16 Shocked People Describe The Absolute Worst Mishap They’ve Witnessed At A Wedding

It can take months, even years, to plan the 'perfect wedding.' Yet things don't always go as planned. The following people know this all too well, as they describe the biggest mishap they've ever witnessed at a wedding, whether one they've attended or, even worse, their own.

Ohhh…. Nooo….

“The distant friend of the family MC, who was doing the wedding for free as a favor to the family, invites the father of the bride to have a last dance with his daughter. The father of the bride had died a couple years earlier” (Source).

Losing The Rings.

“My husband lost my wedding ring on the way to the church. It fell out of his pocket at some point. Just before the ceremony was about to start the person who found it came up to say that he had found a ring and ask if we knew whose ring it was” (Source).

The Champagne Fountain.

“This was at my brother’s wedding. His fiancée’s dad was a pretty big deal regional rancher, and his wife had passed away a few years prior. He wanted to give his little girl a big send off, something his wife would have been proud of. It was a BIG wedding… And of course, that meant alcohol in a big kind of way.

The centerpiece of the reception was a giant fountain of Cold Duck. If you’re not familiar with Cold Duck, think really cheap champagne made with red wine grapes. This thing held, oh I’d guess about 10 gallons. I did say ‘giant’ didn’t I?

Theory was, you’d take a wine glass, and insert it into the flow from several of the strategically located spouts, fill your glass and mingle until it was time for a refill. In practice, is splattered like crazy. A bad thing at a white wedding. Also in practice, the groomsmen – college frat boys and cowboys – all had a vast thirst, if not capacity, for this stuff. They didn’t ‘get’ how much alcohol they were actually drinking…

It all ended up with two of them knocking over the table, spilling the whole fountain, spraying the bridal gown with about half of it, knocking bridesmaids over and falling headlong into the pool of red liquid on the floor. All before photos! Good times” (Source).

The Dog Ate The Cake.

“One of two greyhounds in the house ate a seriously big chunk out of the wedding cake. This was only a few hours before the wedding

The cake maker freaked out, and although I am not cake maker, I ended up cutting the eaten section out. There were extra unfrosted cake sections I used to patch the section back in and refrost the wedding cake.

In the end people thought it was beautiful, and tasty. No one was the wiser that the dog ate the cake” (Source).

Embarrassing The Bride In Front Of Everyone.

“My father-in-law, a vicar, married us in a lovely church in the English countryside. During our ceremony, he started into his speech, telling everyone what important talents each of us brings to the marriage — and then rattles off his son’s many accomplishments….then says ‘and Dawn’s wonderful at (pause, pause, pause) shopping’ (Pause, pause, pause. Nothing more). I could have whacked him one I was so embarrassed” (Source).

Probably The Worst Wedding Ever.

“The first time I got married while still an undergraduate, and my fiancée and I pretty much ‘self catered’ it – we arranged all the details, did the leg work, rented the hall, tables, chairs, etc.

About noon (before a 6PM wedding) I got this phone call. ‘Yzou know aboot zee problem mit zee cake?’ a voice in a thick German accent asks. Her brother grabbed the phone from me, walked into another room, listened a while, slammed the receiver down, swore on his way out the door and left. I’m baffled but I’ve got bigger fish to fry — missing groomsmen, that sort of thing.

Before the wedding, the bridesmaids are warned they need to lock their purses and valuables in a locker and take the key with them as there had been robberies at the chapel recently. The bridesmaid left in charge of this duty put everything in the locker, closed it, and forgot about the lock. More on that later.

My bride’s father was an alcoholic with early stages of Parkinson’s disease. To say he wasn’t steady on his feet is an understatement. Despite prior arrangements not to do so, he insisted on walking her down the aisle. He stepped on the train of the dress several times on the way down, leading to near disaster every time. Two groomsmen had their fly’s open the entire time, even through pictures and most of the reception. The minister got my name wrong. Twice.

Afterward, there was great rejoicing. We retired to the reception facility and after a receiving line and some general milling about, it was time to cut the cake. Whereupon, hand in hand on the knife, we made a key discovery: it’s not cake. It’s an iced and decorated piece of Styrofoam. The lower layer of the cake had collapsed and that’s what the call was about, and the solution was a quick substitution… about which we weren’t told.

