He Realized Why He Was Drinking
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“I know a guy who seemingly had his life together: great career, lots of friends, a beautiful fiancee.
He had a tendency to drink too much while partying and a few weeks before the wedding, he woke up in the hospital with serious injuries due to a non-automotive accident. The scariest part for him was that he didn’t remember a thing past leaving the party to walk home. Did he fall and hit his head? Did someone attack him and leave him for dead?
The thought of that scared him and he decided to sober up. It also caused him to reflect on his life and he realized his fiancee was manipulative, controlling, and he’d never be happy living with someone like that.
He has some long-term damage from the injury, but he’s still sober, spends much of his free time for a charitable cause, and dodged a serious bullet (a bad marriage) as a result of that horrible injury so he oddly came out ahead in the end.”
It Was The Best Thing His Friends Could Have Done For Him
“My dad and his friends took a buddy by canoe to an island to drink the night before the wedding. He told them all he didn’t want to go through with it but couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. When he woke up in the morning, they had stranded him on the island. He missed the wedding, his buddies were branded as the jerks. Groom to be was relieved.
But first, word got out that he was out with this merry band. They were questioned. They played a cagey game. Didn’t admit to ALL of the details but that they got pretty wasted the night before the wedding. Groom was verified to be an idiot who made bad decisions. Submarined any hope for salvaging the relationship. That particular ‘flaw’ in his personality was not going to change. All parties felt they dodged a bullet, I think.”
He Kept The Party Going All Night Into The Day
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“Wedding Photographer here – This happened with a couple back in 2015.
The night before the wedding, all the bridal party got together at the hotel, partied, and drank a LOT. I showed up the next morning at 8 am after a two-hour drive to be told by the hotel receptionist that there was not going to be a wedding.
Apparently, a large fight broke out between the groomsman and bridesmaids. Money to pay then vendors was stolen. The ceremony was supposed to be at 11 am that day. After about two minutes of ‘What is going on here?!’ I realized that nobody called and told me. I called the bride’s mother – and she stated that she was off to pick up the bride and groom, sit them down, and still try to have a wedding.
Fast forward a couple hours, the groom showed up, still drinking, out of his mind around 10 am, guests were already showing up, the bride finally showed around 11:30, and there was a ceremony at 1 pm. Yes – they still got married. The groom was out of it the whole day, the couple argued a ton, and the groom also felt up his mother during the Mother-Son dance.
Needless to say, it was an eventful day.”
He Couldn’t Help But Notice How Awkward They Were Around Each Other
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“This happened to one of my oldest friends who I met in preschool. Our families were friends. They moved out of state in middle school but we kept in touch. Once we were in our 20’s, he got engaged to his girlfriend that he was living with. Everything seemed good. I got the invite and was making plans to travel for the wedding. They had a joint bachelor/bachelorette weekend in Vegas with their wedding party and I coincidentally was out there the same weekend visiting family, so I joined them out one night.
It was awkward. I can’t really describe the tension. The fiancee didn’t even say hi or acknowledge me when I said congrats (it was my first time meeting her, too). Everything was disorganized, no one knew what was going on, we kinda wandered from place to place until we settled at a bar in a hotel. I never saw the bride and groom next to each other all night, let alone talking. They got in different cabs from one place to the other even though it was not separated by guys and girls, but one big party. I ended up hanging out mostly with my friend’s older brother and his girlfriend. I got the weirdest vibe off the situation and when I got back, I told my girlfriend I wanted to hold off buying the plane tickets and wasn’t sure I wanted to make the effort and pay a lot of money to travel to a wedding that I felt so uneasy about.
Maybe two weeks later, my friend called to ask if I’ve bought the tickets yet. Not yet… ‘Good,’ he said, ‘The wedding is off.’ The fiancee decided she was in love with one of the groomsmen and she moved in with him. A groomsman that lived next door to them. She claimed she never cheated while they were together and it just happened…right. I think she and groomsman got married sometime later, but my friend was stuck in the lease living next to them for several months.”
