Weddings are stressful and they can bring out the worst in people. But what happened to these wedding planners goes far beyond the acceptable level of craziness!
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
The Worst Person In The World
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“I got to watch a glorious bout of family drama as the wedding planner of a Bridezilla from ‘Down Below.’ The Bridezilla’s sister (and also a bridesmaid) got pregnant.
The Bridezilla informed her that her pregnancy was inconvenient and threw a fit at her poor timing because the dress would have to be altered to handle the pregnancy. I fled to another room and shut the door, but they had it out so loudly I could still hear the fight.
After what seemed like an eternity, the sister said coldly; ‘We’ve been trying for three years. While the wedding may be your day, you knew what I was going through to get the chance to have a baby.’
Bride: ‘Well, then I guess you can’t be in my wedding because I don’t want to deal with the problems your pregnancy will cause.’
While I stood there, flabbergasted, I heard nothing but silence and then the quiet shutting of the door. The sister had walked out without another word.
I put on my best retail face and continued with the plans. A few months later, Bridezilla and Bridezilla’s Mom were with me, and the Mom got a phone call. The Mom excused herself and left to answer. She spent most of the meeting on the phone. Towards the end, mom came back, slowly putting her phone away.
It looked as though she’s been crying.
Bridezilla: ‘So who was that?’
Bridezilla’s Mom: ‘Your sister… She lost the baby…’
Yep. Bridezilla’s Mom had been crying right along with her poor, distraught daughter on the other end of the phone. My heart breaks for them. There was nothing I could say to take the pain away, and there were not enough tissues in the world to mop up my sympathetic tears that were about to come to the surface.
Then this nasty little piece of work spoke up…
Bridezilla: ‘Oh. Well, I guess she can be in my wedding then since she’s not pregnant anymore.’
I have never seen something snap behind another person’s eyes before. It’s scary as heck. I was wondering what the minimum safe distance was for the upcoming explosion and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there wasn’t a chance I’d make it to the door, much less anywhere near the end of the blast zone.
Then Bridezilla’s Mom turned to me and spoke in this deadly soft, deadly calm, voice; ‘I’m so sorry to have wasted your time, but it looks as though I won’t be financing the wedding anymore. It looks like my daughter will be taking over paying for everything. I hope this doesn’t cause your business any trouble.’
Bridezilla, suddenly horrified and in panic mode: ‘MOM?!’
‘I understand, ma’am,’ I said, giving Bridezilla’s Mom a brilliant smile. ‘I think we can sort out the snags.’
Bridezilla freaked out; shrieking, waving her arms, screeching horrified questions, and getting more and more panicked as Bridezilla’s Mom coldly refused to answer the demanding, ‘Why?!’ of her ‘sudden and unexplained’ refusal to pay for the wedding.
Bridezilla’s Mom left, her back ramrod straight; trailed by her hysterical, sociopath of a daughter.
The wedding was canceled entirely, 24 hours later.”
The Breakup Couldn’t Happen Soon Enough
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“This happened at our bridal store.
Bridezilla came in with fiance and flipped out about how the bridesmaid dresses weren’t the same color as the tablecloths they had picked out.
The store had stressed to her that the photo online wasn’t accurate, she ignored them and ordered that color anyway.
In the middle of her scream fest, the fiance held up his hand and said, ‘Stop.’
Bridezilla stopped dead.
Fiance: ‘You made the photographer cry, and you screamed at the caterer.’
She started screaming at him too, and he just sat there, calm and patient and then he said, ‘Give me the ring.’
Her: [Shock and rage] ‘WHAAATTT?!’
Fiance: ‘I’ve had enough. Give me the ring.’
She chucked the ring at him. He calmly picked it up and walked out, leaving her there like a complete fool. She just sat there for several minutes in stunned silence, then stormed out the door. We saw her on her cell phone, blubbering to somebody to come get her, as her fiance left her at the store.”
A Cheap Pub Wedding
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“I used to work at a pub and there encountered the cheapest couple I have ever met. The first clue was that they decided to have their wedding reception in the tiny bar of a pub. There were quite a few other hints that these people were just trying to get the most freebies out of their wedding as possible:
There was a strict rule that they must be out by 11 p.m. However, they insisted on staying later and later until it was midnight and, since you can’t say no to a bride on her wedding day, I was made to pack up the entire room and place the decorations in boxes for her to pick up in the morning.
