It’s just one day that people spend months or even years obsessing over making sure everything will be 100% perfect—what could go wrong? Turns out, a whole lot. From family fights to embarrassing scenes, these weddings turned into total disasters, and there's no better spectacle than a ceremony that goes completely off the rails.
1. Lap Dog
I once worked at a wedding reception and watched as the bride got intoxicated and sat on some other dude's lap for two full hours, flirting with him so openly. Seeing the groom was painful. He just sat there by himself at the head table with a defeated look on his face. I could not have felt worse for this guy. I have no idea what happened to this couple, but I can’t imagine they lasted too long.
2. All In The Family
I photographed a lot of weddings for people who were filthy rich. A few years ago, I worked a church wedding for a fairly large group. The bride and groom were in their late 20s. The best man was the groom's uncle, who was in his 40s or 50s. The ceremony began without a hitch; however, the bride looked extremely nervous. I was trying to get photos where she looked happy, but she wasn’t giving me much to work with.
Halfway through the ceremony, she started to sway slightly. They got to the vows, and about three words in, she lost her breakfast all over the groom and herself. A commotion stirred as the bridal party rushed to her aid, and she started sobbing. I stopped taking photos at this point and started listening to what was going on. I figured she was sobbing about ruining her wedding, but in truth, she was keeping a dark secret.
Through her wailing, she admitted that she had morning sickness. She continued crying, as the groom repeatedly pointed out they hadn't slept together yet. As another wave of vomit came out, the groom asked her who the father was. She just gave a long guilty stare at the uncle. The groom turned to the uncle, and without missing a beat, socked him right in the face. The uncle went down, and chaos ensued.
3. What A Way To Go
I've been to a few awful weddings, but this one was the worst. I did a dessert table for a wedding at my old country club job once. As I was setting up, people started shuffling in...keep in mind, the actual marriage ceremony was supposed to be going on at that moment, so nothing was fully set up. The couple was nowhere to be found.
It felt more like a funeral than anything else; just people talking quietly amongst themselves. I tracked down the club's wedding photographer since I knew he'd probably have details and I found him chatting with a bridesmaid. Apparently, the couple was super Christian, conservative, and young—like, in their 20s. The groom got sent to a “pray away the gay camp” as a high schooler after getting caught with his best friend.
He was there for a year. When he came back, he met this girl and they decided to get married. Well, he ran into the guy he got caught with like two months before the wedding, decided he missed their friendship, and they started hanging out again. As the wedding got closer, he realizes: “What the heck am I doing?” He started freaking out, and the night before the wedding, he went to the guy's house. That's when it got WEIRD.
He called the bride and she refused to accept that he was not showing. So she went through the whole mess of getting ready and he didn't show up. She lost her darn mind on the speakerphone with him at the church where everyone could hear, all while he was yelling, “I'm gay! I like men! I love him, and my parents can't force me anymore! This isn't about you and you'll thank me in the long run!”
4. That’s Nuts
A co-worker of mine was at his best friend’s wedding. At the reception, there were very specific rules about the food—no nuts was the big one. There were a couple of people there, including the maid of honor, who was severely allergic to them. Well, the venue served something that had nuts, and the maid of honor went anaphylactic. Her Epi-pen wasn’t effective, and she passed on the way to the hospital. Obviously, lawsuits were expected.
5. No Show Nuptials
I've catered many weddings and there have been some memorable ones. Fights between guests, wedding cakes falling over, things spilled on wedding dresses, the lot. But there was one I’ll never forget. It was an all-day do with a small ceremony of a few close friends and family. There was then a big reception filled with a huge buffet and a free bar.
It was all in the same venue and they had paid for 250 evening guests. But here's the thing—only 30 guests turned up, at most. My heart broke for this couple. A beautifully converted barn, loads of food and drinks, great music—but no guests. At about 10 pm (the venue was licensed until 11 pm), the buffet food had barely been touched.
The few people who were there ate, but it hardly made a dent as it was planned for so many more people. I asked the mother of the bride if she wanted me to cover and refrigerate the untouched food so the new couple could take it home. Her reply made me cringe. She said, "Oh no, there are still a lot of people coming." It was the most awkward I've ever felt in my life.
No more guests showed. There was a flash of car headlights in the distance at about 10:30 pm and the bride BEAMED when she thought it was latecomers arriving. But no, it was just taxis arriving to pick up the few who were there. It's the only event I have ever done where we didn't have to ask people to leave the venue. At 11 pm, the place was empty. Then we found out the whole story.
In a nutshell, the bride’s parents paid for the day, and the happy couple had zero control over their guest list. Her parents invited all their “friends” to the evening function, but in reality, it was just associates they wanted to flex on—resulting in no one caring at all about an invite to a wedding where they didn't know the bride or groom. It was basically just a networking event for the bride’s parents.
6. Privacy, Please
I went to a bachelor party in Vegas. The bachelor hooks up with a girl, and gives her his cell phone number so they can continue the party that night. This backfired in the sharpest way imaginable. See, the bride-to-be is sitting at home with the iPad, getting all of the iMessages from the girl as they are coming in. She canceled the wedding that day.
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7. You Can’t Picture This One!
I was the photographer at my childhood friend’s wedding. We had grown up one block away from one another. Our parents knew each other and liked each other, but he was a bit difficult as a kid, so we lost touch about the start of puberty. When I got the call about the wedding, I hadn't seen the guy in at least 15 years.
My mom was the one who called me about it, and she actually asked me to be in his wedding party. I told her we hadn't even spoken in a decade and a half, and I really didn't think it was appropriate to be in his wedding party. My mom told me that he didn’t have any friends over the years, so this would be a personal favor to her and to his mom.
As part of the favor, my mom and I would do the photography for the wedding as our wedding gift. Reluctantly, I agreed. I went over to meet everyone, and within seconds, I came to a horrifying revelation. I suddenly knew why they needed me so badly. The guy hadn’t brushed his teeth in years. They were one solid mass. His bride was massively overweight and overbearing beyond belief. I sucked it up.
Out of the blue, after the ceremony, the bride decided she wanted to have a white limo take her to the Hilton. It was June. There were no limos to be had, and the Hilton was booked. The groom’s older brother, who was the best man, was furiously trying to find something because the bride was in full meltdown mode. In a fury, she ripped her headpiece out, taking about a third of her hair with it.
She stormed into the back room of the hall. The groom said he was going to try and talk her down and went back there with her. A few minutes later, the double doors of the backroom slammed open, and he came running out—streaming blood and screaming. There was a butcher knife through his palm. His bride tackled him from behind and yanked the knife out of his hand.
She looked like she was going to end him in front of the assembly. The best man and I both tackled her. The groom slipped out and ran to his car. After biting the best man, she squirmed free and was going after the groom. He backed out and put the car into drive. She leapt on the hood and grabbed the wipers. He gunned it, and as he exited the parking lot, she rolled off into the street and hit the curb.
We ran up to her and found her all scratched up and bawling. The wedding got annulled the next day.
8. In The Dark
I used to do catering work, and this one time, my boss sent me to a remote location in the woods on a beautiful river. I found out while we were loading the truck that the boss wouldn't be going and that I was essentially in charge. My boss promised me that everything was taken care of...Little did I know it would be a complete nightmare.
You can imagine my surprise when I arrived at this remote location and literally nothing was set up. We were only about an hour early, so I frantically started trying to get the tent in order. We needed extension cords to run the coffee and tea, but there were none there. We needed tables to set up the food, but there were none. I somehow whipped up some last-minute fixes for the missing things.
Then, just as the bride and groom are arriving, it got so much worse. We blew the fuse for our only power source and the place was plunged into darkness. We reset the breaker and I moved some stuff around, but the fuse blew again. This delicate dance went on for the entire evening—through speeches, the first dance, everything. I think the worst part of the entire experience was when we went to rinse our dishes before boxing them up and found out that the water pump for the place stopped working and needed to be primed again.
At that point, I said forget about it, we'll take them back dirty, and the crew and I spent several more hours after the long ride home doing them. That was the day I worked a 15-hour shift without a break—and still ruined the wedding. Needless to say, I quit that job.
9. I’m Like A Bird
I was the best man at my sister-in-law’s wedding. After a whole year of planning, all the bride wanted was a crate of doves to be released while they said handwritten vows to each other. It was a very small, non-denominational wedding. The day arrived in early summer and all seemed to be going well...except something was off with the bird handlers.
They showed up a bit late and were sourcing help from the wedding party to get everything in line. When the time came to say their vows, I helped the handler carry the chest with the doves in it over to the altar where the bride and groom were standing. Vows were just about wrapping up and the handler gave ME the signal to open the chest. I opened it and witnessed a horrific sight.
I saw 20 to 30 DEAD DOVES IN THE CRATE! I immediately closed it and tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Too late. The look of horror on the bride’s face was all that was needed. We spent the next few hours trying to cheer everyone up, but by the end of the reception, the entire wedding party had organized and filed animal cruelty complaints on the handler. It was all anyone could focus on.
10. Surprise, Surprise
I used to work at a pretty upscale catering hall in New Jersey back when I was in college, and we had one instance where I witnessed a ruined wedding. We all thought it was weird when a couple of the groomsmen got access to the reception room during cocktail hour. It was for “decorating,” they said. Not something we normally saw the men do.
In any case, we got through the main courses just fine, and then one thing became VERY clear to us staff. The bride’s side of the family was VERY conservative. They didn’t drink, they barely danced, and they watched wide-eyed as the groom’s side of the party went wild. Anyway, it came time for the speeches, and about halfway through his speech, the best man stood up.
He said something like, “Hey, bride’s family—I know you think your girl is so sweet and innocent, but if you want to see what they’re REALLY like, look under your seat! That's when things got insane. Well, taped under EVERY chair was a picture of the bride and groom caught in the act. The groom’s family and friends roared with laughter, but the bride’s side was MORTIFIED.
There were so many fights that broke out that night. Did I mention this was in New Jersey? The wedding was pretty much over at that point.
11. Too Much Fun
I worked on a tropical island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, and loads of weddings happened there. Most days, there’d be one or two. One time, this groom’s party came through my bar. They were on the bucks party thing before the wedding the next day, and they were pretty in their cups by 4 pm. I figured they started early and would finish early, given they had a sunrise ceremony.
About an hour later, they left for another bar on the island. Then, the bride’s party came through, equally sloshed. I finished work at 9 pm, then came back three hours later to work in the nightclub. I got in at midnight and started pouring drinks. It was busy as heck with like 250 people in the club. Around 1 am, the bride, groom, and their wedding parties rolled in absolutely destroyed.
They looked disgusting. I had no idea why security let them in because I wasn’t going to be serving them. They left about 45 minutes later, which means they would roughly arrive back at their hotel rooms around 2 am with the expectation that the bride and her party needed to be up at 4 am for hair and makeup. But they all decided to keep partying. “We’ll just stay up all night and keep drinking until the wedding!”
At that point, they had to have been drinking for 15 to 18 hours. It backfired so badly. Ceremony time rolled around and she couldn’t walk down the aisle in her heels, so she tossed them off. The groom and all his friends were drunk as heck and could barely stand. They tried to say their vows, but the celebrant couldn’t understand them. This was a huge problem.