As the night wore on we remembered that because we’d rented the place, we were responsible for clean up, etc. and wound up nearly being the last people out of our own reception. My dad finally offered to finish the cleanup and make sure the chairs got returned, and surprised us with a key to the bridal suite at a nearby hotel instead of returning to the apartment we were living in prior to setting off on our honeymoon.

While greatly appreciated, it wasn’t anticipated, so we had to go back home anyway for a few things. En route, we stopped for gas. And discovered — ta da — that while we were getting married, we’d been robbed. All our honeymoon travel cash, some gifts. A whole pile of dough. That whole not-locking-the-locker thing? Really bad idea. We also discovered that whatever the wedding party had painted my car with — all the ‘just married’ and various wedding night reference stuff — actually ate the paint. You could still read it when I finally sold the car years later.

Note I said ‘first marriage.’ It did not have a happy ending, although it took over 15 years for it to finally grind to a halt. Sometimes beginnings are indicative” (Source).

Don’t Have The Bachelor Party The Night Before.

“I went with my family to an afternoon wedding during which the groom fainted… Three times. Just keeled over.

He had made the mistake of allowing his bachelor party to be scheduled the night before the wedding. He was massively hungover, had not eaten anything, and (it being a Greek Orthodox wedding) he and the bride were both holding burning candles, which were consuming a lot of the available oxygen directly in front of him. So he fainted.

After the third time one of the deacons dragged over an ornately carved wood chair that normally stood elsewhere in the altar area, and the groom sat down for the rest of the ceremony. At Greek Orthodox weddings the bride and groom don’t speak – the priest says all the vows for them – so I’m pretty sure he did not faint a fourth time but if he had the congregation might not have been able to tell the difference.

The jokes flowed even more abundantly than the champagne at the reception” (Source).

The GROOM’S Cake.

“Before we got married, my fiancée asked me what kind of ‘groom’s cake’ I wanted. I had never heard of a groom’s cake, before, but apparently I got to have a special cake of my own. I chose white cake with chocolate icing, and I was very excited about it. But I never got to taste it. My wife’s father gave it away. He gave it away! He was supposed to give the bride away, not my cake, dammit!

The wedding was winding down, I hadn’t tasted any of my cake yet, because I was too full. But I wasn’t worried. There was lots of it left, and I figured I’d pig out on it over the course of the honeymoon. But someone admired it, and my father-in-law was a generous man. He said, ‘My daughter and her husband have plenty of leftovers. Go ahead and take it home. Give it to your kids.’

At some point I need to divorce my wife and remarry her, so I can have a goddamn groom’s cake” (Source).Shutterstock/Maria Sbytova

Ignorance Is Bliss, Right?

“Our wedding was held at Fraunces Tavern in New York, a historic restaurant/museum best known for being the place where George Washington bid farewell to his troops after the Revolution. It had been in the news just a few years previously when Puerto Rican separatists killed four people there in a terrorist bombing. Although our wedding was very small, there were a number of high profile guests, including my former boss, US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The ceremony was lovely, and everyone had a wonderful time…but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why we weren’t following our carefully planned program for the reception and dinner. Instead of going to Room A for drinks and Room B for the meal, we and our guests were politely shown to Room B, then Room A, then Room C (back where the ceremony had been held), then Room A, then Room D, and so forth. What was going on?

As I only learned the next day, shortly after the ceremony started, the restaurant staff had found a suspicious package hidden under the main staircase. On high alert because of the bombing history, they had called it in to the police. The NYPD, in turn, on alert because of the presence of the Senator and other high profile guests, responded instantly and in force.

So apparently while we were getting married and having cocktails, dozens of police officers, detectives and bomb sniffing dogs were furiously (but silently, because no one wanted to disturb us) conducting a top to bottom search of the building for possible explosives, while a bomb-disposal robot removed the suspicious package from the premises. As one room was cleared, the police would direct the restaurant staff to move all of us to another room, and so forth.

After more than an hour of this, the police finally cleared out, and we and our guests at last moved to the dining room and sat down to dinner, with no one in the wedding party having any idea as to what had just happened!

Since both of us were working full time in challenging jobs, we had postponed our honeymoon for several months, and were both going back in to work on Monday morning. So the suspicious package that started all of this? My wife’s briefcase” (Source).

The Sacred Wedding Wine.

“A wedding I attended 2 years ago. When the couple was getting married the priest said something to the effect of, ‘And from the fields of a winery owned by the bride’s great-grandfather in Italy, a glass of 20 year old wine. The couple will drink a toast here on the altar and we will re-seal the bottle so that it may be opened again in ten years and they may recall their wedding day.’