There was a strict schedule that was emailed to us. On this schedule, we were told the bride and groom would arrive at 6:15 p.m. and the entrees (two plates of cheese and biscuits) were to come out at 6:30 p.m. Upon arriving at 6 p.m., the bride and groom both came to me at the bar and told me the entrees were late. When I said that the schedule said the kitchen was to prepare them at 6:30 p.m., the bride had a fit and started screaming at me that that’s not what she said, though I had the email from her printed behind the bar with me.
The bride was told beforehand that if she wanted us to cut the cake and distribute it, it would be a $10 cakeage fee, as is standard with most establishments, however, she said no, she could cut it all. After cutting a slice for herself, she said to me, ‘I shouldn’t have to do this. you should do this,’ and tried to get me to cut it without paying the $10 fee.
The venue was free, and the minimum spend was $1,000, and the bride and groom still brought drinks from home and drank that, and after one meal per person (there were only 15 people, and the photographer was not allowed a meal), in a curt email after the reception, the bride told us she wanted a discount because the meals were too big.
These people had money but were just too cheap to spend it. The bride did her own makeup which was running by the start of the reception and bought her dress at one of those cheap online sites.
The atmosphere was horrible too. I don’t know if anything happened before the reception, but it honestly felt like a funeral in there, no one was talking at all. I was the only one serving them, and a couple of my coworkers came in and commented on how immensely awkward the whole place felt. It was the weirdest event I’ve ever attended.”
All Kinds Of Special Disasters
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“I am a wedding/special event planner in Toronto. I own my own planning company, and I have been in the industry for about eight years.
I have so many horror stories that I don’t know which to choose.
I had a bride that openly spoke utter and complete smack about the groom’s family (in front of his face). She would say that they were ‘crazy, unclassy and annoying,’ and come to the wedding, her family was the hardest family I ever had to deal with, and the groom’s family was lovely. On top of all this, the bride yelled at all of the vendors all day, resulting in the videographers leaving after just 1 hour of shooting, the photographer cried in the bathroom, and the groom and the bride’s cousins apologized to me for her behavior all night.
I had one horrible bride for whom I planned an amazing wedding. She raved about how much she loved the food all evening, but the day after the wedding, she wrote a bad review about the caterer on Yelp! and told me she wouldn’t remove it unless they gave her a discount. She’s a horrible person.
I had one horrific couple that didn’t care about anyone. The groom was 30 minutes late for the ceremony, but it was no big deal because the bride was two hours late. After the ceremony, we had to shorten appetizers to make up for lost time. The couple got wasted in their limo, and both ended up falling asleep. They were both so late for their reception that I had the venue serve dinner without them. Their parents were furious. The bride’s parents left early, and the couple didn’t arrive until 11 at night. Half of their guests left before they arrived, and they yelled at me for allowing dinner to start before their arrival. (This was a 400 guest wedding. I don’t know about you, but when 400 stomachs start growling, you start looking for ways to stay off the menu yourself.)
I had a high strung groom who yelled at one of his young guests (the kid was 12) for sitting out of his assigned seat and told the kid and his parents to leave. Later at night, the bride’s father (who was single) made out with one of the bridesmaids, and the groom punched him. We had to call an ambulance, and the groom was arrested.”
A Contract Well Formed
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“I haven’t had much trouble with bridezillas… mostly due to the fact it’s not my full-time gig and I can turn people down. I have a standard contract that includes a variety of reasons I will terminate a deal with a partial refund (any time you don’t use, you get back, but if I had to sit through your nonsense, I get paid). Still, I’ve had a couple of wanna-be clients who discovered that I’m nuclear breath-proof the hard way.
There was one chick who was under the impression I would be paying for the decorations out of what she had been paying me.
I informed her that, while I could handle those directly if she wished, she would still have to cover the cost of anything I had to purchase.
She blew a very impressive gasket, demanded a full refund, and contacted her family lawyer. The lawyer arrived, complimented my contract and informed the bride-to-be to read this nonsense next time.”
Why Would This Woman Hold Out?
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“Not a planner, but worked for a catering company.
We catered for super, super rich weddings and events. There were a lot of little things that happened at the weddings we did, just rude rich people who thought that because we were the help, we should be treated like trash. The one that sticks out in my mind is a wedding that we did at night.
We had been there for hours, and our duties were done. However, we had to clean up, of course, to do that we have to gather all plates, cups, silverware, and napkins.