She wasn’t allowed to marry them because they were too far gone to consent to marriage. The whole wedding was canned. A simple wedding like the one they had cost $35,000, so they wasted all that money. They did have the reception, though. From what I was told, the bride passed out about an hour in. The groom threw up everywhere.
The mothers of the bride and groom were both crying.
12. Please RSVP
We attended a wedding for a family member who didn't have a lot of money. It was hosted at an inexpensive venue, but it was still nice. My heart broke when only a third of the people invited showed up. You could see the hurt in the couple’s face. They came up to our table and said, “Do you have any friends in the city?” They had all this food for 100 people but only 30 guests.
They were willing to have complete strangers come down just so their money and food wouldn’t go to waste. We hadn’t handed over our card with cash inside yet, so my husband hit the ATM and added another $100.
13. Keep It In The Family
Several years ago, I got a phone call from the maid of honor for a wedding I was going to attend (as a guest) two weeks from then. She was flustered, but managed to get out: "There's no wedding, Groom called it off. He's in love with someone else." Well, I didn't press. I was friends with both of them, so I knew that the full details would eventually make their way back to me. I could not believe what I found out.
Turns out, a couple weeks before the wedding, the groom called the bride and said he was coming over. They needed to talk. When he got to her apartment, he broke down in tears and confessed that he was in love with someone else. He loved her, but couldn't marry her because he didn't love her in the way a bride deserves. There was much crying and shouting over it all, but eventually, the bride recovered from the news enough to ask him who he was in love with.
"Well," Groom said, "It's [Bride's Brother]." The wedding was definitely off at that point. Now, five or six years later, the groom and the bride's brother are married and happy. However, I lost contact with the bride shortly after her wedding plans imploded, so I'm not sure if she ever forgave the boys for that one.
14. I Just Keep Coming Back To You
After the wedding at the reception, the newlyweds took forever to show up. They were nearly an hour late. When they did arrive, they were arguing loudly the entire time. They got "introduced" and we all clapped as per tradition and they sat down at the main table in a huff. Sometime between the appetizer and the main course, the argument started again.
The groom stormed off and my girlfriend and I were nosey so we went to see what was up. He ended up in the hotel lobby on his cell phone. We thought nothing of it and we were about to go back when the wife shows up, still obviously in her wedding dress, and continues to ream him out. Now for the first time, we can hear what the argument is about. As we listened, our jaws dropped.
He had invited his ex to the wedding. She showed up to the ceremony and that threw the bride off. Apparently, also...he had cheated on the new wife with this ex-girlfriend several times, with the last time being only about a month prior to the wedding. Additionally, the ex-girlfriend/mistress was on her way to come pick up the new husband to take him away from the new bride...because she was "acting crazy" according to the groom.
After a couple minutes of watching this train wreck of an argument, a rust bucket sedan shows up with the ex-girlfriend in it. The groom gets into the car with his ex or whatever the heck she is and they drive off. Last words went to the bride, though, who screamed at him as he tore off: "Well, I guess I'm going to go back to sleeping with your brother then, you jerk!”
So, they are no longer married now.
15. Sister Act
First of all, if you've never been to a Jewish wedding, the way it goes is, first they have the reception with the bride and groom in separate rooms, then the ceremony, then family goes away to sit for pictures while the guests sit down to eat. Then the bride and groom come in and the dancing starts. In between the ceremony and the pictures, though, is what's called "Yichud" which doesn't really translate, but it approximately means "isolation together."
The bride and groom lock themselves in a room and are observed by two reliable witnesses outside the door to have stayed therein long enough to have consummated the marriage. Although nobody actually does it there; it's considered declasse. This is one of the things that actually solemnizes the marriage. So. After the yichud, the bride comes out and drops a bombshell.
She announces, "Sorry everyone, the wedding's off. We'll be getting a divorce, and we're returning all the gifts…except for the bedroom set, where I caught my new husband trying it out with my sister last week." So? Well, think about this. She knew about the episode before the wedding. Why'd she go through with it? Because under Jewish law, if you've once been married to a woman, even after divorcing her you aren't allowed to marry her sister at any time until your first wife has passed.
By going through with the ceremony, she in effect locked her sister out of ever being able to get together with her soon-to-be-ex...
16. Stairway From Heaven
I'm a wedding photographer. I was at one really fancy event a couple of years ago. It was a typical outdoor deal at a swanky location in the middle of nowhere. The place was really nice—it had a large concrete stairway flanked by water fountains that led down to the altar area, so the bride could be seen by all like she was ascending from heaven.
The ceremony began and the bridal party came down to take their places. Then the bride appeared with her father. She took three or four steps down the concrete steps, then disaster hit. Her shoe twisted on her and she tumbled down a good 12 feet or more. She busted out the majority of her front teeth in the fall, and there was so much blood all over her.
With the place being so isolated, it took a good 40 minutes for the ambulance to arrive and she was in intense pain. Ultimately, she was OK and I got an email from them weeks later with the reschedule date. This time, there were no stairs anywhere in sight.
17. The Best Laid Plans
The bride’s father was 45 minutes late to walk his daughter down the aisle. While we were waiting, the air conditioning broke down in the venue. It was over 100 degrees outside and humid like I’d never felt before. Plus, the place was overcrowded. You could barely move without bumping into someone else and in the heat, that was extra miserable.
I guess the air conditioning problem had also affected the refrigeration or something because most of the food was spoiled. The only food on the buffet was salad, spaghetti, and rolls. Not enough to feed even half the guests. Most people left after the first dance, and two of the bride’s aunts fainted. The bride and the wedding planner were crying.
18. When It Rains, It Pours
It was an outdoor ceremony at a golf course with an indoor reception at the clubhouse. About an hour before the ceremony, the skies went dark and storm clouds began rolling in. I always tell my outdoor brides we need to call the wedding no later than 30 minutes in advance so we have time to move guests indoors, as well as any important items (flowers, decor, etc).
In this case, the bride had a beautiful indoor venue that could be used for both the ceremony and reception, which is why there was no tent. I suggested to the bride that she move her ceremony inside, but she said no. She wanted it outside. I showed her the clouds. "It's Seattle,” she said. "There are always clouds." I thought to myself, well yes, but these are storm clouds and you have 200 people sitting outside on a golf course...
She wouldn't budge. At the 20-minute mark before the ceremony, it started to get windy. Nothing big yet, but this was just another sign that wet weather was upon us. She still wouldn't reconsider. Several guests were then seated outside; though many others hovered inside the reception area because it started to get cold out. I told her this and warned her what would happen if it rained during the ceremony.
She still wanted it outside. When the ceremony began, everything immediately unraveled. First, it started to sprinkle. Bridesmaids were getting wet as they walked down the aisle. Shoes were sinking into the grass. Guests were looking worried. The bride walked down the aisle just as big wind gusts came. The rain started to fall in earnest, and it was too gusty to use umbrellas.
We weren't even five minutes into the ceremony when the heavens suddenly opened and it POURED. Guests started running inside. The ceremony was still happening for the bride, but the guests were bailing. Musicians grabbed their instruments and headed inside. The bridal party continued to stand there like nothing was happening, much like the band on the Titanic.
There were maybe 20 guests left. It was an open downpour, so anyone left behind was just soaked. The officiant was rushing at this point; though, there wasn't really anyone left to witness the vows. Before they got to the kiss, the lightning began. At that point, they finally bailed. The bride and bridal party spent the reception looking like drowned rats.
The bride was just ruined. Runny makeup, hair smushed. She had rashes on her skin from being wet all night. Wet lace and heavy ball gowns are also not easily worn wet. All the decor that was meant to be moved inside following the ceremony was ruined...Thousands of dollars on flowers and centerpieces down the drain. Literally.
And in the end, hardly anyone witnessed the ceremony at all, and they didn't even get to finish. Bad bride.
19. One Special Day
I'm a former clergyman. I used to be a deacon and I was fully empowered to officiate weddings; however, no one, in my experience, ever asked the deacon to do a wedding unless they are a family friend. So I was a little shocked and somewhat suspicious when this couple approached me. They wanted two things: for me to officiate, and to use our church.
Their wedding was only two weeks away and their first venue fell through. They said they just wanted to rent the church and that they would have a family friend officiate, but unless the family friend just so happened to be the clergy of the same denomination, the latter wasn't an option. As I asked more questions, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the couple.
Something was off, and after a bit of back and forth between us, they finally came out with the shocking truth. Apparently, the couple had broken up after the invites had been sent, but the bride was not going to be deprived of her "special day" for some technicality like not having a groom. Deposits were already in place anyway, so they figured they'd throw the big wedding, have the reception, and then go their separate ways.
I asked the groom why he would be participating in this farce. He told me that the father of the bride was willing to give the groom the honeymoon tickets and the hotel. He basically got a free vacation to show up and look sincere. The reason why the first venue dropped them was that they didn't want to stage a fake wedding. Well, neither did we.
20. Gimme Gimme Gimme
Friend invites me to his wedding. He and fiancée are fairly poor and have lived together for years. They're both semi-disabled (his is PTSD, hers is physical) and on fixed incomes, and live in a somewhat expensive area. They have three gift registries (Target, Macy's, Crate & Barrel) and a HUGE invite list—over 300 friends and family members.
All the stuff on the registries is standard stuff like towels, coffee cups, flatware, etc. Anyway, people fly out, get ready for the wedding, and two days before the wedding is the bachelor party. That’s when the dark truth comes out. The friend has too much to drink and admits that she's not really his fiancée; they are just roommates and they have no intention of getting married, they just needed the stuff.
They're going to cancel the wedding tomorrow and keep all the gifts. I had to protect him from getting his butt kicked by about two dozen people. Then he had to have the fiancée come clean to everyone since he was too hungover. They ended up returning most of the gifts to people—but a surprising number of people let them keep the gifts. As his grandfather said, "If you needed these things that badly to lie like this, you must have been very desperate."
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21. A Scheduling Conflict
I once witnessed a bride show up almost two hours late to her own wedding. This was in Southern California, in an open field with no water and no shade. She shows up and wants to get married in her yoga outfit. The groom got very angry and shut the whole thing down. When she refused to change her clothes, the groom decided to just leave her there looking stupid and they never got married.
I spoke with my uncle and it turns out that the groom had been having some suspicions that his fiancé was sleeping with her personal trainer. When she showed up to the wedding in her yoga outfit, it was all he needed to see to call off the wedding. She ended up getting married to her personal trainer shortly after, and then they got divorced soon after.
22. Her Own Worst Enemy
I work as a wedding server. As soon as someone says “Bridezilla.” I think of this one story where the manager of our hotel had to shut down the wedding halfway through. This was the Bridezilla of all the Bridezillas I've ever seen. There were a lot of little things leading up that were casual Bridezilla—until the wedding took a dark turn.
At one point, she accused the wedding server staff of taking her veil...then the manager found it in her room and also showed her the card swipes to her room proving only she had been in the room that day. About 20 minutes later, she was screaming at some poor front desk employee accusing her of taking her wedding boots.
The manager intervened again, and after a long talk the photographer told them he had a photo of the boots on the staircase of the church, and asked if she had worn them since...When she said no, she told our place it was our job to have picked them up and made sure she had them, even though the church was not related to our place at all.
