A wedding is arguably the biggest day in a couple's life. Considering all the time and money that is poured into the event, the bride and groom can only hope that everything goes smoothly as planned. Unfortunately, that is not guaranteed, and disaster can strike at any moment. Here are some real-life wedding nightmares that will make you cringe with embarrassment:
1. When One Door Closes
My uncle got left at the altar on his wedding day after a five-year relationship. My grandad had to go up to the altar, thank everyone for coming, and say there would be no wedding. My uncle was heartbroken and went on a trip to New Zealand to get over it. He sat on the plane next to a dude from there. The guy invited my uncle to his family’s home…and my uncle ended up marrying his sister.
They are still together and have three kids. She is awesome and the best aunt.
2. In-Law for Now
The groom looked drunk and the bride seemed incredibly angry. Then there was this woman walking around during the reception placing bets on when they would divorce. I later found out she was the mother of the groom.
3. Never The Two Shall Meet
I’m a part-time wedding planner. The bachelor party and the bachelorette party were being held in the same hotel in New Orleans. I tried to get them to do separate venues but nooooo, the group discount would cover an extra day in Carmel. They begin at 8 pm and collide drunkenly at about 3 am. It was some kind of drunken fistfight that turned…intimate?
Everyone was so ashamed the next morning they called it off. They made up six months later and got married. They picked something simple, like their backyard, this time.
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4. Clean-Up on Aisle One
The groom said in his speech, “When I joined a dating agency, I never thought I'd be so lucky as to find my own personal cook, dishwasher, and washing machine." Not only is that a terrible way to describe ANYONE, he's in for a nasty surprise when he realizes his wife is actually a complete diva and will expect him to do all those things for her! Bad relationship all round.
5. For Better Or For Worse
A friend of mine had a bachelor party at the local peeler club a few days before the wedding. I was going to come later in the evening as I was flying in late for the bachelor party and wedding. Got a call right before takeoff. The news shook me to my core. The groom had fallen from the upstairs in the VIP section and had severed his spinal cord.
Even after a few months of rehab, he was fully paraplegic. Amazingly the wedding did happen, almost a year later. It puts things in perspective that she still stayed.
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6. The Future Is Not Set in Stone, But Smoke
Well, it wasn't so much only the wedding, even though I was best man at it; it was obvious the whole relationship was doomed when I learned that the bride demanded before they got married that the groom quit smoking weed. He was a stoner, she was strenuously anti-drug. He had no intention of doing so, but was convinced he could hide it from her.
So, starting out with a lie, and one that was bound to be found out. Also, he was horrible at hiding it when he was stoned. They were divorced nine months later, after she caught him smoking in his car in the driveway. So stupid, the whole thing. Why people get into these relationships, I have no idea.
7. Family Feud
My cousin runs a popular upscale marriage venue. The groom's mom was a heavy drinker and got belligerent when she drank, so understandably the bride wanted the groom to try to limit her drinking. The afternoon before the wedding, the bride arrives to see groom's mom smashed with the groom himself giving her drinks. Next thing my cousin knows, the bride and groom are in a straight-up fistfight.
This leads to an Anchorman-style street fight between members of both families in the parking lot. Apparently they recently scheduled a new day for it. I can't imagine the tension there.
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8. Keep Your Enemies Close, I Guess
They stayed together, but they HATE each other. A friend from long ago called me up to be a groomsman. I was his friend back when we were in elementary school and hadn't thought about him in years, but okay. I get there and my friend has changed dramatically and for the worse. Or maybe it was that he hadn't changed.
He was still that elementary school kid, only bitter. I figure I'll enjoy the party, see some old pals, and get through it. This isn't my train wreck to stop. The first time I saw my pal interact with his soon-to-be wife, I knew there was gonna be problems. They swore at each other, in front of everyone, at their arranged parties.
Not like "you're so freaking hot" and stuff, but "you're a freaking dumb witch" kind of stuff. I admit, I went to the wedding just to see what would happen. They have two kids, they hate each other, and I have no idea why they stay with each other. Maybe they just both like being angry all the time?
9. Gimme Gimme Gimme
Friend invites me to his wedding. He and fiancée are fairly poor and have lived together for years. They're both semi-disabled (his is PTSD, hers is physical) and on fixed incomes, and live in a somewhat expensive area. They have three gift registries (Target, Macy's, Crate & Barrel) and a HUGE invite list—over 300 friends and family members.
All the stuff on the registries is standard stuff like towels, coffee cups, flatware, etc. Anyway, people fly out, get ready for the wedding, and two days before the wedding is the bachelor party. That’s when the dark truth comes out. The friend has too much to drink and admits that she's not really his fiancée; they are just roommates and they have no intention of getting married, they just needed the stuff.
They're going to cancel the wedding tomorrow and keep all the gifts. I had to protect him from getting his butt kicked by about two dozen people. Then he had to have the fiancée come clean to everyone since he was too hungover. They ended up returning most of the gifts to people—but a surprising number of people let them keep the gifts. As his grandfather said, "If you needed these things that badly to lie like this, you must have been very desperate."
