Wedding days are supposed to be spectacular and filled with love - but they don't always go as planned. Guests and bridal party members reveal the nightmares weddings they attended. Even brides and grooms open up about how awful their 'magical' day actually was.
The Bagpipes Drowned Out Everything Else
>>> “On the day of our wedding, it was discovered that the venue had booked two outdoor weddings at the same time – ours, and another in a gazebo not very far from ours. Somehow the father of the bride in the other wedding found out that our processions were going to be at the same time. He also found out that our procession included a bagpiper (as myself and groomsmen all in kilts), while his daughter’s wedding procession was to have a harpist. He approached me and very nicely asked if we would consider delaying our procession for about 20 minutes so our bagpipers would not drown out their harpist. After conferring with my soon-to-be wife, we agreed that a 20-minute delay was no big deal for us.
Unfortunately, the father of the bride should have taken some other factors into consideration and instead delayed his daughter’s wedding. Because their procession went off without a hitch, and everyone in their wedding heard their beautiful harpist, but the vows were pretty much inaudible once our bagpipers started at the requested ’20 minutes later.’
On top of that, our DJ had burned a CD with our chosen husband-wife dance song on it and didn’t bother to check it before the reception. The song would not play because the CD somehow did not burn right, and we had to pick another song to dance to on the fly. We got a nice discount from the DJ company for that one.”–
>>> “Bride had 14 attendants, each of whom got their own song; the church was over packed by 100 people; the air broke in July in said church; ceremony was almost three hours long because 1) so many people wanted to recite poems or sing songs, and 2) the groom’s brother gave the wedding talk and turned it into a remember when we did this blow by blow of their entire childhood.
We finally get to the reception hall. Dinner was supposed to start at 6 p.m. At 8:30 p.m., the bride fainted from lack of food. Around midnight, there was a fight between the best man and one of the groomsmen. Classy.”–
>>> “A friend of mine who I had lost contact with was going to get married a few years back. I knew the girl from high school, but we had lost contact as well. I knew she had some health issues, but it was never anything really serious.
The week of the wedding, I heard that she had a heart attack and was in the hospital. They ended up having to postpone the wedding. Through some mutual friends, I knew she wasn’t doing so great so I decided to drop by the hospital. I make my way over to the waiting room and I see some people I knew, but my friend (the groom) was nowhere to be found. Literally 10 minutes after I got there, her family and my buddy walked out of some double doors crying. She had passed away on their actual wedding day.
I went to the funeral, and we hung out a bunch over the next few months. We eventually faded away again but still catch up about once a year. I’ll never forget the complete shock that came over me when I realized that she had actually passed away. I had no idea it was at that point. I thought I was going to just hang out with them and catch up for a bit at the hospital.”
The Bride Disappeared
Vereshchagin Dmitry/Shutterstock
>>> “I work at a museum that people rent out for weddings. I was working a wedding a while back where the bride disappeared as soon as the dances were over. I was walking around the other end of the building when I almost walked past the bride sobbing all over her mother saying, ‘I can’t be married, I don’t love him, I’ve made a mistake’ over and over as her mom was trying to console her.”–
>>> “Many years ago, my parents went to an adults-only wedding. It seems at these types of weddings there is always that one couple that brings their kids anyway. Well, during the reception one of the guests had a heart attack and died right on the dance floor. My parents said it was pretty traumatic watching people scramble to try and perform CPR and hearing the thumping of fists hitting his chest and seeing his bowels release all over the place. Needless to say, the kids that were present were horrified and the mother kept trying to turn everyone’s concern to her kids instead of the dead gentleman on the floor and the couple whose wedding reception just got ruined.”–
>>> “Went to a wedding when I was like 8 years old, and it was a super nice place, there was a giant waiting room for the 30 bathroom stalls. It was a Victorian style room. I was just chilling in there with my cousin, playing with some toys I had brought. When all of a sudden barge in all these women with a man that’s clobbering this woman all because he told her not to go the wedding. He thought it was her wedding and she was trying to marry someone else. Presumably to get out of this abusive relationship she was in. It was so sad. The man got arrested and sentenced to 39 years. The woman had to go to the hospital. She got 18 stitches and lost some teeth. She’s widowed now because some guys in jail beat the crap out of him for ‘being a tough guy’ and thinking it’s okay to beat his wife.”–
>>> “My sister brought a strange girl with her that I didn’t know to my wedding. She didn’t ask if this was okay and just seemed to be pleased that a girl was hotter than me and showing me up. The girl showed up at the reception, then proceeded to dance and gyrate with my new husband. I asked him to stop but he said no. I cried alone in the restroom for 30 minutes. Then our cab came to take us to our hotel, and I was looking longingly at my dad in the hope he would notice how sad I am. I couldn’t speak. I was humiliated. I then got completely wasted in the hotel bar at midnight, in my huge dress, telling all women never to get married. I couldn’t undo my dress or get my hair undone. I woke up to piles of hair on the floor I’d ripped out, a giant puff of ripped white fabric, my wedding ring in the bath, and my jewelry was broken. I had nine missed calls and a missed flight to our honeymoon. Still married. It was a tough year and a half before I finally felt happy again. We are doing well.”
