It's so easy for a wedding to turn into a disaster. There are so many moving parts, people have such intense opinions, and there are always family members that absolutely won't get along. Most weddings are able to withstand these hurdles, but the weddings featured here went downhill so fast. Each story featured here met completely unforeseen circumstances that totally derailed any sense of normalcy.
These stories have been lightly edited for clarity.
The Stinky Secretive Specter
“There was this guy outside the hotel walking up to groups of people in the smoking area, asking how much each person weighed. He was very overweight himself, and his jeans looked to be on inside out. He was severely under-dressed for the occasion, and no one seemed to know him. He would ask a person’s weight, and then exclaim, ‘I can bench that!’ That is, until one guy (I think he was a family member of the bride) got into an argument with him and started asking around if anyone knew this person, figuring that he was a wedding crasher.
That’s when this strange gentleman decided to cut a deal with everyone. ‘If I can pick up that bench with my bare hands, can I stay for the party?’ Everyone agreed, because the bench was clearly bolted to the ground. So, he walked over, puts his hands on the bench, crouched down, and with all of his might, pooped his pants in front of everyone. He stood up and waddled off through the parking lot to never be seen again.”
Frightening Father Of The Bride
“The bride’s parents are divorced due to of her father’s cheating, beating, drinking, and general nastiness. The father of the bride, who is remarried by the way, calls the bride at 6:30 on the morning of the wedding to announce that he will be attending, and that he has taken out a restraining order against her mother’s boyfriend of several years that everyone really likes. The dad claims that if this boyfriend shows his face, the cops will be called to forcibly remove him.
Bride cries a lot, new boyfriend says he will be there to support her however she wants, and offers to fight her dad if he tries anything. The bride pulls herself together and asks her two brothers to give her away at the ceremony.
The dad shows up, pretty wasted of course, at the back of the church, during the procession. He somehow sweet talks the bride into letting him walk her down the aisle. She agrees, I think just to try to prevent a scene, but is basically holding back tears as she starts her wedding. The mom’s boyfriend is there, but the wedding progresses as planned and an hour and a half of full catholic mass later, they are married.
Later on, at the reception, her father walks up to the boyfriend at the front tables in front of a crowd of about 300 and pours a full glass of red from a new bottle. He then dumps the entire glass directly over the boyfriend’s head, soaking him down and staining the white suit he was wearing.
Immediately, one of the brothers begins punching his father and someone grabs him to hold him back. The father tries to punch him back, so someone else grabs the father and holds him back. Meanwhile, the second brother takes this opportunity to beat on the father while his hands are being held. Father gets kicked out, but the mood is completely ruined.
Everyone feels awkward and so they kind of just shuffle out and go home.”
Holy Medical Matrimony
“A cousin of mine was getting married. His wife is a nurse, and there were many doctors in the wedding. It was a huge wedding with over 300 guests, some of them very old uncles and aunts that hadn’t had an adult drink in years.
An uncle aged 75+ had too much to drink and passed out at the wedding table. All the doctors of the wedding gathered around and were trying to get him up, but he died. The ambulance arrived, declared him dead and took him, and his close family members left.
Even after that, the party continued awkwardly, for it was too early to end it. After 20 minutes, another very old uncle that probably ate too much had heart attack. Again, the doctors did CPR on him and were fighting to keep him alive until the ambulance arrived. His daughter, aged around 55-60, saw her father like that and passed out. She hit the stairs with her head and started bleeding.
Half of the doctors now went to check on her, even the doctors were shocked after all these incidents.
Eventually the daughter had a concussion and lived while her father died in the hospital. Of course the wedding table stopped.
Let me say it again, at a wedding with OVER SEVEN DOCTORS and many NURSES, two people DIED and one had a severe CONCUSSION.”
The Most Malicious Mother
“It was my wedding. My husband and I had actually been working on a dream wedding that was not going to put us in debt, but my mother (who is a narcissistic sociopath) kept trying to change our wedding to be more HER way. She wanted to invite 500 people, most of whom we had never met, argued that our theme wedding (we’re community theater actors and our theater was going to let us have the wedding there for FREE) was ‘intolerable and against all the rules of a wedding’ (exact words).
