Weddings are expensive, elaborate events that take months of careful planning, so you don't just cancel your wedding on a whim. Yet some couples do, as these 27 wedding guests (or would-be guests) dish on why there wasn't a wedding.
All In The Family
“Several years ago, I got a phone call from the maid of honor for a wedding I was going to attend (as a guest) two weeks hence. She was flustered but managed to get out, ‘There’s no wedding, the groom called it off. He’s in love with someone else’
Well, I didn’t press. I was friends with both, so I knew that the full details would eventually make their way back to me.
Oh, and boy did they.
Turns out, a couple weeks before the wedding, Groom called Bride and said he was coming over. They needed to talk. When he got to her apartment, he broke down in tears and confessed that he was in love with someone else. He loved her, but couldn’t marry her because he didn’t love her in the way a bride deserves.
There was much crying and shouting over it all, but eventually, the bride recovered from the news enough to ask him who he was in love with.
‘Well,’ Groom said, ‘It’s your brother.’
The wedding was definitely off at that point. Now, five or six years later, the groom and the bride’s brother are married and happy. Though I lost contact with the bride shortly after her wedding plans went belly up, so I’m not sure if she ever forgave the boys for that one”
The Case Of The Missing Drawers
“My wife’s best friend called it off because she found her fiancé trying on the lingerie. I was never sure if she was upset that he was a cross-dresser or if she was angry he wore her favorite undies without her permission”
Anchorman-Style Street Fight
“My cousin runs a popular upscale marriage venue. The groom’s mom was already a handful, and got even more difficult when she attended a party. Understandably, the bride wanted the groom to try to keep her under control. The afternoon before the wedding the bride arrives to see groom’s mom smashed with the groom. Next thing my cousin knows (she was there to oversee preparations) the bride and groom are in a straight up fist fight which leads to an Anchorman-style street fight between members of both families in the parking lot.
Apparently, they recently scheduled a new day for it. I can’t imagine the tension there”
Soul Mates Or Horrible People?
“I’m a musician. I work on an infamous street for revelry and debauchery. One night, a bachelor party came in around the same time as a bachelorette party. The show I work with does special things like funny songs for special events, so I bring them both up at the same time to do something special. In the middle of this, on stage, they start making out. And they Do. Not. Stop. I finish my routine as best I can and get them offstage.
Later, as I’m looking around the audience, my eye catches on them again. They’re in the back corner just going at it, while their respective parties hang out up near the front of the stage. And I mean really getting into it.At some point, they disappear. I take a break and head to the restroom. It’s locked. I hear a woman screaming from within.
I sit in the lounge area outside the bathroom for about 10 mins. The bachelor and bachelorette come out, looking a bit disheveled, but not too bad. They see me, and immediately want to chat. There’s curiously no guilt on them at all.
Come to find out, they both are getting married to other people, but know each other from having lived in the same small town of about 5,000 all their lives. They ran into each other for the first time since high school graduation at our bar and old feelings emerged that neither had ever attempted to act on. They don’t stay long, and as they leave I hear the bachelor say, ‘I have my own room, let’s go there.”‘
The rest of the party stays till the show is over, partying hard and having fun. Possibly the best bachelor/bachelorette parties I’ve had.
I wind up seeing the ‘bachelor’ and ‘bachelorette’ together at our bar and out in the street every night for 4 nights. Always holding hands and/or getting frisky.
They came back a little over a year later. They got married here in our town to each other instead of who they were engaged to that fateful night. Most of their respective bachelor/bachelorette show up for the event.
With this story, I always feel torn. Did I participate in the destruction of two relationships, or did I facilitate the meeting of two soulmates?”
Wearing Jeans To Bed IS Weird
“Part of our engagement was long distance (across the country distant). I had moved for my job before he did. He came to visit me and broke it off at the end of the visit. I was heartbroken and wanted to know why, so I kept asking.
Eventually, he sent an email with a long list of trivial reasons including that I didn’t believe in Santa as a kid and sometimes I wore jeans to bed. In reality, he met someone new and his mom and best friend never liked me. Eventually, he married the someone new and I married someone who also didn’t believe in Santa as a kid. I don’t wear jeans to bed anymore”
Ultimate Revenge
“If you’ve never been to a Jewish wedding, the way it goes is, first they have the reception (with the bride and groom in separate rooms), then the ceremony, then family goes away to sit for pictures while the guests sit down to eat. Then the bride and groom come in and the dancing starts.
