Wedding workers, guests and even bridal party members share their horrific wedding day experiences and what went down after the I do's.
The Maid Of Honor Was Getting Way Too Much Attention
“The bride’s mom wore what was basically a wedding dress and insisted on walking her daughter up the aisle with her father (they were divorced). There was not enough room for all three people to walk comfortably.
After the wedding, we found out that the photographer had become enamored with the maid of honor and at least 50% of the pictures he took were of her and there were zero portraits of just the bride & groom.”
Her Twin Brother Went A Little Too Overboard With His Song
“Wedding was at a Napa Valley winery, during the tech boom of the ’90s. Groom: frat-boyish VC funder on the climb. Bride: Blonde, brittle, glossy.
The wedding invitation was in the form of a merger announcement in a mocked-up Wall Street Journal page. As in: ‘Smith Global announces merger with Jones Limited. Combination delivers significant potential to drive long-term affection growth and market share of love,’ that kind of thing. Still, the guy was a friend, and my date and I went to show our support.
The first really weird thing that happened: The bride’s twin brother came out before the wedding, got the bride to perch on a stool in front of everyone, and serenaded her, on his knees, with a guitar. He wrote the song. It was a love ballad with such barely-concealed incestuous longing that everyone was frozen with discomfort. He sang of how beautiful his sister was, how any man would be lucky to have her. I can’t remember the whole thing, but this lyric seared itself into my brain: ‘Lips touching, tongues dancing, they give each other the looook that can mean just one thiiiiiing.’ It was not done for laughs; he was crying as he sang, and everyone watching looked like they wanted to drop through the floor.
Then the wedding. Two sets of chairs set up in a lovely courtyard garden, aisle down the middle leading to a bower. We all seated ourselves, on the chairs, which had white upholstery.
The ceremony itself wasn’t that bad – my date and I thought things might be picking up. It didn’t last too long. The minister said:
‘And now, I ask each of you to reach under your chairs for the small, white envelope you will find there. Each one contains a live Monarch butterfly. We will release them into the air and let them soar free, as a symbol of the love these two have for each other.’
Everyone froze. Whoever had set up the area had put the envelopes ON, not under, the chairs. White envelopes. Little white envelopes, on snow-white chair seats. Open-mouthed with horror, all the guests reached down and found the envelopes. We opened them. Most were dead – squashed into bloody smears, but a good amount were just horribly maimed, these poor butterflies that had been sat on for the better part of 45 minutes. We watched in shock as these broken, mangled butterflies, missing a wing or some legs or a tail, flopped onto the ground and twitched out their death agonies.
Moral: No incest. No live butterflies, that is all.”
“The Groom Screams And Plops To The Ground”
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“I was a groomsman in a wedding where the chapel was in the middle of a golf course. To get to the chapel, you have to take an elevator down from the clubhouse. If you live in Missouri you might know I’m talking about Big Cedar Lodge.
So wedding time rolls around and all the groomsmen had spent the day drinking in the clubhouse. I had about 7 drinks and I drank the least. Everyone is ready to go but we’re running a bit late. We take the elevator down and it gets stuck between floors. Ten groomsmen and a groom are now stuck in a standard-sized elevator. We call for help and the person answering tells us the mechanic has gone home so it will be some time. One of the groomsmen is claustrophobic and does not handle this news well.
After about an hour of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a controlled panic, we all really, really have to pee. My best friend had an empty flask and peed in it and filled it to the brim. It was really bad vibes in that elevator. Finally, the mechanic comes and does his magic and we get to the floor of the golf course. We sprint across the golf course to get to the bathroom. We’re about an hour late at this point.
As we’re sprinting across, the groom gets struck in the head by an errant golf ball, screams, and plops to the ground. He’s laying on the ground dazed with a bloody head. We call his dad, who comes running over from the chapel. Around this time the golfer who hit the ball drives over in his cart. He says ‘You okay?’ then actually drives off leaving 11 dudes wasted, one of which we will later find out has a ‘cranial hemorrhage.’ Dad runs over, not acknowledging us and helps his son walk to his car and drives him to the emergency room. Obviously, the wedding was canceled.
