Some people decide to spend enormous amounts of money on weddings, with the idea that they want everything to be perfect. But of course, life isn't perfect, so these people are inevitably disappointed when the most trivial thing goes wrong.
These people all worked in the wedding industry, and each had a nightmarish experience with a bride who had zero chills.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
She Made A Big Mistake
“I once worked in a bakery, and we had this bride freak out that her cake wasn’t right. We tried to explain, but she wouldn’t calm down and instead proceeded to smash the cake to bits with her fist.
What we were trying to explain to her was that she was looking at (and had just destroyed) the wrong cake. She had just caused $500 in damages to our company. The cops allowed her to wash her hands before placing her in handcuffs. I felt bad for her future husband, and for the couple that ordered the destroyed cake. People are crazy sometimes.”
I Want Flowers, And I Want Them Now!
“I’m a florist. We had a bride, and her mother show up at 9 am. They wanted to order a bridal bouquet, a mother of the bride cattleya orchid corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen. The wedding was scheduled for noon. Yep, three hours from then, and they wanted them ready by the time they were done with their makeup appointment at the beauty parlor a few doors down.
The bride was flipping through the FTD Flowers sample book and pointing out the style and flowers she wanted. Think garden roses with long sweeping trails of stephanotis and variegated ivy, all three of which would require at least a week’s notice. She was absolutely gobsmacked that we didn’t carry extremely expensive and highly perishable flowers at all times. Same with the cattleya orchid for the mom’s corsage.
My boss told them that since they didn’t place an order beforehand they would be limited to what we had in stock, and simple styles that could be assembled quickly. The bride and her mom kept pointing at the book and arguing that we should have those specific flowers in stock. My boss eventually took the book off the desk and tossed it behind the counter.
The bride vacillated between tears and petulant whining that we were going to ruin her big day. My boss, who had a bone-deep loathing for brides in general, told her she had ruined her own day by not ordering her flowers before her actual wedding day. The mom tried chewing out my boss for her lack of customer service skills. My boss told her that she was welcome to go down the street to Vons and ask their flower department to make their order with whatever they had in stock. The mom said she’d do just that, and reassured the bride that she’d have her flowers done by the time her appointment was over. Both women stormed out.
I figured that was that, but my boss told the other girl and me to start on six simple dendrobium orchid bouts. Meanwhile, she threw together a ribbon wrapped bridal bouquet with some white roses that were nearly past their prime and some more rhododendrons. Sure enough, 20 minutes later, the mother of the bride slunk back in and meekly asked if we were still able to assemble what they needed. We did. We also charged her a huge whiner tax–ahem, rush fee.”
You Mean You Can’t Read My Mind?!
“My mom and I saw a bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years back. We were in a small, local shop when another mother-daughter duo came in. The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they were here to pick up her daughter’s dress, so the attendant looks her name up in the computer, frowns, and says, ‘Ma’am, you never bought the dress.’
‘What are you talking about?’
The attendant shows the lady the notes on her computer screen. ‘You said you wanted to think about it, and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn’t hear back from you, we assumed you didn’t want it.’
‘Well, we want it now.’
‘It’s been over eight months,’ the attendant explained, ‘We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order you another one, and have it expedited here in a few weeks.’
And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. ‘This is unacceptable!’ The mother shrieked. ‘We have her alterations scheduled in two hours! The wedding is a week away! I can’t believe you sold her dress!’ The bride, meanwhile, is slumped against the desk and sobbing like someone killed her dog.
My mom and I are just open-mouthed staring at this point. The attendant was trying to be diplomatic but is as baffled as we are. ‘Ma’am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn’t yours until you pay for it.’
After some more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant came back over to us, and I asked her, ‘Does that kind of thing happen a lot?’
The poor lady just deflated. ‘All the time.’
It baffles me to this day. How do you schedule alterations on a dress that you never purchased? Why would you wait until a week before the wedding to pick up your dress? How do you make it to adulthood without knowing how basic buying and selling transactions work?”
She Picked The Wrong Time To Be A Cheapo
“I worked as a wedding planner and coordinator, and one bride stands out to me because she was so inconsistent with all the vendors. She was a complete sweetheart to me during the planning phase, and I never saw any of the crazy until the day of the wedding. It was honestly like a Jekyll and Hyde moment.