Well, this one rich snobby woman had been a piece of work all night. Complaining about everything and just being a pain in the behind. We were all polite and put up with her. However, she refused to give up her place setting. She had all the dishes and napkins and would not let us take it. That meant we were stuck there.
After an hour past when we should have left, we were all just sitting around, exhausted at midnight waiting. Every time this woman would take a step away from her seat, one of us would dash in and grab as much as possible. And every time she would dash back to her seat.
Finally, she had only the napkin left. She got up to dance, with the napkin in her hand!
My boss, who was a sweet 65-year-old amazing woman, wouldn’t say a foul word to anyone or do a thing to offend a soul, marched up to this woman, looked her straight in the face, grabbed the napkin, ripped it from her hand, smiled sweetly and wished her an amazing night.
I will never forget the anger and disbelief on that snob’s face. She immediately made a beeline for the mother of the bride, while we all made a run for our cars.”
A Bridezilla Narrowly Averted
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“I was the wedding salesperson at a hotel that was going through a rough patch, so I didn’t have much of a choice when it came to clients. There was one bride in particular that drove me crazy. She had been a problem for a few months before I was hired. I remember the Director of Sales telling me that I was inheriting a handful. I figured that no one could be THAT bad and laughed it off. I should have listened.
Our first meeting she presented me with a detailed list of why my venue was terrible. Her fiancee spent the whole time looking defeated.
Our second meeting she brought the absolute worst reviews on Trip Advisor (printed off) from as far back as 2003 and used these as a bargaining tool. She hadn’t signed the contract yet, so I was very ready to walk away from this at that point, but my bosses insisted we needed the revenue.
After this, I started playing hardball and told her that another couple was interested in their date and that if she didn’t sign within two days, I’d be selling it to them. This was trick mind you; I hoped she would go away at this point but instead asked for the contract immediately. I, being forced to oblige, sent it but with extra clauses.
1. She would pay menu price for any food or beverage ordered. 2. At the hotel’s discretion, we were allowed to terminate the contract for any reason without penalty. 3. Her attrition didn’t scale. It was 90 percent, period if she backed out of the contract.
She signed and obviously didn’t read it. During the tasting, she started coming down on me pretty hard because she didn’t feel that the drinks were worth $6 a glass. I offered her something else as an alternative for $5.50 a glass but reminded her that I wouldn’t negotiate menu prices per the contract.
She finally went back and read the thing and asked me about the other additions. I informed her that it was to protect me against ‘Bridezillas.’
After that, she was far more agreeable.”
Party Animals
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“I worked at this country dancehall connected to a restaurant and bed and breakfast, and we once had a reception that was held in the restaurant and the dancehall since their original reception had been rained out a bit before. We were a pretty chill place and used to wasted people, but halfway through this reception, the groom got so trashed that other members of the wedding party had to carry him out and put him to bed.
This was at around 10 p.m., and the dancehall was busy and open until 1 a.m. It was loud enough we didn’t hear anything else or notice where the bride went until we closed, but they were all staying in the B&B and after we closed and were all sitting around counting money and finishing up clean-up, we could hear the bride storming around upstairs in the B&B screaming about the groom and blasting the radio super loud.
Also, much of the wedding party seemed to have gotten so hammered they couldn’t figure out how to open the separate door that led upstairs to the B&B, despite having been given keys. They kept banging on the restaurant door and making a huge ruckus outside while we were trying to close up and had tons of money out on the table.
The owner was this awesome, tough old lady who was a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, and she went out cursed them out. She told them that they better shut the heck up, get the bride to shut up and not disturb the other guests any longer, or she was going to go beat them up herself. She loudly informed them that she would then kick them out and let them find other accommodations for the night– in a tiny town of about 100 people when they had come from far out of town for the event.
It was a very entertaining evening, and we didn’t hear much noise after that. My boss was a pretty intimidating lady.
But I can’t imagine that marriage lasted for long.”
The Reverse – The Wedding Coordinator-zilla
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“A bit of a counterpoint but I had an opposite experience with a wedding-planner-zilla. We got married at this fantastic venue in the Texas hill country, and they provided us with a ‘day-of’ coordinator who was only supposed to be there to work with the vendors while we’re getting dressed and, you know, married.
After one meeting and a couple of phone conversations with this person we realized she was going to be very little help, so we made sure our vendors knew everything we wanted and even sent schedule updates the morning of the event. I don’t know what her problem was, and it may have just been incompetence and not bad intentions, but she proceeded to rain sabotage down on our wedding day.
