Not every wedding is a special day. For some guests, it can be the worst 4-hour party they've ever attended. For some couples, it can be the worst screaming match between dramatic family members they've ever seen. For better but usually for worse, it'll sure be memorable. Content has been edited for clarity.
At Least The Trash Took Itself Out
“This was at my friend’s wedding, acts committed entirely by the Groom’s family.
His dad yelled out what he thought were jokes during the vows, most of which centered around the idea that his son was worthless, lazy and ugly. He did this during the speeches too until his wife had to tell him shut up.
During the wedding breakfast, his cousin loudly critiqued all of the food and drink within earshot of the top table. She concluded this by going outside to make a phone call to a friend, who she told that she would rather have ordered a pizza and eaten that at the table instead.
His mother somehow missed the announcement about the cutting of the cake despite sitting six feet from the DJ when he announced it. His aunt then tracked him down and screamed at him in the middle of the dance floor because apparently it was somehow his fault.
When he then removed himself to the pub next door for some peace, she stalked around the entire venue trying to find him so she could scream at him some more, insulting any guests she wasn’t related to as she went.
The problems continued when his family discovered that the DJ had been asked not to take song requests from anyone except the Bride and Groom. This was because his family had used song requests to cause arguments at the engagement party. At the wedding, they instead directed their anger at the DJ, who was called a number of unflattering things for refusing.
Midway through the reception, his uncle decided to join in by calling each of the bridesmaids ugly as they passed by him.
My partner, the only person of color there, was assigned a problematic nickname by several of the Groom’s family during the reception, which they repeated loudly and often whether he was in the room or not.
During the first dance, the newly-married couple invited everyone to join them on the dance floor for the last part of the song. When my partner and I were spotted dancing together (the only gay men there), we received a few delightful homophobic slurs from several of the Groom’s family, loud enough to be heard over the music.
That side of the family then determined that they didn’t like the seating arrangements, so they moved a number of tables into one corner of the room so they could all sit together away from the rest of us.
They also agreed a system amongst themselves where, whenever the Bride or one of her guests stepped onto the dance floor, they would all leave it en-masse to sit nearby, staring angrily until they left.
When they eventually decided they’d had enough, they announced to the room that they’d had a terrible time and were calling a minibus to pick them up early.
The hour they were gone was the only part of the day where anybody else could actually relax and have a good time, including the happy couple.”
A Wedding Like School In The Summertime (No Class)
“No joke, this wedding was the living definition of a trashy wedding.
For starters, the ceremony was in someone’s backyard. There were no chairs for the guests who either stood or sat on the ground. Decorations and stuff were bought the day prior and the ceremony looked like it.
The music for the ceremony came from someone’s car speakers. The groom was not planning on showering that day (and had not showered for five days), so one of the groomsmen locked him in the bathroom and said, ‘You’re not leaving until you had a shower.’
Another groomsmen complained the whole time. He sounded like a five year old trapped in a 25+ year old’s body: ‘I don’t want to take pictures. Why do I have to stand here? When are we going to eat? This food is terrible, etc, etc.’ There was one point in the night I thought about whacking him upside his bald head with my heel just to get him to shut up.
One of the bridesmaids did not wear the shade of pink the bride wanted and wore a prom dress to the wedding.
You know how you are supposed to bring a gift to a wedding? Only five people out of the 20-30 people (not including children) that came brought a gift.
When it came time to eat cake, they had cupcakes. Now, I love cupcakes and didn’t have a problem with this. What the problem was that people ended up throwing cupcakes at each other because the bride and groom had smashed a cupcake into each other’s face. Ten perfectly good cupcakes were smashed into the ground.
I was angry for the host of this event because this was a friend’s house they were borrowing to host the reception (not paying, borrowing. It was so disrespectful). I was so glad when the event was over.”
Officially The Worst
“I attended a high school friend’s wedding. Her future grandpa-in-law (the groom’s grandpa) was the officiant. He dedicated 20 minutes of the service going on and on about how God created man with one head because two heads is too overwhelming. Therefore, there should only be one head in this marriage and household. Bride is to be subservient to groom.
It was essentially him going on that she is about to be a slave to every future need and desire of her husband. It was ridiculous.”