She wanted a big wedding, around 300 people, and spent a lot of money on the venue and food and wanted the best for everything. She had no complaints about paying for it either, and she never asked for discounts or anything like that. Since she wanted the best and seemed to have a really large budget, I referred her to a popular baker for the cake. I let her handle the logistics for the cake since I’ve worked with this baker before and never had any problems. I figured they would do the standard cake tasting, pick a design with the baker, and I would see a gorgeous masterpiece on the day of the wedding.
Well, that didn’t work out. For some reason, she didn’t want to tell the baker that it was for a wedding. I’m guessing she read that you can save money by ordering a regular cake because some vendors will automatically add an extra charge if it’s for a wedding. Anyways, she decided she didn’t want to pay for a wedding cake, so she told the baker it was for a birthday party. The baker asked how many people the cake would need to serve and she said ‘around 50.’ She also didn’t want to pay the delivery fee, so she had her sister pick up the cake on the morning of the wedding and bring it to the event.
We live in Texas, and this is a summer wedding. By the time the cake got to the venue (about six hours after it was picked up from the bakery), it didn’t look all that great anymore. Some of the decorations had melted, the cake got a little banged up in the car ride, and there was icing on the inside of the box, and the entire cake was sagging on one side. It was also way too small for a wedding of her size. I saw it, and it looked like a complete disaster. But at this point, we’re about an hour away from the start of the wedding, and there’s no possible way to fix this.
The bride comes into the reception room with her makeup all done and sees the cake and completely flips out. She’s screaming, crying, throwing things, and collapsing on the floor. It was a complete meltdown. She threatens to cancel the whole wedding if we can’t fix it. We try to calm her down as much as we can, before grabbing the makeup artist and asking if she can help fix the bride’s makeup, which is a mess now. The bride sees herself in the mirror and has another meltdown because she ruined her hair and makeup and now wants to have the whole thing re-done. After she gets everything done to perfection again, we’re about an hour behind schedule. I let the guests come into the reception room to wait because it seemed cruel to force everyone to sit outside in 100-degree heat, but when she saw that everyone was inside, she had another meltdown.
She spent the entire wedding sulking with a scowl on her face and refused to take any pictures with people. Her new husband kept coming over to hug her and try to cheer her up, and she would either yell at him or give him the silent treatment. Most of the guests left early because of the uncomfortable atmosphere. So pretty much a waste of the $200,000 budget for a lavish wedding, all because she wanted to save a couple hundred bucks on the cake.”
Everybody Was Out To Get Her, Or So She Thought
“I work as a wedding server, and it’s an excellent job. I love it. As soon as someone says ‘bridezilla,’ this one story where the manager of our hotel had to shut down the wedding halfway through comes to mind. 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 sharp turn. At one point she accused the wedding server staff of stealing her veil, then the manager found it in her room and also showed her the card swipes to her room, only proving she had been in the room that day.
About 20 minutes later, she was screaming at some poor front desk employee accusing her of stealing her wedding boots. The manager intervened, 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 us it was our job as the host of the party to have her boots picked up and then make sure she had them (the church was not related to our reception hall at all).
Shortly after, she started opening the wedding gifts frantically inside the ballroom and screaming at anyone and everyone, guests included, saying someone had stolen 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, and then to clock out and go home. Which we all did. None of us had stolen anything, and we heard next day the maid of honor had the certificate, and after we left, the wedding was shut down completely. The room was left as it was for the bride to come back to in the morning and clean up herself. “
A Mother Knows (How To Break Her Daughter’s Heart)
“I worked at David’s Bridal, and I have to say that I never had a terrible bride. It was always the moms, grandmas, sisters, and their friends that were terrible. Either they hated what the bride would pick out for them to wear, or they would hate what she was picking out for herself to wear. At my store, we have strict appointment guidelines when it comes to time, and a lot of brides that would bring entourages wouldn’t find a dress because everyone would bombard her with their opinions and overwhelm them.
The worst thing I’ve ever witnessed was when a bride that always struggled with her weight came in. She was overweight and had been working extremely hard on it over the last year. It was a slower day, and we all loved her story and wanted to make that day special, so we all decided to help. She finally found a dress that she loved, and she started crying along with most of us. Then she looked at her mom and asked for her opinion, and her mom looked at her and said, ‘You look fat in it.’ We all stood there in silence, and the bride lost her happiness. She asked to be assisted in taking it off, and they left.
It was one of the saddest days that I had experienced there.”
Don’t Forget About My Baby!
