Bridezillas, mother-in laws, and plus-ones oh my. These weddings should have had caution signs.
“It Was A (No-Show)Fiasco”
“I knew of a wedding that happened when I was in high school. My cousin’s friend was one of the bridesmaids. The bride was a beautiful spoiled princess who was marrying an officer in the Air Force. Her wealthy parents were over the moon and the family took a year planning the whole affair including press releases in the local newspaper about hiring experts to arrange, plan and design the whole affair. These experts were the who’s who of their industry and they were being flown in to manage the affair of the wedding and reception. As the wedding day approached there was discontent brewing with the bridesmaids who were required to maintain height/weight requirements; engage in periodic photo shoots before the day complete with wardrobes; professional make-up and hair all done in order to catalog several activities before the wedding. The bridesmaids were made to feel they were putting their entire lives on hold and financial expenses were through the roof with wardrobes, full dress rehearsals and photo shoots. The bride in the meantime had morphed into a complete and utter BRIDEZILLA, with demands and threats to them about how they needed to keep up or be kicked out of the wedding and replaced. She actually did replace one or two along the way and then new photo shoots would have to be done all over again. It all culminated into a huge brawl at the final dress rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Come the day of the wedding, at the packed conference hall, complete with videographers, local news and celebrity experts the ENTIRE bridesmaid troupe bailed and did a complete no-show. The bride was in tears and the brides’ mother was trying to pull people from the audience into the wedding to stand with the bride and clueless groomsmen. It was a complete fiasco. The bridesmaids never showed. They eventually decided to have a ‘closed’ ceremony and booted the guests out of the conference hall many of whom had come a long way. The guests were sent to the reception hall to wait for the bride and groom.
After the entire affair, the officer was sent on a remote tour and the bride was still living at home lonely and completely friendless waiting on his return.”
I Do(n’t)
“I went to a large wedding where the bride and groom wrote their own vows. The bride was my friend and she read her very heartfelt, romantic vows first. It went something like this; ‘I’ve waited all my life to find a love like my parents and grandparents have. The moment I met you I knew you were the one for me and my heart is overflowing with joy today to become your wife. Etc., etc., etc.’
When it was the groom’s turn, he paused staring at his index card vows, blushed deeply – which seemed sweet and romantic… until he opened his mouth.
When he began reading his vows, you could have cut the tension in the room with a knife. It became immediately obvious that his blush wasn’t due to his tender feelings for his bride, it was embarrassment about what he was about to say.
Groom: ‘You nagged me for years to marry you so I hope you’re happy now that I’m here in this monkey suit tying on the ball and chain I’ll have to drag around for the rest of my life. I vow to take good care of you by mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, and taking you out once in a while like good husbands should. Etc.’
I cannot imagine what he was thinking when he wrote his vows and I can only hope his intention was to be humorous and not cruel. His vows made light of marriage in general and the bride herself. It came across as a passive aggressive dig toward her and were in no way funny or loving.
The shocked look on her face broke my heart. The minister looked like he’d sucked a lemon and the guests started looking at one another in astonishment. Although the groom was a dislikable and immature person, no one would have expected he would humiliate his bride at the altar.
My friend, the bride, pulled it together before he finished reading his vows and laughed it off, as did some of the guests, but you could tell it ruined their day. Worst wedding I ever attended and in the end they were divorced.”
Baby? What Baby?
“I was the deacon, assisting the priest who’d do the wedding. I’d caught the groomsmen half an hour before sharing drinks from a big bottle. I admonished them and confiscated the half-empty bottle. I thought that was the big issue of the day. I was wrong.
Thirty minutes later the church was full. The organist was playing Bach to fill in until the ceremony began. They’d already pulled out the white cloth to cover the main aisle for the bride’s grand entrance. The altar candles were blazing. The mostly sober groom and five groomsmen in their rented regalia were marching into place at the front, to wait for the bride. The maid of honor and five matching bridesmaids were already there.
The mother of the bride found me. I could see her tears, common at a wedding. She whispered. ‘Julie changed her mind.’ I asked ‘About what? Vows? The wedding candle? What next?’
‘About getting married!’ The mother said, out loud. ‘Can you talk to her? She likes you.’