THEN shortly after she started opening the wedding gifts frantically inside the ballroom and screaming at anyone and everyone, guests included, saying someone took her wedding certificate. After that, our manager gathered the wedding staff and told us to take off our uniform jackets, empty them in front of him, then to clock out and go home.
Which we all did. None of us took anything. We heard next day that the maid of honor had the certificate and after we left the wedding was shut down completely.
23. The Unhappy Hippy
I worked a wedding where the bride and groom were hippies, while the groom's father was the chief of the local police. They were all from the same little town. One side of the room was full of officers, and the other side was full of dread-locked, patchouli-wearing, barefooted hippies. After dinner was over, the entire hippy crowd went outside and stood in a huge circle to get high while the officers looked on with utter disgust on their faces. It was epic—but then it got weird.
The bride was off her rocker but eventually came to her senses when she caught wind that someone was planning an after-party without her approval. She didn't like that one bit. She started screaming at the top of her lungs, "WHERE IS SHE?" over and over again while storming around. When she found, the girl, a bridesmaid, she proceeded to freak out on her.
It was in the middle of the dance floor, in front of 300 people. The bridesmaid started to cry and the bride completely lost her mind. All anyone could do was stare with their mouths hanging wide open in disbelief....the words that came out of that bride were some of the absolute worst. Several people tried to step in, but the bride lashed out at everyone.
It was the single most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. The girl ran off and the bride proceeded to pass out on a couch in the bathroom. Classy girl. When it's your "big day," for the love of God, please be of sound mind.
24. The Couple Had A Small Problem
The best man staggered up to give a speech, saying how beautiful the bride looked. But it was all downhill from there. He then continued to say that she would have trouble with the groom in bed because he had a micro member. He then started yelling that while being dragged off. The groom slumped his head into his hands out of utter embarrassment. His bride got up sobbing and ran out.
Apparently, this couple had both been saving themselves for marriage, so she didn’t know. I felt horrible for both of them. It was the most awkward thing I ever experienced at a wedding.
25. The Hatfields And The McCoys
I was a bridesmaid at my then-friend’s wedding. She, and the groom's entire family, were always fighting. The groom was the spoiled youngest child in his family, who was always referred to as the baby. My friend was the awful woman who was stealing the baby away from the family. There was also this huge blow-up between the parents because the bride was from a very well-to-do family and the groom was not.
At the wedding itself, the bride was continuously being called names by the groom’s adult sisters, the groom’s mother was in constant hysterics, and when she wasn’t making a scene, she was glaring at the bride, and everyone was wasted except for me. In fact, I was loudly criticized and shamed by the bride and her friends because I couldn’t drink due to my epilepsy.
After that, I decided that I had had enough and left.
26. A Surprise Gift
The bride and groom had been together for a long time and were trying to have children for years with no luck. They got engaged and began planning this massive wedding when they found out that she was finally pregnant. By the time the wedding day came, the bride was about seven months along. The guests were having a blast at the reception.
However, no one had seen the bride and groom for a while. People went looking for them, with no luck. A few minutes later, the groom appeared—and everyone gasped in horror. He was carrying his new bride in her completely blood-soaked wedding gown. He carried her out to a waiting ambulance that he had called from the bathroom they were in.
The bride gave birth to a baby that was very premature but alive. She suffered blood loss and was unconscious. The baby was taken to a nearby hospital that was equipped for preemies. The bride was taken to a different hospital, which was pretty far away. The groom spent his wedding day going back and forth between the two hospitals.
When the bride woke up, she insisted on going to the other hospital to see her baby. The first pictures of them as a family are of them looking down at their teeny baby, with the bride still wearing her tiara.
27. The Fighting Irish
Many years ago, I was working as a barman in an Irish hotel. The hotel was struggling, so we took a wedding booking from a notorious family. Their daughter was marrying a member of a similar family from the other side of the country. The families were very large, so the wedding was huge. About two hours into the reception, things took a crazy turn.
The first sign something was wrong was that all the women suddenly made a beeline for the door. Thankfully one of the floor managers had seen this before and quickly pulled the waitresses out of the way. Once the women were clear of the floor, the men started laying into one another. I saw a bottle fly past, and we pulled the shutter down over the bar. It was the closest thing to a massacre I'd ever seen.
There were easily fifty men knocking the heads off of one another. Someone drove a car into the emergency exit. Chairs went through windows. The fight spilled out to the rest of the hotel while the staff was locked behind the bar or in the kitchen. We called law enforcement, who took their time getting there in hopes that the brawlers would tire one another out.
Finally, when it was over, we had to comp every other guest. We spent the rest of that night, until about four in the morning, cleaning up blood, glass, and human waste. The place never recovered. We had to cancel the next three weddings due to the damage, and once word got around, we couldn't get any more. It shut down soon after.
28. When Doves Cry
I went to a wedding that was held in a barn. The barn door was open throughout most of the pre-reception setup and the ceremony itself. At the end of the ceremony, they released a dozen doves. They didn't realize that if you're releasing doves, don't release them anywhere near open ceiling fans. Half of them flew back in, hit the metal fans, and exploded.
There was blood everywhere. The bride was sobbing, and the groom was mad at the dove guy. It was chaos. My wife and I just left—there was no saving that.
29. Rap It Up Champ
My wife was the officiant at a wedding. The bride was gorgeous in a revealing bridal gown, and the groom was in baggy jeans, a T-shirt, and a trucker hat. He was also plastered. He took a shot, chased it with Old English 40, and said, "Let's do this," like Rocky Balboa. As soon as my wife started the ceremony, the groom turned to her and said something utterly chilling.
He said, "I'll pay you $100 to shut up." He pulled out vows he wrote himself and started rapping them—badly. The pain went on for a good two minutes while both sides of the family looked like they wanted to crawl under the lawn to escape. The bride stood there frozen in horror. It seemed no one was expecting this free-form verse.
My wife skipped whole sections of the ceremony, declared them husband and wife, got the paperwork signed, and we got out of there fast.
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30. A Sobering Ultimatum
A couple of years ago, I went to a wedding where the groom and groomsmen began drinking at 9 am. I wasn't in the wedding party, but about an hour before the wedding, I got a call from the best man. The officiant had stopped by and said that if they weren’t going to sober up, he wasn’t going to perform the wedding. I headed up to the room they were in and began trying to sober them up.
Somehow they sobered up enough to get dressed and go to the wedding. They stood up there swaying but made it through; however, the bride was not happy. Then came the reception. About 10 minutes in, one of the groomsmen decided he needed a drink to calm his stomach. That's when the nightmare began. While looking toward the bride and groom, he started to projectile vomit all over them.
I'm not sure how he is still alive after that.
31. A Sign From Above?
I went to an elaborate outdoor ceremony with tents set up and a string quartet playing. Just as the bride and groom reached the altar, dark clouds started to roll in with distant booms of thunder. As the couple was about to take their vows, it started hailing golf ball-sized hail. The downpour was so heavy, and the winds were so strong that you couldn't hear a word they said.
The lawn turned into a slippery mud pit to the point where the dance floor began floating away. As they got to the “I do” part, lightning hit nearby, and everyone's ears were ringing. Part of the tent collapsed, and everyone ran for the main house or their vehicles. They finished up the vows in the main hallway, and the marriage lasted six months.
I think someone was trying to tell them something, and they wouldn't listen.
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32. Into The Woods
My cousin’s wedding was in the middle of August during a sweltering heatwave. They had it in the middle of the woods, with mosquitoes as far as the eye could see. Most people didn't have a place to sit, and those that did, had a nice splinter-filled wooden table, the kind you would set up for camping. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Their toddler was screaming throughout the entire ceremony, and the bride, who was nine months pregnant, was cursing the entire time about how hot it was. She smacked her dad as they walked down the aisle because he stepped on her toe. My brother's job was to walk up and put two goldfish into one fishbowl as a sign of partnership, except one of the fish was a goner.
He dropped one live fish in and one dead fish. Need I say more?
33. A Dark Turn
I was studying photography and used to act as an assistant to a well-known wedding photographer. One day, we went to a couple's wedding. He shot digital and I shot black and white film. We spent all day with the couple from 9 am through until 2 am the next morning when we left. I could see how genuinely in love they were.
It was only a day, but I got to know them quite well and I really liked them both. The next morning, I got a call from the photographer and his voice was shaky. He hit me with the most gut-wrenching news—he explained that the groom had been killed that night after the reception party. Three guys had broken into their bungalow to steal their wedding gifts. The groom got out of bed to stop them and they executed him in front of the bride. I was in shock for about two weeks.
The next weekend, the photographer and I went to the bride's house to present her with the photos. We'd worked together to get the job massively accelerated so she had the photos of her husband. We did it at our own expense and didn't charge her a penny for the day or all the prints and album. It was sort of the least we could do.
Because my photos didn't matter as much, I'd been able to simply capture those natural moments between them, rather than the staged wedding photos. So they had the normal album pictures but also about 150 snaps of just them being a couple. She was in tears from the moment we arrived until we left a few hours later. She was a shadow of the woman I'd met only a week earlier. That still haunts me.
34. For The Birds
A friend of my girlfriend was getting married. The wedding was quite normal—they got married in the local church, then there was a party in a nice restaurant. The photographer asked the bride and her bridesmaids (my girlfriend was one of them) to go outside for some photos. Some minutes later, one of the bridesmaids came back asking for help. The most unexpected thing had happened.
Apparently, there were some swans that attacked the photographer and the majority of the people around him were not doing anything other than laughing. In their defense, it was hard not to—the guy who was running around and screaming.
35. Stage Fright
It was a big wedding with around 500 people. It was all the wife's doing—she wanted a huge $70,000 wedding. I was a groomsman. Pre-wedding, the groom was nervous as heck. There was a lot of pressure for the day to be perfect, and it was her dream wedding, yadda yadda. At some point, a bottle was pulled out. It went from a few "calm the nerves" shots to finishing the whole bottle.
We gave him water, got him in the shower, and then redressed him. Midway through her vows, he puked all down the front of her dress. It was horrible, but it was great to watch. They're going on eight years strong.
36. She Went Out Partying Till The End
One wedding guest decided that the wedding wasn't enough fun, so during the ceremony, she was downing pot brownies. During the cocktail hour, she loaded up on drinks. In the middle of the dance floor, she began peeing herself, then fell backward and hit her head on a pylon. She was knocked out with pee dripping from her legs and blood coming out of her head.
The band kept playing, people danced around her, and others helped. The medics arrived, and while they were wheeling her out, she lifted one arm and made the rock horns sign, moving it up and down to the music.
37. A Final Celebration
I didn't know the family of the bride very well, but I was a guest at her wedding. Her father was overweight but otherwise seemed healthy. Well, mid-ceremony, the worst thing possible happened: He had a freak heart attack on the spot and dropped dead at age 57. People at first thought it was a joke but quickly realized it wasn’t. It was all pretty horrible.
The bride was understandably inconsolable, and the groom was shocked but did his best to comfort her. They followed the ambulance to the hospital, and everyone just kind of stood there in the church for a while. The bride had her maid of honor encourage everyone to go to the reception hall, regardless of the situation, because she felt bad for her guests.