They made a big deal about it and they later talked about how they were going to re-seal it with nitrogen or something so it wouldn’t go bad. About 5 hours later, we’re all dancing and we realize that we’ve run out of the free alcohol. No big deal, we keep dancing and make plans for an after-party. About 5 minutes later the groom walks over to me. ‘Hey Joe, have you seen that bottle of wine from the ceremony?’

I look directly over the groom’s shoulder and see one of my buddies holding a wine bottle against his lips and turning it fully upside down, emptying what little wine was left. My face must have reflected my shock because the groom turned around and saw that our buddy had just finished their sacred wedding wine” (Source).

The Drunk Cowboy, And The “Deluxe Wedding.”

“My husband and I eloped in Idaho. I made a reservation at a little wedding chapel across from the courthouse where we got our license. The chapel was called ‘The Hitchin’ Post.’ It was the Saturday before Valentine’s Day and the place was packed.

The young couple ahead of us had obviously been partying rather heartily. From the groom’s exuberant buddies we learned that the groom was a young man who had just come down from Calgary to join the rodeo circuit. He had made the acquaintance of his lovely bride at a bar the night before, they fell in love while boot-scootin’ and he proposed in the predawn hours. She was so drunk that all she could manage was leaning against her man, smiling up blearily. The cowboy and his friends were not much better off.

The cowboy and his lady love went first, and then Jay and I were called. As our ceremony started, the newlywed cowboy, his bride and all his witnesses were standing at the back of the small chapel, exchanging congratulations and slapping each other on the back. Meanwhile, the minister asked Jay if he would like the ‘regular wedding’ or the ‘deluxe wedding.’ Jay asked the difference. The minister said that for five dollars more, we could have music. Jay said that it was a special occasion and that we might as well go all out.

The minister said ‘In advance.’ So Jay dug a five out of his wallet and handed it over. The minister leaned over and pushed a button on a boom box. I thought that ‘The Wedding March’ would start playing, but it was ‘IOU’ being sung by Lee Greenwood. There was a bit of a commotion at the back of the room and the cowboy was suddenly standing behind us demanding to know why we got Lee Greenwood when he had not. The minister kept trying to explain that he and his bride had not opted for the deluxe ceremony, but the cowboy was having none of it. I think that the minister was thinking of calling the cops when Jay turned around and stuck out his hand to the irate cowboy. The cowboy reluctantly shook Jay’s hand, grumbling that he just wanted a special song for his wedding, too.

Jay said he understood that and suggested that the cowboy and his bride (and their entourage) sit down in the chapel and listen to Lee Greenwood while we got married. And that’s exactly what happened. Instant wedding guests.

I have always wondered whatever happened to that couple. As for Jay and me, we lived happily ever after” (Source).

Sex Before Marriage.

“There was a couple I knew in college that told a few people that neither of them had ever had sex, and they were ‘saving themselves’ for their wedding night. The only problem was the minister forgot to sign their marriage license before they went on their honeymoon. They were horrified to be informed they had sex before marriage. Guess they got past it, they’re still married” (Source).

Great First Song…

“Someone, who shall remain nameless because I’m related to them, used ‘The Dance’ by Garth Brooks as their first-dance song.

For those of you who aren’t country fans, the song is about how if the singer had known how terribly, horribly, viciously badly things were going to end, he would have done them anyway. And that’s nice. Except for the whole thing ending terribly, horribly, viciously badly.

Not the symbolism I would choose for my FIRST ACT AS A MARRIED COUPLE” (Source).

The Procession Of Lawyers.

“I was just at a wedding in Cancun Mexico. Right in the middle of the ceremony (immediately before the ‘I do’s’) – the wedding officiant, in Spanish, called for another official to step up. He had a stack of papers, at this point the bride and groom were asked to sign the paperwork for their marriage license, along with three or four witnesses.

This occurred front and center and took about 10-15 mins. I later coined this touching part of the ceremony ‘the procession of lawyers.’ Each of the participants had to, not only sign on the dotted line right then and there, but also initial different pages as if they were closing on a new house. I half expected a notary public to come forward and stamp the documents (actually for all I know this happened since everything was in Spanish — and no one, not even the bride or groom — spoke the language).

After the documents were signed, the officiant continued with the ceremony, with the rings and I do’s much to the bewilderment and amusement of everyone involved.