I followed Mom back to the little bride’s room downstairs. Julie was there in a chair with her worried dad, wedding dress and veil on, tears streaming, mouth quivering. ‘I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it? I don’t love him he doesn’t care about this baby!’ (Baby? What baby?) She turned to her mother and almost shouted ‘you can’t make me.’ I did a perfunctory ‘Are you sure, Julie?’ I got a definite ‘yes,’ and said ‘OK, I’ll go tell Father Wozniak. Do you want us to tell the people?’ She did.
Thank God Father W. decided he’d tell the people. He went out, explained that the bride was having a bit of a thing, nothing dangerous, but that the wedding wasn’t going ahead. I don’t remember specifics, but he was a great speaker and made it sound almost . . .normal.
It was definitely the biggest breach of wedding etiquette I ever experienced, and later, when I was helping couples get ready for their marriage ceremony, I was always careful to be sure they were sure.”
Trigger, I Mean Ring, Finger
“My dad was an Episcopal Priest and one of his Parishes was in South Philly.
He did a decent amount of funerals, baptisms, and weddings and I would usually be asked to serve as an acolyte since that meant one less person had to be asked to serve for a special service.
On this particular wedding in the early ‘80s a girl from our church was getting married to a soldier in one of the local mob families. He was gregarious and handed out a twenty dollar bill to each of us who served during the service. This was the first time I had ever received a tip so he seemed cool to me at age 14.
The night rolled on and the drinks were plenty and pretty much everyone had a few too many. I decided to walk home with one of my friends and as we got out to the front sidewalk, the groom followed us out and was telling us how much he appreciated us helping out.
He took a bit to tell us what he wanted to say and during that time a car pulled up and asked if everything was OK?
The groom reached inside his coat and pulled his piece part way out and asked the people in the car if they wanted to get involved. Of course they sped away.
He instantly started laughing, finished what he had to say to us and we quickly went on our way home. Even though he was joking, it scared us to the core.”
Wait, Who Was Getting Married?
“I asked my mother to be my Matron of Honor, mostly to make her happy and to avoid a crisis. I chose her favorite colors for my bridesmaids so she wouldn’t be wearing something she didn’t like. I gave her free rein to choose a dress she liked, in the color I ‘chose’ for her. Keep all this in mind.
From the very beginning of planning, she claimed the wedding was not for the bride, but for the mother of the bride. She dictated my dress, my veil, my flowers, my cake, the food at the reception, and the music that would be played. I got to choose my invitations and announcements, but only because I hid the catalogs from her.
I allowed all this because I believe that a wedding is not nearly as important as the marriage, and I knew that my husband and I would be fine.
Fast forward to the day of the wedding. I hadn’t seen her dress yet, but she assured me that I’d love it. I was so busy getting myself ready that I didn’t worry about it. My wedding was scheduled for 3:00, so I and my bridesmaids were ready to go at 2:30. My mother insisted that the ceremony wasn’t until 3:30. I showed her the schedule and she got upset but allowed that I was right. I still hadn’t seen her dress.
At 5 minutes to 3, she was ready. My bridesmaids and I were already in the car with my dad when my mother came out of the house. I finally saw the dress. It was the exact same off-white color as mine. She was also wearing a small tiara with a little veil attached. As it was too late to do anything about it, I let it go.
I got married and a good time was had by all, even with my mother telling everybody who would listen that it was HER day.
Quite a few people who have seen the wedding photo of the whole bridal party ask which one of the 2 women wearing long, ecru gowns is the bride or was it a double wedding.
Although my mother hijacked my wedding, 29 years, three kids, 8 grandchildren, and 5 dogs later, we’re still happily married. The funny thing is, both times my brother got married, she told me that it was the bride’s day and we had to respect her wishes. As far as my mother is concerned now, she’s since been diagnosed with some mental health concerns. It explains so much of her past behavior. But she’s still my mother and while I do not like her, nor do I want to live anywhere near her, I do love her because she’s my mom. Sometimes that’s all you can do with people like her.”