There’s Something Going On There…
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“I traveled with my wife (then girlfriend) to a wedding she was in. At the rehearsal, I told my wife there was something going on between the bride and the maid of honor. She laughed. Two weeks after the wedding, the bride’s Facebook went dark. The bride and maid of honor are now living together in another state. I still talk about how I called it within an hour of meeting them. Poor groom… super nice dude.
We almost didn’t even go to the wedding after the rehearsal because the bride was wearing a Coach purse that went missing from my wife the summer her and the bride lived together in college. My wife was furious and thought about bailing last minute on the wedding day.”
The Tattoo Was The Final Straw
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“My childhood best friend got engaged and invited me to come down and to meet his fiancee/the rest of the bridal party (I moved states years ago, but we still keep in touch). So I made the trip down to see him and his family and things were going really well. I spent the day hanging out with him and catching up, but ultimately the first day was short just because I had been traveling all day.
Day two rolled around and we made a trip to go look at tattoos. It’s important to note that my buddy has tons of tattoos and had been talking to me for weeks about getting my own. I agreed to go look and we had talked about him getting some additional work done all week prior to my trip. So we got to the shop and I decided to hold off on my tattoo for now (still deciding on the right one), but he got a few of his touched up and got a new one. That’s where things went sour.
We left the shop and there were, like, six missed calls from his fiancee. We got back to their place and she asked if I ended up getting a tattoo and I admitted that I didn’t yet. Then she looked at him and saw his new tattoo. She was furious. Like, just absolutely beyond mad. They were living together in a small crappy apartment. He was working full time (at the time he was on leave because he dislocated his shoulder-he was a firefighter), while she was a student. He had just leased/bought a brand new, very nice car and had a history of impulse buys. His thought process was that he worked for his money, it was his money, he could spend it how he wanted. Her thought process was that she wanted to move out of the apartment and it was their money. I think she wasn’t so much upset with the tattoo as much as his lack of forethought in making purchases. They got in a huge screaming match and eventually, we had to leave to go out to meet with the rest of the wedding party.
The night started off okay but she kept randomly yelling at my buddy and was just generally upset. We ended up leaving the first bar and bouncing to the second one. Things seemed to have cooled off. I dipped to use the bathroom for maybe two minutes, but by the time I got back, the atmosphere had completely changed. No explanation, all I was told was that we were leaving and then no-one spoke. She was sober cabbing for the group, so we had the most awkward, completely silent hour long car ride home. Then when we got home, my buddy asked me which couch I’d like to sleep on that night, as he’d be taking the other one.
They lasted about another month before the whole thing collapsed.”
She Found Out In The Most Ludicrous Way
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“The day of the wedding, the groom’s family was patiently waiting. The bride’s family hadn’t shown. The bride’s mother finally arrived and said that the bride had discovered that the groom had a second fiancee in another state and the wedding was off. The rehearsal dinner photos had been uploaded on Facebook and someone tagged the wrong girl, assuming that was his fiancee he had been talking about. Except it was the other fiancee. So the bride saw herself tagged as someone else and messages from out of town friends about, ‘Can’t wait to meet her, why wasn’t I invited?'”
They Were Going To Warn Him, But He Learned Soon Enough
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“Three of us guys were best friends since high school – we’ll call us Billy (guy getting married), Joel (one of the Three Amigos), and Martin (me). Fast forward to about age 23 – Billy was getting married to this girl who was probably 19 at the time. They started dating when she was still in high school… but I digress. Night of the bachelor party, somehow Joel and I were alone with the bride-to-be. She’d gotten a few drinks in her and decided to seriously proposition Joel for after-hours activities. We thought long and hard about telling Billy, but given previous experiences (we also told him about an ex doing some shady stuff and he proceeded to stop talking to us until they broke up), we decided against it. They did get married… Six months in, he came home early from work and walked in on her in the middle of taking her clothes off in the living room with another dude. While they might have just been starting an innocent game of naked twister, he decided to divorce her.”
They Found The Groom In A Place They Never Expected
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“Last year, I was a groomsman in a wedding with a guy I have known for close to 15 years as a good friend. We did the typical ‘get a nice dinner then hit the town hard’ kind of party. Ended up at a Top Golf, loaded out of our minds. We were having a lot of fun when we noticed that the groom was gone for longer than it takes to just pee… so we went looking.