In between the ceremony and the pictures, though, is what’s called ‘Yichud’ which doesn’t really translate, but it approximately means ‘isolation together.’ The bride and groom lock themselves in a room and are observed by two reliable witnesses outside the door to have stayed in there long enough to have consummated the marriage (although nobody actually does it there: it’s considered declasse). This is what actually solemnizes the marriage.
So. After the yichud, the bride comes out and announces, ‘Sorry everyone, the wedding’s off. We’ll be getting a divorce, and we’re returning all the gifts . . . except for the bedroom set, since I caught my new husband trying it out with my sister last week.’
She knew about the episode before the wedding. Why’d she go through with it? Because under Jewish law, if you’ve once been married to a woman, even after divorcing her you aren’t allowed to marry her sister at any time until your first wife has died. By going through with the ceremony, she in effect locked her sister out of ever being able to get together with her soon-to-be-ex.”
He Wanted To Multiply Their Love, She Subtracted It
“He had previously been in a polyamorous marriage. The first month we starting dating exclusively, I had the conversation with him in which I said I wasn’t the polyamorous type. He reassured me and said he wasn’t comfortable with that between us either.
Years go by, we get engaged. Another year goes by, and he says he wants to sleep with other women along with me. I tell him that my feelings have not changed. He says, ‘Why don’t you try it?’ I said, ‘That’s not how it works.’ Then I proceed to break up with him, and he says he’s not done with us yet. I told him, ‘Too bad. you don’t get to make that decision for me'”
No Wedding Crashers
“A wedding I was attending in a public park didn’t happen.
The bride was watching from a house across the street for 2 hours when she decided there weren’t enough bystanders to give her attention and called it off.
A friend of hers had her wedding and while taking wedding photos down Hosier Lane in Melbourne, she had quite a lot of random strangers watching and taking pics.
So, the bride thought that doing it in a park of a busy area would attract the same thing. It didn’t. She had over 200 people invited but wanted the attention of random people like her friend.
She knew someone who lived across the street and was watching everyone who attended and random people who just walked by. She didn’t like that normal, everyday people didn’t concern themselves with her wedding so decided not to get married”
You Marry The Family Too
“Her dad tried to kill me.
Actually, it was her response to her dad trying to kill me that made me throw in the towel.
We were friends in high school, worked together a bit, had some of the same friends, carpooled occasionally. Her parents always struck me as PROFOUNDLY odd, but nice.
I’m a Christian, but I’m like a really normal person. I’m not going to shove my religion down your throat or judge you or anything. Like, I’m a nice, decent person. Her parents were totally backward people. They had really weird religious beliefs that I think your average Christian would not endorse at all. They just made crap up on the fly.
I can’t honestly decide who was worse, her manipulative, lying mom or her psychotic step-dad. I honestly hate thinking about them and they weird things they said and did to her… like for example, her mom told her that if she wore jeans, God would take away her college scholarships. She said the same thing would happen if she didn’t break up with me.
We started dating when she was 20, and it took about six months for the weird stuff to start coming from her parents. Before that, they were just awkward.
We were pretty serious, we were together for a long time. After the engagement, they freaked out like you wouldn’t even believe, though. Her mom claimed God was speaking directly to her and told her that I was going to cheat on their daughter. She cried and pouted and screamed for weeks and TOTALLY drove this girl into the dirt. I kept trying to convince her to move out, she was freaking 22, but she didn’t feel like she could. Then her dad drove to my parents’ house and tore them a new one, claimed that I was bringing a curse on both our families. My parents are also Christians and are also totally normal people. They were as weirded out as I was.
Her dad told my family he was going to kill me. He told me to meet him at a restaurant and he talked to me for over two hours, telling me what an awful person I was, trying to persuade me that I really didn’t want to be with his daughter anyways. Then came the truly laughable part. He started this big long story about how he, ‘could have been in a biker gang’ and how sometimes people would say something around him and then say, ‘Oh, pardon my french,’ but HE KNEW that they weren’t ACTUALLY speaking French! I’m still amazed I kept a straight face during this part. Then he told me he would do whatever it took to keep his family safe, even if it meant spending the rest of his life in prison.