What Can Go Wrong, Will Go Absolutely Terrible
“All of this happened in one wedding. A woman answered her cell phone during the ceremony and proceeded to have a conversation about her appointment for a cosmetic procedure, of the rear end kind. The best man kept burping very loudly. Someone took the cake topper as a souvenir, before the photographer could even take pictures of the cake. There were toast glasses on the bridal party table that quickly disappeared before the bridal party even arrived. These glasses were also taken as a souvenir, and a broadcast had to be put out that they had to be returned because they were not the property of the bride and groom but were being borrowed from a friend (they never did reappear). The couple asked for no gifts (except gift cards to a hardware store as they were building their own house) and someone opened the cards to help himself to the gift cards (the stolen amount well over 5 grand; the couple did press charges, he wasn’t even a guest, but one of the hired waiters). The bride and groom paid for 2 drinks per guest, for which each guest was given a punch card. Needless to say many punch cards were stolen from other place settings and some guests got rather upset over not being able to get their two drinks.”
“I Kid You Not!”
“When my husband and I got married, we had a very large wedding. There were approximately 400 guests. There were people on my husband’s side that I did not know and there were people on my side that he did not know.
When it was time for me to throw my bouquet to all of the single ladies, this woman caught the bouquet that I did not recognize. She looked a little out of place as she didn’t seem to be dressed for a wedding. When I turned around to see who had caught the bouquet, it looked as though one of my friends from work had caught it – but this mystery woman ended up with it in her hands; my friend was left with a couple of leaves in her hand!
I had assumed that she was on my husband’s side of the family, while he had assumed that she was on my side of the family. Right after she caught (Correction – GRABBED) the bouquet, she came over to me to INTRODUCE herself. She told me that she had the same name as me. I then asked her who she was related to from the wedding.
Her response astonished me and caught me off guard. She said that she was at the wedding because she ‘came to pick somebody up who needed a lift home from the wedding.’ I kid you not!
This woman who caught my bouquet was not even an invited guest to my wedding! She was a complete stranger. How does somebody do this and think it’s OK? I guess it takes all kinds! Good thing I don’t lose sleep over this 32 years later!”
They Took What?!
“We were invited to my cousin’s wedding… Held at a very ritzy place! Her parents are pretty wealthy… Nothing left undone! The groom’s family also pretty well off. His family traveled several hours by car for the wedding. It was a ‘weekend get-away’ type wedding. His family only stayed overnight the night before the wedding… This enabled them to literally strip the wedding reception room of ANY leftover food (they actually brought containers for the food!),took every flower (even the flower pieces that were placed in the private bathrooms for wedding guests only). My uncle ended up paying an additional $40,000 for all the things taken from the groom’s parents & siblings rooms… including the tv’s that were mounted to the walls!!! My cousin was wild with anger… and when her new husband defended his family… she had the marriage annulled within a month! Total ‘wedding cost’ was over $100,000… Including lawyer fees for the divorce! There had been no signs pointing to how wrong this would go.”
Is This A Wedding Or The Super Bowl?
“Last November I was in a wedding where the father of the groom’s speech was not about the couple, marriage or the nature of love itself—it was about the Philadelphia Eagles.
This was not an elaborate metaphor. He started with a joke about how he ‘pulled some strings’ to make sure this particular weekend was a bye week for the team. He talked about how much he enjoyed watching football with his only son and how proud he was that the bride was now an Eagles fan too. After several anecdotes about his ‘good friend’ Don Smolenski (President of the franchise) he mercifully concluded by showing off his Super Bowl ring.
The speech was eight minutes long. At one point my mother in her everlasting candor turned to me and stage-whispered:
I will NEVER do this to you.
The kicker is that this wedding was in Pittsburgh. Nobody in that room cared about the Philadelphia Eagles.”
Stop, Drop, And Roll With It
“I’ve been to my fair share of weddings and most went off without problems but a few things did happen here and there that just made me cringe, it’s true. One incident was when my good friend caught herself on fire at the wedding reception. Picture the scene…a beautiful bride, a dashing groom, a couple of hundred folks at the local country club dressed up in their formal attire. The bride and groom do their dances, their cake thing, and then they do some kind of unity candle thing where they both light the same candle to symbolize their union. As they turn around to face the guests after lighting the candle, a flame jumps up behind the bride’s head, because her veil had caught on fire. Thank goodness for groomsmen, because someone managed to put her out, and she continued on with her evening, holey veil and all. I gave her credit for that, she just rolled with it.”
