
She came in and found me wearing dish gloves and a poncho, ready to handle the situation. For five minutes, I cleaned up a crying, undressed bride while questioning every life choice that had brought me there. The mess had spread in a thin layer across much of her body. It was one of the most unpleasant situations I’ve ever dealt with. Once she was clean, I threw away the shapewear and started scrubbing her $15,000 gown in a plastic basin.
The inner lining couldn’t be saved, so I cut it out completely. The bride got dressed again, and I offered her something to help her calm down. The support tent smelled awful and stayed closed for the rest of the night. To his credit, the groom handled it well. He never directly addressed what happened, but he did ask if we could skip the garter toss because he didn’t want to go under her skirt. Photos from the wedding later appeared in a magazine. In the pictures, everything looked beautiful.
52. As She Should
About 25 years ago, my neighbor went to a wedding and came home with this story. When the pastor reached the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part, the bride said, “Yes, I’d like to say something.” Nothing could have prepared anyone for what came next. She turned to the guests and said, “I’d like to thank my maid of honor for spending last night with my fiancé.” Then she threw her bouquet and stormed out. The story even made it onto local radio.
53. Feels Like the First Time
I was raised in a cult. Dating wasn’t allowed unless it was specifically for the purpose of finding a spouse. Even then, everything was closely supervised to make sure there was no physical contact before marriage. The most uncomfortable wedding I ever attended was a small ceremony between two members of that group. The only people there were her family, his family, and my family, gathered in her grandmother’s living room.
What made it so awkward was the extremely intense kiss at the end. When the officiant said, “You may kiss the bride,” the groom went all in. It was far more passionate than anyone expected, with way too much enthusiasm for such a quiet room full of relatives. No one knew where to look for what felt like five full minutes.
54. A Little To The Left
I used to cater wedding receptions during college. One time, this mother-of-the-bride-zilla showed up at the reception hall about thirty minutes before guests were due to arrive. She decided one table was too close to another and asked us to move it about five inches. Fine. But then, of course, that made all the other tables look off to her, so she demanded that every single table in the room be shifted five inches.
All sixteen of them. We rushed around and moved them, but once you move sixteen tables, every chair is suddenly out of place with the settings. So we had to reposition every single chair—more than 160 of them—right before guests arrived. It ate up the time we should have been using for final prep, like filling water pitchers and getting the room ready, so we were instantly behind schedule.
Then this mom insisted that every fork was slightly too close to every plate. At that point, we politely told her we would not be repositioning 160 forks. She completely lost it. Thankfully, we held firm, and for once, she didn’t get her way.
55. Awkward Is Putting It Mildly
My wife and I got dragged to her friend’s mother’s wedding. I think it was her third marriage. Aside from being deeply awkward, the ceremony itself went smoothly enough. The reason it felt so tense was that the bride’s son had been involved in the killing of the groom’s nephew.
He had gone with some friends to buy illegal substances, but they never intended to pay. He was charged and eventually accepted a reduced sentence that involved several years of probation… and then later showed up at the wedding.
56. A Multitude Of Problems
My cousin planned a wedding that stretched across a whole long weekend. The plan was for family to come in for several days, with different wedding activities happening the entire time. There was everything from flower picking to laser tag. But the actual ceremony happened Friday night with just family and close friends there, followed right away by dinner and toasts.
Then on Saturday, a larger group of more distant guests showed up for the official reception, which was a dry potluck. The invitations hadn’t made that distinction clear, so a lot of people were confused. Some had traveled a long distance and were still wondering when the bride and groom were actually getting married. I had to explain that they had already gotten married the day before, and that Saturday’s reception had no alcohol and required guests to bring their own main dish. It was uncomfortable.
57. A Few Words to the Wise
I work in the wedding industry, and I’ve been to more than 3,000 weddings. A lot of them were awkward for similar reasons. The whole “singing your vows” idea almost never works the way people imagine it will. Seriously, don’t sing your vows. Don’t try to sing any part of your ceremony. It’s not going to come out the way it looked in your head. Your wedding day is not the time for surprises. Don’t surprise your bride with some unexpected part of the ceremony.
And definitely don’t surprise your mom with the wedding itself. True story: one bride told her mother they were going to an engagement dinner when she was actually getting married. The one exception might be surprising the bride with a meaningful addition to her ring—like a diamond from her grandmother, a ring made from her parents’ rings, or something similar.
Jokes about the couple sleeping together later are never funny. They just make people uncomfortable and make you sound immature. After a joke like that, there’s always silence. If you’re going to be late, tell EVERYONE somehow. Have your fiancé, your parents, or somebody else let people know.
The staff especially needs to know. If you forget the rings, don’t panic. It’ll turn into a funny story. If you forget your vows, do your best and keep going. Just don’t sing. Ask the officiant to help if you need some last-minute vows. And finally, don’t get so drunk that you act ridiculous. You do not want to be that person. Also, if you’re that drunk, you probably won’t be making those jokes a reality later anyway.
Silence...
58. A Mother's Envy
I went to a friend’s wedding, and during the reception his mother, who drinks heavily, stood up to give an unplanned speech. She said, “I can’t believe my son is marrying that awful woman. She’s going to ruin his life.” The groom grabbed the microphone out of her hand and shouted at her to leave. That was seven years ago, and the couple is still married.
For the record, the bride is not awful.
59. The Writing’s On The Wall
I do henna tattoos. Most of the time I work a booth at a theme park or fair, and sometimes I work at a small shop downtown where I live. One day I was finishing a shift at a local theme park when the woman at the shop called me in a total panic. A bridal party had shown up without any warning, and not only did the bride want full traditional wedding henna for herself, she wanted henna for all her bridesmaids too.
There were 20 people who wanted their hands and feet done, plus the bride, who wanted her hands, feet, and back covered in henna. I got to the shop, and now there were only two of us available who could do the kind of designs she wanted. The bride took one look at me and said she would not let me do henna for her or anyone in her party. I’m white. I had rainbow hair in a pixie cut. I also apparently gave off the impression that I was gay.
So after listening to this rude bride go on about how a white girl couldn’t possibly do henna properly, I pointed to the photos in the sample book—because I had done all of them. Then I happily went home, turned off my phone, and took a nice nap before heading to my other job. Later I found out the bride ended up storming out of the shop when she learned there was simply no way to get it all done.
