Weddings are supposed to be your "special day". Unfortunately, these weddings turned out to be the exact opposite of special. Wedding workers reveal the worst mishaps they have ever seen while on the job.
A Turn For The Worse
“My mother’s friend is a florist, and she makes the flower arrangements for a lot of weddings.
Anyway, for this wedding, the bride wanted flowers on the chairs (not very smart because they would eventually get crushed, and/or ruin someone’s clothes), and each chair with flowers costs about $75, and there are about 300-400 guests.
Plus, there are all the other flowers arrangements for the tables, and around the venue, so the bride’s mother spent about 20k on flowers, alone. I can’t even imagine how much the whole thing cost.
Anyway, the wedding day went by uneventful, until the bride and groom were on their honeymoon. The bride received a call from her ex-boyfriend, they made up, and she left her husband and went to live with her ex.
Apparently, the mother had a nervous breakdown.”
A Terrible Solution To A Tricky Problem
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“I think my friend’s wedding was probably her wedding planner’s horror story.
Over an hour into the meeting, the groom-to-be still hasn’t shown up. The bride called him up all ticked and yelled, ‘If this is your attitude to our wedding planning, maybe we shouldn’t get married!’
The groom yelled, ‘You’re right! Cancel the wedding!’
It wasn’t a joke. They actually broke up.
Only a bunch of deposits had been paid, and it was split almost 50/50 by both families. Apparently, they can’t agree on who needs to pay who back, and neither wants to back down, so both families decided they’ll both have a party instead of a wedding instead.
The wedding planner ended up planning 2 separate ‘Christmas parties’ for 2 feuding families, in the same ballroom.
People showed up out of morbid curiosity and apparently, it was awkward.”
It Only Took One Precious Moment To Ruin It For The Rest
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“My mom made wedding cakes for almost 20 years.
Several of her horror stories involved Precious Moments figurines, of all things. They’re the ones that look like creepy babies/angelic children.
For some ungodly reason, Precious Moments cake toppers were all the rage for a while. Unfortunately, they are ceramic and can be a bit heavy to place on top of a stacked pastry.
One time, my mom was mid-cake-setup when the mother of the bride (MOB) handed her a five-pound Precious Moments wedding car and told her it was their cake topper. Besides being heavy, it was also larger than the top tier of the cake. My mom flat-out told her, ‘No way. That thing is way too heavy, it will crush of top the cake.’
MOB didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer and kept insisting that the wedding would be ruined if they didn’t have this cake topper. My mom refused and explained several more times that the cake could not support the car. She placed the car next to the cake and got a pretty spray of flowers from the florist to put on top, instead.
An hour later, she got a frantic call from the reception hall, because the cake fell, ‘all by itself.’
Turns out, MOB waited until my mom left, placed the car topper on top of the cake, and left for the ceremony. The reception manager found the cake all over the floor shortly after.
A similar scenario occurred with a motorcycle-themed Precious Moments figurine several months later. Mom banned all Precious Moments after that.”
She Saved The Stories For Later
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“My wife and I asked our wedding coordinator what horror stories she has and she said ask me again after the wedding as she didn’t want to scare us. Sure enough, after the wedding when I went by a week later with the final payment, she told me the most horrific story involving a jealous bridesmaid who tried to sabotage the wedding multiple times.
It started with her going around to multiple guests as they were sitting down in church and saying if you felt faint please leave and go outside as the family couldn’t afford to bring in additional AC. Then she pretended to faint when the vows were being exchanged after bragging earlier to someone that she was going to do just that and cause a scene. She also did another fake faint as the bride was leaving the church and caused a domino effect of falling bridesmaids. Luckily the bride and groom got away OK. The mother-in-law, who was in tears for all the wrong reasons, asked her if she is feeling ill perhaps go to the hospital in an attempt to get rid of her. She said that she was feeling better and that she can’t abandon the bride.
Things got even more messed up at the reception when she was seen by the coordinator taking a dead rat out of a plastic bag and attempting to place it by the food. Luckily, she caught her and confronted her about this and told her to leave or she will call the police. She told the bride and groom a week after the wedding. Turns out she was the bride’s best friend and jealous that she didn’t marry her brother as they previously had a thing.”
The Violinists On The Titanic Were Treated Better Than This
“I’m a professional violinist who works with wedding planners, and I’ve seen some things.