I don't know if anyone went. When everything calmed down, about a month or so later, the wedding party and a lot of the guests organized a barbecue for the couple so they could finally celebrate their wedding.
38. Blowing In The Wind
My second cousin got married in Vermont in the springtime, and the weather report called for a "chance of showers." As a result, they rented a huge, circus-sized tent to cover the meadow they were going to have the reception in, which was next to a pond. It easily covered all 80 attendees, along with the tables and chairs.
The ceremony beforehand was in a church about two miles away. The bride arrived via motorcycle as her dad was in the local Harley Davidson club. During the ceremony at the church, it started to rain outside. As it was just a drizzle at the time, the bride and groom hopped onto the backs of their motorcycle escorts' bikes and rode off to the reception venue.
About a minute after they took off, the light drizzle turned into a full-on tropical storm with wind, sleet, and hail. They did not turn back. They rode through the storm to the venue. When the rest of us arrived, we found quite a scene. The tent had come off of its moorings. The groom and groomsmen all had their shirts off and were wrestling the tent back into place.
The bride was completely soaked through her white dress and waited for a change of clothes to arrive. The wind blew so much that the pond had two-foot waves crashing over its edge and splashed one of the tables near the bridesmaids. The rest of the guests and I ran up to help with the tent. Just as we were getting it back in place, the wind gusted in the opposite direction and blew one of the bridesmaids into the pond.
39. At Least Nana Saw The Nuptials
I was at the wedding of a good friend. It was a beautiful ceremony, but at the reception, the bride's grandmother wasn't feeling well. They had to have the paramedics take her out. She died on the way to the hospital. At least she saw her granddaughter get married. Unfortunately, the great-grandmother was there too and had to see her daughter pass at her great-granddaughter's wedding.
40. Get It Right For Kristin's Sake!
The priest during the ceremony kept calling the bride "Elizabeth" despite her name being Kristin. The bride and the maid of honor tried to correct him, but he was so old and hard of hearing that he just kept continuing calling her the wrong name. It was a disaster through and through. This wedding also had the parents of the groom show up halfway through the ceremony.
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41. Need A Ride?
I was the best man's date to a wedding. There were seven bridesmaids. Three of them got into a car crash on the way to the rehearsal dinner. Fortunately, no one got hurt, but the car was totaled. One of them went home and didn't even attend the wedding. No one had arranged transportation for the wedding party from the hotel to the rehearsal, so I offered to drive.
I was kicked out of my own car to make space for another bridesmaid because "that's what the bride asked for.” Keep in mind that I didn’t know anyone other than the best man at the wedding. The rehearsal dinner didn't start until 11 pm, and most of the bride and groom's families didn't come because they couldn't wait that long to eat. And then the morning of the wedding dawned and sheer chaos ensued.
First off, the bride was several hours late to the ceremony. The horse and carriage that was supposed to transport her had gone to the wrong hotel, so it was delayed by over an hour. Eventually, they picked her and the wedding party up, but on the way to the wedding, one of the two horses fell into a ditch and broke its leg. The other horse had a heart attack and passed. The flower girl, who was on the carriage, had to be told the horse went to sleep.
To top things off, the bride's sister had a severe allergic reaction to the food at the reception and had to be rushed to the hospital. It was a mess.
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42. It Was All A Bit Too Much
I went to a wedding for some friends at some very generic meeting hall. The ceremony went off fine, and all seemed normal. Then, the reception started and it all fell apart. We were served raw chicken and the driest cake I've ever had. But that wasn't the worst of it. As the reception went on into the night, the groom kept drinking and drinking.
Eventually, he started getting belligerent and demanding. He announced that all the women needed to come out on the dance floor and "freak" him. After some more drinking, he started to get very affectionate with some of the bridesmaids. He got a little too touchy with one and wouldn't let her go, so she bit him in the ear.
He then demanded that everyone take the woman and throw her out of the wedding. All of the commotions got the bride's attention, who started yelling, "You're ruining my wedding!" The groom started cursing at her. The bride’s uncle tried to intervene but got backlash from the groom. Eventually, the bridesmaid that bit him calmed him down by sitting on his lap and letting him poke her cleavage with his finger, and giving him little kisses.
43. What A Bunch Of Balogna
My cousin got married in a small town in Kentucky that was at least an hour's drive from any hotel. Their wedding was in late June, in the middle of a field, in full sun. His wife designed the flowers and decorations, which amounted to some really sad-looking shade plants wilting in the sun, still in their plastic pots with hooks attached, just sitting by the aisle.
It was scorching hot out, and they were forty-five minutes late starting the ceremony. While we were sitting there, cooking in the sun, sweating through our nice clothes, they provided bottled water to help us cool down. The bottles were stored, warm, with no ice, and placed on either side of the aisle. Not only that but there were mosquitoes and chiggers everywhere.
They had a fairly large budget but decided to hold the reception in the middle school cafeteria just down the road, which smelled like old macaroni and cheese. They even reused the prom decorations for it. The provided meal was quartered squares of bologna and ham sandwiches on bread with a spread of condiments. The wedding cake was a sheet cake with a team logo on it.
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44. The Bride Thought It Would Pass
I was a guest at a wedding where the bride and groom had been together for 11 years. They were high school sweethearts and excited to marry each other. The ceremony went great. It was quick and emotional—everyone cried. The bridal party was taking pictures, and my boyfriend, who was in the wedding party, asked if I could bring him a drink.
As soon as I got there, all the groomsmen were standing around while the bridesmaids and groom were flocked in a circle around the bride. She was sick to the point where she couldn't stand up and had to be helped into the reception. This came out of NOWHERE. The couple came in and did their first dance.
They danced with their parents, served dinner, and then announced that they were going to the hospital. They missed their entire reception. The wedding continued well into the night because that's what they wanted. As we were getting ready to leave, we ran into them coming back to the hotel. It turned out she had a kidney stone.
45. The Things These Eyes Have Seen
The bride and groom got way in their cups, then eventually started to argue with each other. They were crying, yelling, and screaming, running out into the courtyard and causing a scene. The best man went to check on them and found them rolling on the ground, but not in a sexy way. The best man threw the bride out of the way, slammed the groom’s head into the sidewalk, and pinned him down. The bride then started kicking the groom in the face.
The best man pushed her away while sitting on top of the groom, and the bride finally stormed off with a bridesmaid. Then, the best man let the groom up, who began kicking trees and breaking the posts off the gazebo. That's when he revealed what had been building up inside of him for months: "I'm going to kill myself!" The best man told the bridesmaid to go grab an officer from inside for assistance.
The officer came out and tried to help get the groom to his room since the wedding was at a fancy hotel. The groom proceeded to be disrespectful with the officer and ended up getting detained. The father of the groom then disowned him but also yelled at the bride. The best man and his date ended up taking care of the bride and groom’s child. At least they got to stay in their honeymoon suite for the night.
Source: I was the best man.
46. This Took A Turn
I went to a co-worker's wedding about 15 years ago and this happened at the reception. It was a beautiful outdoor venue overlooking a lake. Anyway, the groom had planned to sing a song to his new wife and have a fireworks launch as he was singing the last note. Well, that last note came but the fireworks did not. He held that last note for a good 10 seconds before he finally yelled “JESUS” and threw the mic down. He then ran to go fight the fireworks guy.
No fists were thrown, but somebody did end up in the lake. The party kind of broke up after that. They also ended up getting a divorce about a year later after the groom got fired from his job for showing his “package” to his boss’s underage daughter.
47. All In The Family
A fight broke out between the father of the bride, brother of the bride, and some guy who just happened to be staying at the hotel. In reality, I don’t know how much of a “fight” it was; it was more just the dad and brother assaulting some man. So anyway, they were both detained. Cut to the bride sobbing at breakfast because her dad and brother spent the evening of her wedding in the slammer. They faced assault charges for what they did to that poor man.
48. Beauty Is Pain
The bride and groom decided to "get a few pictures in" right after the ceremony...except they disappeared for about five hours. We all waited at the venue for them, but since no one got any word from them, the buffet wasn't set and the DJ didn't play any music. After two hours, most guests decided to collect some cash. We talked the manager of the venue into serving the buffet and getting the DJ to play music.
So we basically started the party without the couple. When they finally got back, they were in shock—basically, all food was gone, people were sloshed, and everybody had forgotten that this was their wedding. So the wedding itself wasn't ruined, but everything around it, well...at least the guests had a great time when we took things into our own hands.
For what it’s worth, they did actually take pictures during that time. The photographer did his best but to be honest, the couple wasn't that good-looking and they thought he could simply work some voodoo magic on the spot to make them look good. He was angry, to say the least, and actually tried to talk them into going back to their party several times.
49. Truth Hurts
I was a guest of a friend of the bride, and I did not know anyone attending. It was a very expensive, over-the-top place, and there were several hundred guests at this very Italian wedding. The maid of honor grabbed the mic at the cocktail hour and began her speech, rambling and clearly having had a few drinks. It quickly devolved into her stating that the recently deceased mother of the bride was against the wedding and that was what ended her.
She also said that “Vinny,” the groom, will never give up his sidepieces. The maid was tackled by several people and dragged away. The happy couple separated and divorced within a year.
50. Safe And Not-So Sound
This was around 2009 in Tenerife. On the second day of the wedding, the bride went swimming in the ocean. She swam out too far and was basically “lost at sea” for nine hours or so. She eventually found her way back but was in bad shape. Everyone was panicked the whole day and thought she drowned. By the time she got back, there was a twisted development.
Her husband found her phone and read a bunch of messages supposedly from her aunt, but it was clear from the content it wasn’t her aunt at all. She had been having an affair with the best man for years. They got an annulment shortly after. $60,000 down the drain. It was one of the most opulent weddings I’ve ever been to.
51. All’s Well That Ends Badly
It was a big wedding with an open bar, and most of the attendees (including the wedding party) were apparently gussied up white trash. The ceremony itself went on without any issue, but the reception became a big, messy party. It then started to run late, so the catering manager told the father of the bride that they'd exceeded their time and needed to start shutting down.
This led to an argument involving several members of the wedding party. "Do you know how much I paid?!" They eventually complied, but it stirred the inner white trash. The party then spilled out to the hotel bar where people continued drinking. Members of the wedding party were still stewing about the reception getting shut down and tempers were short.
Finally, something triggers the groom and he takes a swing at someone. That person swung back. Then the groomsmen started swinging. Now, it was a full-on donnybrook. The hotel staff managed to get them out of the bar and the fight spilled out into the front entrance of the hotel. The authorities showed up and tried to break up the fight, but the groom then tried to take a swing at an officer and proceeded to get the tar beat out of him.
The bride, at this point, was just standing on the sidelines screaming in support of her hubby. But a few minutes later, she said to herself, "Well, I guess we're doing this." She walked up to a female officer and took a swing at her. She chose the wrong female officer though because this woman was apparently way more yoked than she appeared to be and she took the bride to the ground.
The bride’s face hit a planter on the way down and she busted her nose. She started bleeding all over her wedding dress. By that point, the wagon showed up. Several people were handcuffed and loaded up, including the bride and groom.