I still wonder whether she ever found someone. The funniest part was that a lot of her wedding party were white women too, so apparently it was fine for them to wear henna, just not for a white woman to know how to apply it.
60. Take A Picture, It’ll Last Longer
When I was a senior in high school, I played on a summer international traveling soccer team. Four of us stayed with a host family in Costa Rica for two weeks. The couple we stayed with had grown children who had already moved out.
Before the trip, we were invited to a wedding happening that weekend. I thought it sounded really interesting, so my parents and I agreed I should go. I would end up seriously regretting that. It was at a place called Vista Verde, kind of a jungle retreat with a lodge and bungalows.
At first, it seemed great. It was a nice, normal wedding with maybe 200 to 300 people. At the reception, I was flirting with a beautiful girl who was a little older than me.
I was the American nobody knew, which actually helped me get some attention from the girls. I was having about as much fun as a 17-year-old could have.
Everyone else seemed to be having fun too, until we heard gunshots. Suddenly a group of armed men in black fatigues rushed in. They were shouting at everyone to get down and yelling “manos arriba” — hands up.
Naturally, everyone panicked, but I was a little slow to understand what was happening and was still standing while everyone else dropped to the floor. I got shoved pretty hard, hit my head, and blacked out. When I came to, it was terrifying. I was zip-tied and thrown onto a bus.
I spent nine hours in a school gym with most of the other guests. Once they got to me and saw my passport, they contacted the US embassy. That’s when I found out the authorities believed people at the wedding were connected to a local gang.
My teammates and I were taken to the embassy right away, while our host family was detained for several days. I had a bad headache, my parents had spent a lot of money on the trip, and we never got to play in the national tournament.
I never found out what happened to the host family or what was discovered at the wedding. I also never got my camera or film back, including photos from the previous week of sightseeing. It had rolls from Mexico and San Diego too, where we had also played.
Honestly, that still feels like the worst part even 20 years later. I have almost no physical memories from what was otherwise one of the best two months of my life.
61. A Brother’s Bridal Ballad
I once went to a wedding at a Napa Valley winery during the tech boom of the ’90s. The groom was an up-and-coming venture capitalist, and the bride was a polished, fragile blonde. They both loved talking in tech jargon, and their wedding invitation was designed like a merger announcement on a fake Wall Street Journal page.
Still, the groom was a friend, so my date and I went to support him. The first truly strange moment came before the ceremony, when the bride’s twin brother stepped out, had her sit on a stool in front of everyone, and then knelt down with a guitar to sing her a song he had written. It was a love ballad. The whole thing was so full of yearning that the entire crowd just sat there in stunned discomfort.
He sang about how beautiful his sister was and how lucky any man would be to have her. I don’t remember all the lyrics, but one line is burned into my memory: “Lips touching, tongues dancing. They give each other a look that can mean just one thing.” And the most uncomfortable part? It wasn’t meant as a joke. He was crying while he sang, and everyone watching looked like they wanted the floor to open up beneath them.
Then came the ceremony itself. The chairs were arranged in a beautiful courtyard garden, with an aisle down the center leading to a pavilion. We all sat on white-upholstered chairs. When the ceremony ended, the officiant said, “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 fly free as a symbol of the love these two share.” Once again, the whole crowd froze. Whoever had arranged the seating had placed the envelopes on the chairs, not under them—small white envelopes on white chair cushions. In horror, every guest reached down and found the envelopes.
Most of the butterflies had been crushed after being sat on for nearly 45 minutes.
62. I Told You So
I objected at a small wedding in Vegas. I was a little tipsy and had already said my piece to the bride the night before. I told her her future husband would probably end up back in prison and leave her to raise the kids alone. His friends shouted at me when I spoke up during the ceremony. A year later, he was in prison on a second-degree charge, and she was alone with the kids...
63. Together Again
I once went to a wedding in the United States where it was the bride and groom’s fourth marriage. To each other. Yes, they had married each other four times and divorced three times in between. For this fourth wedding, they chose a grimy motorcycle bar as the venue. They were openly handing adult drinks to little kids and then laughing when the children got drunk.
Things were already bizarre, but they quickly became much worse. I asked my friend if we could leave right after the bride pulled a knife out of her dress and tried to stab the groom because he had slept with another woman while they were divorced. I don’t know if that’s normal in New Jersey, but the other weddings I attended in the U.S. were definitely not like that...
64. Runaway Bride
I’m not a bridal shop employee, but I do have a pretty unbelievable Bridezilla story. My sister and I were asked to be bridesmaids by a mutual acquaintance. We both thought it was a little strange that she picked both of us instead of people she was closer to, but we went along with it. For her bachelorette party, we planned a lovely weekend in a resort town three hours away with her two other bridesmaids, who were her friends.
From the start, she was sulking and glued to her phone most of the time. She seemed completely unappreciative of all the effort we were making. Things improved a little once we started drinking back at the hotel. Later, we went to a bar to see a band, and there were other bachelorette groups there too. She seemed fine for a while, dancing and having a good time, until another bridal group sat near us and started drawing more attention.
They were younger, very cute, and the band was flirting with them. Guys were asking their bride to dance. Suddenly, my bride sat down and started texting furiously. We asked what was wrong, and she would only say she wasn’t having fun anymore and wanted to go home. We said, “Okay, let’s call a cab and head back to the hotel.”
But she said, “No, I want to go home.” Home was three hours away. We had all been drinking, so none of us could drive her. She stormed out of the bar and started calling random people none of us knew, trying to get someone to come pick her up in the middle of the night because her fiancé wasn’t answering. She refused to get a cab and said she would stand in the parking lot for hours until someone came for her.
She even made us miss a free shuttle back to the hotel because she simply would not move. That’s when I lost my patience. I yelled at her. I’ve never yelled at another adult like that before. I told her she was getting in a car and going back to the hotel, because we were not going to leave her alone in a parking lot, and we were definitely not going to stand there for hours waiting with her.