Once I got an email from a bride asking me if I’d play at a wedding, for free, in the middle of a bleak winter, in a pavilion way down the path of a hiking trail. Uh, no ma’am.
My first college gig was a wedding that was supposed to be in a beautiful sunny garden, but being in the deep south, guess what? There were actually tornadoes that day instead. The families decided to go on with the wedding… so they had the wedding under the reception tent instead and moved the actual reception indoors (weird thinking, huh). Things were actually going ok until near the end of the ceremony when the weather sirens went off. We didn’t get hit by a tornado, but the rain and wind that eventually came in made it so that it was even hitting us under the tent. We obviously couldn’t couldn’t play for the recessional and had to run a short distance inside to pack the instruments up rather than risk staying outside and getting the instruments soaked. The wedding was completed outside ASAP and everyone made a beeline for indoors as fast as possible once it was over! The bride was laughing thankfully but everyone was wet and worried about tornadoes and it was just such a crazy day.
Also another deep south wedding I played for: two avid football fans left their own reception early to watch their team’s football game that was on that day. I knew the girl personally. She divorced him a year later, he ended up being an egotistical, abusive, cheating jerk.
I also played in a quartet at this gorgeous mountainside wedding and we got there quite early to set up. A fight broke out between who I later realized was the bride and groom, they busted out of the clubhouse behind us literally kicking and screaming at each other. They appeared ok during the wedding amazingly, but I would be surprised if that marriage lasted.
And last but definitely not least was the day my sister and I played a wedding when my grandfather died in the hospital. My family had been called to the hospital as I was getting ready to leave for the venue, and got the news he passed when I finished. I knew he was dying the whole time, though. Playing an entire wedding and reception through the death of a loved one is something I never, ever want to do again. I had to keep my sobs in so hard I got the hiccups.
Treat your wedding musicians well, most of us deal with and see a lot of crap.”
Here’s A Multi-Course Meal Of Drama
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“I just started working for a catering company that does a lot of weddings. I’ve been here almost a month and I already have like, four stories about weddings.
Most recently was a wedding planner who charged $5,000 for a wedding and then almost ruined it. She had told the couple the venue would provide glassware for the bar. The venue did not. We had to scramble to find glassware for them. The couple had asked her to place handmade, customized napkins the wedding party had finished the night before the wedding. They gave her explicit instructions as to where these napkins were. The coordinator forgot them, and when she realized she didn’t have them, she told the bride she couldn’t find them.
This caused the bride to cry.
She later told our coordinator that she had seen them but that couple ‘hadn’t paid her enough’ to set out napkins.’
She went on to refuse to carry and fix a number of decorations, leaving our crew to scramble to do it. The wedding did go off without a hitch but only because our coordinator went above and beyond to make sure it did.
The other fun wedding horror story was when the wedding party showed up smashed, went through two and a half kegs within the first hour of the reception, accused random people of stealing bridesmaids purses only to later realize they had put them upstairs instead of downstairs like they thought, and then smashing $500 worth of glassware on the dance floor.”
Making Kids Cry
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“My cousin’s wedding, everyone is there and has a role. I’m a scripture reader, my little sister and cousin are in charge of handing out the programs. Cool right? Until the wedding planner runs up to the girls minutes before the guests arrived and ripped the programs out of their hands, chastising them for not standing outside to greet the guests.
It was 98 degrees outside, a mild spring day for Texas. The bride had to come away from photos to tell her own wedding planner to step off and leave the church for making the girls cry. We later found out that the planner was only there at the mother of the bride’s insistence, and the bride just planned everything herself while her mom and the planner would get trashed at brunch ‘planning’ the wedding.”
Bride? Check! Groom? Check! Priest? Priest?
“My sister got married a few years ago. The wedding was in a small town up north, and the church was old and small but beautiful. Of course, she asked my brother and me to usher the wedding.
The wedding day came, everything was great, everyone was seated in the church. We closed the outside doors to prepare for my sister to walk in.
The wedding planners were standing outside with us doing a final check. Everything appeared to be okay.
Except no one knew where the priest was. He was nowhere in any part of this small church. My sister came out and called the priest, who as it turns out, thought the wedding was actually an hour later than it really was. So he started speeding towards the church, in the meantime, the harpist that was playing kept playing and everyone inside was getting a bit antsy.
