Everyone dreams of having that perfect wedding that goes off without any issues. But a lot of the time, that's not exactly how things work out. Any number of problems can arise - between difficult family members, uncooperative venues, and totally innocent accidents, some weddings turn into disasters.
Here, wedding hosts and wedding guests share the series of events that unfolded to ruin a wedding.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
We Were Wasted And Trapped In An Elevator For An Hour
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“I was a groomsman in a wedding where the chapel was in the middle of a golf course. To get to the chapel, you had to take an elevator down from the clubhouse.
The wedding time rolls around, and all the groomsmen had spent the day drinking in the clubhouse. I had about seven drinks, and I had downed the least of everyone. Everyone was ready to go but we were running a bit late. We took the elevator down, and it got stuck between floors. Ten groomsmen and the groom were stuck in a standard-sized elevator. We called for help and the person answering told us the mechanic had gone home so it would take some time to free us. One of the groomsmen was extremely claustrophobic and did not handle this news well.
After about an hour of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a controlled panic, we all needed to use the restroom. Finally, the mechanic arrived and did his magic and we got to the floor of the golf course. We sprinted across the golf course to get to the restroom. We were about an hour late at that point.
As we were sprinting across, the groom got struck in the head by an errant golf ball. He screamed and plopped to the ground. He was laying on the ground, dazed, with a bleeding, throbbing head. We called his dad, who came running over from the chapel. Around this time, the golfer who hit the ball drove over in his cart. He asked, ‘You okay?’ And then drove off, leaving 11 inebriated dudes and one that we later found out had a ‘cranial hemorrhage.’ The groom’s dad showed up, not acknowledging us but helping his son walk to his car. He drove him to the emergency room. The wedding was canceled.”
A Wedding So Bad, The Venue Closed Down
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“This happened many years ago when I was a barman at an Irish hotel.
The hotel was struggling, and so took a wedding booking from a well-known criminal family, involved in illicit substances and burglary. Their daughter was marrying a member of a similar family from the other side of the country.
These families were large, so the wedding was huge. The bride asked us not to serve hard drinks, which was making the guests angry as they were all in for some fancy spirits and Redbull. Most switched to cider, as we had an entire shed full of the stuff.
About two hours into the reception, disaster ensued. The first sign something was wrong was that all the women suddenly made a beeline for the door. Thankfully one of the floor managers had seen this before and pulled the waitresses off the floor the moment she saw it start.
Once the women were clear of the floor, the men started laying into one another. I saw a bottle fly past, and we pulled the shutter down over the bar.
It was the biggest brawl I’ve ever seen – easily 50 men punching the heads off one another. Someone drove a car into our emergency exit. Chairs went through windows. The fight spilled out to the rest of the hotel, with the staff either locked behind the bar or hiding in the kitchen.
We called the police, but they took their time coming as they obviously didn’t want to get into the middle of a massive brawl and were happy to let them tire each other out. We didn’t have enough security to make any difference, as the owners were morons and couldn’t afford it anyway.
Finally, when it was all over, we had to comp every other guest. We still had a shed full of cider, which we essentially had to do discounted offers on for months.
We spent the rest of that night, until about 4 a.m., cleaning up blood (I’ve never seen so much blood before or since), and glass, and human excrement.
The place never recovered. We had to cancel the next three weddings due to the damage, and once word got around, we couldn’t book any new weddings. Locals avoided the place. It was sold six months later at a loss.”
The Priest Started Screaming
“My sister’s wedding got ruined embarrassingly. She got married in a Catholic church.
Her father-in-law is Venezuelan and doesn’t speak English well. He didn’t understand the priest when he said not to get out your ‘Browning’s’. That old crusty dude didn’t even use the modern word for CAMERA.
Anyway, her father-in-law stands up to take a photo. And man, this part kills me because he was so happy for his son and wanted a photo of the moment. The priest slams his bible down mid-ceremony and yells at him in front of everyone. Not speaking barely any English at all, he was so confused as to why the priest was upset. He sat down looking defeated and confused.
