Weddings are a glorious event - everyone is happy to share the big day with the bride and groom. Until it isn’t. Just as a wedding can be the most memorable day of your life for good reasons, they can also be memorable for all the wrong reasons. People around the world have been sharing their experiences of when the weddings they attended were not so awesome. My nephew is highly allergic to peanuts and was the ring bearer at a wedding when he was very young. The bride and groom made sure that the venue, the caterers, whoever made the cake, all knew that there should be no peanut-containing or contaminated food on the premises for their wedding.
No one thought to tell the DJ though, and the DJ brought peanuts as a snack. He held my nephew's hand walking him into the reception and my nephew had a serious reaction. He was ok in the end, fortunately, the EpiPen did work in his case. But it certainly put a damper on the reception after he had to leave for the hospital. It was pretty scary, and I share that story hoping that if any other brides/grooms have a loved one with a peanut allergy, make sure you tell everybody that might set foot in your wedding venue.
We attended a wedding for a family member who didn't have a lot of money. It was hosted at an inexpensive venue but was 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 asked, ``Do you have any friends in (the city we live an hour away)? 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 had not handed over our card with cash inside yet so my husband hit the ATM and added another $100.
I'm a wedding photographer. I was at one really fancy one a couple of years ago, typical outdoor deal at a swanky location in the middle of nowhere. The place was really nice, 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 begins and the bridal party comes down and takes their places. Then the bride appears with her father.
She takes 3 or 4 steps down the concrete steps and her shoe twists on her, she tumbled down a good 12 feet or more and busted out the majority of her front teeth in the fall. 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.
After the ceremony at this wedding I worked at - 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. 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 etc., but she wanted to continue with the wedding.
She then had the first course of the meal and threw up her dress, and had to sit with her mum in another room while everyone else dances etc. Felt so bad for her as she spent the rest of the evening crying.
The bride's father was 45 min late to walk his daughter down the aisle. While we were waiting the air conditioning broke in the venue. It was over 100 degrees outside and humid AF. 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. Two of the bride's aunts fainted. The bride and the wedding planner were crying.
This wedding was not ruined per se, but marred. My ex-wife's grandmother was in her 90s, in a wheelchair. While we're up at the altar, she wouldn't shut up about the flowers and how they might need water. Note that she was not talking quietly to her neighbor, , but yelling in her old lady voice. She didn't have dementia, she was very with it. She had no volume control or what she was doing was inappropriate.
She thought the flowers needed water. ”THEY LOOK TERRIBLE!!” she yelled. One of the cousins, without saying anything, got up and started to just wheel her out. WHERE ARE WE GOING?!?!??” she yelled. We all chuckled at grandma and went on with the ceremony.
A friend of my girlfriend was getting married. The wedding was quite normal: they got married in the local church and then there was the 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: there were some swans that attacked the photographer and the majority of the people around him were not doing anything much more than laughing at this guy who was running around and screaming.
I was a groomsman at a big wedding of around 500 people. All the future wife's doing. She wanted the huge $70,000 wedding. Pre-wedding, the groom was nervous as hell. All these people have to be perfect, this is her dream wedding, etc. So, at some point, the whiskey gets pulled out.
It went from “calm the nerves” few shots, to “he's just about finished the bottle.” We gave him water, got him in the shower, and redressed. It's go-time. Midway through her vows, he pukes all down the front of her dress. It was horrible, but it was great. They're going on eight years strong.
My mother was a church organist and attended many weddings. I suppose the story that stands out was of the bride who when asked "Do you take this man..?" broke down and said "No, I can't - I don't love him" - and ran out of the church.
It was a smallish town, people found out that she had met somebody new, fallen hopelessly in love with him.
It was an uncle that pulled this at one wedding I attended. He got grabby with the bride's mother and the maid of honor at which point he was told to go sit at his table and stay there or there would be trouble.
He didn't listen and tried grabbing the bride's bottom, at which point he was punched and frog-marched out into the parking lot by the groom and locked in the back of his own pickup truck with a bloody nose.