Again, since it was all in Spanish, for all we know the entire bridal party just agreed to buy a plot of swampland in southern Mexico” (Source).

A Spork Would Have Been Better.

“No silverware. Had to wait then they only had plastic spoons” (Source).

You Might Want To Feed Your Wedding Party…

“I was part of a wedding that was littered with mistakes. Not just little accidents that end up being funny memories—flat-out errors that could have been avoided with a tiny bit of forethought.

The bridesmaids (of which I am one) have a 7:00am hair and makeup call. I arrive at the bride’s home to find that even though we’d been summoned at seven, the bride and her parents had neglected to provide any breakfast for her attendants. No one expects a full spread, but a few bagels and some coffee, perhaps? Nope.

The hair and makeup woman arrives at 9:00am. I am told that we were invited at seven to allow for latecomers. The bride has a dozen bridesmaids, but has hired only a single hair/makeup artist. We sit around for five hours waiting for her to finish each person. No coffee, no food, not even an offered glass of tap water, watching the bride melt down and already starting to worry about the coming day.

By noon, everyone is ready. But we’re all a bit confused, as the wedding is not until 5:00pm. Some of us confer and decide that she’s probably going to provide lunch next, as most people have skipped breakfast. We fantasize about deli sandwiches. No such luck. We’re instructed to get in our cars and follow the bride to a local park for photos. It has rained the night before and our light pink dresses are mud magnets. Our heels sink into the ground. It’s December and we’re miserably cold.

In the limo after the photos, bridesmaids are wet, muddy, shivering and hungry. There’s one bridesmaid with a toddler in a tux who’s had to sit around all day. He’s at his limit and it’s still hours before the ceremony. The sister of the bride is a nursing mother has lactated through her dress twice (not having been told we’d be standing in a forest for hours and left without a plug for her pump.)

After photos, we head to the venue jubilantly. There’s a cocktail hour,but not for us. We are guided to a holding area that is a 12×12 windowless box with a few armchairs, a bathroom, and some side tables. And we sit. The bride confers with her mother in the corner, alternately sobbing and dry heaving. We wait patiently for her to get over her wedding day jitters. She does not.

Three hours later, we are still packed into the room. We send the men out to scavenge from the guest appetizers. They come back with a few crackers and a bit of cheese. They buy us soda from the restaurant bar. Turns out, there are 150 guests, but the couple has skimped on provisions and the few trays of food went fast. Like us, the 150 guests are hungry, bored, and confused. The venue’s wedding coordinator keeps popping in to ask if we’re ready, as does the photographer. The bride yells at them to go away. We sit around awkwardly watching her throw tantrums. The groom’s brother casually suggests canceling the wedding if she’s unsure… he’s that exasperated.

I’ve had to pee for hours. Knowing we’d be starting at any moment, and not wanting to hold everyone up more, I’d been holding it. Finally, I can’t wait any longer. I ask the bride, ‘Can I use the restroom now, or do you need it?’ She waves me in and I remove my gown, corset, underthings… a whole production, when the bride suddenly bursts in on me (now nude and exposed to the entire room) and shoves me out of the way to vomit into the toilet. She must have felt better after that, because she then announces we were ready to start as I try to cover myself. I’m allowed back into the vomit-splattered bathroom to use the toilet after her. The bride’s mother knocks on the door and asks me to hurry as I’m getting my corset back on after cleaning up her daughter’s mess so I could use the restroom. I resist the urge to tell her to take a flying leap.

At last—the ceremony! Guests line the aisle as we file in, one by one. They all look ticked off. We just shake our heads. The vows take all of fifteen minutes, and for this I am grateful. We settle into our head table to eat and discover the food is being served buffet-style. The new couple and their immediate family are called up first, then another table and another, while the starving wedding party waits. Finally, it’s our turn and as we approach the food trays, we notice that nearly all are empty. We ask if more food is coming and the catering manager shrugs and says that was all that was ordered by the couple. The regular guests ‘took too much food.’ We sit down with empty plates. The bride’s mother makes the rounds of the room and crows to our table about how wonderful dinner is. One of the groomsmen tells her we wouldn’t know, they ran out. She turns red and leaves.

At this point, the annoying day has become absurd. The wedding party, thoroughly fed up, leaves the wedding en masse and heads to a local burger place for food. Years later, if you bring it up to the bride, she insists the day was perfect and beautiful” (Source).