Then we realized that while we were figuring this whole thing out, no one bothered to clue in my soon to be brother-in-law, who was just standing alone at the altar.
After this event, the planners added ‘Check that the priest is there’ to the list.”
You Had One Job
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“A bride and groom decided to get married in an old boutique hotel/theater. The building was a three-story affair – the ballroom was on the first floor, ‘rooms’ on the second, and a theater on the third. The coordinator had failed so hard on the wedding from the beginning.
As guests arrived for the event, no one had a clue of where to go as there were no signs leading the way to the theater. So the guests gathered on the second floor instead; the problem with this was that is where the wedding party was getting ready. The bride and groom were constantly barged in on from every single guest trying to find a seat. The wedding was set for 3 pm, the coordinator had the audacity to hold the wedding party back until 3:45 pm to account for stragglers and to be ‘fashionably late.’
Being in an old 1800s building, let’s just say the lighting isn’t the greatest, I think a candle would have put out more shadows than the light in the room. This was compounded by the only windows in this theater were on the south-facing side of the building which was where the audience was facing. You could not see the wedding party because the coordinator delayed the ceremony for so long. On top of that, the daily 4 pm train came whistling through as the couple was saying their vows.
Now, maybe if the coordinator wasn’t familiar with the venue this all could be excusable, but this coordinator worked at this hotel/theater, their main income is weddings and receptions.”
It Would Have Been A Great “Dinner And Show” If There Would Have Been Dinner
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“I felt so sorry for the wedding coordinator at my niece’s wedding. It’s always a bit of a white trash show with that part of the family, but they went all out for this wedding.
The mother of the bride was noticeably wasted and noisy during the ceremony. The stepmother of the bride was in a snit. The father of the bride was being his typical spineless self. The bride, groom, and wedding party were all chain-smoking and drinking natural light before, during, and after the ceremony, and most of them were a lovely shade of orange from their fake tans.
The officiant showed up in a t-shirt and sweatpants. There wasn’t enough food for the guests, not even enough for everyone to get a bite of something. Arguments broke out all over, between all members of the bride’s family. If there had actually been dinner, it would have been a great ‘dinner and a show’ thing.”
The Ink (And Their Swimsuits) Weren’t Even Dry Yet
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“Officiant here. I once sat with a couple to talk about their ceremony. They asked for the barest of bare bones, five minutes or less. Welp, okay, I guess.
On the day of the wedding, I showed up, knowing the ceremony was casual and poolside in their backyard. I didn’t realize it was in swimsuits. Ok, cool, sure. Hottest day in Phoenix ever, so we all appreciated the short ceremony.
I got a call the following Monday from a family member telling me that the bride and groom broke up, he had been cheating. Right as I dropped the license in the mail.
So, if you’re ever cheating on someone and don’t plan on staying married after the air comes out of the floaties, just ask your officiant to be a bro and not mail the thing, that way you’re only out $75 and not the cost of an actual divorce.”
The Wedding That Just Kept Getting Worse
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“I was just getting into the wedding photography game and taking any client that would let me shoot them, often on a shoestring budget with late notice. Only had one client that ended up being so bad that I thought I was getting pranked.
Some of the highlights included:
- The bride and groom showed up to the church an hour and a half late with McDonald’s.
- The bride got ready in a room that was under construction – had to avoid most of the room when taking photos as they were torn apart.
- The groom got ready in a room that had signs leftover from a church production that said things like ‘I was addicted to crack’ and ‘I sold my body.’
- The ceremony happened in a room that was so small you could hear the bride’s 3-month-old baby crying in the next room over.
- The ceremony was in a church with two short aisles instead of one big aisle. They decided last minute to have people walk down each separate aisle, I couldn’t be in two places at once – missed a lot of essential shots.
- They turned the lights on and off at different parts of the ceremony in an attempt to highlight the bride, but the person flipping the switches had awful timing, and the aisles were so short I couldn’t adjust my camera perfectly – created a TON of work in post.
- The person playing the piano and singing couldn’t sing or play the piano well at all.
- The reception was 45 minutes away – keep in mind they were an hour and a half late, so now photos that should’ve been at sunset are done at night.