After the ceremony, the old lunatic was bragging about keeping his ‘flock’ in line and how you sometimes have to yell at ’em.
I still hate that guy.”
My Mother Did Everything She Could To Ruin It
“My mother, who has mental health problems, got increasingly upset as the attention from the family was taken off of her. It escalated to her barricading herself in her apartment, refusing to take her diabetic medication or eat anything, followed by taking all of her medication at once and then calling for an emergency ambulance four days before the big event. The doozy is that the person who answered the call was my fiance’s mum (mother-in-law to be), who was working at the call center and was nothing but professional whilst they got my mother assessed and sectioned. She signed herself back out the night before the wedding, citing it as a reason and then continued to cause merry havoc for attention throughout the whole thing.
Highlights included shouting at the hairdresser, introducing herself with a shout (‘I’m the mother of the bride, who are you?!’) to all, changing all the tables and seating arrangements two hours before the reception, refusing to state if she would be at the wedding (she lived opposite the church, people saw her peeking out of her curtains). Being forced to come, being late, and loudly complaining that she didn’t have a good view from the front, as I was walking down the aisle after waiting for her to be seated, commenting rudely on people’s outfit choices, refusing to smile for photographs, asking if the problem with my corset making me lightheaded on my dress was because I was too fat (in front of everybody who had just gone quiet for a speech at the reception), signing the guest book ‘mother of the bride’ and addressing it only to me and not my husband, ‘looking after’ guests of mine who were staying at her house for the night by forcing them all to eat full breakfasts at 6 a.m. before they left, then complaining when their hungover vomiting kicked in. Picking us up ‘for a drive’ on the morning after our wedding and then taking us back to the reception hall and forcing us, as newlyweds, to help clear the bin bags, wash the dishes before the caterers came to pick them up, and more. Feigning another self-harm attempt for attention after the honeymoon, forcing me to spend my second week married with her in a clinic rather than with my husband.”
A Sickening Secret
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“Two years ago, it was a spring wedding, with a ceremony in a church, and a fairly large group. The bride and groom are in their late-20s, and the best man is the groom’s uncle, who’s in his 40s or 50s. The ceremony starts without a hitch, and the bride is all done up in an expensive white gown, and tons of makeup (the usual). But she looks nervous. Understandable though. It’s her wedding day, right? I try to get the photos where she looks happy, but she’s not giving me much to work with.
Halfway through the ceremony, she starts to sway slightly. They get to the vows and she starts into hers. She’s not three words in and she completely loses her breakfast all over the groom and herself. A commotion stirs, of course, as the bridal party tries to rush to her aid and she starts sobbing. I stopped taking photos at this point and started listening to what was going on. I figured she was sobbing about ruining her wedding, but that wasn’t the case. Through her wailing, she admits she didn’t puke because she was tipsy or nervous – it was morning sickness. She continues wailing as the groom points out they hadn’t slept together yet. As another wave of vomit comes out, the groom asks her whose baby it is, and she just sends this long guilty stare at the uncle. The groom turns to the uncle, and without missing a beat, socks him right in the face. The uncle goes down. Chaos ensues.”
When Your Wedding Venue Gets Destroyed
“My wedding wasn’t exactly ruined (thanks to the tremendous efforts of my wife’s prior boss and his family, who owned a restaurant and a catering company), but nothing says, ‘Good day, are you awake yet?’ quite like finding out that your entire wedding venue has turned into a smoking, cratered ruin less than three days before the big event.
Yup. Got a call from my mom at about 7:15 a.m. on a sunny day in early September, and the first words out of her mouth were, ‘Your wedding place has burnt to the ground.’ No ‘Hi, how are you?’ No ‘Good morning.’ Just a deeply Germanic nothing-but-the-important-information shot to the gut. Less than 90 seconds after she hung up the phone, I heard about it on the radio.”
Their Cake Had A Birthday Clown On It
“I remember this one wedding where the cake people dropped the ball. They brought a big birthday cake with a clown on it. When they were informed they’d messed up, they realized the other cake (the wedding cake) had ended up on the other side of town. So in order to salvage what they could, they brought in a cream cake that was blank and could be decorated. They wanted to top it with a bride and groom but did not have the topper. Instead, the cake people bought a Barbie and Ken doll and slapped them on the top.