They got married at the same spot a couple months later and everything went swimmingly. We did not drink as much the day of the wedding and we avoided the elevator. From what I heard it was an incredibly urgent ER visit for the groom but he made it in time for there not to be any permanent neurological damage or something. I have not heard if they found the golfer.”
“I’ve Never Seen So Much Freaking Blood And Broken Glass And…”
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“I worked at one that was a disaster. It was many years ago when I was a barman in an Irish hotel. The hotel was struggling, so it took a wedding booking from a well-known criminal family involved in illegal substances and burglary. Their daughter was marrying a member of a similar family from the other side of the country. These families were very large, so the wedding was huge. About two hours into the reception, chaos ensued. 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 pulled the waitresses out the moment she saw it. 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 biggest brawl I’ve ever seen, easily fifty men beating the heads off one another. Someone drove a car into our emergency exit. Chairs went through windows. The fight spilled out to the rest of the hotel, while the staff were locked behind the bar or in the kitchen. We called the Gardaí (police), but they took their time coming as they obviously didn’t want to get into the middle of a massive brawl and were happy to let them tire each other out. We didn’t have enough security to make any difference as the owners were morons and couldn’t afford it anyway. 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 (I’ve never seen so much freaking blood before or since), and glass, and human crap. The place never recovered. We had to cancel the next 3 weddings due to the damage, and once word got around we couldn’t get any more. Locals avoided the place. It was sold six months later at a huge loss.”
When The Father Of The Bride Collapsed, People Thought It Was A Joke
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“Bride’s father dropped dead during the ceremony. That was pretty horrible. I didn’t know the family of the bride very well, I had met them once or twice before, but we were just guests at the wedding. The guy was overweight but otherwise healthy. He had a freak heart attack on the spot and dropped dead at 57. People at first thought it was a joke, but quickly realized it wasn’t. The bride was (understandably) inconsolable and the groom was shocked but did his best trying 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, as good a person as she is, had her maid of honor encourage everyone to go to the reception hall regardless since it would have been a sunk cost anyway and felt bad for her guests. I don’t know if anyone went. When everything died down, a month or so later the wedding party and a lot of the guests organized a really awesome barbecue for them to celebrate their wedding since the ceremony was technically about over when it happened. Everyone also kicked in some money along with their wedding gifts to pay for the honeymoon that they ended up missing originally. They got a much deserved, all expenses-paid week in St. Thomas.”
“The Groom And Groomsmen Had Been Drinking Since 9 AM”
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“I went to a wedding a couple of years ago, the groom and groomsmen had been drinking since 9 am. I wasn’t in the wedding party but about an hour before the wedding I get a call from the best man. The officiant had stopped by and said that if they don’t sober up he wouldn’t perform the wedding. I head up to the room and they are all wasted. I start having them do anything I had ever heard about sobering them up (I know it doesn’t actually work but A) You got to try something and B) The officiant said that if the groom can get all the way to the front without falling over, he would consider him sober enough, they were that bad). Somehow they sobered up enough, got dressed and to the wedding. Poor guys stood up there swaying but somehow made it. The bride was not happy. Then came the reception. About 10 minutes in one of the idiot groomsmen decided he needed a drink to calm his stomach. While looking toward the bride and groom, he started to projectile vomit. He got the bride, groom, and best man. I’m not sure how he is still alive after that.”
She Gambled On A Fart, And She Lost Big Time
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“I work as an event planner. It was the wedding of two fairly wealthy families, and the bride had decided on a rather rural, ‘shabby chic’ aesthetic. The reception, she decided, would take place on family property, in a historic barn. This caused a huge flurry of issues, between having to have the barn cleaned, the fact that we needed auxiliary tents as the barn wasn’t large enough, and the fact that the property lacked electricity and running water. The latter was solved with a bank of generators, tubs of water for catering, and a side tent with port-a-johns hidden inside.