The last thing I do after getting dressed and ready but before going to the altar is meet with the caterers and bartenders who have just arrived to make sure everything has been communicated. Then I go down to the ceremony and wait at the altar. Thirty minutes later the wedding party finally starts entering. The Best Man and Maid of Honor enter last.
Then nothing. For another 30 minutes. I’m understandably a little concerned at this point. The musician is confused, and I’m not sure what his signal was supposed to be but ‘Here Comes The Bride’ plays three times and no bride. Finally, she enters, and everything goes perfectly. The ceremony ends, pictures start.
The coordinator leads guests to drinks while the family stays for photos. The family leaves while I take more pictures with my beautiful new wife, strutting around on cloud nine. We talk a little, and I found out all the delays were just because the wedding planner ‘thought we needed to wait’ and ‘couldn’t find the bride.” She ‘couldn’t find the bride’ because the wedding coordinator told her to wait off at some distant point and then just left her there.
Whatever forget it. We keep taking pictures.
Then the coordinator finds us, and she informs us that dinner is being served without us because she told all the vendors to disregard our schedule and instructions because ‘it wasn’t going work anymore.’
I spoke to the caterer; this conversation happened while my wife was standing there with her father waiting to start the ceremony.
So we are forced to rearrange our reception since we were planning to enter and do our first dance before dinner. Not the biggest deal to me, but upsetting since my wife spent an unreasonable amount of time planning every detail.
What stood out was that the coordinator was such a witch while delivering the news, and rudely refusing to answer questions or discuss anything, that not only my wife was crying, but our photographer had broken into tears she felt so bad for us. On our wedding day, she made my wife cry and told her to shut up a couple of times.
I was not pleased.
Overall the wedding was fantastic, and the ceremony was beautiful once it happened, the reception was the party of the decade, and upon reflection, the turbulence she caused wasn’t even noticed by most of our guests. But I will never forget that which that darkened the brightest day of my life, and I will never know if she did so out of malice, incompetence, or just because she was too apathetic to listen to a word we had said to her.”
The Bridezilla Is A Director Too
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“I used to shoot wedding videos. I worked for this place that sold everything, and I only worked on videos. We’d shoot on the weekends and edit during the week. I was assigned this wedding, and no one told me anything was special about it. I show up, and it was an Indian wedding.
In a typical wedding we would mic up the groom, and the bride and groom would stand in front of the preacher, and the one mic would get everyone’s audio.
Except in this wedding, the bride and groom sat on a swing and the person officiating the wedding was pacing back and forth. So my audio was like this, ‘today we are here to celebrate the LIVES OF THIS young couple who have agreed to spend.’
On top of that, the bride and groom had eloped months earlier and this was all for show. So what did the bride and groom do? Sat there and talked smack about all their guests.
So not only could I barely hear the guy talking, I had way too much audio about how the bride’s mother’s cousin was wasted.
Then we go to the reception. The reception lasted eight hours. Eight freaking hours. I brought enough batteries and tapes, but wow, that was a long time. I sat a camera up at one end of the hall for a long shot, then a slightly closer shot from over the DJ booth, and I was doing handheld camera work. Every few songs I’d move my long shot cam to get a different angle.
Now we go into the editing phase. This is the first time I ever interact with the couple where we spend any amount of time together. I get shots while they are getting ready, but we didn’t talk that much.
So I’m editing, and we have a standard format we follow. A montage, in the beginning, ceremony footage, first dance, father/daughter dance, mom/son dance, cake cutting, random footage of people dancing, testimonials and well wishes, etc. Basic stuff. It ends up being about 2-4 hours once everything is done.
Theirs was 5 hours long. We gave them a copy and the next day the bride stormed into the store demanding the rest of her wedding. I have no idea what’s she’s talking about, and I don’t get paid for any re-editing work. We gave her an hour longer than any video I’d ever done, but that wasn’t enough. She wanted all eight hours of the reception. Edited together.
I loaded all my shots up and did huge cuts where I’d stay on a shot until it sucked, then I’d change it. Some shots wouldn’t move for three songs. There was no way I was spending a lot of time on this.
We finally finished and exported the video to DVD. We called her in, and she wanted to watch it in the store, and she brought a notepad. As she’s watching she’s making an ‘edit list’ of things she wants me to change. That list ended up being three pages of stuff.
I stood up, looked her in the face and said, ‘This job isn’t worth it. I quit.’
That was the last wedding video I ever edited.”