52. Bad Reputation
My best friend's mom got remarried and had an expensive, beautiful wedding; but for some reason, she didn't hire a DJ. Last-minute, her mom asked me to manage the CD and gave me a list along with verbal instructions of when to play each song. I tried to warn her that I simply did not follow what she was trying to say, but she told me she had confidence in me.
Apparently, all her life, she wanted to walk down the aisle to some specific song, but I just couldn't figure it out. They had to get walking to match the sunset, so she went ahead down the aisle while I flipped through a series of incorrect songs to the horror and amusement of the crowd. For years afterward, when I called my friend's house and her stepdad answered, he'd say, "Is this the guy who screwed up my wedding? How are ya?"
53. Childish Behavior
I was invited to the reception of one of my good friends. They had been courthouse married for months and were living happily. When I arrived at the location and saw the big crowd, I knew something was wrong. My friend's wife is prone to panic attacks and is extremely agoraphobic to the point of breaking down if she is overwhelmed.
I immediately called my friend and ask what was going on and if everything was okay. It turned out, out my friend's parents invited everyone possible to be there without my friend knowing. After I sent him a picture of the crowd, he and his wife thought it would be better to go on a second honeymoon than have a reception. He sent a message apologizing to everyone and told them to leave without telling his parents. His parents had a meltdown as we left.
54. Young And Dumb
I was invited to a wedding of a friend’s friend because she didn‘t have enough of her own people to get the reception as big as she wanted it to be. Also, the bride and groom were super young—she got pregnant three months after hooking up with him and were marrying for all the wrong reasons. When the party started, the whole atmosphere was forced and strained.
Everybody knew the whole thing was fake in a way, so I decided to spend my time outside instead. I was having a wonderful time…until I heard screaming inside. The bride then ran past us very Hollywood-style, all teary and dramatic. It turned out that the ice cake wasn‘t stored properly, so it melted and came out a little lopsided. The bride didn‘t come back, even though the cake was still really nice. The couple got divorced nine months later...
55. Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?
I was at a wedding where the bride's mom wore what was basically a wedding dress. Not only that, but she insisted on walking her daughter down the aisle, along with her ex-husband, who was the bride’s father. There wasn't enough room for all three to walk comfortably. After the wedding, we found out that the photographer had become enamored with the maid of honor, so more than half the pictures he took were of her! There were no portraits of just the bride and groom.
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56. Meal Mixup
During the reception, the hotel brought out the wrong main meal. Rather than just shrug it off and get compensation later, the bride insisted they cook the whole thing from scratch—for 100 people! This essentially brought the reception to an end as now all the guests had to wait an extra 2-3 hours for dinner. Many guests waited in the bar all night, then went home without ever seeing the happy couple.
57. It All Came Out At Once
The bride had been drinking. She had a bit too much and ended up vomiting and peeing on her wedding dress. The groom became angry that guests were fighting and threw a glass through a window. To top it off, an engaged couple broke up, and the lady took her ring off and threw it at her now ex-fiance. This all happened at one wedding.
Officers came and shut the whole thing down before the clock struck midnight.
58. The Sister-In-Law Got Snubbed
I went to an outdoor wedding, in June, in Southeast Texas. It was 100 degrees and humid. It rained all day up until about 20 minutes before the ceremony. The poor bride and her entire party look wilted, and the guests were complaining about the heat. The groom’s sister, who showed up in jean shorts, flip-flops, and a Budweiser shirt, caused a scene by screaming at the bride.
She threw red wine on the bride when she told her she couldn't sit at the table reserved for the bridal party because she wasn't a part of the bridal party. She cursed at the bride in front of the whole reception. And then the unthinkable happened. For the finale, during the sparkler send-off, the bride's dress caught fire because an inattentive guest hit her with the end of their sparkler.
59. Bitter Sweet Boredom
I went to a wedding where the bride walked down the aisle to a boombox playing “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” The ceremony lasted two hours and involved an extremely awkward "mixing sand" portion that took thirty minutes. This was followed by candle lighting that lasted twenty minutes. It was unbearably long and boring. Then the entire thing shifted to a local convention center banquet hall for the reception.
The room was huge, and they only had about 100 people in attendance, so we only filled about a sixth of the space. The DJ in the corner blasted music so loud that it was uncomfortable to be on the dance floor near him. There was a cash bar that only served wine, and as a final slap in the face, they only paid for two hours in the banquet hall.
So, the reception lasted equally as long as the ceremony. It was just an absolute nightmare.
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60. Mass Exodus
I went to a friend's wedding that was being held in a multipurpose center at an apartment complex. The two families all got wasted on cheap drinks before the wedding, which was bad. Then, during the ceremony, two people started getting into an argument, which resulted in the entire bride's family just up and leaving. About 40 people just got up, walked out in the middle of the ceremony, and went home.
61. Game Time
After dating for four weeks and engaged for another four on top of that, a girl from my high school decided to get married. She emailed out invites on a Tuesday for a Sunday wedding to take place in her mother's backyard, which was actually the common area for the trailer park. They started at 12 pm on Sunday so they could be finished before the football game started.
There were no chairs for the guests to sit on. The ceremony took about 45 minutes. The bride and groom read three different sets of vows/inspirational thoughts they found online. They only had 15 minutes left for the reception before football was to start. They had four pizzas delivered, along with two 20-piece chicken wing bundles and three bags of chips for 40 guests.
There was no silverware, no plates, napkins, or drinks. At 1 pm, the bride’s dad came out yelling for people to leave so he could focus on the game.
62. A Serious Arrangement
I worked for a non-denominational wedding venue. One day, we had an arranged marriage for a devout Muslim family, so there was no booze. The bride and groom had never met before, only Skyped, and the bride didn’t speak any English. It was basically a first date held in the middle of a lot of sober, unsmiling relatives. It was supremely awkward and completely devoid of fun. The couple even left early.
63. “I Do” Disaster
My brother got married a few years ago, and it was a mess from day one. He and his bride had estranged everyone in my family before the wedding. My parents, who were funding pretty much the entire event, ultimately decided to cut off their support about three months before the wedding. As a result, my brother and his fiance wrote an email to everyone invited, calling out my parents for their “lack of support.”
This fractured the family. Ultimately, only the most immediate members of my family showed up. The day of the wedding was a continuation of how horrible everything leading up to it was. My brother and his fiance stiffed the officiant and failed to pay the caterers for food. Because of that, we were literally only served a few platters of vegetables, which my parents paid for on the spot.
His whole relationship was a disaster, but the wedding was an especially bad episode for our family.
64. Life Is Just A Rodeo
My cousin got married at the rodeo grounds of a very small rural town in Wisconsin, which kind of sets the tone for the wedding. The ceremony was fine, but then after the ceremony, the entire wedding party went bar hopping for FOUR HOURS while all of their guests were left with no food or entertainment at the rodeo grounds.
Eventually, the bride's stepdad single-handedly got the food set up and let everyone eat. However, the bride and groom lost their minds when they got back because people were eating without them. Some guests just left because they got tired of waiting. The bride, who was pregnant, walked around all night with a pack of smokes sticking out of her cleavage and also drank heavily. It was just miserable.
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65. Some Like It Hot
I had this client book me two weeks before the actual wedding. I regret taking it to this day. She had no transportation to take her home at the end of the night. I asked her repeatedly what her plan was, and she told me she would just refrain from drinking and drive herself to her honeymoon spot. She never told me where that was, even though I kept asking.
Fast forward two weeks. A massive tornado just went through the area the day before her wedding, so there were power lines and trees blocking every entrance to the highway in the boonies of Maryland. I got up early to deal with the issues at the venue—there was no electricity on a 100-degree day, so that was a huge problem. I got a call from her around 6 am saying she realized she now needed transportation.
Fine, I decided I'd find it for her. "One last question, where is this mystery honeymoon spot?" I asked her. Turned out, it was hours away in West Virginia. I called every Maryland-based limo company and begged them to find someone to drive into the Maryland countryside at 11 pm and then take them to West Virginia. Finally, someone relented and I called the bride to tell her the price. Complete. Meltdown.
"Well guess what, you requested that at the last minute, so you're going to pay whatever they want to charge you," I told her. The wedding itself was a complete circus. The bride hated her hair and makeup and made it very well known to me, even though she had personally booked the stylist. As it was 100 degrees out, the original unshaded area was going to be terrible for the ceremony.
I suggested we moved it somewhere cooler for her comfort, like underneath this beautiful centuries-old tree. She refused, but as guests arrived, they did nothing but complain. I decided to say screw it and moved the ceremony to make everyone happy. It was a one-hour traditional Jewish ceremony and no way was I going to let people suffer in the sun.
After the ceremony, I had to wait outside the bridal suite while the couple had a wedding ceremony...which is something I never want to witness again. That ceremony went way over schedule, thus extending cocktail hour and shortening the reception. The bride freaked out that she lost out on dancing time and blamed it on me.
At the end of the night during clean-up, the mother of the bride started throwing decor in her car rather than let my team do the load out. As soon as she left, I noticed my emergency kit was nowhere to be found. I called her and she claimed she never saw it, even though it was next to the decor we had started to pile up.
The next week, I got a call from the venue saying they saw a car throw a bag out of their window onto the steps of the venue before speeding away. Alas, it was my bag and I had to drive for over 90 minutes to go fetch it, even though the mother and bride lived super close to me and had my address. To top it all off, I got a heat stroke and my poor assistant had to drive us home at midnight.
66. Right In The Face
I was a bridesmaid for a family member’s wedding. We hired a super talented makeup artist to come in and make her look really good for her big day. This makeup artist, who was the quietest, shortest lady I’ve ever met in my whole life, starts doing her makeup. Once she finished it looked REALLY GOOD. I was just like “diddly dang, she’ll love this.” BOY was I wrong.
The bridezilla looked in the mirror and went absolutely BONKERS. She screeched, “It looks awful! YOU KNOW WHAT I WANTED!” She was crying, and her eye makeup was streaming down her face. We all rushed to calm her down. This poor makeup artist looks like she’s about to pee. So the makeup artist fixes her up despite her outburst and does basically the same thing but adds a little more eyeliner.
Suddenly the bridezilla LOVES IT.
67. Sister Act
It was my cousin's wedding and he was marrying this very awful girl whom no one, except his sister, liked. This girl hated everything about everyone and liked to be vocal about those things. So, halfway through the reception, I was super bored since I didn't want to be there. Honestly, I only went because my mother insisted.
The place was very awkward—no one was dancing and the bride was having a screaming contest with her dad outside. I noticed a woman who was very young sitting at the bride's family table, holding a baby and talking to some guy. I didn't notice her before since the baby was very quiet during the entire ceremony and they sat at the back.
I recognized that woman as the bride's 17-year-old sister who, by the way, was a teen mom. The guy, I later learned, was her boyfriend and baby daddy. At some point, the bride came back from outside, looked at her sister angrily, then marched her way to the groom's family…where she proceeded to complain about how her sister was stupid and irresponsible. Here’s where it got very embarrassing very fast.
She was talking so loudly that her sister, the guy, and everyone could hear her. The sister then started crying quietly while hugging the baby, who was now anxious. The guy, on the other hand, looked ready to attack the bride, and the bride's father seemed angry as well. Just when things couldn't get worst, The truth came out.
