You can't filter someone, especially at a wedding.
(Content edited for clarity).
That’s Got To Sting
“One wedding I went to, the pastor started giving the typical ‘marriage is hard work’ speech. He talked about how many marriages fail, and about all the people he’s counseled through divorce. He goes on about how, on their wedding day, they’re just like this couple he’s marrying now, thinking they’re going to make it, but 6 months later they’re getting a divorce. I’m trying hard to keep a straight face, the groom is starting to look like he wants to punch the guy, and I can hear people behind me disguising laughing as coughing. I keep expecting him to bring it around to something positive, but he doesn’t. 15 minutes of, ‘Marriage is hard and lots of them don’t work.’
We found out at the reception that he was a family friend. A family friend with a life-long, unrequited crush on the bride.”
He Picked The Wrong Time To Let It Out
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“At my wedding, my gay friend from high school had way too much to drink and stepped up to the mic (it was a low key affair). It took everyone about a minute to realize he was slowly professing his love to me. My sister had to walk him off the stage. This speech was literally going nowhere other than to tell me he loved me (not that there is anything wrong with that, but to my defense, I was currently occupied marrying my wife).
Later in the night, he tried to tell me I ruined his day by not having him in the wedding (we hadn’t really hung out in the last 2 years, but more a wedding-logistics issue). I told him his options were to have my brother walk him back to the room or I’d knock him out for trying to get in my face at my wedding. We chalked it all off to him being wasted and emotions getting out of hand and are still good friends, but it was far from fun at the time.”
Airing Dirty Laundry
“When my cousin got married, most of the close family knew that the groom had been caught cheating multiple times in the past, but the majority of the people attending did not. During a small speech discussing the marriage counseling he had done with the couple, the priest went on a long rant about the groom’s past infidelity and how he was confident it would not happen again.
Given how few people in the church knew about the issues, it became very tense.”
There’s A Time And A Place For Jokes
“When my husband and I first started dating, he took me, as his date, to the wedding of a friend of his. During the reception, as the groom (my husband’s friend) and his new bride were dancing to a nice romantic song, the DJ suddenly switched to ‘Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay’ by Otis Redding.
This was the mid-1990’s, and the song was a little out of place, considering the other music that had been played so far. As I watched the newlywed couple dance, I noticed that the bride had this look of disgust on her face. I then noticed her new husband seemed to be pleading with her. He looked upset, but she looked totally ticked off.
I nudged my future husband and asked what was going on. He proceeded to tell me that the song had a double meeting. The groom and bride had broken up at one point, and he’d hooked up with a girl. On the dock. Of the bay. Ta da! His friends knew about this, and he’d confessed to his girlfriend when they got back together. His ‘friends’ (using that term loosely) paid the DJ to play the song, which resulted in one furious bride.
Pretty tacky of his friends, I thought. You don’t do that at someone’s wedding.”
Thou Shalt Not Enjoy Thy Self
“I was at a very conservative, religious wedding two years ago. The minister took the opportunity to deliver a 45-minute sermon; he said obey many times. He stressed over and over again that the bride will never have a will of her own again. She was just a rib to the man she was now bound to.
Yeah…
Then the father of the bride had his speech. He offered a long-winded telling of a disgruntled ex-coworker’s shooting spree in the hospital. He talked about his wife locking the door and hiding. He gave reports of where people were shot and how one person that had been shot in the head had played possum, then called the police. The father of the bride hadn’t even been there, but this shoot-out seemed to be the best thing that ever happened to him. He just showed way too much enthusiasm. Then, to finish, he mentioned that the groom was the extra security hired after the incident and that’s how he met his phlebotomist daughter.
Wow.
Then the testimonials began. Everyone shared stories about how hard the groom tried (but he was stupid). The stories of the bride were always about her eating problem (can you believe she ate the whole pie at age 6?!). However, the bulk was basically ‘it will get worse, just get stronger with Jesus.’ Nobody shared stories of growing up together or the adventures of raising a family. Nope, none of that. Life is over, as you do your duty.
It was like a eulogy.”
Can’t Argue With That Logic
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“So I was at my at my brother-in-law’s wedding. My wife (groom’s sister) was in the wedding party, so I sat with her family. Her parents get up on the stage to say their speech. Father-in-law steps up to the mic and says: ‘Thanks everyone for coming out,’ and sits back down beside me. There is a horrible awkward silence in the room, everyone was expecting a long speech, and the MC had just sat down and taken a big drink. In the silence, he leans over to me and says: ‘What? If you don’t have anything nice to say!’ Apparently, he doesn’t like his new daughter-in-law very much!”
Can You Repeat That?