Eventually, she gave in. We got a cab and went back to the hotel. She kept texting and refused to speak to any of us because I had yelled. When we arrived, she refused to come inside. She stood in the awkward space between the double doors and once again would not move. One of her friends and I went upstairs to pack her things while my sister and the other bridesmaid stayed downstairs to make sure she didn’t disappear.
Eventually she reached her fiancé, and he agreed to drive down and pick her up. My sister later said that when the bride finally started talking again, she complained that she was angry with us because “we hadn’t helped her enough.” I was furious. We had gone to wedding expos with her, helped her choose a dress, chosen our own dresses, and planned an entire weekend for her bachelorette party.
We had spent hundreds of dollars trying to make her happy, and somehow it still wasn’t enough. While I was upstairs packing her things with one of the other bridesmaids, I found out even more. She had been married before, had multiple foreclosures and court appearances over unpaid debts, and had two children she no longer had custody of—none of which I knew, even though I’d known her for years.
I’m not even sure her fiancé knew all of that. When he finally arrived, she didn’t greet him or thank him. She just walked straight past him and got into his car. She acted like a sulky teenager, even though she was in her late thirties. It was unreal. On the bright side, my sister and I became friends with the other two bridesmaids through the whole mess. And somehow, the wedding itself was surprisingly calm. I’ll take that as a win.
65. I Don’t
The worst wedding I’ve ever been to was probably my own. I had already been having doubts about going through with it. I was dressed, and my mom was doing my hair, when I suddenly had that awful, crystal-clear realization.
I did not want to marry him. But I felt trapped. Family had traveled across the country to be there for me. I’ll never forget walking toward him and seeing his face. He didn’t smile. He didn’t cry. He just looked blank.
Afterward, during dinner and the reception, he spent most of his time out on the church patio. He only had two friends there, and apparently they mattered more to him than I did. I was dancing alone, talking to guests alone, and feeling the whole time that something was deeply wrong.
So yes. Mine.
66. I Now Pronounce You Co-Beneficiary and Wife
My sister-in-law’s first wedding. I never really liked the groom from the moment I met him. After about a year, he proposed, and they started planning a wedding for the following year. But then, on a whim, they got married in a civil ceremony and still planned to have the big celebration later that year. A few months after the civil ceremony, the groom went in for heart surgery for a valve problem he’d had since birth.
When the big ceremony finally happened, almost every major part of it had been scaled back. Less than a year into the marriage, my sister-in-law brought me a credit card bill and asked if I knew what a $600 charge from her husband might be. A little internet searching later, I found out he’d been spending money on cam sites. They were officially divorced about a year after that.
Looking back, it became pretty clear what had happened. My sister-in-law had basically been used to help pay for a new heart valve. He didn’t have insurance through his job that would cover the surgery, so he convinced her to marry him earlier than planned so he could get on her insurance, have the operation, and then leave.
67. Blinded By Love
I went to a coworker’s wedding, and I honestly thought someone might object. She had been seeing a guy from work, and we all knew it. Then one day she came in showing off an engagement ring from her boyfriend, who was supposedly long-distance, even though none of us had ever heard her mention him before. And that wasn’t even the wildest part.
She actually invited the guy she’d been seeing. He sat alone in a pew crying during the ceremony. Then she slow danced with him in front of her new husband. A bunch of us from work were there, and we all knew what had been going on. It was incredibly uncomfortable.
68. Last-Minute Decisions
I once went to a wedding where the groom suddenly changed his Best Man and didn’t tell the original one until the ceremony was about to start. Then, when the reception began, the bride and groom realized they hadn’t hired a bartender, so they asked one of the guests to do it. Later, the groom did a very inappropriate dance with his stepmother. Yes, his hands were fully on her backside.
Then the bride and groom brought the entire wedding party up for a choreographed dance to Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” but apparently they hadn’t warned anyone ahead of time or taught them the moves. That song is eight and a half minutes long. It was definitely awkward to watch.
The wedding was held on a beautiful boarding school campus during the summer. Guests were told they could stay in the dorms for free. What they weren’t told was that there would be no bedding and no air conditioning. Later, the groom emailed everyone who stayed there asking them for money.
69. Straight And Narrow
I’ve been DJing weddings for about 10 years. Most brides relax by the time I really get started, and most of the time the groom handles the music. So I don’t have a ton of stories. But one bride was extremely focused on her wedding being perfectly symmetrical. She measured the whole room and wanted everything placed exactly where she had specified.
I had to measure how far my table was from the wall and the other tables. I also had to measure the distance between my speakers and the dance floor. On the wedding day, she was upset with me because I hadn’t told her I would have lighting for the dance floor, and she wished she’d had time to decide exactly where those should go too.
70. The Devil’s Tiki Drink
Two years ago, one of my cousins got married and had the reception outdoors at my grandparents’ house. They have two acres of land, so there was plenty of space.
There were about fifteen tables set up, along with a bunch of tiki torches because it was nighttime. My cousin Drew decided to grab one of the ice buckets from the bar, dump out the ice, and pour a little bit of everyone’s drink into it while people were busy dancing.
Then he tried to drink the mixture in the bucket. Since it had all kinds of beer, champagne, and wine in it, he made it about halfway through before doubling over and vomiting everywhere.
As he tried to catch himself, he grabbed a nearby tiki torch, which was already leaning toward him, and pulled it the rest of the way down, setting himself on fire. He stood there for a second like a flaming fountain of vomit before everyone panicked and rushed over to put him out.
71. “I Do” Disaster
My brother got married a few years ago, and the whole thing was a disaster from the start. He and his fiancée had already pushed most of my family away before the wedding even happened. My parents, who were paying for almost everything, finally decided to stop funding it about three months before the date. After that, my brother and his fiancée sent an email to all the guests, publicly blaming my parents for their “lack of support.”
That split the family even more. In the end, only the closest members of my family actually attended. The wedding day itself was just as bad as everything leading up to it. My brother and his fiancée didn’t pay the officiant and also failed to pay the caterers. Because of that, all we were served were a few trays of vegetables, which my parents ended up paying for right there.
Their entire relationship was a train wreck, but the wedding was one of the worst parts for our family.
72. A Storm Is Coming
My wife’s uncle, who owned the farm where we were getting married, stood up during the part where they ask if anyone objects. Right away, his son, who was the man of honor, shouted at him to sit down. To his credit, he did sit back down... but only for about 12 seconds. Then he stood up again and explained why he was objecting—there was a huge storm coming up the driveway, and it was about to hit the whole ceremony before we could finish.