The bride started talking about how her sister was stealing her thunder, making the day all about herself and her mistakes. The bride's father then went to talk to her, taking her out of the venue so she could "calm herself," but everyone could still hear her having a complete and total tantrum outside.
The sister and her partner later said their goodbyes to her family and friends, but she was still crying at that point. Later on, I learned that the bride was always jealous of her sister because she was "the baby and the favorite daughter.” The bride and the sister are no longer on speaking terms.
68. This One Takes the Cake
I once attended a classmate’s wedding. They were both young, maybe about 22 or 23 years old. There is apparently a “caking” tradition in some parts of the country where, when they cut the wedding cake, the couple feeds each other a little bit of it and smears some onto each other’s faces as a joke. The bride had absolutely made it 1000% clear to the groom that she did NOT want to be caked.
He did it anyway. And not just a small smear. He full-on smushed the entire slice into her face. She was stunned initially, then got up, with her face full of cake, and yelled “YOU JERK! I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT!” She then ran as fast as she could to a back area near the reception. The groom tried to follow her, but the bridesmaids and the mother of the bride stopped him.
So, the groom ended up sitting awkwardly at the head table by himself while half the wedding party rushed off with the bride. She stayed back there for like an hour. They eventually did let him go back there to check on her. We could hear her crying and them arguing. The rest of the reception came to a screeching halt until one of the bride’s aunts emerged and directed the servers to clear the tables and put on some music.
They got divorced two years later.
69. Tonight’s Gonna Be a Cringey Night
I was a banquet manager at a hotel for years, and have worked hundreds of weddings. The worst one by far was the time the bride was at least twenty years younger than the groom. It was almost definitely an arranged marriage. Only about twenty people were invited to the reception, and the only decoration was a lousy quality massive blown-up picture of the bride and groom in the shape of a heart.
When the bride and groom walked into the room, someone put the Black Eyed Peas’ "Tonight's Going to be a Good Night" on over a CD player. Then the song played again, and again, and again for three hours straight. The only time it stopped was when the CD ended, because apparently no one had learned how to use the repeat feature. So, they had just burned a CD with the same song on it twenty times in a row. When it did stop though, someone just got up and restarted it.
Also, there was no drinking at this event.
70. Music Makes the World Go Round
I once attended a wedding where the bride and groom sang their vows to each other. Neither of them had a singing voice. The vows were also totally crazy and inappropriate. She promised to do whatever he wanted in the bedroom, and he promised not to always ask where she was going whenever she left the house.
The autotuned microphones were also a terrible idea. Their vow songs shared a chorus and it was awful, yet they expected all the guests to sing along with the chorus. The singing of the vows lasted more than twenty minutes. Calling it twenty minutes of pure cringe would not be an exaggeration to anyone who was there. Kids, don’t sing your wedding vows!
71. Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off
A couple of years back, I was waitressing at this function lounge that was hosting a reception. The music started but nobody came in for a solid 30 seconds, so the DJ cuts the music. Everyone then heard loud arguing in the foyer for about a minute, and two men later came stumbling into the hall fighting each other bloody. It was the groom and the bride’s brother.
Turns out, the groom's side of the family didn’t want him marrying the girl, and the groom decided at the reception that he agreed with his family. Long story short, more people got involved with the fighting, and officers were called. The bride was, understandably, a crying mess. Still, she decided that if she spent so much money on the event, then they were going to have a party with or without the groom.
Honestly, she was so much stronger than I could have ever been, so good on her for that…but the whole thing was an absolute mess.
72. Head Games
This was one I worked at. After the ceremony, right at the start of the reception, the photographer was taking “jumping” photos of the bride and bridesmaids, so they were all jumping in the air while wearing heels. The bride landed and dislocated her knee, then passed out and kept going in and out of consciousness. We called an ambulance, who turned up and fixed her knee, but she wanted to continue with the wedding.
She then had the first course of the meal and threw up down her dress, and had to sit with her mother in another room while everyone else danced, etc. I felt so bad for her as she spent the rest of the evening crying.
73. Not A Good Look
The groom got so sloshed the night before that he couldn't make it to the altar at the ceremony. They still had the ceremony with only the bride and her party, plus one of the groomsmen, who apparently didn't get wasted. Everyone was shaking their heads the entire time. The groom did make one singular appearance for a few seconds at the reception.
He looked like a zombie and was wearing street clothes, which made things worse as it was no trashy wedding. The bride was a professional dancer for a major label pop star, so that gives you an idea of the type of people that were in attendance. 200 plus people were at the ceremony alone, and probably double that was at the reception. They divorced within six months.
74. Grin And Bear It
The bride and groom planned a wedding at a Caribbean island resort, and their friends and family booked their trips. Well, everything turned upside down right before the wedding—the groom got caught with some other woman, so the whole ceremony was called off. It was too late to cancel the trips or get refunds, so mostly everyone, including the bride, went to the Caribbean island resort anyway.
The groom did not go, but his family and friends did, and they supported the bride. Everyone put on a brave face, trying to have a good time, but there was obviously an air of sadness about the whole thing behind the fake smiles. Looking back at the group pictures that were taken, it’s heartbreaking. The bride stopped nearly all contact with her friends and family after the trip. I think a part of her just couldn’t come back from the experience.
75. A House Divided
I went outside for some fresh air at a reception and I saw the groom's dad sitting in the back of his SUV drinking Knob Creek from the bottle. I was friends with the groom's family and knew the father well, so I went up and asked him what was going on. We all knew the bride was an entitled, spoiled brat, but she cranked it up to 11 that night.
Everything about the reception was wrong according to her. The food, the centerpieces, the decor, the DJ...everything. Even though everything was prepared exactly the way she wanted. Her behavior was not surprising, since her whole extended family was a bunch of entitled, spoiled brats too. They all gladly jumped on the hate bandwagon. The groom's family was slipping out the nearest door while the bride's family was berating every person they made eye contact with.
I think the only reason the dad was still there was in case his son had an epiphany and ran for it. He was poised to play getaway driver. I ended up sitting with dad until it was over. No way in heck was I walking back into that. My wife and their daughter were close friends (that's how we knew the family) and we had a front-row seat.
The daughter was sloshed and ready to throw hands, and the mom was all over the place too. They just hated this bride and her family so much. My wife basically became their wrangler, with a couple of other levelheaded females associated with the groom's family, to keep them from kicking the bride's butt. These are all upper-middle-class folks on both sides, by the way.
76. International Relations
An English guy was marrying an Irish girl in Ireland. The wedding guests were comprised mostly of her family, including people from Northern Ireland (the Republican areas) and England. The wedding was fine—it was all very romantic and the ceremony was nice. But then at the reception, during the speeches, everything went downhill.
It was all because of the best man speech. The best man was a particularly red-faced, Brexit-voting English man. He proceeded to make the most insensitive offensive speech, filled with “jokes” about re-colonizing Ireland one woman at a time, and how the stag party had been on Good Friday, but the hangover was so bad it led to a Bloody Sunday.
You get the idea. He ended up the speech by making a comment about how the speeches had gone on so long that it was like the guests were on a hunger strike. Throughout all of this, the English groom and his friends and family were laughing. They thought it was funny. Her Irish family was all fuming. I was there as a plus-one of the bride’s older cousin. It was aggressively awkward, and a lot of her cousins and uncles just refused to mingle with the groom’s family at all.
I'm no longer in touch with the guy who took me, so I don't know how the marriage is going. The bride was very kind, and despite his best man's speech, the groom seemed like a nice enough guy.
77. Surprise Ending
I went to a really weird wedding last year. The bridal party had different, fancier meals than the guests and they were all drinking free champagne, while we had to pay for lesser stuff with drink tickets (cash-only, no ATM). There weren’t enough tables to sit at, either—I guess the goal was to mingle and stand to eat—and there was definitely not enough food.
People were hogging the buffet stations and going back for thirds before some people had eaten at all. The bride and groom, who were friends of my partner’s, were really stand-offish and just took photos with their photographer all night. Later on, a fight among the two families broke out in the parking lot and the authorities were called.
We decided to leave, order a pizza, and have drinks in a park. When we went back to our hotel room, someone was passed out in our bed. Ah, New Jersey.
78. Money Can’t Buy Class
I was a caterer at a really expensive wedding overlooking the Rockefeller center during the holiday season. It was between two prominent New York Jewish families. The bride and groom had way too much to drink and started physically fighting in front of everyone on the dance floor while screaming in each other's faces. Like, the bride was literally trying to throw punches and the groom kept shoving her. But that's not even the worst part.
The groom's mother was also pretty blasted and had come back into the kitchen to blame us (the kitchen staff) for "ruining her baby's big day." Apparently one of the hors d'oeuvres came out a few minutes too late and this was to blame for them starting a public fistfight. I actually had permission to dip early from that shift and was getting into the elevator right as the groom was screaming. He had to be held back by multiple members of the wedding party.
I had to try really hard not to laugh about earlier when his mother screamed in my face about how we should feel ashamed and how she "wasn't going to pay a penny," as though hiring a team of 15 back-end chefs, five up-front-party chefs, two catering managers, and a team of wait-staff was something she could totally pay for after everyone already ate.
I don't know what happened after I left, but I was pleased to leave when I did.
79. Can’t Stay Away From Each Other
This was a hilarious moment. It was a Christian wedding where the pastor refused to say the phrase, "You may now kiss the bride." The bride knew this going in but insisted that he say it anyway on the day. She had herself convinced the pastor would change his mind and ultimately say the phrase. Well, he didn't say it at the end of the ceremony.
The bride had a few drinks prior to walking down the aisle and proceeded to grab her new husband by the face and make out for what felt like a solid three minutes. At first, everyone was clapping and cheering for them, but eventually, the clapping petered out and we were left with two people just SUPER making out, in absolute silence, tongue and all, in front of 300 people.
I was a groomsman, so I got to see the stunned reaction of the entire crowd. Her grandparents and the older people were incredibly uncomfortable.
80. It’s A Bust
I worked at a wedding in upstate New York as part of the catering company. For context, this was at a summer camp-type place, with a ceremony on the lake and a reception in what could be described as a mess hall. It was in September, so I assume the camp was trying to make extra money after kids went back to school. The ceremony went off fine.
During the reception, however, disaster struck—the owners of the camp realized there was a building fire across the lake. It was a building from the 1800s, and it completely burned down. At the same time, the father of the bride slipped on the dance floor and split his head open. The ambulance got called, and he went to the hospital and ended up with stitches.
The place was a mess with fire trucks, ambulances, etc. The bride and groom then got in a massive fight, and the DJ packed up and left around 8:30. That marked the end of the wedding. I proceeded to drink my weight in Yuenglings and sleep in my car. Made good tips, though.
81. What Was She Thinking?
I worked as a wedding decorator for five years. Two years ago, we did the decor for a really pretty ceremony, and halfway through the day, we found out it was a "surprise wedding." The reality is even worse than that sounds. Basically, they were not engaged, but the bride planned the whole thing and the groom showed up at the golf course thinking he was just playing a regular round of golf. Nope.
He walked into his own wedding, saw her standing at the altar, and peaced the heck out. As he should have. Truly one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in all my years of doing weddings, and I’ve seen A LOT.