We couldn’t find him in the bathroom. Staff said he went outside to ‘clear his head and have a smoke.’ We went out and didn’t see him in the parking lot. We started going into panic mode because he was SUPER SLOPPY and tended to get crazy when he got to that point. We ended up calling the bride-to-be. She got a crying phone call from him and he said he was meeting another friend then he hung up on her and threw his phone.
Fast forward 2 hours and the bride’s brother found him…balls deep in another dude. Apparently, he was holding back that he was actually attracted to men and that he had a secret boyfriend (plot twist: was the bride’s brothers best friend). So the wedding was called off and he just up and moved out of the state.
He is now a dancer at a few gay clubs and is currently engaged to marry his ex-bride’s brother’s best friend. Happy for the dude.”
An Actual Monster In Their Wedding Party
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“The bride and groom decided to have a wedding in Vegas and invite lots of friends and family.
The night before the wedding, the bachelor and bachelorette decide they’re gonna have their parties TOGETHER. Big mistake.
Backstory- bride’s best friend is a self-centered narcissist, but when drinking she becomes a full-fledged Queen of the Harpies who manipulates everyone, becomes ultra paranoid, who always falsely accuses someone of a crime.
Her: ‘Someone stole my jacket!’
Us: ‘Your jacket is on the chair.’
Her: ‘Someone stole my credit card! ‘
Us: ‘Check your purse again, I saw you put it in there.’
Her: ‘That guy over there is gonna kidnap that girl tonight!’ Etc. She’s just an evil attention seeker.
So, the big party night before the wedding, 15 of us partied with the bride and groom at a Coyote Ugly clone bar. Everyone was drinking, the guys were taking body shots off the waitresses and random women.
The bride’s best friend, aka The Harpy, was gaslighting the bride the entire night, whispering in the bride’s ear, ‘Your husband is gonna cheat on you after the wedding. He doesn’t love you. Look at his friends getting body shots. Look at the way he’s looking at those women. Why aren’t you mad at him? He’s disrespecting you! He’s gonna get a body shot next!’ She purposely separated the bride from everyone else.
The groom was having fun with his guys and happy; everyone was having fun and being totally respectful, but still drinking.
The bride was out, however, and had been getting madder by the second because she was being manipulated by The Harpy.
The bride bolted over to the groom, turned him around, threw a drink in his face, and slapped him, hard!
The groom was shocked and grabbed the shoulders of his bride-to-be while she was yelling at him and trying to hit him again. He’s a big overweight guy with little balance and she’s easily 5’10.” They toppled to the ground.
The fall to the ground looked really bad. Everyone assumed the groom was the aggressor since he was the bigger one. Bouncers jumped on him and restrained him, then the cops came and arrested him outside.
He was cuffed with his hands behind him, leaning against the squad car, with the red and blue lights on his face. The entire wedding party thought the wedding was off. The cops interviewed witnesses, the bride acknowledged she started the altercation. A couple of hours passed and we were relieved to find out the groom wasn’t charged. The wedding went on as planned, but for a few hours, everyone was scared that the wedding was off.
We all knew who was to blame: The Harpy
The Harpy went on to work in Washington DC. with a congressman or senator. She’s a hot, intelligent, psychopath…she’ll do well there.”
Didn’t Anyone Ever Tell Him Three’s A Crowd?
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“My old roommate is the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet, so it wasn’t any surprise when guys were into her and she struggled to turn them down. There was one guy in particular who was really weird. He spent months pursuing her and she kept politely turning him down and eventually had to be clear that she only regarded him as a friend. Then he took it upon himself to become her best guy friend and took it to a creepy level. Like, when she brought a new boyfriend around, this guy would insist that the boyfriend had to fill out an application and get approved by him before he could date my roommate. Weird ownership stuff that lasted for years. And it’s very clearly all on his end because she never initiated hanging out or mentioned him when he’s not around or really seemed to enjoy her time with him.