What He Was Really Looking Forward To
“I was working a wedding (at a very fancy private country club) and when the song ‘Shots’ came on the groom looked like he was gonna absolutely blow a gasket and he rushed over to the DJ and had them switch the song off. Turns out he was a recovering drinker and that’s also the reason he was drinking bottles of soda instead of bottles of stout.
He also pretty much burst into tears when he found out we didn’t have any cookie dough ice cream. When his best man said, ‘Hey, you have a wife! That’s great right?’ the new husband said, ‘Yeah, but the ice cream was the thing I was most looking forward to about my wedding day.'”
Truly The Best Man
“If you were to ask my friend’s bride, I suppose I was the worst thing she’d seen at a wedding.
The groom was my best friend from grade school. I arrived from out-of-town the day before the wedding. I had never met her, but after watching them interact at the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner and listening to him unload a litany of complaints about their relationship the morning of the wedding, I was convinced they shouldn’t get married.
I lobbied him hard to just walk away. The wedding was in Los Angeles. I told him I’d drive him to Vegas and call her from the road and deliver the bad news. He thought about it but declined. At one point on the wedding day, I was giving her and her bridal party a ride to the hairdresser while plotting to call him afterwards and lobby him again.
I arrived at the church early just to make sure I had the parking spot by the side door, pointed towards the highway. Fifteen minutes before the wedding started, I pointed to the side door of the church and told him that if he headed towards that door at any point in the ceremony, I would be at the car before him and would drive him away.
He married her anyway.
The marriage lasted less than a year.
He and I are still good friends.”
Well, Technically They Followed Her Orders
“I went to the wedding of some college friends of mine who were both from pretty fancy families back East. She had been raised by her mom and stepdad, who sprang for the wedding and reception at their extra posh country club.
Her biological dad and his wife were also fancy people, but basically disinterested parties in the whole event UNTIL two days before the ceremony, when his wife showed up to ‘preview’ the location. She was aghast (shocked!) about the condition of the wooden chairs the country club supplied for guests to sit on during the ceremony. So much so that she contacted the grounds department and demanded that the chairs be painted before the event. She offered to pay.
Imagine the horror of all parties involved when the guests stood up after the ceremony finished with parallel horizontal stripes on their garments from the not-dry fresh paint. The groundskeepers had painted the chairs the evening before the wedding. So not only did the jealous dad and wife pay for unnecessary chair painting, they paid for a boat load of dry cleaning.”
“Her Whole World Imploded”
“During a three day wedding, the first night had a raging party. Everyone had just really good, clean fun. Nobody was heinously wasted or dramatic, the food was awesome, the servers were hilarious, the music was the perfect volume and style, truly a once in a lifetime kind of party and everyone had an absolute blast from the 90 year old grandpa to the 1 year old toddler.
Next day was the wedding. The bride and groom are coming separately to the church. But the groom is late. He’s stuck in traffic, but he’ll be there, he’s all ready and tuxed up so it’s literally just slide into the church and get to the altar. He was nervous standing there because he had been so late (45 minutes) because of the accident but whatever, he’s there now.
Bride is stunning and doesn’t care that things are delayed, nothing can ruin this day. They say their I dos and start to walk back down the aisle.
Groom slams to the floor, dead before he hits. Massive aneurysm took him out. Photographer has rapid shots of him going down.
The traffic he hit on the way there was a result of the bride’s grandparents in a car accident, also dead on impact.
This happened about 8 months ago. She’s in counseling and on the right road, but her whole world imploded so its going to take more than a few months to get over that.”
They Knew What Was Coming
“So, my husband and I put off getting married for years. We both sensed… a future disturbance in the force on the horizon, if we dared to, what with both of our parents being divorced and remarried and all of them being insane.
Finally, we were buying property together and decided to bite the bullet. We tried for as small and casual as possible. It ended up with like 30 people (which was 30 too many).
It was THAT bad.
My mother-in-law showed up in a wedding dress. For your information, I was not wearing one. So that happened.
My estranged father send me a vicious letter because I dared to invite him as an olive branch. Apparently I did not grovel enough. And my stepfather was going to be there and that was my fault too.
My brother-in-law invited a ton of people I didn’t know, unexpectedly. And drank some special bottle of Cabernet my stepmother-in-law completely flipped out about and made a giant screaming scene over.
The officiant arrived totally wasted. We were both raised by wolves and didn’t know thing one about getting married and had NO idea we needed a license, and didn’t have one.