“I worked at a high-end bridal shop in my early 20s. One day, I had a bride-to-be shopping for a gown, and she had brought her mom, aunt, and sister (who had just become a new mom) with her to her appointment. The sister was a little jealous that attention was no longer being lavished on her and her new baby, and instead, the bride was the now the center of attention.
As I was fitting the bride in a $2,500 Lazaro Bridal Gown, the sister decided to change her newborn’s diaper in the dressing room. She proceeded to hold the poop-filled diaper up to the gold-hued gown and exclaim, ‘look, the colors almost match!’ I excused myself from the room for fresh air and to regain composure. In my experience, the brides were rarely the problem–the family was!”
Both Opinions Matter, Except For His
“I used to be a ‘bridal consultant’ at a retail store, which means I helped couples scan things onto their registry, although the training for it meant I knew how to use the scanner, and the computer and my actual job had nothing to do with bridal shopping.
This one couple came in to start a new registry, which quickly turned into only things the bride wanted. Anything the groom wanted to put down on the registry was deemed as ‘childish, stupid, ugly, unpractical, and never-going-to-be-used.’ I was cringing during the entire appointment, as she kept asking for my input/opinion on everything and I felt so bad for this guy. His bride-to-be seemed so selfish and entitled, and I couldn’t believe the fact that he was soon to be married to this woman.
The poor man just wanted a waffle maker. Who doesn’t want waffles?!’
They Saw Things Differently
“I’m a retired master seamstress. This was not a Bridezilla, but a Momzilla. I was making her daughter a custom bias-cut gown and had limited fitting time because the bride lived one state over.
Now, bias-cut gowns are the devil. But things got worse when we (the mom and I) started working on details between fittings. I would say our working relationship got very frosty. Each time the bride came for a fitting, she lost weight. Tape measures don’t lie, and she was not a big girl. The mom would scream that her daughter did not lose any weight. After the third fitting, the third fight, and the third rebuild of a very complicated gown, I finished it and told them to take the gown and do what they wanted with it. It was gorgeous but hung loose. The girl lost over 3″ over the course of 7-8 weeks. I lost hours of my life and was not paid for the work. The deposit took care of the materials ($140 per yard of silk and Venice lace), so there is that.”
What A ‘Hero’
“Wedding coordinator here. I’ve found the moms are usually worse than the brides. I worked a wedding this past summer with a ridiculous Momzilla. During the rehearsal, she handed me the box of decorations and said, ‘don’t you dare make this look tacky.’
On the day of the wedding, she arrived and came up to ask me where the wedding programs were. I told her there weren’t any programs in any of the boxes and she proceeded to shout at me for losing them and then decided that I stole them. She also asked that we build a water station for the guests, but instructed that she didn’t want the guests to have access to it until after the ceremony. It was a scorching 90 degrees that day, and the ceremony was outside, so that did not go over well. And when the guests complained that they were thirsty and we weren’t letting them go to the water station, she told them how horrible we were and made a big deal out of opening the water station early, like she was the hero. Thank god they only booked the venue for the ceremony, so she was only my problem for about an hour.
The next day my boss handed me an email the Momzilla sent her. She wrote about how I had lost the programs, but then in the same sentence said she found the programs in her hotel room later that night and made a comment about how I should’ve gone to her hotel and gotten them. She also complained about how I wouldn’t give her guests water and how the photographer was the worst person she’d ever seen. She actually wrote, ‘don’t bother remembering her name, she’ll never work in his town again’ about the photographer. Her letter ended with her complimenting the venue space and saying something along the lines of ‘I think I would be a great addition to your team of event coordinators! Let me know when I can start!’
She was blatantly trying to take my job. The worst part is that my boss actually hired her. Needless to say, I quit working at that venue.
This isn’t the worst story I have, but it’s one of the most memorable.”
Maybe They Should Have Spent That Money On A Marriage Counselor
“I worked for a wedding photographer.
The bride and groom were a beautiful couple, seemingly made in heaven. Their wedding album WITHOUT pics cost $2,000 alone. The thing was made from mirrored glass and weighed a ton. It was my job to order 60 units of the 8×10 prints that the bride wanted to use. This album had no protective sleeves, so every single picture had to be sprayed with a chemical coating and left to dry, in a dust-free area. If it did not dry with a smooth, dust-free finish, I had to remove the chemical coating and try again.
I spent most of that week in a tiny closet-sized room, in full respirator mask, protective gloves, and eyewear, spraying those pictures. But my god, I have to say, it was the best job ever! When done, this couple spent over $5,000 on that one album. It was GORGEOUS. They divorced before the year was up. DUH!”