Rain And Wind Caused A Disaster
>>> “A friend of mine had her wedding under a large pavilion at a really lovely park. The weather forecast called for rain, so they had canvas panels covering the sides of the pavilion. About 10 minutes into the drinking hour, there was a huge clap of thunder and the sky just opened up and poured. Sheets of rain and wind gusts up to 50 mph. Those canvas panels were held in place by flimsy pieces of twine and every single one of those ties snapped.
Imagine huge 20-foot-tall canvas sheets, propelled by wind and rain, whipping through a carefully arranged reception area. Vases smashed on the ground, tablecloths blew away, flowers scattered, complete and total destruction as the bride sobbed on her maid of honor’s shoulder. Even the bar was decimated, as it had been set up next to one of those curtains. Everyone was drenched, especially the guys who were trying to hold the curtains in place.
Once the rain stopped, they realized they hadn’t taken photos yet. In each and every one of my friend’s wedding photos, the groom and groomsmen looked like drowned rats.
Two years later, as the divorce was being finalized, she told me she should have taken that disaster as a sign and run for the hills much earlier.”–
>>> “My wedding was set for September 1st. I checked every weather report for the area going back five years. It had not rained on that date for all five of those years. But just in case, I decided to have my wedding at a golf course inside the ballroom. We had a bouncy house planned for the kids. My husband was in the military, so we were going to have a sword ceremony as we ran out to our car for our honeymoon. We had family and friends from Italy, China, the Philippines, and Romania fly in for our wedding in Salt Lake. It all went to crap when it began to rain. We canceled the bouncy house on the way to the venue and were thanking our lucky stars we had planned on having it inside.
Well, we are halfway through dinner when it begins to hail. Hail the size of golf balls fell and dented cars, cracked windshields and brought everyone on the patio inside. We were in the middle of cutting the cake when the cops came into the venue and had to evacuate our wedding because there were flash floods. Everyone dashed to their cars and had to go around the opposite side of the entire lake because flash floods had wiped out the roads. We had to pick up multiple people who were broken down on the side of the road because they didn’t put gas in their cars and there was absolutely no gas stations on that side of the lake.
To top it all off, my ex-boyfriend showed up to crash my wedding and hooked up with one of my bridesmaids in the venue bathroom before he got kicked out. The venue flooded a few hours after our evacuation. Cheers to the most memorable wedding ever, mine.”
The Paramedics Were Called
>>> “I had a relative collapse and start having trouble breathing shortly after the dancefloor opened. I saw a group of people helping him to a chair and he seemed like he was really ready to pass out. Paramedics were called, and they quickly got there and helped him onto a stretcher. The guy never lost consciousness, but since I had turned the music off, it really put a very awkward and gloomy shadow on the wedding.
The bride was sort of panicked, and I told her that we would just pick up where we left off, and that we’d pass along info as we received it, and that I would need her and the bridal parties help to get the floor going again. It was definitely a strange feeling, but within a few minutes, things did get back to normal and the guy ended up being released that very night. He had gone golfing earlier in the day and just gave out.”–
>>> “My cousin’s daughter got diarrhea and puke ALL OVER her wedding dress maybe five minutes before she was supposed to walk down the aisle.”–
>>> “I used to work for a DJ company. One time, one of the DJs was performing at his best friend’s wedding, so he needed to borrow a bunch of equipment and asked me to come along to handle setup and run the lights. This DJ, who was, at the time, one of the more respected senior DJs at this company was the worst example of a wedding DJ I ever saw.