So, we didn’t actually get married. We left for three months on our honeymoon, and did the paperwork when we got back. The officiant was still somehow completely wasted and our marriage license is hysterical. Literally every line is crossed out and the date had been written incorrectly, crossed out, and rewritten multiple times.”
She Went Missing And Everyone Got Involved
“I saw a big brawl and the bride and groom break up.
Midway through the reception, no one could find the bride. Turns out she was in her new husband’s car, going at it with her ex boyfriend. He hadn’t even been invited, but apparently the bride had texted him for one last go around. The groom’s sister dragged her out of the car by her hair, and proceeded to beat her up. The bride ended up with a broken nose and both eyes blackened.
When the bride’s family separated them, her mother took a swing at the groom’s sister and ignited a brawl involving at least 50 people. It was ugly. I was one of the groomsmen and we did what we could to separate everyone. Eventually we just had to give up and defend ourselves against both sides.
Three people were hospitalized, one was permanently blinded in one eye, a second had a badly broken pelvis and detached retina, and the third ended up with internal bleeding. No one was arrested. I guess living in a small town where half the police force was in attendance has its perks. It’s kind of creepy how well the whole incident was just quietly swept under the rug.
The groom just sat crying afterwards and we didn’t leave him alone that night. He went on his honeymoon with the best man and tried to have a good time. Poor guy still has commitment issues over 5 years later.”
“The Color Drained From His Face”
“My brother-in-law got married, and all the groomsmen were his fraternity brothers, and my wife and my new sister-in-law’s sisters were the bridesmaids.
So the wedding goes well, I’m in the audience sitting with my kids while my wife is standing. They do pictures and a party bus to the reception. I’m sitting there with my parents-in-law and my kids, and all the intros are done. The bridal party dances in and it’s all cute and fun and stuff.
Finally after dinner, the bridal party is up and around. Up until this point, I literally hadn’t been able to speak to my wife since we left in the morning, because between pictures and travel to the reception, she had been just way too busy (and I’m also not an overbearing jealous type, she can have fun at her brother’s wedding, I was fine on kid duty). She had apparently been so busy she couldn’t even go to the bathroom, so she stopped for a second to say ‘hi’ then ran off to the bathroom with the bridesmaids.
The groomsmen, meanwhile, all kind of congregate with the groom as he starts saying his thank you’s and making his rounds. He comes by our table first to talk to his parents and start introducing groomsmen.
Now is where I should insert a small fact: the groom and his buddies are blitzed. As wasted as I’ve ever seen anyone. Apparently they made very liberal use of the party bus’s bar.
Back into the story: my brother-in-law is introducing all the groomsmen to his parents when he introduces the one who walked with my wife. The guy proceeds to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle when I take her home tonight!’
His buddies laugh, while the groom and my in-laws stare at him like he is an idiot. Then my brother-in-law gestures to me and says, ‘Oh, and this is her husband, and her two kids.’
The color drained from his face as his bros laughed at him. He let out a kind of half hearted ‘just joking!’ I literally didn’t see him the rest of the night.
The next day my brother-in-law apologized to my wife and I for him. He told the dude she was married, but the other bridesmaids were all single. I guess he got confused or something and thought he was given the green light to try to hook up with the groom’s sister. After he realized what he’d said, he went back to the party bus and passed out. The bus was waiting to take just my brother-in-law and his new wife to their honeymoon suite, so they had to deal with the trashed passed out groomsman before they left.
Otherwise it was a really fun wedding, and the rest of the groomsmen were cool and promised not to let the dude live it down.”
O(din) No
“When I got married, it was a traditional Texas Baptist wedding. My husband and his family are mostly conservative.
My father, his wife, and my oldest brother showed up (we are all pretty estranged, I have only met them all once or twice). The morning of the wedding, I spoke to my father and asked him to please please PLEASE not bring his 16 and 17-year-old ugly smelly lap dogs to the wedding, as they were not allowed in the building. He declared that they were his service animals and he could take them anywhere (the only service those dogs are going to do for him is finally die).
As I am walked down the aisle by my grandmother, I see my father and his wife. And both little dogs wrapped up in blankets like babies on their laps. After the ceremony, they presented me with a bottle of homemade cherry Meade. They also told my husband and I that while they enjoyed the ceremony, they do not believe in God but instead ‘follow the laws of Odin.’