It was a big wedding, with over 300 people. Turns out the bride had been having an affair with her cousin’s husband. The cousin had known for a little bit but waited until the wedding to go table to table letting everyone know the bride was sleeping with her husband.
Poor groom was blindsided. The worst part was his father-in-law was well off and opened up a restaurant for him. Well, he lost his wife and his restaurant.
The bride and groom get drunk and get into a fight. Crying yelling screaming, running out into the courtyard. The best man goes to check on them. Finds them rolling on the ground, not in a sexy way. Best man throws bride out of the way, slams groom’s head into the sidewalk, and pins him down. The bride starts kicking the groom in the face. The best man pushes her away while sitting on top of the groom.
Bride storms off with the bridesmaid. Best man lets groom up who begins kicking and punching trees and breaking the posts off a gazebo. The best man tells the bridesmaid to go grab the police officer from inside for assistance. The police officer comes out and tries to help get the groom to his room (the wedding was at a fancy hotel. Groom proceeds to trash talk and be disrespectful with the officer and ends up getting arrested. The Father of the groom disowns him, yells at the bride. The best man and his date end up taking care of the bride and groom’s child and staying in their honeymoon suite for the night.
My dad has vintage and veteran cars. When I was younger he used to do some weddings with them, I loved clearing out the confetti from the car when he'd get home. One week he arrived back and there was no confetti in the car. On the way to the church, the bride changed her mind, and instead of taking her and her father to church, they asked if he could drop them at the local zoo as it is her favorite place.
So he did and he left them there in full wedding attire. They were going to get a taxi home when they were done. It was the days before mobile phones too so I'm guessing ppl were waiting at the church for quite a while.
Was a guest of a friend of the bride, did not know anyone attending. Very expensive over the top place, several hundred guests of this very Italian wedding. Maid of honor grabs the mic at the cocktail hour and begins her speech, rambling, drunk.
Quickly devolves to stating the recently deceased mother of the bride was against this wedding and that's basically what caused her death Plus Vinny will never give up sex workers. She is tackled by several people and dragged away. The happy couple was separated and divorced within a year.
My wife and I had to postpone our wedding due to Covid. On the day we would have gotten married, my wife's grandfather passed away.
I'm kind of grateful we couldn't get married on that day. There's no way we could have had a good time with such a loss in the family.
At the wedding of one of my wife's friends (he was the groom) the bride propositioned me in the lift - I was going up to check on our son who was with a hotel-provided babysitter. She was leaving the party because her new husband was "spending too much time partying with his friends and ignored me all night". She was totally drunk, having just sat down all night drinking endlessly refillable champagne.
I took her to her room and left very quickly as she began to undress in front of me. I came down to tell the groom, he wasn't fussed at all, and didn't go up to bed for another couple of hours.
This was around 2009. On the second day of the wedding, the bride went swimming in the ocean. It took place in Tenerife. She swam out too far and was basically ‘lost at sea’ for 9 hours or so. She eventually found her way back but was in bad shape. Everyone panicked the whole day and thought she drowned.
By the time she got back, she wished she had. Her husband found her phone and read a bunch of messages supposedly from her aunt (but it was quickly clear from the sexy content it wasn’t her aunt at all, she had been having an affair with the best man for apparently years). They got an annulment shortly after. 60,000 down the drain. One of the most opulent weddings I’ve ever been to.
Huge expensive wedding with all the anxiety and $ that entails. Thinks his wife has died on her wedding day. The wife miraculously survives but is shown to be a conniving cheater.
He loses his best friend, his wife, $60,000, and social esteem with extended family and friends in a 24 hour period. What a roller coaster for the husband.
Not as dramatic as some of the comments on here but very awkward. I was at a lovely wedding, really romantic - all candlelit - and the reception was lovely.
The best man made a good speech, then at the end, he said everybody raise your glasses to - he said the groom's name & then accidentally called the new bride by the groom’s ex-wife’s name!