Played music all night way too loud. When guests complained, he pretended to turn it down before turning it back up. Drank all night long and ended up sloppy before dinner even ended. Bridal party intros were unintelligible. He played nothing but Sinatra during dinner. Played the wrong first dance song for about 10 seconds until his friend and bride were glaring at him. During dinner, he proposed to his girlfriend right in the middle of the dancefloor.
I reported this horrendous turn of events to the owner of the DJ company who shrugged it off because he didn’t really care what sort of service he provided, just as long as he got paid by clients. I quit soon after.”–
>>> “My wife’s coworker got married. She was nervous, so her bridesmaids decided to give her some liquid courage before the ceremony. She wasn’t feeling it fast enough, so they actually overdid it some. She was nervous the first two minutes of the ceremony and by the end was feeling pretty good about life. By the reception, she was pretty knackered – several sheets to the wind and losing grip on the rest.
She was wearing a strapless dress that had fit when she got it fitted properly but apparently, she shed some weight leading up to the wedding. So she’s going around thanking people for coming when she sees me sitting with my wife. She apparently thought it was time to tell me what an awesome guy I was, by hugging me. She lifted her arms for the hug, and at that point, her dress went for a bit of a trip.
She hung on for a bit gushing about me. I could breathe, but dang if she wasn’t actually clammy bordering on really sweaty. When her groom and maid of honor extricated me after about 15 seconds, she looked down and made that classic over-emphasized ‘oops’ reaction and hauled herself back into her dress.”
She Fell Face First Into The Cake
>>> “Friends had a small wedding, with the reception in a private area of a restaurant, with about 30 people. After the meal, our server came through the doors with the 3-tier wedding cake in her arms. When she got front and center, she slipped and hit the floor like a rock face first into the cake. The initial laughter stopped quickly when it seemed she might be hurt because she wasn’t moving. She got up with help but crying as hard as I’ve ever seen. Hysterically apologizing over and over. Fast forward a couple hours, and thankfully she was physically okay. But even better, she was serving New Yorkers with money who felt terrible for her and were now hammered. I don’t know what the hosting couple tipped her, but I’m certain she picked up another $5,000 from the guests on the side. I threw her $100, and I’m cheap. She was crying again when we left, but for an entirely different reason.”–
>>> “My brother’s third wedding. Everyone shows up except the bride’s father, who shows up almost an hour late in a t-shirt and jeans. Proceeds to loudly exclaim what he would do to the bridesmaids. Insults the groomsmen for dressing up. Gets wasted and wrecks on the way out.
Or my father’s wedding. Where the bride’s mother brought a drink to the wedding. Gets hammered before the ceremony and loudly exclaims how my father is not good enough for my mother. Gets thrown out and slashes the tires on the limo.”–
>>> “Cousin April’s wedding. In no particular order:
Groom goes all the way with the dancer at his bachelor party the night before.
Was super proud they were getting married in a wedding chapel John Wayne Bobbitt was working at.
Bride and groom snort stuff in their limo on the way to their reception.
Bride and groom continue to snort it in the bathrooms at their reception.
All relatives get hammered, including my husband’s grandparents. We were the only sober ones.
Cousin Laurie wants to dance to ‘Want to Eff You Like an Animal’ with my husband who happens to be one of her first cousins.
One of the relatives made off with all the table decorations.
All kids under 10-years-old smeared wedding cake and food all over each other.
Groom/bride returned to her mother’s house with the rest of the family. All they cared about was opening envelopes for money. They gave a crap less about anything else.
Amazingly, the marriage lasted 10 years. I guess Cousin April got tired of her husband not coming home at night because he ‘was too tired to drive home.’