Then they got out a second bottle of Meade and a giant horn my brother began wearing, and started asking every single wedding guest if they would like a drink of the Blood Meade from the Horn of Odin. And asking all the children if they would like to kiss the horn.
The final straw was when I was sitting at the head table and saw my father’s wife feeding one of the dogs food at the table. Shortly after that, my husband and I left the reception.
The bottle of Meade they gave us we had stored in the kitchen of the building. Turns out it was under too much pressure and exploded while we were gone. I was given a giant red bomb as a wedding present by my father.”
A Trashy Family Makes For A Dumpster Fire Of A Wedding
“My cousin’s wedding was awful. I was about 7 or 8 and vaguely remembered my grandmother grabbing me and my brother and leaving. I remember being mad because I didn’t get any cake, didn’t get to dance, nothing.
When I got married this year, and was worried that my wedding was going to be just as bad, I was finally given the details as to why Gram made us leave so early.
My cousin was not in contact at the time with her birth father. He showed up to the reception anyways. Everyone more or less tolerated him for the time, as no one wanted to be the one to ruin my cousin’s wedding. At some point, he made a pass at my mom and said pretty nasty comments to a 14-year-old girl that was there. My mom let the comments he made to her go, but the father of the 14-year-old girl did not. He punched him in the face. When he got punched, he fell backwards onto another lady, whose husband in turn jumped on him.
It turned into an 8 person brawl, including my dad and one of my cousins. No idea how my dad or cousin got involved, but drinking was a factor.
So where was my cousin (the bride) when all this was going down? She was in a truck with her new husband doing a line of coke.
12 people, including my dad, one male cousin, my cousin the bride, and her new husband, all got arrested at her wedding. She and her husband were caught doing blow when the cops showed up for the fight. My grandma realized something was going to go down when she saw my cousin’s dad and the first guy start fighting and got my brother and I out of there.
I have a pretty trashy extended family.”
How To Ruin A Special Day
“Literally five minutes before our wedding ceremony started, my aunt came up to me (the bride) and told me that my grandfather had cancer and most likely only a few months to live. I had not known but seeing him that morning, I saw that he was not well (my parents and sister had unnecessarily kept it from me before the wedding).
Auntie Dearest just waltzed up to me and said, ‘If I were you I would not be so happy, did you not know that your grandfather is dying?’
I cannot remember but apparently I replied, ‘Well, let me get married first and then we’ll take care of this.'”
Clearly He Was Trying To Send A Message
“For the bouquet toss, a middle-aged guy forced his middle-aged girlfriend out onto the floor, then stood by her so she couldn’t leave. The bouquet was caught by an excited little girl. The guy proceeded to yank the bouquet out of the little girl’s hands, gave it to his middle-aged girlfriend, then ran off the floor cheering loudly to high-five one of his buddies. The little girl ran away crying.”
An Odd Way To Say “Thank You”
“My brother’s wedding was the worst. My parents and I have helped him through a lot of trouble in his life – prison, addiction etc. He’s clean and clear now but I don’t think he’s ever understood what those years did to our family. And in typical white people fashion, we never talk about it.
His wife was wedding CRAZY, so it was all about her, which is fine…except, at the reception, her family had all the front tables. We were stuck down in the back behind his ‘rehab family.’ Her family had 3 hours of speeches where no one thanked or acknowledged my mom or dad, who had given them $20,000 for the wedding.
We were then the last table to get to go to the buffet, by which time nothing was left. Oh and of course there was no bar.
My husband and I went through McDonalds on the way home.
It just showed me that people never change, he’s still an idiot. Now he’s just an idiot with a wife.”
A Tragedy And A Creep
“Just as the bride started walking down the aisle, her grandmother had a sudden cardiac event. We had to stop the procession and start CPR in the aisle way.
What’s worse is that we were in a large park, and people calling 911 couldn’t give the address. I ran to the ranger’s station, but it was locked. I broke a window screen and crawled through to use the land line so EMS could trace and respond. She didn’t make it.
As an added bonus to the horrible situation, I later found out the ranger had placed a hidden camera in the women’s restroom where the girls got ready/dressed for the wedding. He served jail time.”
Why Did No One Stop Him?
“I was at a friend’s wedding. The bride’s nephew (about seven, I think?) was the ring bearer. Instead of sitting at the front after he made it down the aisle, he decided to do karate moves in front of (and sometimes behind) the couple during the entire ceremony. He’s in almost all their photos.”