82. What A Waste
50% of the people who RSVPed to my wedding didn't come. My brother-in-law who volunteered to DJ didn't actually bring any DJ equipment, so our reception was powered by Pandora. He also said he would capture the ceremony and create a video of the highlights of the reception, but didn't bring his video camera. The florist also forgot to deliver about 50% of the flowers. That was already bad enough, but things just kept getting worse.
The reception venue took everything we discussed and then decided to do the opposite. There weren’t enough tables and no dance floor, among other things. When we tried to get it fixed, the man who was sent to change out the tables stood outside the window of the reception hall angrily drinking from a bottle. It was an absolute mess and no one seemed to care.
I later spoke with a friend who had worked with that man, and he explained that that sort of behavior happens pretty much any time he is asked to do anything, so...We made a CD with a couple of songs on it for my brother-in-law to play before the ceremony began. He insisted that he had something better. It was two songs played on repeat for about an hour.
My immediate family was late to the wedding, including my sister who was a bridesmaid, and my mother and father. They had originally offered to help set up everything that morning, but I guess they just got a late start. My veil got lost the night before the wedding. It still has not resurfaced. After everyone was done eating and the cake had been cut, I dimmed the lights in the reception hall to change the atmosphere to more fun, party vibe and get people dancing. Everyone got up and left.
It didn't go great, but my husband and I ended up married and we're still very happy together. I guess that's the most important thing. Still, I wish I'd saved the money from the whole thing and gotten married at the county clerk instead.
83. Evil Stepmother
My father-in-law’s wife at the time attempted to ruin our wedding. The week before our wedding, she sent my mother an email saying that I, the bride, was too good for her stepson. She then messaged me that she had decided not to wear the dress that we had picked out together. She refused to come to the wedding rehearsal, then showed up on the day of in a garish, skimpy outfit.
She wouldn't speak to anyone and just sat there with her arms crossed for the whole day. We just ignored her, even when she threw away all the leftovers from the post-ceremony brunch that my husband and his best guys catered (they're all chefs). My father-in-law divorced her the following year.
84. The Big Grift
My cousin attended a wedding where the bride and groom got scammed by the wedding organizer. One hour before the wedding event, there was nothing in the room—no food, no decorations, just a few tables, and basically an unused ballroom. The bride and groom realized the wedding organizer hoodwinked them and took the money to buy a big ol' house.
85. You End How You Start
It started with the best man just absolutely roasting the bride and her parents. Basically, he called them gold diggers in front of several hundred family and friends. Then they cut the cake. Apparently, the groom was told under no uncertain terms not to shove cake in her face. Well, he did it anyway and she stormed off, not to be seen for 20 minutes. The chaos didn't end there, either.
The reception went on as planned, but she got wasted and passed out that night in the middle of the street while still in her wedding dress. Pure class. They’re divorced now.
86. In It To Win It
My own wedding was a disaster. It rained so it was cold, and no one bothered to turn the lights on. The few pictures I have are dark and grainy. My parents divorced earlier that year, so my dad hated seeing my mom at the wedding and didn’t stick around to get a picture with me. My husband’s mom didn’t even take off work to attend.
The good news is that we just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary.
87. I Don’t Get Paid Enough For This
I was a DJ for a wedding that was just rough. To start, the groom wanted to have the Raiders emblem projected on the ceiling during the reception. They had hired me, as well as a band. The groom's family insisted that the band play first and only play cumbias and that my set be exclusively Latin music. The bride got mad, but she didn't hire me. So I tried to compromise the best I could.
The bride got sloshed and started dirty dancing a little too heavy with some guys. The groom went to fight the bride. She swung and missed, hitting the maid of honor, who ended up on the floor with a bloody nose. It turned into an all-out ghetto brawl with guns being pulled out. I packed up and left as law enforcement arrived.
88. The Greatest Show On Earth
I have officiated a few weddings, only one of them really went badly. The bride was raised Jewish, and the groom was raised Catholic, but both were atheists. He only proposed because his family pressured him. She only said yes because he asked in front of her family. Her family was quite wealthy, and they had hired an impossible wedding planner. The whole thing was destined to be an expensive circus.
The only aspect the bride and groom got to control was hiring me, their friend, to conduct a custom ceremony. We wrote something together that they liked and signed off on. The rehearsal was held at botanical gardens, which were beautiful. However, we did not get time to rehearse the ceremony because the ballerinas were having issues nailing their choreography, and the violinist took a while to set up.
The next day we started the ceremony. Twenty minutes before we were to begin, the wedding planner told me they were going to mic me, but we didn't have time to do a sound test. There was also an A/V crew filming the whole affair from multiple angles because they were going to make DVDs. When the couple got to the altar, I started talking, and a train drove by, blaring its horn.
I wanted to wait until the horn stopped blaring to start the ceremony, but it kept going and going, and after a minute, I had to start talking to get the show on the road. When I began, there was a giant burst of feedback that momentarily drowned out the train. When it finally calmed down, I started the ceremony in earnest, but there was an awkward time delay with the speakers.
I could hear my own voice with a delay playing a few seconds after I actually said it. I had the ceremony memorized, but at that point, I just started reading off the paper, trying to think straight. Meanwhile, the train continued to honk its horn. There were awful performances during the ceremony with ballerinas—a wedding present from some aunt.
It felt like it took forever, and the couple just stood at the altar and watched five minutes of dancing. There was also a violin solo, another wedding present, during the ceremony. The train blasted over both of them. We finally got through it and to the reception, which was basically all about the family without any regard for the couple or what they wanted.
The bride's family had a whole PowerPoint about how great they were; there was even a musical tribute to an uncle. The bride had learned a song to play on the piano, just for him. During the cake cutting, the family noticed the bride had switched to more comfortable shoes, and the wedding planner declared she had ruined his wedding. I found out the next morning that the couple had agreed to split up the moment they got home.
89. This Is A Wedding, Not A Frat Party
Our good friends were getting married, and the whole college crew was there. There was an open bar. One of my friends got wasted and couldn’t control the volume of his voice. The bride’s parents were introducing the new couple to everyone for their first dance when his voice suddenly cut in. All you could hear was someone swearing at the top of their lungs.
My friend was talking to someone else, but the entire wedding fell utterly silent. After that, he caught the garter belt and ran around with it on his head, screaming. Shortly thereafter, he was yelling at an officer as he started a fight at the hotel.
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90. An Unwanted Promotion
The best man checked himself into a mental ward the morning of the ceremony without telling anyone, so I was "promoted" to best man about four hours before the wedding. I had to write a speech while doing all the stuff he was supposed to do. The ceremony was being held at a park at the top of a mountain. There was no cell service.
The bride was over an hour late, and no one had a way to reach her without driving for twenty minutes to get service. Everyone thought she bailed, and some people were talking about leaving when she finally arrived.
91. The Show Must Go On
I was the event planner for a wedding between two fairly wealthy families. The bride had decided on a rural, "shabby chic" aesthetic. She wanted the wedding to take place on her family’s property, in a historic barn. This caused a flurry of issues. Not only did the barn need to be cleaned, but we would need auxiliary tents as the barn wasn't large enough. The property also lacked electricity and running water.
The latter was solved with a bank of generators, tubs of water for catering, and a side tent with porta-potties hidden inside. The bride had been quite a bridezilla, but it was my job to deal with those things. The ceremony had ended, cocktail hour was shutting down, and professional photos were taken. We were preparing to transition to the bridal party’s entrance.
Their entrance would be followed by the first dance and the cake cutting. While all that was going on, dinner would be staged, so every aspect was being carefully timed out. I was speaking to the caterer when I happened to glance over and saw the most curious blend of expressions pass over the bride's face. She frantically waved down my assistant.
A few moments later, my headset beeped on, and my assistant said, "We have an issue.” The bride had a mishap and needed to use the bathroom. She was wearing a huge, full ball gown with a fitted, strapless top that had an embellished mesh. Underneath, she had a shaper garment, hoops, and slips. We had already realized there was zero way of her going to the bathroom.
We had issues getting her into the limo, and having her use a porta-potty meant one of us would have to get personal. That was my assistant's job. I radioed everyone to expect a fifteen-minute delay, and they headed towards the tent. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Finally, my earpiece beeped on, "The previous issue is more than we anticipated.” I ran over to find my assistant looking horrified.
It seems as if the bride had been using some health shakes in an attempt to fix last-minute bloating. This had mixed poorly with the cocktails from earlier, and she had eaten a fairly decent breakfast. The substance that had come out of her body, as a result, defied explanation. Not only did she have a rather profound accident, but the smell was unrivaled. It was a substance no human body should emit. Oh, but that wasn't the worst part.
What sent it all over the edge was that the shaper the bride was wearing was a latex deal. It came down over her thighs and up to her bra. It was waterproof, and the poo had just sort of filled it, like a water balloon. My assistant had opened up the snap crotch and just released the evil down the bride's thighs. She quickly sealed it back up.
She, and the bride, vainly tried to wipe up the goo with toilet paper. This just spread it around, so they gave up. I now had a shell-shocked assistant and a crying bride. You could smell her four feet away. The bride was just flipping out because she was making her guests wait, and she had a choreographed dance waiting to happen. She wanted to be introduced NOW.
Her manicured nails had diarrhea residue embedded in them. I started scraping it out with a fabric stain wipe while the bride insisted that the show go on immediately. I gave in and signaled to start introductions. The groom looked vaguely disconcerted by his new wife's odor, but I told my assistant to distract him until they took the floor.
The introductions happened, the dance started, and then we were met with some fresh horror. The dance was a choreographed number, and as the groom spun his bride around, hand on her waist, he squished the poo up the insides of the waist trainer, up, and out the back waistband. We watched as an oily stain spread across the mid-back of her gown.
As we were reeling from that sight, the groom set his hand firmly in the middle of the poo stain. It was evident that I had to take action as soon as the couple left the dance floor, so I left my assistant in charge while I made preparations. She kept radioing me, telling me that the stain was spreading and that she could smell the stench from her spot by the DJ.
Then the couple started cutting the cake. They were feeding it to each other, both with poop-stained fingers. Each was looking downright repulsed. As they left the dance floor, I had someone rush wet naps to the groom and bring me the bride. I had my staff close down the support tent, and I pulled a tub of clean water from the caterers.
She walked in to find me in dish gloves and a poncho, like American Psycho. For five minutes, I was sponging down a sobbing, naked bride while I questioned every life decision that led to this point. The diarrhea was everywhere, spread in a thin layer across her body. It may have been the most disgusting thing I ever dealt with. With the bride now clean, I threw away the waist shaper and scrubbed down her $15K gown in a plastic basin.
The inner lining was a loss, so I cut it out completely. The bride got dressed again, and I offered her a Xanax. The support tent stunk like a sewer and stayed closed for the remainder of the event. The groom was a sport. He never directly said anything but asked if we could cancel the garter toss as he didn't want to go under her skirt. Pictures from the event appeared in a magazine. The still photos were beautiful.
92. A Multitude Of Problems
My cousin planned a multi-day wedding event. The idea was that family was supposed to come for the long weekend, and wedding activities would go on for days. Events ranged from flower picking to laser tag. However, the actual marriage was on Friday night, with family and close friends present. It was complete with dinner and toasts immediately afterward.