Oh, yeah. And she’s a teacher to elementary school children.”–
>>> “This happened at my cousin’s wedding. The bride and groom had requested there be no young children at the wedding. Which in my opinion is a pretty understandable request. Well, a member of one of the families created a huge stink about it saying they had no one to watch their 1-year-old. My cousin and his fiancee kept insisting that they didn’t want children, at least at the ceremony. Well, they brought the baby anyway. Two minutes into the respectful silence of a really nice ceremony the baby starts screaming bloody murder. Luckily they were at least respectful enough to leave when the baby started crying. Well, I guess baby calmed down, brought them back in and before you know it. Round 2 bloody murder. You could feel the entire crowd cringe. I felt terrible for my cousin and his new wife because they are really genuine and understanding people. It was incredibly rude and disrespectful.”
She Was All Alone Because Her Mother-In-Law Freaked Out
>>> “My mother-in-law came with her two sons to our wedding. She took a plane, and so she didn’t have a car. On the wedding day, she drove me completely nuts with her normal overly-dramatic rhetoric. When it was time for the bride and groom to get a ride to our hotel for the night, my mother-in-law started freaking out about having to drive our car to her hotel. We were getting a ride from friends, and she was going to take our car, and we would meet back up at noon the next day to see her and the boys off. The ceremony and reception took place at my parents’ house about a half-hour drive from the hotels. She started freaking out about driving 20 miles in the rain, and not one person in my family offered to drive her. My husband ended up having to ride with her, and he knew I was furious with her so he sent me along with my friends to be dropped off at the hotel. He forgot to give me the credit card, and his mother drove 15 mph and then delayed him at her hotel for over an hour. I sat in my wedding dress ALONE, on my wedding night, in our hotel lobby for almost two hours while my mother-in-law freaked out.”–
>>> To start off, Iceland has a very small gene pool. So small in fact, there was an ‘anti-incest’ app made to make sure that you’re not banging your cousin, or if you are, at least you know it.
I once went to the wedding of a couple where the groom was Icelandic. His mother did not approve of the wedding because she had the fear that the bride was related to them. So, on the wedding day, she got up and actually objected. It took one of the groomsmen running down to the bride’s mother’s house to fetch the family Bible. The Groomsman came charging back in about 30 minutes later and just about threw it at the mother and screamed, ‘No, this woman is not a member of the family. May we please be allowed to go on now?’
The bride was very Scandinavian looking: very tall, blond and blue-eyed. Also, her mother’s maiden name was the same as the groom’s last name. She did look like she could have been his sister and I won’t say I didn’t find it a little unsettling at times.”–
>>> “My father-in-law’s girlfriend threw a fit because the bride didn’t want her to sit in the mother of the bride’s seat. She wanted the spot to be left empty in memory of her mom who passed away nine years prior. Then she brought her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend to the reception and took up spots at the bride’s family table. I had the pleasure of sitting next to them. The boyfriend vaped during the reception at the table. The daughter ordered six or seven drinks. They danced very inappropriately. He kept smacking her butt, and she would jump in the air and wrap her legs around him while making out. We were all disgusted. The mother of the groom told them that this was a family-friendly wedding and not a nightclub. Father-in-law’s girlfriend was very mad that somebody told her guest to stop acting like dogs in heat, so she caused a scene. My father-in-law sided with his girlfriend and left his own daughter’s wedding reception without saying goodbye.”–
>>> “I forgot my wife’s vows on the kitchen table at home, and didn’t realize it when her brother was called up to the altar to give them to her. THEN I realized. Like a minute before the kiss. Her father ran to his car grab wife’s iPhone so she could read a copy from Google Drive.
Besides that, my mother-in-law was toasty. When we talked to her about it the next day, she was like, ‘No I wasn’t. Anyway, you shouldn’t have invited my sister, I always get wasted with her.’ Woman, we invited her because you insisted. Then there is my wife’s uncle who was always in the path of the photographer and had pretty much no idea how to use his $80 Samsung camera. Basically, he took two-second short videos trying to take pictures. The wedding was great though.”
Shevelev Vladimir/Shutterstock
What’s That Smell?