My wife made it inside before she got soaked, but nobody else did. We ended up finishing the wedding indoors instead.
73. A Man of the World
I used to film weddings, so I’ve seen all kinds of things. One couple from New Jersey looked exactly like they belonged on Jersey Shore. They were extremely focused on appearances and loved flashy, over-the-top style. During their church ceremony, they had their very uncomfortable 60-year-old uncle wear a culturally inappropriate costume, stand up, and chant around the church, giving what I assume was meant to be some sort of blessing.
It was incredibly strange, inappropriate, and completely out of place. I got the sense they wanted the ceremony to feel meaningful or profound. They also did the thing where they poured multicolored sand into a vase together.
74. Doomed From The Start
I’m a florist, and I handled the flowers for a bride and groom who were both very difficult, but everything went smoothly on my end. On their end? They had to leave the state to get married because they had protective orders against each other.
75. Who’s Cutting Onions In Here?
I recently went to the wedding of a family acquaintance, and during the reception I witnessed one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever seen. After the first part of the ceremony, the bride’s family gathered with the groom’s family to take photos.
It was an outdoor ceremony, and the sun was shining hard over the garden where the photos were being taken. One of the bride’s uncles came out of a small building pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair who was paraplegic.
It was the bride’s father, and he was unable to move because of a spinal injury he had suffered years earlier. I was told that people had explained to him many times that his daughter was getting married, but he hadn’t shown any response.
They decided to bring him out for one family photo before taking him back inside, since he couldn’t handle the bright sunlight for long. He was placed in front of the bride, and she leaned down to hug him in his wheelchair.
As the photos were being taken, the father started to cry. He couldn’t move, and he didn’t make a sound, but tears rolled down his face.
Apparently, this was one of the rare times he had shown any physical reaction, and everyone around him began crying too. Sadly, the story didn’t end there. Later at dinner, the bride was missing for a while. It turned out her father couldn’t handle the physical strain of the day and had to be taken to the hospital.
76. Don’t Even Heifer
I was the heavier girl in middle school, and there was one guy who would literally moo at me in classes we shared all year. We ended up going to different high schools, and by then I had lost more than half my weight. During my junior year, a family friend got married to that jerk’s older brother, so I knew he’d be there.
The bride called me over, introduced me to her new brother-in-law, and said we’d probably get along. He immediately asked me to dance, and I said no because I didn’t want to make a scene. He kept pushing, so I finally said, “I know you. We went to middle school together.” He looked confused and clearly didn’t remember me.
So I said, “Yeah, you were the guy who used to make cow noises and moo at that girl in some of our classes.” He instantly started laughing and said, “Yeah, that was me. That girl was awful!” I looked right at him and said, “Well, you’re looking at that cow now.” His jaw dropped, and I walked away feeling pretty satisfied.
77. Wisdom Beyond Her Years
This happened about 20 years ago. My dad was marrying his second wife, who turned out to be a pretty awful person. During the “speak now” part of the ceremony, I looked at my dad and said, “Daddy, no.” Everyone laughed it off, but I meant it. They ended up divorcing years later.
78. Think of the Children!!
This wedding was held in an Episcopal church. The priest was dressed in full formal robes, and the church was beautifully decorated for the occasion. The bride and groom had specifically asked everyone to dress casually, so most of us assumed that meant something like semi-formal. Apparently not. They and their children showed up wearing overalls and plain white T-shirts.
So there they were standing next to the priest in full ceremonial clothing. The other uncomfortable part came when the groom, right in the middle of the ceremony, kept bringing up the Bible verse “let the little children come to me” and insisting it also meant “and listen to what they tell you.” He repeated that again and again, even though most of us had no idea what point he was trying to make.
Then he launched into a completely unplanned twenty-minute speech about how he and the bride had gotten together. There were several parts where he admitted he wasn’t even sure she was the right person for him, but his son had been encouraging him because “he wanted a mom.” It was honestly sad, since the boy’s biological mother had died when he was only four, and this was eight years later.
So the speech ended up sounding like a long, wandering explanation that basically came down to: “I’m marrying this woman so my son can have a mom.” Along with that came a few more Bible references that didn’t really help. Not exactly the strongest reason to marry someone. I could tell, a lot of the guests could tell, and the priest definitely seemed to know it too.
That whole story might have made some sense at the reception in the right setting, but I still have no idea why he told it during the ceremony itself. In the end, I’m pretty sure they divorced less than two years later.
79. A Cake Walk
I used to work in a bakery, and one bride completely lost it because she thought her cake was wrong. She started punching it and smashed it to pieces. The problem was, she destroyed the wrong cake. Seriously, what even was that? Anyway, the police let her wash her hands before putting her in handcuffs. I felt bad for both her future husband and the couple who had actually ordered that cake. Some people are unbelievable.
80. Kissing Cousins
I once went to a wedding with my ex. It was his cousin’s wedding, held outside on a few acres of land. There were around a hundred people there, walking around and socializing, including a few close mutual friends of ours.
I had never met the bride’s stepfather before, but he and my ex were apparently pretty close. As the day went on, he got very drunk and very loud. First, he told my ex that he should have been the one marrying his daughter that day—yes, his cousin—in front of me and several of our friends.
Then, during the speeches, he announced to everyone that the man his daughter was marrying was an idiot and that my boyfriend at the time should be her husband instead. And yes, everyone there knew they were cousins, which somehow made it even worse.
81. Missed Encounters
At the wedding of one of my husband’s college friends, we found out the bride—his old friend—had been in love with him for more than ten years. We heard it from the women at our table during the reception. We’d introduced ourselves while waiting for the bride and groom to come in, and they were shocked we were there—and clearly nervous.
My husband had absolutely no idea she felt that way. Right after the big “introducing Mr. and Mrs.” moment, she made a straight line for our table, ignoring her family and leaving her new husband standing there by himself. She grabbed onto my husband and started sobbing, then lifted her head to glare at me. Someone eventually had to pull her away from him.