The final straw were our invitations. You have to understand, both my husband and I had sworn we were never going to get married (before we got together), so the first line of our old time theater scroll invitation was ‘Purgatory hath frozen over’ and then the announcement of our wedding. My mother stormed away screaming (and I mean SCREAMING) how we were going to offend EVERYONE who read that.
For us, it was the final straw. We said forget this stress, and we told our family we were going to the courthouse the next Friday to get married and get it over with, they could be there or not, it was just a process for us, as we were already committed to each other forever.
Friday rolls around and my dad surprised me with a very sweet bouquet of white roses, and my mother and paternal grandmother (the last of my grandparents) attended, as well as my husband’s mother, aunt, half-brother with his girlfriend and daughter, and one of our closest friends. That’s it. The judge did the ceremony, we kissed, and my mother said as loudly and gleefully as possible, ‘Well, now you can’t give her back to us.’
Dead quiet.
Crickets.
The judge cleared his throat, and that sound seemed to bring my now husband back to reality, and he said, ‘That’s not a problem. I love her, and I definitely would NEVER give her back to YOU.’
After that, my mother returned to work. My dad, grandma, my now mother-in-law and her sister took us out to a little late lunch to celebrate. It then my mother-in-law looked at my dad and asked what the on earth was wrong with my mother. My dad did that awkward laugh and just said, ‘I don’t know.’
We ate and my husband and I went home to enjoy our first married night together. Mom never apologized, she thought it was funny.”
Maybe Don’t Raise A Glass To That
“This guy got up on stage and gave a speech:
‘Krystal and Gary have always been best people I’ve ever known. They have always been there for me when I needed them. They’re like loyal dogs, they’re like my dawgs, you know what I mean? So it’s fitting that they stood by me when things got ruff ruff.
When I first met them, I used to ask Gary all the time if he could send me some pictures of Krystal in a bikini. You know, I run a project where I bring pictures of all different girls in bikinis to prisoners in exchange for woodworking.
Speaking of bartending, I can give you this metaphor about marriage: The man is like the drink, and the woman is like the mixer. And life stirs it up, and God is like the bartender. And the devil is your mother-in-law.
Life’s gonna play tricks on you. You lose your job, you’ll fight, go into debt, you’ll get sick. So let’s raise a glass. These two people love each other so much, I hate it.
This isn’t a Jewish wedding, but my Jewish friend, Hymen, told me that in his culture, it’s important for the groom to break a glass. Now I’m no Jew, but I have broken a lot of glasses. But tonight I don’t mean to ‘break the Hymen’ tradition.
I want to tell you guys something that my grandfather told me when I was young that gave me the chills. And it seems most fitting today! He says, ‘I shot a lot of Japanese in World War II.’ Guys, there’s no denying you’re awesome together. But sometimes marriage can be like a war. Don’t let the Japanese get in your way.
Krystal, you’re beautiful inside and out, I should know. Cheers.'”
What A Foul Father!
“I just attended a wedding for my very good high school friend. She is in her late 20s and married the first man she had dated since high school. He is a lovely person, as is she, they should be happy together.
Anyway, her dad gets up to speak during the reception. He’s an eccentric person, outspoken, and just generally loud. For taste, he had a wardrobe change between the ceremony and reception; his reception outfit was a black paisley suit, and the paisley had Darth Vader designs hidden in it because he loves Star Wars.
He gets up to make his speech, and says the happiest day of his life was marrying his wife, and the second happiest was the birth of the daughter being married, who is the younger of two daughters. The older daughter was sitting right in front of him when he said it, and he played it off as a joke, but yikes.”
Oops, Wrong Soulmate
“I worked as a wedding caterer for years, so believe me when I say I have seen it all. The worst though was probably when the best man gave a speech that was basically him admitting to being in love with the groom, and that he felt the bride was taking him away. This was accompanied by a slideshow of what was obviously supposed to be the couple’s best moments. It only included incredibly cringy photos of just the groom and the best man, poorly photoshopped, with the bride cropped out from many of the pictures. There was also several that had obviously been taken while the groom was really wasted, with the best man trying to hold his head up to achieve the whole romantic staring into each others eyes thing.
When the speech was over, the bride looked like she wanted to murder him, but he made several comments of how the groom obviously married the wrong person. When everyone was free to go, they practically ran to the open bar. Later that night, several of the groomsmen got into a fight and the bride left in tears. The worst part was how the groom didn’t seem to understand what everyone was upset about or what the best man had been implying.”