He came after me in the parking lot, and he definitely was a stronger guy than me. Even if he hadn’t been bigger though, I wouldn’t have fought him. I got away from him and got in my car, called the cops. He tried to ram me with his car. I drove away and thankfully he didn’t follow me.
Throughout all of this whole thing, I was insanely frustrated with the girl. She was no help. I would talk to her and insist that she leave her parents out of our relationship because they clearly were trying to ruin it, and she’d agree. Then her mom would take her out to lunch and be super nice and be all buddy-buddy with her and so she’d confide in her, then the mom would turn around and go psycho again. Happened like six times.
She refused to believe that her dad tried to kill me, and her mom told everyone I knew that I made it all up and was lying, and the daughter believed it. I was done, nobody is worth all that. I walked away and have never regretted it. She still lives with those psychopaths three years later. It’s a shame because she’s a really cool girl and has a ton to offer. I genuinely believe that her parents suffer from mental illness”
The Family That Fights Together…
“The wedding was called off because everybody in the wedding party found themselves in county lock-up after brawling during the rehearsal. They eventually reconvened for the next afternoon… So many black eyes. Even the preacher was banged up.
There may or may not have been camouflage bridesmaid dresses involved”
Wow, Who Does This?
“Friend invites me to his wedding. He and fiancee are fairly poor, have lived together for years.
They’re both semi-disabled (He has PTSD, she has a physical issue) and on fixed incomes, and live in a somewhat expensive area.
They have three gift registries (Target, Macy’s, Crate & Barrel) and a HUGE invite list – over 300 friends/family members. All the stuff on the registries is standard stuff like towels, coffee cups, flatware, etc.
Anyway, people fly out, get ready for the wedding, two days before the wedding is his bachelor party. After a night of heavy partying, friend admits that she’s not really his fiance, they are just roommates and they have no intention of getting married they just needed the stuff. They’re going to cancel the wedding tomorrow and keep all the gifts.
I had to protect him from getting his butt kicked by about two dozen people. Then had to have his ‘fiancee’ come clean to everyone since he was too hungover.
They ended up returning most of the gifts to people – but a surprising number of people let them keep the gifts. As his grandfather said, ‘If you needed these things that badly to lie like this, you must have been very desperate'”
Stockholm Syndrome Didn’t Set In
“My cousin called off the wedding after her fiancé lost his mind and kept her in the basement for like a week. The best part? My auntie was disappointed that she had to return her mother of the bride dress. And that was All. She. Spoke About.
For reference, the dress was a really ugly, cream colored thing with blue flowers on it. She’d planned on wearing a cardigan with it”
Craigslist Dealbreaker
“There were many things that were wrong with this relationship, but this is the most concrete reason I called off the wedding. I was working on his computer putting together wedding invitations and found emails responding to M4M encounters on Craigslist. Yeah, that is a big deal to me. So, I called off the wedding two weeks later after trying everything to work it out and he never made an effort. Best decision ever”
The Jerry Springer Family
“My mother punched my aunt in the face the night before my aunt’s wedding. In her defense, it was to keep my aunt from throwing rocks through the window of her ex-boyfriend’s home. At least, that was the reason for the FIRST wedding being called off”
She Attended Another Wedding And…
“My cousin called off her wedding 2 weeks before the big day. She had attended another cousin’s wedding and didn’t see herself feeling the same way.
The man she was supposed to marry was uneducated and had been out of work with no desire to get a new job for months. He was a bit aloof, and while we liked him enough, it just never seemed right.
She’s such a positive and warm person to be around, and he never was that. She gave him the ring back and they went their separate ways. As far as I know, they have had no contact since. It seemed forced, she was in her late 20’s and wanted a family. She had never dated seriously and was settling, I think.
She met a different guy a few months afterward. He was recently divorced after his marriage fell apart due to his wife becoming emotionally abusive towards him after a year. She wanted to wait, to heal a bit more, and politely turned him down. He was persistent, to say the least, and they began to hang around together more and eventually started dating.