The bride and groom were told the cake could be placed on a rolling table, so the couple could cut the cake at a specific angle so the guests wouldn’t be able to get a full view of the atrocity.”
There Were Trails Of Blood Running Down My Arm
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“As the bridesmaids and groomsmen were lined up to walk down the aisle, I noticed my brother-in-law (a groomsman) had sunglasses resting on his head. I motioned for him to take them off and he tossed them to me (no idea why) from 20 feet away. I caught them, but it hurt my thumb. I set the sunglasses aside and didn’t think anything of it. Not even 10 seconds before my dad is supposed to walk me down the aisle, I feel an odd trickling from my thumb. The sunglasses had somehow cut my thumb and left a huge gash that was now running down to my elbow. My dad saw this and sprinted to the bathroom, then came back with 20 feet of paper towels. He and the wedding coordinator wiped all the blood up, making sure there was none on my dress, then my dad created a makeshift bandage out of paper towels.”
A Hired Helicopter Ruined Everything
“For my cousin’s wedding, one of our uncles decided it would be great to have his friend, a helicopter pilot, fly over and get some aerial pictures. What he didn’t think of was that helicopters are loud. He also didn’t work out the timing with the pilot. So there we were, at a beautiful ceremony in a garden at the bride’s parents’ house, when, right as the bride and groom were exchanging vows, the helicopter shows up and hovers about 75 feet above us. Most of the guests thought it was some idiot that saw a wedding and wanted to take a closer look. I, as well as a few other family members, immediately looked at our uncle who was on his phone trying to call off the chopper (in vain). The helicopter circled the ceremony for a good 15 minutes, all the while nobody can hear anything the bride, groom, and officiant are saying. The bride laughed it off and everyone had a good time at the reception, but I’m sure she would have liked everyone to have heard their vows. I do feel bad for my uncle who thought he was doing something special for his niece only for it to completely backfire.”
Their Venue Went Bankrupt
“I was the maid of honor at my best friend’s wedding this past summer. It seemed that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. One week before the wedding, her venue, where she had both the ceremony, reception, and rooms booked for guests from out of town, called her to say that they were going bankrupt and closing their doors that night. She lost her deposit and was left with no venue. It was in a small town too, so there were a few hotels to choose from. She finally managed to get sympathy from another hotel and they eventually booked her in for the same date, but she wasn’t able to have food as there were already three other weddings booked for that day. We were lucky she was even able to get married, so we didn’t complain much.
Then, after the ceremony, her new hubby got a phone call saying that his mom had a heart attack and was on her way to the hospital. So instead of going to their ceremony to celebrate, they ended up going to the hospital, in the pouring rain, in her wedding dress, to spend some time with the mom. His mom was fine, and they ended up coming to the ceremony later that night, but man was that a wedding full of bad luck.”
Someone Sabotaged Our Venue Reservation
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“Everything was going according to plan when my husband and I were planning our wedding (aside from the stress, of course). Then a few weeks before the wedding, the owner of the venue was supposed to contact us and tell us the exact total to be paid. When he didn’t, my husband took initiative and called him up to ask how much we owed. The guy who answered the phone responded, ‘Nothing, you canceled the wedding.’ Uh, what?!
After some back and forth, we found out that someone who was not my husband had called the venue, claimed to be my husband, used my husband’s name and contact number, and canceled the whole event. But the only people who would have had access to that information is maybe one of the owner’s employees or someone in my husband’s family. We tried to get the phone number from the service provider, but for obvious reasons, they refused to disclose it.”
Forced To Change The Venue At The Last Minute
“My best friend from high school got married five years ago. About eight months before their wedding, she and her hubby picked out a park to have the ceremony in. It was a pretty green space, with lots of trees and flowers and bushes and overall, it was just a great place for a wedding. They got their permit, paid their deposit. Bam. Done.