She pulled herself together, but then followed us as we tried to slip out quietly. As a final comment, she looked at my chest and said, “Well, I guess now I know what I was missing all along.” Her new husband looked stunned, and my husband was mortified and embarrassed. He had been completely unaware of any of this and never would have gone to the wedding if he’d known she was so fixated on him. It was incredibly strange.
82. Case Of The Side Chick
At my coworker’s wedding, the groom’s other girlfriend showed up extremely drunk just as the ceremony began. She started yelling at him, saying she was supposed to be the one marrying him. A few of the groomsmen had to carry her out. Then the ceremony continued like nothing had happened. I honestly couldn’t believe it. And the worst part?
About a year later, I found out he was still cheating on his wife—with that same woman and another one too.
83. A Lot of Energy in This One
About ten years ago, my brother managed a gas station and had hired the future bride as an employee. After she’d been there a little while, she asked for a few days off for her wedding. The date was still a couple of months away, so it wasn’t a problem. Then, about a week before her scheduled time off, she came into work and had this exchange with my brother:
Bride: “Want to see my new tattoo?”
Bro: “Uh, sure.”
She lifted the back of her shirt to reveal a huge green Monster Energy “M” covering most of her upper back.
Bro: “Wow. That’s…something.”
Bride: “Awesome, right? And my fiancé got the same tattoo!”
Bro: “Really?…”
Bride: “I know, I know what you’re thinking. Copyright, right?”
“But what are they going to do? It’s already on my body! It’s ALREADY ON MY BODY! Ha ha!”
Bro: “Right. Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
Then at the ceremony, the two of them awkwardly showed it off to all their guests. There are even photos of it, and I’m still trying to track them down. It was a camouflage-themed wedding.
She wore an open-back camo dress with camo heels. She even had a camo veil. Honestly, I wish she’d gone all the way with full ghillie-suit headgear. The groom wore camo pants, camo boots, and a camo bow tie. He was, in fact, shirtless, though he did wear a camo baseball cap. I can still picture them walking down the aisle, backs shining in the sun, covered in petroleum jelly over a giant Monster logo.
Exactly the perfect wedding every kid dreams about. They stayed married for seven months.
84. Photo Finish
I’m in a wedding band, and once I had a bride get furious with me and the rest of the group because our instruments weren’t white or salmon-colored to match the decorations. She said we were going to ruin the photographs—even though I was playing during the reception, after all the formal pictures had already been taken. A sunburst jazz bass, a blue Stratocaster, and a red drum kit are not going to destroy your photos, dear.
85. You Can Pick Your Friends, But You Can’t Pick Your Clients
I work in catering, so I’ve seen more weddings than I ever expected. Most of them are straight out of a storybook—beautiful, carefully planned events in the $20,000–$40,000 range. Every detail is chosen with care. The only thing no one can fully control is the people.
I’ve seen everything from guests taking their clothes off and using bushes as bathrooms to people swimming naked in retention ponds. But out of all my stories, this one stands out the most.
A couple in their late twenties was getting married, maybe around 29. Their reception was in a chapel made almost entirely of glass. We had to clean the whole place before every wedding, so trust me—it was spotless.
All our venues have at least one bar, but this wedding party drank far more than usual. The celebration was still going strong, and about halfway through the reception, the groom stepped away from the bride and walked outside.
The bride was pretty intoxicated, so she didn’t notice at first. Once she realized he was gone, she looked around, spotted him outside, and tried to run to him in what I assume was meant to be a cute moment. Then came an awful crashing sound. She ran straight into the glass and split her nose open.
There was blood everywhere, she was in a lot of pain, and an ambulance had to be called. I never found out what happened after that, but it was definitely something to see.
86. Top Secret
Before the wedding, the bride had made her rules very clear in every possible way. One of the big ones was no social media posts until she gave permission—and definitely nothing before she posted first. A few hours before the ceremony, though, someone put up a post saying they were at the wedding or something along those lines.
It wasn’t mean or dramatic, just a harmless, generic post. But the bride saw it, and everyone could tell she was furious. Right after finishing her vows, she turned to the guests and said, “Can you all please unfriend Jennifer? I gave very clear instructions that there were to be no social media posts until I said it was okay, and she broke that rule today.”
Just picture it—she had literally just gotten married, and that was the first thing she wanted to address. Everyone gave this awkward little laugh like they thought she had to be joking… but she wasn’t. Then she stormed off, and her brand-new husband awkwardly followed after her. The whole mood shifted, and people immediately started coming up with reasons to leave.
I mean full-on fake emergency excuses: “I need to get back because I have to, um… actually… yeah, bye.” People left way earlier than normal. Nobody wanted to stick around and deal with tense small talk with the bride.
87. Shameless Saboteurs
I went to a wedding where there were basically three separate groups: the bride’s side, the groom’s side, and the groom’s parents, who seemed like their own hostile team. The groom’s parents absolutely hated the bride—they thought she wasn’t good enough for their son and were hoping the relationship would fall apart. Of course, the bride and groom still had to invite them, but they even asked the priest ahead of time to leave out the “Does anyone object?” part of the ceremony.
At the reception, there was a point where the groom’s father danced with the bride, and a few minutes later she rushed off the dance floor. When I found out what he had said to her, it was chilling. Apparently, he offered her $5,000 in cash to leave his son on the spot and get the marriage annulled. The reception included a flambeau entrée, and everyone kept glancing at the groom’s mother, half expecting her to grab one of the flaming skewers from a server and throw it at the bride.
They’re still married 30 years later and have two children, but as far as I know, they’re estranged from the groom’s family.
88. He Shoots, He Scores
When I was in high school, one of my hockey teammates had a baby with his girlfriend during their junior year. They decided to get married, and the ceremony was officiated by my teammate’s dad, who also happened to be our head coach. The entire wedding party was made up of the bride and groom’s immediate families plus the hockey team.
The wedding was held at a Golden Corral. And the reception? Also at the same Golden Corral. Then later that night, we had a hockey game. Somehow the team we were playing found out about the wedding and spent the whole game giving him a hard time over it. The situation may have felt awkward, but those guys were still being total jerks.
If anyone is wondering how the game went, I honestly don’t remember whether we won or lost. Hockey season is long and full of games, and this happened quite a while ago. Now, around seven years later, the couple has a second child, the guy is an officer in the Air Force, both of their kids play hockey, and he coaches and referees in their league.