>>> “I was one of nine groomsmen in my friend’s wedding. When we stood on the stage during the ceremony, the last groomsman in the line (the bride’s brother) was a good 30 feet from where the bride and groom were standing. Before we walked out, the bride’s brother says, ‘Man I have to fart!’ I thought he was joking and told him to let it rip. About 10 minutes into the 45-minute long ceremony, he did indeed let it rip. Due to the air conditioning in the church being on, it took a bit for the stench hit me. It was like a low hanging fog. Over the course of the next few minutes, I observed this putrefacient cloud overtake each groomsman one by one until hitting first the groom’s nostrils, then the priest, and finally the bride who started gagging. I was having a hard time keeping it together. The bride’s brother stood there, with a smug look on his face as his sister shot him a look that would make an ordinary man whither in fear.”–
>>> “I was at my aunt’s wedding. As she was walking down the aisle, a phone rang. It was her soon-to-be mother-in-law’s phone. It rang for some time while she fumbled through her purse. She finally got it out. And answered it. And talked. For a while. While my aunt was walking down the aisle.”–
>>> “I was at a friend’s wedding reception and we’re having a good time dancing. A different friend’s kid was hiding under a table while his parents were getting hammered and ignoring him. The kid then starts running and laughing through the dance floor, and I see him wipe something that looks like chocolate on the BRIDE’S dress. She’s mortified and everybody stops dancing. It was poop. He had poop on his hand and wiped it on people. Years later, my wedding was child-free.”–
>>> “My brother proposed to his girlfriend at my wedding. They tried to convince the pastor to marry them that day.”–
>>> “I know of a couple that is of lower socioeconomic status and used nearly all of their $1,000 budget on a food truck guy who makes bomb BBQ. Well, wedding day rolls around and BBQ guy still hasn’t shown up to the reception hall. They are calling him and he isn’t answering. Turns out he forgot about the wedding and didn’t prep any food. So he rushes to the grocery store and buys cold cut meats and top-shelf bread. He manages to prep 200 sandwiches, coleslaw, and beans.
The family was understandably peeved, but BBQ guy made up for it by calling his buddy’s band to come play. From what I hear other than the food, the reception was amazing and the BBQ guy felt so bad he gave the bride and groom free food for life from his food truck. He also handed out a ton of 50-percent off coupons to guests.”–
>>> “A good friend of mine had someone open fire during his brother’s wedding. The shooter was aiming for the groom. Thankfully he missed and no one was hurt. The police showed up after a few people tackled the shooter and held him down. The wedding party carried on as if nothing happened.”
The Groom Didn’t Show
Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
>>> “I’m actually a wedding DJ. I once attended a wedding in which the groom failed to attend. It was a total disaster. The bride just sat out in the hallway crying with her parents while her friends and family were moved from the ceremony hall to the reception area for dinner and drinks. Weirdly enough though, the groom showed up later in the evening after the minister had already gone home. We had their formal dances but on that day, they didn’t actually get married.”–
>>> “My husband’s coworker wanted to bring his two young daughters to our wedding. He said they would be good they’ve been to weddings before. So we say yes, they show up in the flower girl dresses that their parents got for their canceled wedding and proceed to act like flower girls. They photobomb a bunch of our pictures, the ones of just the married couple before we had to ask them to get out of the shots. Everyone asked if they were the flower girls, no they just really wanted to be.”–
>>> “The wedding without a photographer (almost). Their photographer did not show up and could not be reached. They started calling photographers in the yellow pages and managed to get someone. Not only ‘someone’ but a very good one. And the only reason they got him was that he had retired the year before, and his ad was mistakenly still in the Yellow Pages.
The original photographer showed up for the reception, which was held at one of the nicest Country Clubs in the area, wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops, and couldn’t understand why everyone was so ticked off.”–
>>> “Went to a wedding once where the caterer messed up the food so bad that it was basically inedible. They ended up ‘making up for it’ by ordering a mass amount of chicken from KFC. The reception was literally just KFC meals. Everyone was shocked and horrified.”–
>>> “We had a real DJ at our wedding, spinning records and playing weird electronic dance music. My brother had too many free drinks. He then proceeded to give the DJ some good stuff. Our DJ then went on a 45-minute set of original music. When we tried to leave and say goodbye to everyone on the microphone, he told us that he was almost done and we could have the microphone in like 10-15 minutes when he finished up. And my brother puked in front of everyone after we left.”