A month before the wedding, they came back to plan out where the aisle would be, where they would put chairs, how everything would be set up, etc. (they lived in a town about 40 minutes from the park, so they weren’t in that area too often). When they arrived at the part of the park they had reserved, they found a tennis court. The city had leveled the green space and put in a tennis court on what was to be the site of their wedding.
My friend was understandably upset, and they fought to get their deposit back, but the city refused. Screw them.
Due to the last minute venue change, the only thing they could book that had enough space was free on their date, and that they could afford was an open space at a rec center (Kind of like a YMCA). They got married across the hall from the swimming pool. The walls were thin, so the ceremony was punctuated with little kid screams and the pungent odor of chlorine.
I wouldn’t say the wedding was ruined, but no one dreams of their wedding involving fluorescent lighting and the scent of chlorine.”
Late Groom Sends Bride Into Panic
“I’m an event coordinator. We once had a wedding at our venue where the groom had apparently been three hours late to the ceremony. When nobody had shown up to the reception an hour after the contracted start time, we started making calls, but no one was answering. Nearly three hours later, the catering director says to give it 15 more minutes. Then the groom calls. He had just made it to the ceremony venue.
I’m sure that poor bride’s day was ruined, but showing up at the reception venue to find everyone packing up would have been the absolute worst. She was pregnant and ill, too.
I never did find out what had held the groom up so long, just that everyone was panicking because no one could reach him or the other groomsmen. Finally, they called the tux shop an hour after the ceremony was supposed to start and he hadn’t even picked up his suit yet. I’m sure she thought she’d been left at the altar.
That couple then went on to not be able to pay any of their bills. I think I was the only one who had been paid in full. But that’s because I was able to remove a few services at the last minute that hadn’t been set up yet or were staffed by salaried employees.”
Running Off On A Rescue Mission
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“When I was about 12 years old, my half-sister got married, and I was forced into the wedding party.
Our parents were poor and disabled with no income, so the groom’s family paid for the whole thing and got to dictate how everything was run.
Most notably, they insisted on two limos for each side of the wedding party, so the bride and groom were not able to see each other until they got to the church.
The entire bridal party goes through the horrors of getting ready on the day of the wedding, and we climb in the stark white limo so we can get to the church. The groom’s parents force us all into these awful updos and ugly 17th century-inspired handmade dresses. We’re all ‘picture perfect’ and on our way to the service when the limo driver starts taking back roads and neighborhoods to ‘avoid traffic.’
We end up driving past a cul-de-sac and my half-sister, who wasn’t allowed to speak for herself all morning demands the limo driver pull over and let her out. She bursts out the door and runs down the street.
Now, you might be thinking at this point that she’s running away with cold feet. If only it were that simple. Apparently, on the drive, she spotted an animal on the loose and wanted to save it.
The whole bridal party climbs out of the limo and sees my crazy half-sister, veil over her face and all, running in circles chasing not one, but eight lost baby pugs. We all yelled at her to stop, and she responded, ‘I haven’t made a single choice for myself since this engagement ring was put on my finger. Help me catch these dogs!’
So that’s what we did. One by one, we chased these pugs up and down the street until each and every pup was safely in the limo and given limo water for their dehydration. We were filthy from running after the dogs and I got the worst of it because I was the youngest. I got charged with staying in the limo with the pugs while the rest of the bridal party located the puppy owners. It turned out they belonged to an oblivious breeder whose kid let them get out and didn’t say anything.
We were four hours late to that wedding and my half-sister kept the runt of the litter. The groom’s family was furious when we got there and started yelling about how their son shouldn’t marry such a careless woman.
My half-sister told them to screw off, pushed the mother of the groom out of the way, and walked down the aisle with her tattered, stained dress, bouquet that the maid of honor managed to keep away from the dogs in one hand, and her new pug in the other.
They said their ‘I do’s’ despite the boisterous objections from his parents, and we all got to change out of our torn dresses before getting to the reception where I got to play with the puppy all night. His parents have not forgiven my half-sister for ‘ruining their son’s big day,’ but they are still married 11 years later.”