He and his wife seem genuinely happy together, and I’m really glad everything worked out for them. And just to be clear, I never meant this story as an insult to them. They’re great together and are doing an amazing job raising their kids in a loving home where they have everything they need. Life hasn’t been easy for them, but they’ve handled it incredibly well.
I haven’t talked to my old teammate in a while, but I’ve seen his dad—our former coach—at alumni games, and they really are a wonderful family. They’re proof that you don’t need a huge, expensive, fancy wedding to have a happy life. If you have each other, plus family and friends, that’s what really makes it something worth celebrating.
89. This One Takes The Cake
I used to work as a wedding planner and coordinator, and one bride really stands out because she was so inconsistent with the vendors. During the planning process, she was incredibly sweet to me, and I didn’t see any sign of chaos until the actual wedding day. Honestly, it was like watching two different people. She wanted a big wedding—around 300 guests—and was spending serious money on the venue, the food, and basically every detail.
She never complained about the cost either, never asked for discounts, nothing like that. Since she wanted top quality and seemed to have a very large budget, I referred her to a well-known baker for the cake. I let her handle the cake details herself because I’d worked with that baker before and never had any issues. I assumed they’d do the usual tasting, choose a design, and that I’d see a beautiful cake show up on the wedding day.
That is not what happened. For some reason, she didn’t want to tell the baker the cake was for a wedding. My guess is she had heard that you can save money by ordering a regular cake, since some vendors charge more for weddings. And yes, that’s partly true—but there’s usually a reason for that added cost.
When something is for a wedding, vendors typically put in a lot more care, stress more about the timing and presentation, and often use better materials or include extra upgrades. It’s not always just an arbitrary fee. But she decided she didn’t want to pay wedding cake prices, so she told the baker it was for a birthday party.
The baker asked how many people it needed to serve, and she said “around 50.” She also didn’t want to pay for delivery, so she had her sister pick it up the morning of the wedding and drive it to the venue. One important detail here: this was a summer wedding in Texas.
So by the time the cake arrived at the venue—about six hours after it had been picked up—it was in rough shape. Some decorations had melted, it had gotten knocked around in the car, icing was smeared inside the box, and the whole thing was leaning to one side. On top of that, it was nowhere near big enough for a wedding with that many guests.
The moment I saw it, I knew it was a disaster. But we were only about an hour away from the ceremony, and there was no way to fix it. The bride came into the reception area with her makeup already done, saw the cake, and completely fell apart. She was screaming, crying, throwing things, dropping to the floor—the full meltdown.
She threatened to call off the wedding if we couldn’t somehow fix it. We did everything we could to calm her down and managed to get the makeup artist before she left so she could repair the bride’s now-ruined makeup. Then the bride looked in the mirror, saw that her hair and makeup were messed up, and had another meltdown because she wanted everything redone from scratch.
By the time she was fully redone, we were running about an hour late. I let the guests wait inside the reception room because it felt cruel to make everyone sit outside in 100-degree heat, but when the bride noticed people were already inside, she had yet another breakdown. For the rest of the wedding, she sulked the entire time, scowling and refusing to take photos with people.
Her brand-new husband kept coming over to hug her and try to cheer her up, and she either snapped at him or ignored him completely. Most of the guests left very early because the whole event felt painfully uncomfortable. So in the end, a lavish wedding with a $200,000 budget was basically ruined because she tried to save a few hundred dollars on the cake.
90. There Are Evil Plans—Then There’s This
At our wedding, one of the guests had recently gone through a truly awful divorce. His ex had made false claims about him in court as part of the divorce, and while he was fully cleared, that kind of experience can really shake a person—especially since he was still deeply in love with her.
So of course, she wasn’t invited. My wife and I had met her before everything went bad, though. Apparently, during the months leading up to our wedding, while the divorce was unfolding, she saw the invitation and decided to mail a letter to the venue. In it, she asked the manager to secretly find one of our friends and have them read the letter aloud during the reception as a surprise.
It sounded nice on the surface. It wasn’t. It was obviously her way of trying to get at her ex, and it upset our friend, made guests uncomfortable, and put our poor mutual friend—who had innocently agreed to read it, thinking it was a genuine note from someone close to us—in a really unfair position.
91. I’m Gonna Getcha
I was seeing a woman who asked me to go with her to her ex’s wedding. We’d only been together a few months, so being invited to a wedding felt like a pretty serious step...but I still said yes. I took the week off work, and we went all in for the trip. I tried to make the most of the time we had together, but she kept disappearing.
Then came the reception. She caused a scene in the most chaotic, unhealthy way possible. Right in front of the groom, the bride, and everyone else, she blurted out, “I’m still in love with you. We’ve been sleeping together all week, and I can’t stop thinking about you.” She was quickly escorted out after that.
The bride was obviously upset, but everyone tried to carry on. After I left, my “girlfriend” started trashing the hall and decorations on her way out, just completely melting down. It was unbelievably embarrassing. I assumed she was telling the truth, since she’d been gone so much, but I’m pretty sure most people there thought the whole thing was too wild to even believe.
I definitely regret not seeing who she really was sooner, but when you’re working a lot and trying to date at the same time, it’s hard to really get to know someone. A few months can fly by before you realize it. Then a month or two later...she ended up with the groom, and I’m pretty sure she had zero regrets about wasting my time.
She probably doesn’t feel bad at all about using me or helping wreck that man’s marriage. She was seriously troubled.
92. Leaving So Soon?
When I was in college studying photography, I became friends with another student who ran a wedding photography business while finishing his qualifications. After seeing my work, he asked if I wanted to help him shoot his next wedding. I said yes. The big day came, and I was ready to get photos of the groom, best man, ushers, and everyone else getting ready before the ceremony.
To my surprise, the groom refused to be in any pictures, saying he wasn’t feeling well. I honestly thought he should just push through—it was his wedding day, after all. But he wouldn’t budge, so we got no pre-ceremony photos of him. A little later, the ceremony happened, and then it was time for the bridal party photos at the church.