They had a bunch of second-string guests arrive on Saturday for the official reception, which was a dry pot luck. This distinction was not clear in the invitations, so guests were left confused. Some had driven a long way and were wondering when the bride and groom were actually going to get married. I had to tell them that they were already married the day before and that day’s reception was one where there was no booze and guests had to bring their own entrees. It was awkward.
93. A Brother’s Bridal Ballad
I went to a wedding that was held at a Napa Valley winery during the tech boom of the 90s. The groom was a venture capitalist on the climb, and the bride was a brittle, glossy blonde. Both were prone to using tech-speak in conversation, and their wedding invitation was in the form of a merger announcement on a mocked-up Wall Street Journal page.
Still, the guy was a friend, and my date and I went to show our support. The first really weird thing that happened was that the bride's twin brother came out before the wedding, got the bride to sit on a stool in front of everyone, and serenaded her, on his knees, with a guitar. The song was a love ballad that he wrote. It was filled with such longing that everyone stood frozen with discomfort.
He sang about how beautiful his sister was, how any man would be lucky to have her. I can't remember the whole thing, but this lyric seared itself into my brain, "Lips touching, tongues dancing. They give each other a look that can mean just one thing.” And the most cringey part of all? It wasn’t done for laughs. He was crying as he sang, and everyone watching looked like they wanted to drop through the floor.
Then, during the wedding, there were chairs set up in a lovely courtyard garden, with an aisle down the middle leading to a pavilion. We all seated ourselves on the chairs, which had white upholstery. When the ceremony ended, the minister said, "And now, I ask each of you to reach under your chairs for the small, white envelope you will find there.
“Each one contains a live Monarch butterfly. We will release them into the air and let them soar free as a symbol of the love these two have for each other." Once again, everyone froze. Whoever had set up the area had put the envelopes ON, not under, the chairs—little white envelopes on snow-white chair seats. Open-mouthed with horror, all the guests reached down and found the envelopes.
Most of the butterflies were squashed, as they had been sat on for the better part of 45 minutes.
94. I Now Pronounce You Co-Beneficiary and Wife
My sister-in-law's first wedding. Never really liked the groom from the first time I met him. After a year or so, he proposed. They started planning their wedding that was to take place in a year. But then, on whim, they get married in a civil ceremony with plans to still have the big ceremony later in the year. A few months after the civil ceremony, the groom goes in for heart surgery, for a bad valve he's had since he was born.
The big ceremony finally comes except every major aspect of it has been stripped away. Less than a year into the marriage, my sister-in-law brings me a credit card bill and asks me if she knows what this $600 charge her husband has on it. A little internet research and I find that he's tipping cam girls. They're officially divorced about a year after that.
In retrospect, it became obvious what had happened. My sister-in-law was grifted for a new heart valve. He didn't have the insurance at his job to cover the surgery, so he convinced her to marry him—earlier than expected—to get on her insurance, get the heart surgery, and then split.
95. Leaving So Soon?
When I was in college studying photography, I got friendly with a fellow student who had a wedding photography business but was still studying to get his qualifications. After seeing my work, he asks me if I want to assist him at his next wedding. I agree to do so. The big day finally comes and I'm all prepared to go in and see the groom, the best man, the ushers, and a bunch of other participants to get some pre-event photos of them getting ready and whatnot.
To my surprise, the groom refused to be in any pictures, stating that he was feeling under the weather. I kinda thought he should just suck it up. It was his wedding day, after all. Nevertheless, he was insistent, so no pre-event photos were taken of him. A little while later, the ceremony comes and goes. It’s now time for the bridal party photos at the church.
Once again, the groom refuses to be in any photos, much to everyone's annoyance. We all get to the reception, the speeches begin, and, midway through the father of the bride’s speech, the groom just straight up leaves. He once again repeats the fact that he was feeling a bit ill. This is where the bride drew the line—she went into a full-on rage. She started pulling the small groom and bride figurines off the top of the cake and stomping on them.
She shouted, "I knew I shouldn't have married him!" There was a lot of hullabaloo at this point, with guests trying to console her. Everyone agreed that he was being dramatic and was basically a huge jerk. We got paid in full even though at that point we were done. I go home, put my feet up, drink a few beers, and then answer an unexpected phone call from my friend.
I was expecting him to just be calling to joke around a little bit more about how crazy that wedding had just been. Not even close. In reality, he was calling to inform me that the groom had passed away shortly after leaving the reception hall, and that our photo job would now be turning into a two-for-one wedding and funeral service.
96. Don’t Even Heifer
I was the fat girl in middle school, and there was one guy who would moo at me during classes we had together all year. We went to different high schools, and I’d lost more than half my weight. There was a wedding my junior year for a family friend who was marrying that jerk’s older brother, so he’d be there.
The bride called me over and introduced me to her new brother-in-law and said we would hit it off. He immediately asked me to dance, and I turned him down, not wanting to cause a scene. He kept insisting, so I said, “I recognize you, we went to middle school together.” He looked puzzled and didn't remember me.
I said, “Yeah, you were that guy who used to make cow noises and moo at that girl in some of our classes.” He instantly started to crack up and said, “Yeah, that was me, that chick was nasty!” I looked him straight-faced and said, “Yeah, well now you're looking at the cow.” His jaw dropped, and I walked off happy.
97. Missed Encounters
At a wedding of a college friend of my husband’s, we learned that the bride (his old friend) had been in love with him for over a decade. We learned this from the women at our table at the reception. We introduced ourselves while we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. They were horrified that we were there—and extremely worried.
My husband had NO idea that she had feelings for him. She bee-lined right for our table after the "introducing Mr & Mrs" thing—ignoring her family and leaving her husband standing alone. She clung to my husband and sobbed—lifting her head to glare at me. She had to be pulled off of him.
She repaired herself, then followed us as we tried to leave quietly—her parting shot was to stare at my chest and say, "Well I guess I know what I was missing all along!" Her new husband was in shock and my husband was horrified and embarrassed—he was completely clueless and would never have gone to the wedding if he'd known she was obsessed with him. It was bizarre.
98. Top Secret
The bride gave explicit wedding instructions beforehand through various channels. One rule was that there were to be no posts on social media before the bride gave the OK, and certainly no posts before she posted herself. Anyway, a few hours before the wedding, someone posted something, saying that they were at the wedding or whatever.
Absolutely nothing malicious, just a generic statement. The bride saw this and everyone could tell she was about to blow up. At the end of the vows, the bride turned to the congregation and said, "Can you all please unfriend Jennifer as I gave out explicit instructions that there are to be no social posts until I give the OK, and she has broken that rule today."
Just imagine—she literally just finished her vows and she finally has a new husband, but that was the first thing on her mind. Everyone awkwardly laughed as if she was joking…nope. She then stormed off, with her new husband awkwardly following behind. There was a weird atmosphere after that and everyone started making excuses to go home.
I'm talking proper fake emergency stuff here: "I have to get back because I need to err, my erm, yeah bye..." Everyone left much earlier than usual. No one wanted to be there and have awkward conversations with the bride.
99. I’m Gonna Getcha
I was dating this girl who asked me to go to her ex’s wedding. We dated for a few months prior, but asking me to go to a wedding together felt like a serious commitment...I still accepted. I planned for the week off work and we went all out for this wedding. Half the time, I was trying to make the most of our time together, but she always went missing.
Fast forward to the reception. She made a scene in the most unstable and mentally sick way. In front of the groom, the bride, and everyone else, she said out loud: “I’m still in love with you. We literally have been sleeping together all week and I can't stop thinking about you." She quickly got escorted out after that.
The bride was clearly upset, but everyone tried to go about their business. As soon as I left, my “girlfriend” started completely ruining the hall and all the decorations, just throwing a fit on her way out. It was so embarrassing. I figured she was telling the truth since she was missing the whole time, but I’m pretty sure that everyone during the whole thing assumed this was too crazy to be real.
I definitely regret not seeing her true colors before, but when you work so much and try to date at the same time, you have very little time to get to really know some people. Time sort of flies by and you end up dating for a few months. Fast forward a month or two later...she got together with the groom and I’m pretty sure she has no regrets about wasting my time.
She probably doesn’t even feel bad about using me or even ruining that man’s marriage. This woman is seriously twisted.
100. My Way Or The Highway
I’m not a wedding planner, but I was going to be at a wedding as a bridesmaid. The bride-to-be took us—the maid of honor, another bridesmaid, and myself—out to pick out dresses. The bride's mother and the groom's mother also came at her insistence. We arrived at the dress shop only to find that the bride, her mom, and the groom's mom had already picked out the dress she wanted us to wear for the wedding.
Okay, that was fine in theory, but we had been under the impression that we'd get to pick our own dresses. Whatever, it was her wedding. When we tried the dresses on, however, we realized something disturbing—they didn't really look good on the two of us because we both had different frames and sizes. We came out, showing the bride and two moms, and the moms were in agreement that the dress they picked really didn't work. The bride’s response, on the other hand, was jaw-dropping.
The bride was very upset that we didn't magically look great in the same dress. She then started making snide, subtle comments about our appearances, implying that we'd need to lose weight to look good in them, and telling one of the other girls how she'd need a push-up bra to look "normal." The moms ignored the bride's attitude and flagged down an employee to help us find some alternatives.
We live in a small city, so the selection they had wasn't the best, but the employee found at least half a dozen other dresses that come in the color the bride wanted. We tried them all on, but because we vary so much in body type, most of them didn't look good on both of us. For example, the strapless ones looked bad on the busty girls, while the long dresses didn't fit right on the short ones, etc.
The bride continued to make comments about our bodies. Finally, the last dress we tried on was generic enough that it looked fine on all of us...except the bride didn't like it because it didn't make us look "sexy" enough. To make matters worse, the dress had pockets. She absolutely did not want her bridesmaids to have pockets.
At this point, every single one of us was happy with this choice except for her. She reluctantly agreed to let us pick that dress but she was very clearly not happy. So then we picked out shoes. The bride told us we will be wearing the same shoes as her but in a different color. Weird, but again, we didn't argue with her.
When we tried them on, though, there was a snag in her plans. I have very small feet (technically a 3 in kids, though some size 5 shoes will fit). The heels she wanted were sky high and strapless. When I put them on and tried to walk, my feet kept slipping out. They were also open-toed, so I couldn't really stuff the front as I'd done in the past.
To top it off, just standing in them to try them on, the front was absolutely ruining my feet. I told her this, and she watched me try to walk in them only to have them flop off. Her mom asked me if they came in a smaller size, but they were fancy shoes, so no, they obviously didn't make them for kids. The bride's solution?
"Once you start to wear them, your feet will swell and they'll fit then." She then walked off. The bride's mom assured me that we'd "figure something out" and bought all of our outfits as her condolences. I never got to know how that would have worked out, though, because the bride and groom simultaneously cheated on each other, and they called off the wedding.
The bride didn't even have the nerve to tell me herself; I had to hear it from the maid of honor. We are no longer friends, and it's sad to me that this wasn't even the reason why. I can't believe I let someone treat me, and other people she called friends, like that.