The bride had, to be honest, been quite a bridezilla, but it’s my job to deal with those things. At this point, the ceremony had ended, social hour is shutting down, professional photos were taken. We were prepping to transition to the entrance of the bridal party, which would be followed immediately by first dance and cake cutting. During this, the dinner would be staged, so every aspect was being fairly carefully timed out.
I was speaking to the caterer when I happened to glance over and see the most curious blend of expressions pass over the bride’s face, and she frantically waved down my assistant. A few moments later, my headset beeped on, and my assistant said ‘we have an issue.’ It turns out that the bride had gambled on a fart and lost in a big way. Now, the bride was wearing a huge, full ball gown, with a fitted, boned strapless top in a sort of embellished mesh. Underneath, she had a shaper garment and hoops and slips. We had already had issues getting her into a limo, and having her use a port-a-johns meant one of us would have to get personal. That was my assistant’s job. I radioed to everyone to expect a fifteen-minute delay, and they headed towards the tent.
The fifteen minutes pass. Then twenty. Finally, my earpiece beeps on. ‘The previous issue is more than we anticipated.’ I ran over to find my assistant looking horrified. The bride, it turns out, had been using some health shakes in an attempt to fix last minute bloating. This had mixed poorly with the drinks from earlier, and she had eaten a fairly decent breakfast. The substance that had come out of her body, as a result, defied explanation. It was slimy, oily even, with stringy bits and the consistency of hair gel. Not only had it been a rather profound accident, but the smell was unrivaled. Generally, a substance no human body should emit.
But the thing that set it over the edge was that the shaper the bride wore was a latex deal that came down over the thighs and up to her bra. Waterproof, the poo had just sort of filled it, like a water balloon of horror. My assistant had opened up the snap crotch and just released the evil trickling down the bride’s thighs.
My assistant quickly sealed it back up and she and the bride vainly tried to wipe up the goo, dry, with toilet paper but this just spread it around. Now I have a shell-shocked assistant and a crying bride. You can smell her four feet away. The bride is just flipping out that she’s making her guests wait, that she has a choreographed dance waiting to happen, and she needs to be introduced NOW. I’m just looking at her manicured nails. Residue of diarrhea are just embedded in her nail bed. I start trying to scrape the poo out with a fabric stain wipe while the bride insists that the show must go on, immediately. I give in that this is an issue which will have to wait and signal to start introductions. The groom looks vaguely disconcerted by his new wife’s odor, but I tell my assistant to distract him until they take the floor. Introductions happen, the dance starts, and we find some fresh horror.
The dance was a choreographed affair, and as the groom spun his bride around, hand on her waist, he is squishing the poo up the insides of the waist trainer, up and out the back waistband. To our horror, we watch as an oily stain spreads across the mid-back of the gown. As we are still cringing from this, the groom sets his hand firmly in the middle of the poo stain.
The action had to be taken as soon as the couple left the dance floor, it was obvious, and I left my assistant in charge while I made preparations. She kept radioing me: the stain was spreading, she could smell the poo from her spot by the DJ. They were cutting the cake now. They were feeding the cake to each other, both now 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 to bring me the bride. The support tent was closed down for me, and I pulled a tub of clean water from the caterers. My assistant walked in to find me in dish gloves and a poncho, like American Psycho, as 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 be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever dealt with. With her clean, I threw away the waist shaper and scrubbed down the $15 k wedding gown back in a plastic basin. The inner lining was a loss, and I cut it out completely.
Dressed again, and offered a Xanax, the bride was little worse for wear, and except for missing her dinner, she was fine. The support tent smelled like a sewer and was closed for the remainder of the event. The groom was a sport, never directly saying anything, but asked if we could cancel the garter toss as he didn’t really want to go under her skirt.