They got married in February 2015 on the beach in Florida with about 50 guests. It was a great weekend, and they’re happy together. Just had their first child 2 months or so ago. I’m happy for her, she deserved the best”
After The Wedding, Ouch
“Actually, my ex-wife called it off a few days after the wedding because ‘marriage wasn’t for her.’ She moved to another state with her friend Sandra. It turned out Sandra was really Daniel. I found out a few years after everything happened.
By the time I found out (her sister told me a few years later), I had realized how nice life was without her. I was only marrying her because I convinced myself she was the one and I was settling.
It really was the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to work harder, make new friends, and value everything so much more.
Her leaving me convinced me to go all in on changing careers and I absolutely love my career now.
In the end, I think she had a lot of self-doubt about how life turned out and I hope she found some of the answers she was looking for. She was a great person even if she handled the situation horribly. If you feel like calling off the wedding do it before the wedding, not a few days after. It’ll be cheaper for both of you”
A Real Monster-In-Law
“My uncle was going to get married a few months ago. Everything was going well. His small business was doing well and he was planning to elope with his fantastic bride-to-be. The witnesses for the elopement were my mom (uncle’s older sister) and his mother-in-law. The bride was in the early stages of pregnancy (not related to the eloping, they planned the wedding and then found out).
On the day of, as they were getting ready to leave, mother-in-law threw a huge fit that boiled down to my uncle wasn’t good enough for her baby because he didn’t fit in with their Chinese culture.
She held them up just long enough that they couldn’t make their appointment at the court, my mom had to turn around halfway there. They called the registry and rebooked for a week after mother-in-law flew back to China. The second attempt went off without any drama”
On Deployment
“This happened to one of my best friends. His fiancee was in the Navy, all was well. Then she goes out on deployment (I don’t remember if it was 6 months or a year but she was on a carrier). She comes home this world traveler, feeling like an entirely different person. Meanwhile, he is the same guy he’s always been.
At least she broke it off before they got married. Felt bad for my friend though”
They Couldn’t Understand Why..
“My sister was getting married to a Congolese guy. However, as the wedding drew closer he began to change and became more and more controlling, probably thinking he didn’t need to put on a mask anymore. It was becoming clear that he still had cultural values common from that part of the world, and that their relationship would not be one of true equals.
The wedding was called off ten days before it was supposed to have happened. To this day, he and his family believe that my sister was ‘forbidden’ from marrying him by my parents; they just can’t understand why she wouldn’t want to live with an abusive jerk and that my parents, unlike Congolese parents, would never try to forbid their kids from marrying whoever they wanted”
Worst. Neighbor. Ever.
“My wedding was called off because she was sleeping with the next door neighbour. She asked me to marry her with a candy ring, ‘I’ve thought about it and actually I do want to marry you.’ I thought it was super cute. Then she started dating the woman next door. Not just once or twice but full on going to events, going to dinner just the two of them…. discussing having kids, all of that.
This was six months before we were supposed to get married. I got a refund on everything thank god.
They are not together now”
He Sounds Nice
“We bought a house together and were going to get married in a few weeks. Then he called me and said he couldn’t do it as he drove out of town. My family had paid for everything, including his wedding suit. It all went back to a camping trip.
He has gone camping with his brothers the week before, did shrooms, had a moment of spiritual awakening and then say he didn’t want to be tied down. He wasn’t happy anymore and I gave him panic attacks (even though I had put down the down payment on the house and done all the mortgage paperwork on my own). This was the guy who cheated on me and contributed to my depression and anxiety. He was a real peach.
Did I mention that was the second time he had called it off?”
Mom Does NOT Know Best
“I made the mistake of letting my mom be my wedding planner and I had an emotional breakdown.
I have cyclothymia, so I get overwhelmed when it comes to big stuff and can get really emotional. Yet, my mom constantly questioned every choice I made. Not a joke. My dress, the place, my flowers, my choice of shoes – all of it was not ‘traditional’ or to her liking. We had to do ‘this’ or ‘that.’ ‘You need to have a sweetheart table’ and ‘Don’t worry about if you like the food being served, you won’t get to eat any of it’ and my favorite, ‘You won’t get to dance much.’
I didn’t really feel like I had the support of my fiance. We weren’t getting along well, and he sort of refused to hold me and give me the human contact I needed to calm down. I felt like I was living with a stranger. I was overwhelmed, he was unemployed, I was fighting my mother every day, about the dumbest things. I found out right before the ceremony she’d asked the DJ to speed up our entrance song because she couldn’t walk half time to VSQ’s cover of Starlight. She didn’t even ASK me. The song was unrecognizable. I felt like I was doing all of this alone.