Don’t Judge A Cake By Its Bottom Layer
“Baker here. I wasn’t present for the freakout, but it was my fault.
A few months back, I had a bride who wanted a navy-to-white ombré cake made with white sponge. In case you’re not sure what ombré is, it’s a layer cake where each layer is a different shade between two colors, one at the top and the other at the bottom, creating a scale between the two.
Now, dark, rich colors like that in a white cake just suck. They always taste terrible because they have so much gel coloring in them to get them right. However, you can do it, if they’re willing to have the dark layers be chocolate. Navy is exceptionally easy, thanks to blue velvet. I tell her this when we’re planning. ‘But I want white cake!’ I tell her I’ll do all but the last few layers in white sponge. She agrees, and I make the thing and drop it off.
I come back to pick up the staging stuff the next day, only to find my whole cake sitting there.
Apparently, when they cut into the thing and fed it to each other, she freaked out over it being chocolate and refused to let any of the cake be served. She seemingly forgot she had agreed to have the bottom tier made with two layers of blue velvet, so she threw a massive temper tantrum over ‘the cake being wrong’ and how I ruined her wedding, then locked herself in the bridal suite. If she wouldn’t have been a little child about it and let the staff cut the cake like they should have, she would’ve seen that 90% of the cake was white sponge-like she wanted.”
Sounds More Like Chuck E Cheese’s
“Management here. You have no idea the sense of entitlement that walks into my store. I would consider us the Wal Mart of weddings, as we cater to people of all spades, some of them very modest in their expectations, and some of them wealthy doofuses who expect it all.
I’ve seen it all, from ‘These dresses are cheap,’ to ‘These dresses are too expensive.’ I’m a rational person and being part of management team means I’m trusted to make important decisions and enforce the policy. All sales are final, depending on the case of course, but you have to have one great excuse to get a penny out of me.
The best (by best I mean craziest) excuse yet was a spouse who had her wedding coordinator go in to refund the items because she was in a psych ward after trying to kill her sister. Her sister had announced she was pregnant with the groom’s baby at the bridal shower. We refunded everyone except the sister, who was ironically the maid of honor.
And of course, I always make a special exception for sudden death, and it does unfortunately happen.
A woman waited outside of our work for a co-manager because she couldn’t refund her dress, which turned into a fist fight, which turned into the bride having a black eye and spending time in jail. I’ve had women come in sloshed and throw up in fitting rooms. Women have soiled themselves or bled into wedding gowns in the fitting rooms. The bathrooms are a nightmare to clean because the floor is always sticky with urine and devil children have come and gone.
We’ve had children pouring cement into the toilets, running around the store knocking t-stands over, along with mannequins, displays, etc., sometimes injuring themselves. We have clear doors, and I can not tell you the number of times young children have run straight into them at full speed. We’ve had unmonitored kids locking the front doors or physically preventing other customers from coming in. Let’s not even get started on the screaming or crying or even the fact that we have a fitting room with mirrors for walls that kids with sticky hands feel compelled to touch with every part of their body.
We are not like ‘Say Yes To The Dress.’ People need to stop asking.
There are no drinks allowed in the establishment; there is no food or drink allowed on the showroom floor. (People will still hide it and do it anyway).
THERE IS THIS ONE COMMERCIAL THAT HIGHLIGHTS AN AMAZING $99 DRESS SALE BUT FORGETS TO MENTION THAT EACH STORE HAS MAYBE 6 DRESSES IN THAT PRICE BRACKET.
Oh, but please make the entire commercial about the sale, and showcase women in dresses upwards of $600, which isn’t that bad if you consider how expensive weddings are.
Women come in and are spending thousands on their wedding and are shocked at the price of a gown that hasn’t been mass-produced for the populace since the 1800’s. Please. When I say we are the Wal Mart of weddings, I can point you to 10 other places with gowns upwards of $25,000. Our most expensive dress caps at $2,800, which is still a lot by my standards, but so are weddings in general, and you don’t need either to celebrate a successful union.
I love my job, and weddings can be beautiful, symbolic affairs that can take your breath away. Don’t let the little things discourage you or bring you down, as every bride can have a beautiful day no matter her ideologies, size, race, societal status, or financial status.
Oh, and don’t get me wrong, I have my wedding planned out to the last seconds. It’s just important to keep in mind that it’s not the most important thing in life. A word of advice to any future brides: don’t sweat the little things!”