Once again, the groom refused to be in any pictures, which annoyed just about everyone. Then we got to the reception, the speeches started, and halfway through the father of the bride’s speech, the groom just got up and left. He repeated that he wasn’t feeling well. That was the last straw for the bride—she completely lost it. She pulled the little bride and groom figures off the cake and stomped on them.
She yelled, “I knew I shouldn’t have married him!” At that point, chaos broke out, with guests trying to comfort her. Everyone agreed he was being dramatic and acting like a total jerk. We were paid in full, even though it was obvious the job was basically over. I went home, put my feet up, had a few beers, and later got an unexpected call from my friend.
I thought he was calling to laugh a bit more about how bizarre the wedding had been. Not even close. He was calling to tell me the groom had died shortly after leaving the reception hall, and that our photo job had suddenly become a wedding-and-funeral package.
93. Every Rose Has Its Thorn
I’m a florist. One morning at 9 a.m., a bride and her mother came in wanting to order a bridal bouquet, a mother-of-the-bride orchid corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen. There was just one problem: the wedding was at noon. Yep, three hours away, and they wanted everything ready by the time they finished their hair appointment a few doors down.
The bride started flipping through our sample book, pointing out the exact style and flowers she wanted—garden roses with long trailing stephanotis and variegated ivy, all of which would have needed to be ordered from our suppliers at least a week in advance. She was stunned that we didn’t just keep expensive, delicate flowers like that on hand all the time.
Same story with the orchid for her mom’s corsage. My boss explained that since they hadn’t placed an order ahead of time, they’d have to choose from what we already had in stock, and the designs would need to be simple enough to put together quickly. The bride and her mother kept pointing at the book and arguing that we should have those exact flowers available.
Eventually, my boss took the book off the desk and tossed it behind the counter. The bride bounced between tears and whining that we were ruining her wedding day. My boss, who had absolutely no patience for brides in general, told her she had ruined her own day by waiting until the morning of the wedding to order flowers.
The mother tried to scold my boss for being rude. My boss told her she was welcome to go down the street to Vons and ask their flower department to make whatever they could from what was available. The mother said she’d do exactly that and assured the bride they’d have flowers by the time their appointment was over.
They both stormed out. I thought that was the end of it, but I was very wrong. My boss told me and another employee to start making six simple corsages. Meanwhile, she quickly put together a ribbon-wrapped bridal bouquet with some white roses that were almost past their best and a few fillers. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, the mother came back looking much less confident and quietly asked if we could still make what they needed.
We did. And we charged a very hefty rush fee.
94. Can’t Win Em All
I got married in May, and it was wonderful—except for two things.
First, a female friend from high school flew in for the wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, she told my mother and my female cousin—who my fiancée, now wife, is very close to—that she secretly wished she were the one dating me.
That eventually got back to my fiancée, thankfully after the wedding was over. But my mom and cousin told me before the ceremony, and it really stressed me out.
This woman had only ever been a friend in high school. We never dated, and she had never shown any romantic interest in me back then or afterward. We’re 39.
She gave us a very nice saucepan as a wedding gift. My wife now refers to it as “ and your saucepan,” which honestly makes me a little sad. Before all of this happened, we’d actually hoped to become closer friends with her, and that she and my wife might get along really well.
The other difficult part involved my wife’s oldest daughter, who is 9. Right before the wedding, she had a sudden emotional meltdown because her dad reacted strangely to the news that his ex-wife was getting remarried. They had been separated for about three years, and I had been dating my fiancée for two.
Before this, the 9-year-old had been our biggest supporter. For about a year, she had been drawing pictures of us in wedding clothes, even though we had never talked to her about marriage and weren’t living together.
She had been calling me “kind of like a stepdad,” which we gently discouraged, and she had been calling my two daughters her sisters, which we didn’t discourage. At the time, I was living next door to my fiancée with my two girls.
My wife also has two daughters. So it was really heartbreaking. The 9-year-old was crying and refusing to come out, and she had a pretty major role in the ceremony as co-maid of honor. We could have changed things at the last minute, but it wouldn’t have been easy.
We also knew this was part of her personality—she sometimes had intense but short-lived emotional episodes that usually passed within an hour. Unfortunately, we had guests waiting and couldn’t delay the whole ceremony long enough for her to calm down.
So in our wedding photos, she’s frowning. But about 10 minutes after the ceremony, she was back to herself and had a great rest of the evening.
95. Full Circle Moment
A friend of mine was getting married in five days, and I really didn’t like her fiancé. I was joking with another friend about it and sent a link to an article called “How To Stop a Wedding.” I didn’t realize my mistake until it was too late—I had accidentally sent it to the bride instead of my friend. Oops. It made the wedding pretty awkward.
But two years later, she divorced him, and we became friends again.
96. My Way Or The Highway
I’m not a wedding planner, but I was supposed to be in a wedding as a bridesmaid. The bride-to-be took the maid of honor, another bridesmaid, and me dress shopping. At her insistence, her mom and the groom’s mom came too. When we got to the bridal shop, we found out the bride and the two moms had already chosen the dress they wanted us to wear.
In theory, that was fine, though we’d been told we’d get to choose our own dresses. Still, it was her wedding, so we went along with it. But once we tried the dresses on, it became obvious there was a problem: they really didn’t flatter either of us, because we had very different body types and sizes. We came out to show the bride and both moms, and the moms immediately agreed the dress just wasn’t working. The bride’s reaction, though, was shocking.
She got really upset that we didn’t somehow look amazing in the exact same dress. Then she started making rude little comments about our appearances, hinting that we’d need to lose weight to wear them well, and telling one of the other bridesmaids she’d need a push-up bra to look “normal.” The moms ignored her behavior and asked an employee to help us find other options.
We live in a small city, so the store didn’t have a huge selection, but the employee still found about six other dresses in the color the bride wanted. We tried them all, but because our body types were so different, most of them didn’t work for both of us. The strapless styles looked off on the girls with fuller chests, while the long dresses overwhelmed the shorter ones, and so on.
The bride kept making comments about our bodies the whole time. Finally, the last dress we tried was simple enough that it looked decent on everyone. But of course, the bride didn’t like it because it didn’t make us look “sexy” enough. Worse, it had pockets, and she absolutely did not want her bridesmaids wearing dresses with pockets.