Everyone tried to tell me it was my illness causing my issues and that everything would be JUST FINE once we got through the day. Looking back, I think this event showed me that I needed to give my mom less control in my life, and my fiance wasn’t able to help me in the moments I needed him the most. I went through with the ceremony but didn’t sign the certificate.
My fiance promised we’d be intimate on our wedding night, but he fell asleep and I watched Forensic Files and cried. I don’t blame him these days. I had been pretty stable the years we’d been dating, so my breakdown was completely new.
My relationship with my mom has not fully recovered. We used to be pretty close, but I can go weeks at a time not talking to her. I don’t introduce boyfriends to her anymore and I’m much more willing to tell her she’s overstepping boundaries. This has been a years’ of emotional process for me, but I think all of this needed to happen for me to really grow up. Moral of the story: Stick to your guns. If it feels wrong, it is”
Cultural Confict
“Not me but my cousin’s wedding. Our extended family is Indian-American and but we are all pretty liberal and Americanized. All the cousins were born here, no one is really religious or speaks the language, and most cousins are married to whites, including myself.
My cousin was engaged to this guy who we all thought was really cool. He came to the US from India as a teenager but seemed pretty Americanized (or so we thought). They had planned an elaborate wedding at this fancy mansion in New Jersey.
A couple days before the wedding, he tells her that they will be living with his parents, his brothers, and their wives. This would also be a permanent thing, just like in India. He refused to compromise about this and she walked away. They had to eat the cost of the wedding but this was a small price to pay.
Flash forward, a few years, she’s happily married to another guy and I have no idea what happened to her ex-fiancee”
Anonymous Mischief
“I can’t vouch for if it was called off but I received a text on my phone one morning when I was hung over.
Something along the lines of, ‘Tell Cathy we are going to be late to the wedding rehearsal, we had to buy more plates.’
I then texted back, ‘Weddings off :(‘
They texted back, ‘Oh no! What happened?
I never responded. Sooooooo yeah, not sure what kind of rift in the world I had started at that point”
He Turned Off His Phone And…
“The prospective groom, one other friend, and I were heading south to New Orleans on the down low for a bachelor party. We really didn’t have much money so everyone assumed we were either going to stay at a relatives house for a few days or camp out or something close to home.
When it had gotten dark, we made a pact to call both our mothers, tell them we were fine but would be in social media blackout for several days. We did that and we stuck to it. We also did not make it back to the wedding.
When we finally logged back into our phones we were bombarded with messages.
His fiancee had gotten her big brother and two of his friends to search the entire county for us. They woke up my parents and grandparents in the middle of the night, the same thing with his, they went to all of our friends’ houses and tried to intimidate them into giving us up. They only stopped when one of our mutual friend’s father, who was a veteran chased them away with a 20 Gauge in his wheelchair. They gave up after that.
She then tried to use social media claiming that I had turned him gay – I can attest that this one isn’t true. Then she tried to take out an ad in the local independent paper that was supposed to be an apology to the guests but apparently was more of a rant at him but the paper wouldn’t print it. She settled for an ad asking any guest to contact her if they wanted their gift back (I kid you not). She then put up the same rant that the newspaper had refused on a big whiteboard in her front yard and that got destroyed during the night.
Kicker. When all of that failed, she sued him for breach of a contract to marry. Yes. She sued a 20-year-old kid who was on his way into the marines in 3 months. This is a real cause of action in my state but it’s only useful to recover actual damages. When her lawyer found out she had gotten quite a few gifts, jewelry, and furniture and that the two families had split the wedding costs he withdrew and the suit fizzled and died”
Fourth Times The Charm?
“My sister in law put the brakes on her third marriage because her fiancé flipped the heck out about her wedding dress. My wife made a Facebook post after they picked out her dress together. He was livid he was not consulted on the dress, nor was he told first. Mind you, my wife made the post in the shop while the measurements were being taken and she was just bored.
He called her as she got in her car. My wife heard the whole thing and can only describe him as a jerk, with inane passive aggressive barbs asking, ‘Is this how it is going to be with you?'”