“A couple of years into one of my more serious relationships, my significant other and I were invited to his cousin’s wedding, where a lot of folks on both sides of his family would be, as well as a few of our close friends. It was a really nice ceremony, and afterward, we were talking with the bride’s step-dad. I was quietly nodding my head, listening to my boyfriend chat with him, until I heard, ‘You know [ex’s name], you’re the one who should’ve married [bride’s name].’
Wait, what?
I stood there, trying to keep my mouth shut, and looking at this man telling my then-boyfriend to he should have married his first cousin. I didn’t just have to hear this once; it was loudly announced during the same man’s speech to the bride and groom. After all the speeches and dancing, the bride ended up getting very inebriated — being five months pregnant at the time — and telling everyone around who was not up and dancing to ‘DANCE! DANCE! It’s my freaking wedding!’ Just lovely.”
Now That’s What We Call A Blessing
“At my brother-in-law’s wedding, the grandmother of the bride was asked to say grace before the meal. My father and I just happened to be standing by the bar, after getting one last drink before it closed during the meal. We figured we would stand there during the 30 seconds or so while she blessed the food.
She pulled out three — yes, three — pieces of paper, completely full, front and back, with writing. She then started in on the history of the bride’s family. Here is what so-and-so is doing now. This was when and where everyone has moved into their current homes. She added in some updates on nieces, nephews, cousins, parents, grandparents, everyone. No one knew she was going to get up there and talk for more than 15 minutes about people nobody actually cared about.
My dad and I actually finished our drinks and ordered two more by the time she was done speaking. I still refer to it as ‘The 3 Drink Grace.'”
This Teacher Had An Important Annoucement
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“I bartended weddings for a little over a year, you may (or may not) be shocked by some of the stuff that goes down. Generally, there was one crazy person at every wedding, and it’s always either the bride or groom’s mother or some wacky aunt. They’d start fights, throw up, act wasted (though they never got served), dance WAY too inappropriately, say nasty things to the bride, and basically do anything possible to get attention on them. It was sickening.
But one of the weirdest ones I had was a teacher of mine from high school attended one of the weddings and yelled on the microphone in front of everyone about how ‘I used to be a hot little thing like you (pointing at the bride). Heck, just a few years ago the bartender (me) even wanted some of my ‘goodies’!’ She was large. She was gross. I did not.
Anyway, they pulled the mic away from her and she left shortly after via a cab. Unless she drank beforehand, she was stone sober.”
Not The Memory This Bride Wanted To Relive
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“The goom’s father made a speech along the lines of, ‘we knew she was a keeper when he brought her home and we heard them banging in the bathroom.’
AWK-WARD.
Everyone pretty much laughed, myself included. The bride, on the other hand, looked mortified. Like bright red. My table kind of all looked at each other like, this is hysterical but OMG that’s the father of the groom! He was pretty wasted from what I gather.”
She Wasn’t Even An In-Law Yet
“My sister-in-law is totally crazy. Let me start there, and I’ll get to the wedding part. The craziness started several months before.
When my husband proposed, it coincidentally was also his sister’s birthday. She wound up coming up to our house and staying over that evening, wanting to go out to the bar my husband frequented because she wanted to hook up with one — or a couple, who knows? — of his friends. Rather than us going out to celebrate our engagement, it turned into some girl’s birthday party.
A few weeks later, a hurricane came through, and she and her new boyfriend — the third of the month — and one of her kids stayed at our house for more than a week. At this point, I think she’d decided she was entitled to stay whenever she liked.
Fast forward to two days before our wedding. She calls my husband, wanting to stay at our house during our honeymoon so she could have a free place to stay with her boyfriend since she spent all her money on his plane ticket and couldn’t afford a hotel. We hadn’t even invited this guy — it was a tiny, immediate-family-only wedding. Without asking, she flew him down and decided it was our responsibility to house them for the wedding, even though the wedding was 3 hours away from our house, on the beach.
When husband told her ‘heck no, no strangers are staying in our house with our stuff for a week while we aren’t there,’ she went ballistic. She ranted that she was going to crash our wedding anyway and mess up the ceremony, because what were we gonna do about it since it was on a public beach?
She harrassed us for two days via text. She told me I was a whale in a wedding dress the night before my wedding. It didn’t stop after the wedding either.
She told my husband’s father, her stepdad lies about my husband while my father-in-law was on his deathbed. She called my husband crying at Christmas, and he now just laughs. She apologized again at our nephew’s wedding, but to heck with that crazy woman.”
Well, She Was Some Life Of The Party
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“My wife’s aunt was wasted at my sister in law’s wedding and began a toast talking about the bride and her husband. After about 20 seconds, she started talking about her dead parents and her failed relationships. She later tried (awkwardly) to have a friend of the groom dance and dip her which resulted in him dropping her on the floor and walking away while she rolled on the floor showing her sequin underwear.”