When I was 4 or 5, I walked in on my uncle's wife-to-be and her maid of honor kissing the night before the ceremony. As a little kid, I must have casually dropped this into conversation with my dad. It all unraveled from there.
I wish I remembered more as frankly it is some top-tier family drama and my uncle has always been a douche. I remember them jumping apart and her crouching to my level to say, 'Hi [name], what are you doing here? I'm [name], I'm going to be your auntie!'
Not me, but my elder cousin's story. He 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 it feels like an unused ballroom.
The bride and groom realized the wedding organizer scammed them and the wedding organizer took the money to buy themselves a big ol' house. When the bride and groom decide to see the wedding organizer, they catch him sleeping in his house. It became national TV news here and the wedding organizer got sued by a few brides and grooms that got scammed by them, too.
Was invited to a wedding of a friend’s friend, because she didn‘t have enough people to get the reception as big as she wanted it to be. Also, the bride and groom were super young, got pregnant 3 months after hooking up and marrying for all the wrong reasons. Party starts, the whole atmosphere is forced and strained, everybody knows the whole thing is fake in a way, so I decided to spend my time outside with the smokers. Having a wonderful time until we can hear screaming inside and the bride runs past us in very Hollywood style, all teary and dramatic.
Turns out the ice cake wasn‘t stored properly, was slightly defrosting, and a little lopsided. The bride didn‘t come back, the cake was really nice. The couple got divorced 9 months later.
A couple of years back I was waitressing at this function lounge that was hosting the reception, the music starts but nobody comes in for a solid 30 seconds so the DJ cuts the music. Everyone hears loud arguing in the foyer for about a minute when two men come stumbling into the hall absolutely 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, police got called, the bride was understandably a crying mess but 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.
The poor bride started her menstrual cycle on her big day, and she was nauseated and in pain all day. She couldn't eat any of the buffet because her stomach hurt too much, and anything she tried to eat ended up being vomited back up. She couldn't even stand properly either because of her cramps.
She stayed seated. In most of the wedding photos, she's grimacing instead of smiling because she was so ill.
Leading up to my friend's wedding his father had been battling cancer after a terminal diagnosis. And it was touch and go whether he would be well enough to attend the wedding, in the end, he was too unwell to attend despite wishing that he could.
Just as we got to the wedding reception my friend was informed that his father had just passed away. It was devastating.
Not me but a close friend (wedding photographer) waiting at the altar the best man announced that the groom was coming out as gay and the wedding was canceled. Everyone laughed like it was a best man joke, but no it was very serious. The bride was on the way in the car. She was not happy.
All the guests had to wait while they sorted their lives out. In the end, they split the reception room in two and each family had their own dinners. Needless to say, they didn't want the photos.
I was at a family wedding where my cousin's daughter was subbing in for the bride to trick the groom into pulling off her garter belt with his teeth and other guys volunteered too.
My cousin looks at me and, with no irony whatsoever, says something to the effect of "Why don't you go do that too?" with a big smile on his face.
I went to the wedding of a friend of my girlfriend, we sat waiting for 35 minutes before we were told it was off. Turned out the best man and the groom were caught in a rather risky position. Turns out the groom was only getting married to please his Catholic family.
Girlfriend’s friend was so embarrassed she left the country and we have not heard from her since. The groom and the best man are now married and run a BnB in the Lake District I think.
I was invited to the reception of one of my good friends. They had been courthouse married for months and living happily. When I arrived at the location and saw the big crowd I knew something was wrong. Friend's wife is prone to panic attacks and is extremely agoraphobic to the point of breaking down and crying if she is overwhelmed. Immediately call my friend and ask what's going on and if this was okay.
Turns 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 all those his wife and him invited and telling them to leave without telling his parents. Parents had a meltdown as we left.
Groom got so drunk the night before 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 there 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.
And this 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 at the ceremony alone, probably double that at the reception. They divorced within 6 months.