Hot Mess Is An Understatement
“The groom got extremely wasted at the open bar after the ceremony. He unknowingly peed his pants at the bar and thought everyone was lying as they told him about it. He finally got mad and said he was going to go change his clothes, but instead he went and got into his truck. When everyone realized he hadn’t come back, we went looking and realized his truck was gone. After alerting the police and searching the roads for hours revealed nothing, everyone gave up looking for him and waited for the police to come up with something.
The next morning, the groom returned to the venue in his truck, which was completely totaled, airbags deployed and all. How the truck even ran was beyond us, as the front end was compacted back into the steering wheels. Turns out, the groom had decided to go to his house to get his weapon and fire off some rounds at his favorite pasture-range spot. While driving to his spot, he had hit a cow in the road. Being too wasted to repair his vehicle, he slept in the truck in the middle of the road. He woke up the next morning and fixed his truck enough to get it back to the venue.”
Cake Shrapnel
“My friend got married he was 21 years old. Neither he nor the bride had much money, so the wedding was modest but still very nice. They did have a lovely three-tier cake though.
The ceremony goes fine and ‘The bride will cut the cake’ music is playing. She was a dainty, tiny little thing, maybe 5’2 and 100 pounds soaking wet. If she swatted a fly it might not even notice. She approaches the cake with the knife, barely touches it and BOOM!
The whole thing immediately collapse, all three tiers somehow, all over someone’s elderly grandmother who was seated right by the ill-fated cake. That old lady, who had barely moved throughout the whole affair, shot out of her chair like she was fired from a cannon, screeching bloody murder and sending cake shrapnel all over those nearby. Another close friend and I watched the whole thing from close range and were paralyzed and purple from hysterical breathless laughter, as were many of the other guests.
I later heard the bakery refunded them for the cake due to its not-up-to-code construction. They should have charged them double for generating memories that no one there will ever forget.”
That P.I. Wasn’t On The Guest List!
“We’ll call the groom Steve and the bride Julie. This took place in the United States. Julie was an immigrant to the US. While Steve and Julie were dating, Steve’s sister caught wind of a rumor that Julie had been married previously only for the purpose of getting her green card. Steve confronted Julie with it, she denied it, then he proposed, and she said yes. His sister didn’t drop it, and she told Steve’s parents what she heard.
Fast forward to the wedding day. Pictures at 11, service at 1. That was the plan.
At about 10:30, with the whole wedding party assembled and waiting for pictures to start, there’s a ‘family meeting’ with both families, bride and groom, and pastor in the basement of the church. Bombshell dropped: Steve’s parents hired a private investigator to explore the rumor. Rumor confirmed. Julie had lied about the previous sham wedding. Those of us in the wedding party had very little idea of what was happening. We just know there’s a row going on in the basement and none of the family members or the bride or groom are in sight.
This goes on for an hour or more. It’s 20 minutes before the service was supposed to start. No sign of the bride, groom, or families yet. They are literally arguing it out in the church basement to decide whether there’s going to be a wedding. Steve is committed, Julie is committed. Steve’s parents are not. Steve finally puts his foot down; wedding proceeds with totally stressed out bride and groom; shaken and very quiet bridesmaid (Steve’s sister, who started this whole mess), a pastor who’s wondering what he got himself into, and Steve’s furious mother.
Yeah, Steve stuck by her even when all the truth came out. I think he found out about the other marriage the day before this all happened and somehow quickly made peace with it all. I’m not sure if he’s a saint or an idiot for doing that. Wedding happened. 20 years later, couple still together. Go figure. Screenplay pending?”
This Guy Has The Worst Wedding Luck
“The first wedding featured a couple of our friends, who had their ceremony officiated by the grooms best friend. Pretty normal thing to do, but the officiant went into a very detailed speech about his friendship with the groom, as in their entire backstory, never mentioning the bride. It was a 10-minute-long speech about these two guys growing up together and then it abruptly ended, and he did the marriage vows in like two minutes and that was it. Super weird and the whole crowd was confused.