She Snuck In
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“The church wedding of an old friend of mine from university was held in a rather nice church in the middle of a small-ish touristy town here in Germany. So the ceremony was somewhat not really private. There was a nice older lady making sure the few tourists didn’t interfere.
Anyway, halfway through the ceremony, a middle-aged woman managed to get through, goes up front next to the couple and shouts, ‘I just wanted to ask what the church has to say about all these child-violaters being discovered within the church recently?!’
The groom had a great sense of humor and usually has good quick comebacks with even stronger wording, however, in this situation, he had no idea what to do. Luckily the lady was kicked out rather quickly.”
Repent, Sinner, For The End Is Nigh
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“My cousin married a Mormon boy a few years back. Our aunt officiated it, and our entire family was so proud of her, and everyone loved the guy. The guy’s mother, though, was very into her religion and almost convinced the groom’s entire side of the family not to attend. Why? Because my cousin had visible tattoos. The groom and his brothers managed to convince her not to go through with her stunt.
At the wedding, Momzilla broke into a toast that was neither planned, nor requested, in which she essentially said that she hoped that, at some point during my cousin’s life, she could look to the LDS church for truth and hopefully be able to ask God for forgiveness for her sins and be allowed into heaven.
There was a very awkward silence afterward.
Most of her family looked pretty embarrassed, but my aunt broke up the silence by yelling out ‘We love you Libby!’ which prompted lots of cheers.
The groom and some other cousins of mine promptly ‘asked’ the mother to leave, while others of us consoled the bride who was in tears.”
Piece Of Cake
“I used to be a cake decorator. I did this for 14 years. I made all kinds of cakes, including wedding cakes. Wedding cakes were considered a big deal with my employers, and they insisted that I stay for the wedding and or the reception, depending on where the cake was.
In 14 years, I made it out to 35 wedding cakes a year, on average, so about 490 wedding events. Of those, I’d say about half were wedding/reception combinations, so I’ve gotten to experience about 200 wedding ceremonies. The best story I got is this:
This was an early spring wedding. The original plans called for an outdoor wedding, but the weather brought us indoors. Other than that, the wedding was proceeding as expected, and we were at the point where the religious officiant was asking the groom the ‘do you take whatever to be your lawfully wedded blah blah blah?’
The groom said no.
The crowd went into a full-on gasp, mumble and whisper mode. Nice, this is something different. The groom looked at the back of the room and gave a hand signal to someone near the lights. The place went black, and a flashlight came on. The groom was using the flashlight to fiddle with an AV cart, with one of those older projection units that could project onto a wall or screen sitting on it. The thing came to life, and the groom, the bride, and the bride’s family were all lit up in the beam of the projector.
The groom announced that what we were about to see was filmed the night before the wedding. He walked over to the machine and pressed play. Immediately, the room was filled with the sounds of two people who weren’t married but were sleeping together anyway. As the projector finally focused, we saw, superimposed over the bride and her family, the bride going at it with the best man. I watched as the bridal party was shocked into complete silence and motionless. The video played for a good 45 seconds to a minute before any of them showed any reaction.
The bride crumpled to the ground crying, and the mom and dad pried her off the floor and walked her out.
I applauded and then left. I never did find out what happened after that, but I am happy I got to see that happen in person.”
All In The Family
“I went to a wedding in North Carolina. The father of the bride is also the pastor officiating. The bride’s sister is a recovering addict who had apparently been clean long enough to be trusted to be a bridesmaid. That was a big mistake.
The wedding starts normally enough. The bridal party and bride and groom were all up there and the pastor/father started talking. Then I noticed the bridesmaid/sister slowly falling forward and catching herself a few times. Then she started swaying even more. The pastor/dad noticed but kept rolling. The swaying got worse. A friend of the family got up and went to stand behind her to catch her in case she fell. At this point, the sister decided it would be a good time to ask her mom, who was seated in the front row, if she could borrow some money. She asked, and did so loudly. The mom and everyone else ignored her, but she asked again. Even more loudly. It was clear by her speech she was lit. At this point, the pastor paused and asked her to be quiet.
Wrong move.
The sister/bridesmaid began to berate her father, the pastor, using language that’s not intended for church. The family friend standing behind her tried to lead her away, but she turned and slapped him. Undeterred, he picked her up, caveman style over his shoulder, and started to walk out a nearby door. She was screaming the entire time. He walked through the doorway and she managed to grab the frame and hold on for dear life. The unexpected hero managed to break away and proceed out the door with her, but not before the sister/bridesmaid got in a few more curses and swears.
The pastor finished like nothing had happened.”