Picture Not-So-Perfect
“During the ceremony all the groomsmen were bored out of their minds. That’s because all of them including myself are non-religious. My entire family sitting on one half of the church are also.
So the wedding photographer managed to snap one picture that showed a rather obvious difference of unspoken opinions about the prayers and general religious stuff going on in the church. In the photo you can see my entire family looking everywhere else for something generally interesting while my brothers wife’s family were intently focused on the religious prayer. I’m sure its quite obvious now that my brother’s wife required the religious ceremony.
At the top of the photo the groomsmen (from order of the best man to my little brother on the far right) are doing various things to occupy their time. The best man is chugging from a flask (He was really hitting it hard in the photo), the next guy is looking at his watch, the next guy is staring at the ceiling twiddling his thumbs, I’m motioning in the air with my finger non-verbally stating ‘lets get this over with already’, and my little brother on the end was playing his game boy with the sound off.
On the bridesmaids’ side everything was fine, except for the one on the far end just barely in the picture. This lady I had to chastise before the entire ordeal because she showed up completely hammered. I’m not talking a little tipsy, I’m talking about not able to stand, make sentences, or control their bladder.
There she is during all of this with a massive urine stain running down her tan dress while another bridesmaid desperately trying to stand in front of her to hide the wet shame. Unfortunately she simply couldn’t hide that mess simply because the bridesmaid couldn’t stand, and was leaning on a wooden wall in a rather exposed way with her legs spread for support.
Needless to say that picture perfectly summed up the entire ceremony.”
To Be Or Maybe Not
“After 15 years of marriage my ‘friend’ left his wife for his high school sweetheart. He had recently rekindled with her when they both were on the committee planning their high school reunion. He could not get divorced fast enough. The wedding to marry his high school sweetheart was literally a few weeks after the divorce was finalized. Everyone at the wedding was heart broken for his two teenage daughters who watched in tears as he had his first dance with his ‘new’ wife. For his youngest daughter it was too much to bear. She literally ran out of the reception bawling with family members in tow. If that is not bad enough, at some point during the wedding the groom decided to ask the DJ for the mic for a special speech. For whatever reason the ‘happy’ groom had decided to make his speech talking in third person. It went something like this:
‘Johnathan and Macy would like to thank everyone for coming to their wedding………..’
There was an audible gasp from all the guest. Why?? Well, his new bride’s name was Loraine. Macy was the name of his now ex-wife. He immediately tried to correct himself, but the damage was done. The guests open mouths and his new wife’s face said it all.
Amazingly, they are still together. This December was 10 years. They are happy still in love and loving Grandparents. His ex wife has of course moved on. It was very very hard for her in the beginning. But I think she felt she got her revenge when she had a short lived relationship with his best friend since elementary school. She made sure to put a nail in the coffin of his relationship with his best friend ‘brother.’ But that’s a whole other story.”
“Don’t Do Anything Stupid”
“I’ve seen a lot of craziness at weddings. At one particular wedding I was working for a company that hired me as a freelancer, I never knew who it was I was going to photograph. Anyway, this particular time it was a young couple they couldn’t have been more than early twenties. The wedding went well she was beautiful he was handsome, got to reception and him and his boys started drinking. I could tell they were getting buzzed, it was during the cake cutting ceremony I said to him don’t do anything stupid. Well he did, he took a piece of cake when it was his turn to feed her, he took the whole piece of cake in his hand and pushed it into her face and rubbed it around in her face the cake fell onto her beautiful wedding gown and she left crying. She came back about an hour later cleaned up, but I could tell through the photographs that she was not happy, and he probably wasn’t going to get any that night.”
A Happy Ending
“There is this family who lost contact with one of their family members for more than 18 years and this ‘family member’ appeared on his niece wedding and everyone was speechless. They were soaked in tears.
So I grab my drink, I stood up and shout ‘Here’s to the man!’ and everyone stood up and did the same thing I did.”