Not The Bride, But The Ex-Bride
“I’m a manager at a donut place and believe it or not, I have a story about a groom who dodged marrying a bridezilla. You’re probably confused as to why a donut shop would have anything to do with a wedding, right? Buckle up, kids! WOW, what a ride!
It’s late, and we’re about an hour from closing (It’s 10 p.m.; we close at 11) when I get a phone call… a phone call from a woman who claims to be a wedding coordinator.
Okay…?
She says she knows we’re probably about to close soon but if we would please, please, please give her just a few minutes of our time, she needs to buy any and all of the donuts she can. She says the cake had been destroyed, and the bride was a huge fan of donuts since childhood and is willing to substitute. If we’re willing to help her out in any way we can, she’ll buy everything we have.
Now, this could have been a sick (and odd) joke, but there was a note of controlled panic in this woman’s voice that told me she wasn’t playing with me. I said that we were going to close in an hour, but if she could get to the store ASAP, we would work with her.
She arrives within 10 minutes. She pretty much wipes out all our stock, and snags the biggest cream puff we had for the ‘ceremonial donut,’ and as she’s getting ready to pay, I ask her to wait just a moment. In a fit of inspiration, I grab some eclairs and write ‘Congrats’ on one, and ‘[Name] And [Name]’ on the other two, and tell her to put them above and below the ‘ceremonial donut.’ Not fancy, not all that professional a job, but I figured it would be cute and maybe bring a smile to the ceremony.
She thanks me profusely and runs out the door.
Some time passes, and a happily married couple comes in, asking for me by name. They’re back from their honeymoon but just want to thank me in person for being so accommodating and for the surprise eclairs. This is when I get the full story:
The groom apparently had a psycho ex, who somehow, some way, found out about the wedding. We’re talking crazy as in trying to claim that she’s pregnant with his kid a year after they broke up. She had this whole, detailed story that he snuck into her home and got her pregnant one night. DNA tests proved her wrong. When that failed, she became enraged that he was getting re-married! How dare he find happiness with someone other than her!
She storms into the venue, grabs the wedding cake, and chucks it at the newlyweds! I mean she-hulking a beautiful three tier cake! Then, she began screaming how he was a deadbeat dad (to the kid who wasn’t his), before grabbing bottles that she smashed on the ground.
Everyone was stunned in shock at first, but the woman was ultimately restrained by the groomsmen. They called the police, and she was charged with assault, assault with a weapon (from waving around a bottle and clocking a groomsman,) and destruction of private property (both from the couple and the venue.)
She was also found to have been stalking the groom for months. What a charmer.
The cake couldn’t be salvaged since it was a combination of smashed and pelted with broken glass, but because of the bride’s brilliance about the donuts, they celebrated ‘cutting the donut’ during their midnight lunch. They ultimately enjoyed the remainder of their night, but the bride’s gown was destroyed, a good amount of the linens were ruined, and an arrest was made. Memories to last a lifetime!
My whole team got to gather around to see the pictures of what the wedding HAD been, and what it became. I got to see a shot of the cutting, with my eclairs in full view. The wife and hubby are in a shot holding up their own named eclairs with huge grins, and then another of feeding them to each other. (My genius was appreciated! Yay!)
The wife, bless her brilliant, warm soul, is laughing and smiling in all the pictures, even with cake and frosting splattered all over her (once) gorgeous dress. (Later shots have her in casual clothes when her mom raided her suitcase so she could take off the dress.) She said it was going to be one of “those stories” that she’s going to laugh about with her kids in years to come.
Somebody, please find me a wife with a soul that robust and happy!”
It’s Her Day, No Matter What Happens To Her Brother
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“I’m a wedding photographer. This one self-absorbed, nasty woman sat in her suite making her guests sat outside in the sun for a full hour while she fussed with her makeup and jewelry, which had already been done for some time. She wrote her vows during this time – an hour after the service was supposed to have started.
When her aunt came in and gently reminded her that she was holding everyone up, she threw a mini tantrum and complained, ‘It’s my day, and everyone’s forgetting it’s supposed to be about ME!’
When she finally deigned to appear, her brother (a groomsman) passed out from heat exhaustion.
The officiant leaned in asked if she wanted to take a break while he was tended to and she said, ‘Nah, just keep going, he’s fine.’
At the end of the ceremony, as she’s recessing down the aisle, you could see the ambulance arriving in the background of the video.
Her vows, by the way, were awful, and sounded like they’d been thrown together just minutes beforehand… because, of course, they had been.”