Pictures from the event appeared in a magazine. Still photos, away from the smell, were beautiful.
Sounds Like One Classy Wedding
“My cousin’s wedding was FREAKING RIDICULOUS.
To be fair, we all knew it was going to be something because his girlfriend (now wife) is completely psychotic.
Anyway, their wedding was in the middle of August in the sweltering heat. In the middle of the woods. Mosquitoes as far as the eye can see. Most people didn’t have a place to sit and those that did had a nice splinter-filled wooden table like you’d set up for camping.
Their toddler was screaming throughout the entire ‘ceremony.’ The bride was 9 months pregnant, cursing the entire time how hot it was (NO DUH). She smacked her dad as they walked down the aisle because he stepped on her toe. My brother’s job was to walk up two goldfish to put into fish bowls as a ‘sign of partnership’ or whatever it meant. Except one of the fish was dead, so he dropped in one live fish and one dead fish.
At the reception, they served food like home-made dunkaroos and hot dogs.
Need I say more?”
“That Marriage Didn’t Last”
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“The hotel brought the wrong main meal during the reception, and 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 brings the reception to an end as now all the guests have to wait an extra 2-3 hours to get dinner, pushing back the speeches to the end of the night. The evening guests waited in the bar all night, then went home without ever seeing the happy couple. There was no time for dancing. That marriage didn’t last.”
It Was An Omen
“Elaborate outdoor ceremony, they had tents set up and a string quartet playing. Just as the bride and groom reach the altar dark clouds start rolling in with distant booms of thunder.
We were in huge tents, about 200 people so we felt safe, then as they were about to take their vows it started hailing golfball sized hail. For the most part they bounced off the tents, but the downpour was so heavy and the winds so strong that you couldn’t hear a word they said.
The lawn turned into a slippery mud pit, the dance floor was floating away. As they got to the I do part lightning hit nearby and everyone’s ears were ringing. Part of the tent collapsed and everyone ran for the main house or their vehicles.
They finished up the vows in the main hallway, and the marriage lasted 6 months. I think someone was trying to tell them something and they wouldn’t listen.”
“After 11 Years And All The Days For That To Happen, What Bad Luck”
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“I attended a wedding where the bride and groom have been together for 11 years, high school sweethearts, could not possibly be more excited to marry each other. The ceremony went great: quick, emotional, everyone cried. They used the same venue for both the ceremony and reception and the bridal party were taking pictures when my boyfriend (who was in the wedding) asked if I could bring him out a drink. As soon as I got out there all the groomsmen were standing around while the bridesmaids and groom were flocked in a circle around the bride. She was sick to the point where she couldn’t stand and had to be helped into the reception. This came out of NOWHERE. So they came in and did their first dance, danced with their parents, served dinner, and made an announcement that they were going to the hospital. They missed their entire reception. The wedding continued on well into the night (because that’s what they wanted) and as we were getting ready to leave we ran into them coming back to the hotel. Turns out it was a kidney stone. After 11 years and all the days for that to happen — what bad luck.”
She Planned An Outdoor Affair In The Middle Of January
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“I supposed any wedding where the bride and groom successfully get married can’t be considered a COMPLETE disaster, but this one came pretty close. A couple friends of mine had already been JOP (Justice of the Peace) married but wanted to have a nice reception with all the trimmings. I started to have a bad feeling about it when the bride insisted that this January wedding in Virginia should take place outside under canopies. ‘But January is cold,’ I told her, and she said, ‘We will have space heaters though.’ The tents she wanted were canopies without sides, so essentially she intended to heat the entire Earth with space heaters?
Well the date came around and it wound up being one of the big storms (Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon, I can’t remember). I was not able to attend the wedding because I couldn’t make the trip in the snow, but according to what I saw on Facebook, one of the outdoor tents collapsed in the snow and the other had to be taken down as it started to blow away. The wedding and reception were instead held inside the house whose yard they were originally intending to use, which was the groom’s aunt’s hoarder house.