By then, literally everyone else liked that dress except her. She finally agreed to let us wear it, but she was clearly unhappy about it. Then we moved on to shoes. She told us we’d be wearing the same style she was, just in a different color. Strange, but we didn’t argue.
That plan fell apart when I tried mine on. I have very small feet—technically a kids’ size 3, though sometimes I can wear a women’s 5. The heels she picked were extremely high and had no straps. When I tried to walk, my feet kept sliding right out of them. They were also open-toed, so I couldn’t even pad the front the way I had with other shoes before.
On top of that, just standing in them was hurting my feet badly. I told her, and she watched me try to walk in them while they practically fell off. Her mom asked if they came in a smaller size, but they were dress shoes, so of course they weren’t made in children’s sizes. The bride’s answer?
“Once you start wearing them, your feet will swell and then they’ll fit.” Then she walked away. Her mom tried to reassure me that we’d “figure something out” and even paid for all of our outfits as a kind apology. I never found out what the solution would have been, though, because the bride and groom ended up cheating on each other at the same time, and the wedding was called off.
The bride didn’t even tell me herself. I heard it from the maid of honor. We aren’t friends anymore, and what’s sad is that this wasn’t even the main reason. I still can’t believe I let someone treat me—and other people she claimed were her friends—that way.
97. The Cruelest Trick
When my cousin married her wife, her parents, grandparents, and a few other older relatives stood up and walked out. They didn’t say anything or try to stop the ceremony; it was simply a display of disapproval. My cousin was crushed because she thought their presence meant they had finally accepted her and wanted to support her, but instead it turned out to be a hurtful stunt.
98. Plot Twist
I once went to a wedding where my wife and I quietly said to each other, “This marriage won’t last two years.” The ceremony was in the backyard of the bride’s house. They had rows of chairs set up outside, along with a wedding arch.
They’d also laid down a plastic tarp over the aisle. Right before the ceremony started, dark clouds rolled in. That really should have been the sign to move everything inside, but they had invited too many people.
As the ceremony began, it started to rain lightly. That’s when everything started to unravel in the most unbelievable way. The father of the bride was walking her down the aisle, slipped on the wet tarp, and landed flat on the ground.
By then the bride had reached the front, and the rain was getting heavier. Guests started trying to cover themselves with whatever they had, and some began to stand up. Then the bride turned around and shouted, “THIS IS MY WEDDING, NO ONE IS GOING TO RUIN IT, YOU ALL BETTER SIT DOWN!”
So everyone sat back down, and the wedding continued. By now it was really raining. The grass was turning into mud. Some women in the crowd—and even some of the bridesmaids—had makeup running down their faces.
My wife had my jacket over her head to stay dry. The couple finished their vows and kissed, and then everyone ran for the house and garage to get out of the rain. And remember the muddy grass? A lot of people slipped and fell on the way.
Once we got inside, people looked awful—makeup smeared, clothes muddy, hair soaked. A few women had to cover themselves because their wet clothes had become see-through.
Most of the men were handing over their jackets so the women could cover up. There were plenty of angry looks going around. The wedding cake had been outside too, and by the time it was brought in, the rain had ruined the decorations and it looked terrible.
Then the bride and groom started cutting the cake and feeding each other. That led straight into the next disaster: they smashed cake into each other’s faces and then turned it into a full-on food fight. A friend’s wife got hit in the face with purple icing.
Even the priest got splattered, ending up with yellow icing all over his white robe. There was no cake left to serve. The meal was no better—some of it was still frozen in the middle, and the rest was overcooked.
My wife—whose dress was filthy, makeup ruined, and hair a mess—told me she didn’t want to see those people again for six months. But that still wasn’t the end of the story. The couple divorced 11 months later after the groom came home from work and found his wife with two other men.
99. Comeuppance Bought And Paid For
A few years ago, my mom and I witnessed an incredible bridal meltdown while I was shopping for my wedding dress. We were at a small local bridal shop when another mother and daughter walked in. The consultant who had been helping us went over to greet them. The mother said they were there to pick up her daughter’s dress, so the consultant looked up the name in the computer, frowned, and said, “Ma’am, you never actually bought the dress.”
“What do you mean?” the mother asked. The consultant showed her the notes on the screen. “You said you wanted to think about it and asked if we could hold it. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn’t hear from you, we assumed you passed on it.”
“Well, we want it now.”
“It’s been over eight months,” the consultant explained. “We sold that dress a long time ago. But I can order another one and have it rushed here in a few weeks.”
That’s when the explosion started. “This is unacceptable!” the mother yelled. “Her alterations are in two hours! The wedding is in a week! I cannot believe you sold her dress!” Meanwhile, the bride was slumped against the desk, sobbing like something awful had happened. My mom and I just stood there staring.
The consultant was doing her best to stay calm, but she looked just as confused as we were. “Ma’am, we had no way of knowing you still wanted it. You never called. You never paid a deposit. The dress wasn’t yours until you bought it.”
After more yelling from the mother and more crying from the bride, they finally left. The consultant came back over to us, and I asked, “Does this happen a lot?”
The poor woman just sighed and said, “All the time.”
It still amazes me. How do you schedule alterations for a dress you never purchased? Why wait until one week before the wedding to pick up a dress you didn’t actually own? How do people reach adulthood without understanding how buying something works?
Flickr, Office of Public Affairs
100. Speaking from the Heart
The most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever seen at a wedding wasn’t the fault of the bride or groom. It was the bride’s father. I was the best man, so I had a front-row seat to all of it. The couple was young, and they were getting married after the bride became pregnant. It hadn’t been planned, but they clearly loved each other and believed marriage was the right step.
At the reception, I was sitting next to the bride’s father and noticed him looking over a prepared speech again and again. I could see phrases like “not ideal” and “would have preferred not to welcome you into the family under these circumstances.”
Right before the groom stood up to give his speech, the bride’s father got up to use the restroom and left his notes behind.
I knew I had to do something before he turned the whole reception into a disaster. So I took the speech and later acted like I had no idea what happened to it. I’m not proud of stealing it, but I don’t regret it.
In the end, he stood up, said a few vague and polite things about love, and sat back down without causing a scene. I never told the groom, and I’m happy to say the couple is still happily married twenty years later.