- The reception was at a nice townhouse with a pool. The dance floor was in the living room. The wall on the west was playing the game. The mirror on the east wall was reflecting the game. North wall was open and led to the pool where a tv was playing the news, south wall was non-existent and led into the kitchen where everyone was eating. I asked if they’d turn the TV off – they said they wanted to keep it on so people could watch. At this point, I had given up and just delivered pictures with Donald Trump’s face, or reflections of a crispy chicken sandwich commercial playing on the tv.”
When All Else Fails…
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“I catered weddings for a long time.
One wedding, the bride and groom picked out the worst pink and coral blue tablecloths and used them both but layered. It looked bad. That doesn’t pertain to the story, I just want to set the tone that the room was uncomfortable, to begin with.
So the couple apparently decided to have a fun routine as their first dance. The two of them go up to the front of the room and tried to do a dance that – even if performed well – would have been the cringiest thing I have ever seen. It was not performed well. Neither of them was very coordinated, and the fact that they were both horribly overweight did not help their cause.
It was a compilation of a bunch of songs that I’m assuming they got online from a cheer group’s routine because you could hear clapping in the background but it was certainly not from the guests. The bride knew what moves and what song was next, but the groom had absolutely no idea. He would just start doing whatever she was doing five seconds after she did it. It was the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life. Afterward, no one clapped. They all just looked around as if they were unsure if they all saw the same thing.
Thankfully, the bride and groom did not seem to care. They instead began inviting people up to the stage so they could teach them the dance that they themselves did not know and do it again.
I have not catered since. That’s unrelated, I just like to tell people I went out on a high note.”
Whose Wedding Was She Planning?
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“My horror story is about our wedding planner. When we went to get married at our church, the church provided a wedding planner. She was retired and had pushed to be the church’s on-site wedding planner so she had something to do.
She was a complete pain in the rear. She tried to tell us that our florist friend couldn’t do the flowers and that we had to use the florist she wanted us to use. We went to the church and they told her to back off. It was the same deal with every little detail. Everything we had already planned. We already had 90% of the wedding planned and were on a strict budget. Lots of our friends had volunteered their services as their gift. This wasn’t us asking Uncle Bob to take some photos with his newfangled camera and Aunt Margie to pick some flowers from her garden to decorate the church. These people did this stuff professionally. Yet every time we told her we already had that taken care of, she tried insisting that we do something more expensive that suited her personal taste. Then when it was clear that we weren’t going to play her silly games, she stopped returning our calls and even answering her door when we knew she was inside (we lived in the same apartment complex). Another friend who was an actual wedding planner helped us sort out a few logistic details with the ceremony.
For a few weeks before the big day, we got nothing but radio silence from her, which was fine by us. Then, she shows up at the rehearsal and starts trying to run the show according to her plan. No, no, no.
We had a little chat outside with her, letting her know that in no way was she a part of our wedding, that her plan, whatever it might be, was NOT our plan and that as far as we were concerned she could get lost.
She tried the same kind of crap the next day when my fiancèe was getting dressed, but the bridesmaids intervened and shut her down.
We had been communicating with the church secretary and the minister all along, so they knew what was up. Evidently, we weren’t the only couple who had problems with her, so the church ‘fired’ her.”
Did We Forget Something?
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“I once had a couple who never paid their final balance prior to the reception.
I’m a ‘day of event’ coordinator, so I’m not part of the arrangements. I only handle the details to make sure everything goes smoothly. This was one of the rare times it didn’t.
Once the ceremony started, I headed over to the reception hall to oversee the setup, only to find out that the couple paid the deposit, but never paid the balance – about half of the total cost ($30,000). The catering hall refused to hold the reception until they got their money in cash (no personal checks allowed). It was a Sunday before a bank holiday, and while most commercial banks would have been fine, their local bank was not open until that Tuesday.
Slightly panicking, I called the main coordinator who was still at the church with the couple to try to figure this out. The older brother tried to help by trying to get money from relatives, but they were obviously short of the sum needed. We were at the point where guests were starting to arrive. After going back and forth, the catering manager said they would hold the social hour since the deposit covered that.
When the couple arrived, the groom, the brother, and my lead coordinator met with the manager and they basically offered their gift box, along with whatever payment they were able to round up to hold as ransom until they made the payment. The reception went on as planned, and once everything was set, I broke my work rule and had a strong drink.
They went back on Tuesday with the full payment.”