So the bride in her beautiful gown was photographed standing in front of a stack of boxes filled with trash. Those are her wedding pictures.
I felt bad.”
“She Gives A Long Guilty Stare At…”
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“I’m a wedding photographer, fairly high end, in the Connecticut area. I do a lot of weddings for people that are — let’s say well off. 2 years ago, spring wedding, ceremony in a church, fairly large group. Bride and groom are in their late 20s, best man is groom’s uncle in his 40s or 50s. The ceremony starts without a hitch, the bride is all done up in an expensive white gown, makeup, the usual, and she looks so nervous. Is it a wedding day right? I try to get the photos where she looks happy but she’s not giving me much to work with at all. Halfway through the ceremony, she starts to sway slightly, they get to the vows and she starts into hers. She’s not three words in and she loses her breakfast all over the groom, and herself. A commotion stirs of course as the bridal party tries to rush to her aid and she starts sobbing. I, of course, stopped taking photos at this point and started really listening to what was going on. I figured she was sobbing about ruining her wedding, but no, through her wailing she admits she didn’t puke because she was out of it or nervous, it was morning sickness. She continues wailing as the groom repeatedly points out they hadn’t slept together yet. As another wave of vomit comes out, the groom asks her whose baby it is and she just gives a long guilty stare at the uncle. The groom turns to the uncle and, without missing a beat, socks him in right in the face. Uncle goes down, chaos ensues.”
When The Groom Is Running Away From The Bride Bleeding, You Know There’s A Problem
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“The groom was a childhood friend of mine who grew up one block over. Our parents knew each other and liked each other, but he was a bit of a jerk as a kid, so we lost touch about the start of puberty. The day I got the call about the wedding, I was 28, so I hadn’t seen the guy in 15 years, at least.
My mom was the caller, and she asked me to actually be in his wedding party. I told her the obvious, that I didn’t much like the guy back then, we hadn’t even spoken in a decade and a half, and I really didn’t think that meant I was good for his wedding party. My mom told me that he hadn’t had literally any friends over the years, so this would be a personal favor to her and to his mom. Reluctantly, I agreed.
So, I go over to meet everyone after all this time, and within seconds I realize why I’m being asked for the favor. The friend hasn’t brushed his teeth in years. His bride is massively overweight and overbearing beyond belief. I suck it up, do my best, but the 4 months leading in are a nightmare.
Then the wedding happens, and after the ceremony (which was actually nice), the bride decides literally out of the blue that she wants to have a white limo take her to the Hilton. It’s June, there are no limos to be had, the Hilton is booked, but the best man (the groom’s older brother) is furiously trying to find something and pay for it on his credit card because the bride is in full meltdown mode.
In a fury, she rips her headpiece out, taking about 1/3 of her hair with it, and storms into the back room of the hall. The groom says he’s going to try and talk her down and goes back there with her. A few minutes later, the double doors of the back room slam open and he comes running out — with a butcher knife through his palm. He’s streaming blood and screaming. She tackles him from behind, yanks the knife out of his hand (oh, that sound!), and looks like she’s going to stab him to death in front of the entire assembly.
The best man and I both tackle her at once, and we’re both grown men, but she’s a total she-devil. The groom slips out, gets out of the hall, and runs to his car, but she also squirms free after biting the best man and is right behind the groom. He’s just backed out and as he puts it into drive, she leaps on the hood and grabs the wipers. He makes a run for it, and as he bottoms out on the exit of the parking lot and yanks the wheel, she rolls off into the street and drills the far curb. As we run up to her, she’s all scratched up and she’s bawling.
The wedding got annulled the next day.
Turns out she’d been psychotic several times during her adolescence and adulthood and was on a bevy of pills every day. She decided on her own not to take her meds on her wedding day because she wanted to be totally clear for the ceremony.
Bad decision.”