The second wedding was some cousin of my wife. Apparently, the bride’s grandmother always writes and reads a poem at the reception about the bride and groom, which sounds nice on the surface. She starts reading this poem and it becomes apparent this is not a short ordeal, it was like 8-10 full pages of poetry about the bride and groom and she read it in kind of sing-song manner, poetic prose I guess. She kept losing her place and dropping pages and having to start over. It probably took 15-20 minutes for her to get through it. Half-way through, a good portion of the audience had got up, left the hall, and went to the bar.
Wedding #3 had my brother being the best man, and he wanted to see how long he could make his best man speech before they took the mic away from him. He just rambled on for a good 30 minutes about complete nonsense, including how lucky the groom was that he gets to bang his wife tonight and all this adult language until mom took the mic from him and I think kicked him in the butt. I was dying.”
Why Is That Rain Yellow?
“My sister got married at the family house. The best man clearly out of it and had taken who knows what. The ceremony began underneath the bride’s second story window, and the best man handed off the ring to the groom, the stumbled away into the house, we all thought he went to puke. The ceremony continued. Vows were exchanged, both the ‘I do’s’ happened, when my sister looked up for rain clouds, as she was sprinkled on.
The best man, who was completely blacked out, was peeing on the wedding party from the bride’s second story bedroom window. The groom thought it was funny, the bride didn’t, a fight ensued, and the wedding couple left the scene in separate cars. They literally separated at the altar. The wedding was eventually annulled.
Last we saw of the groom was the next day, when he dumped my sister’s possessions out of his pickup onto our driveway. And yes, if you were guessing, the best man was a Florida man, but the wedding did not happen in Florida.”
Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing
“The bride of the groom was filthy rich, so he went all out for this ceremony, including a very nice hotel and beautiful ceremony. It was very showy but very nice.
After the ceremony, we were all having dinner and then the speeches came. The groom’s best friend gave a speech, as well as the bride, groom, and finally the bride’s dad.
The bride’s dad’s speech was very long, but he was so proud of his daughter. He had massive printouts of childhood pictures. It was a good vibe, and people are having a laugh. We get through a few pictures of her as a baby, then a close up of her is shown at three years old, just a picture with her head and her shoulders in it, covered up, enjoying a sunny day.
Someone in the far corner decides it’s appropriate to wolf whistle at the picture of the bride as a three-year-old. The entire room went silent and nearly every guest grimaced. You could hear comments of ‘who on earth was that,’ and, ‘bit inappropriate, don’t you think?'”
My Mother-In-Law Was A Demon
“My first wedding was awful. My mother-in-law wore black, head to toe. She sat in the last pew of church. After the wedding, she cried, tore her corsage off, ripped it up and threw it everywhere. She peeled out of the parking lot and laid rubber down the street as we were going to the reception. She went home, drank, and started popping pills. Her husband had to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. Our wedding night consisted of pagers going off and phone calls off and on all night.
That was only the beginning. She was nuts. Certifiable. There is a long list of crazy actions she did to me over two years of our marriage.
She called animal control and told them I was beating our dog (I wasn’t). She poisoned me on a family camping trip. She didn’t invite me for any holiday, or birthday celebrations. She found out what I was getting everyone for Christmas and did the same but purchased higher end versions. It was the one time she made me cry really hard. I was absolutely crushed. That year was the year I didn’t get a single thing from any of that side, which was fine. But for some reason this was particularly nasty and hit me hard. I could go on but you get the idea.
This was the last straw. We are late getting up there on a Friday night. My husband had to work late, but my mother-in-law decided it was my fault. So she was angry already. We get up and have coffee with everyone that Saturday morning. She purposely spills her coffee on me, and we are off to the races. Everyone does their thing for the day, we converge for dinner. She is in the motor home making dinner. I offer to help and got the door slammed in my face. She makes everyone’s plates which was odd, as she had never done that before. I get served very last.
So, 2 in the morning rolls around, and I wake up violently ill. Dizzy. Vomiting. Other unpleasant stomach issues. Sweating. I literally had to crawl to the bathrooms at the campground. Horrible stomach pain. It was bad. The aftermath went on for a few days. I was the only one that got sick. We all ate the exact same thing that night.
We surmised that she put something in my food. My father-in-law alluded to it a long time after it happened.
Putting things in food is a signature move of hers. She got her kids taken away when they were younger for putting sleeping pills in their hot chocolate.”