So fast forward a couple years and this guy is dating someone. He makes sure my roommate approves and she’s constantly being brought along as a third wheel on dates and to everything they do. My roommate’s approval is necessary and he wants to make sure these two women are really good friends. He’d bring his girlfriend over sometimes and just ignore her to pay attention to my roommate. They get engaged and he specifically makes sure my roommate can come (as basically his best woman) and insists she drives up to the wedding with them. So they take the several hour drive to the bride’s hometown together.
The details from there are a little unclear to me. The morning of the wedding (like an hour before), the bride called off the wedding and it’s vaguely understood that she’s really uncomfortable with her fiancé’s attachment to this girl he used to pursue really hardcore. She thought it would get better, but his insistence that my roommate be a part of the wedding and spend all her time with them (even up to the day of the wedding) convinced the bride that he’d never give up on my roommate.
So in the midst of all this, it’d make sense if he cut my roommate off in order to work at his relationship, right? Well, instead he peaced out and dragged my roommate with him and they immediately took the several hour drive back to our college town. So basically, all the bride’s fears were confirmed as he ran off with the woman she was concerned about.
My roommate got married a couple years later and I think that’s when he finally gave up because he got engaged shortly after her wedding.”
The Groom’s New Love Was Closer To The Bride Than Anyone Thought
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“I bartend weddings fairly often and work directly with wedding planners all the time and meet with the bride and groom to be to talk things through and create a sense of familiarity. Each time I met the groom, he just kind of seemed out of it but I chalked it up to stress. The day of the wedding, just before the ceremony, the wedding planner came over and asked for a couple shots for herself. She usually doesn’t drink on jobs, so I asked her why. Apparently, things were about to get started but the groom was missing and wasn’t responding to phone calls, so everyone was looking for him.
That was when one of the bridesmaids disappeared. Not long after, the brother of the groom got a text from the groom saying he and the bridesmaid are in love and they’re running away to elope and that he’ll call him after. Everyone was getting antsy waiting for things to start and they’d all been waiting for about two hours. Now the wedding planner had to tell 150 people that the wedding was off and explain to the parents what happened while the wedding party was consoling the bride.”
He Couldn’t Keep Up The Act Any Longer
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“So this was a crazy one. My boyfriend was the best man at his friend’s wedding and told me this story after he got back from the bachelor party. One of the groomsmen (we’ll call him Eric) from high school got wasted before they went out and told the groom (we’ll call him Michael) that his soon-to-be wife was a terrible person and he can’t believe that Michael would marry her because he thought he loved him (Eric).
Turns out, they had been having a gay affair for three years behind his fiancee’s back but Michael was too afraid to tell his friends and family, so he kept up the facade of a straight man so he wouldn’t be cut off from his trust fund. Michael first told the groomsmen that Eric was crazy and kicked him out of the hotel they were staying at but called him later to meet up at a bar where they made out and left together. My boyfriend said they had no idea where they went that night but Eric and Michael came back to the hotel the next day confessing that they loved each other and Michael proceeded to call his family and fiancee with the news and cancel the wedding.”
All He Did Was Leave A Note
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“A friend of mine in college had been engaged to her high school sweetheart. The plan was for them to get married after she graduated. She was one of those that dreamed of her wedding since she was a little girl. She had been planning FOREVER! A week before the wedding, he left without a trace, except a note saying, ‘I can’t marry you.’ She was devastated. We still had a party with the wedding cake, food, etc. because it had all been paid for already.
Saddest party ever.
She ran into him a few years later at an 80’s dance club wearing a mesh shirt and a taxi hat and making out with a dude. She actually spoke to him but it was kind of an….’Oh! Ooooh heeeeyyyy…’ awkward silence and walk away. He did not apologize or say anything else. She didn’t understand for a long time why he never said anything to her. Probably because they were both raised very religious and even met at their church. My friend tried calling his mother after it happened and the mom didn’t even know where he was or what was going on (so she said). He was always a big-time mamma’s boy and apparently, his mom hated that her son was with her. My friend eventually met someone else and married them. The new guy is fantastic.”