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10. Born into Disharmony
The couple came to see me by appointment to choose wedding music for their ceremony. There, in the church choir loft, they got into a heated argument over each piece of music under consideration. From the wedding processional to the recessional, there was absolutely zero agreement or willingness to compromise with each other.
To try to bring some harmony, I suggested that the bride choose the organ processional and the groom select the recessional, even though they strongly disagreed with each other—same with other music for the occasion. That worked for the moment. In less than six months, the pastor informed me that the couple was back to see him for counseling, with divorce under consideration.
11. Talk About Bad Timing
My friend had been with his fiancée for eight years when she got pregnant. Fast forward eight months and we decide that because they are basically common-law married anyway, we need to throw him a bachelor party. So we go to the nearest big city and we are all living it up when he gets the call that his fiancée is in labor. None of us is in any state to drive.
We end up calling a cab and paying over $300 to get him to the hospital as soon as possible. My friend is stumble-down hammered he walks into the delivery room smelling like a peeler club, with lewd things drawn on his face and covered in glitter. I was positive that was the end. They've been married seven years and just had their second child last week.
12. On the Fast Track from Love
I was working at a "wedding factory." On Monday, we got a call the Saturday wedding was canceled. They were told that they would lose the deposit (around $7,000). Then on Thursday, they said it was back on. When the guests arrived, everyone was cheesed off. It seems they told everyone was it was off, then two days later that it was on.
The ceremony was about 3 minutes long. The bride then changed into sweatpants and then everyone got angry drunk. "Well this won't last long," I thought. Then on the following Monday, the bride walked into my then-wife’s divorce attorney's office.
13. Liar, Liar
The sister of the groom chatted with the sister of the bride. Just casual conversation, but it came to light that almost 100% of what the bride had said besides her name was a complete lie. Sister of the groom calls him up and says he really needs to figure out if this is right. A few fights and some long thinking later, the groom leaves her and leaves town. It got worse though.
It turns out pretty much all the bride's friends had been lied to as well. They all stopped talking to her. She lied about all the normal details of a person's life. Where she went to high school, instead of a boring suburban school it was an expensive private school.
She claimed her family had a ton of money she was set to inherit. Claimed they had a home in Hawaii. Faked knowing people in the same industry. Small to large, didn't really matter, almost all of it was fake from what I heard. I didn't really know her, but we were at the same company. People I worked with used to work in her department so I just heard most of it second-hand.
I have no idea how she thought this would work for the rest of her life. I honestly think she had a mental condition. From what I understand, she tried to rekindle the friendships but quickly started to lie again and that was it. She quit the company shortly after all this went down.
14. Back in the Black (Out)
Our friend was the girl who had spent a whole year setting up for the one day. They had taken six months of dancing lessons and she has spent a ridiculous amount of time looking good and dressing up her bridesmaids for the wedding, of which my wife was one. So, come the night of the wedding, the groom meets up with his old friends and starts to get blackout drunk.
He got so drunk he didn't even recognize us, rather just pushing us aside to get to the bathroom. The worst part was the dance itself. It was really heartbreaking to see them stumble around and watch the panic on her face as he realized he had no idea what was going on. I gave it six months at the time, but they ended up together for three years.
She later ended up marrying another woman.
15. She Dodged A Bullet
I had an awful teacher in high school who used to brag about how he left a woman at the altar. He was a short, angry, jerk of a man. He would cover the windows so no sunlight would come into the room, and make us put all of our backpacks against the wall. He would then publicly mock anyone who had to get up and retrieve something from their backpack during class.
Anyway, he said that he went up to the bride and told her it wasn't worth it. And then he went home to have a drink. Ugh, he was so smug about it, it made me feel sick. If I wasn't so insecure in high school, I would have complained about him.
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16. Ready, Aim, Fire
It was a shotgun wedding-they proudly proclaimed it as such. Overheard the bride's mother saying that the bride was such a later bloomer for waiting until 19 to "trap herself a man." The child is three years old and they have been separated (don't know if divorced) since she was one.
17. The Silver Coffin Lining
I used to work at an upscale wedding venue. Two weeks before a huge, expensive wedding, the groom's father dies, so they ask us to turn the wedding into a funeral instead. They were a lovely couple, and it was really awfully sad when it happened, but I still use it as my go-to answer for "describe a time when you delivered outstanding customer service" type questions in job interviews.
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18. Battle of the Mothers
My cousin's wedding. The groom invited his ex, who was also the mother of his one-year-old son—he and my cousin had been dating for longer than two years—and my cousin, who was then very pregnant herself, got into a loud screaming match with him over it in a bathroom. They eventually came out and got married, my cousin with puffy red eyes from crying that you can see in every wedding photo that was taken.
19. A Nasty Surprise
I worked at a music venue in the Detroit area that was also a popular wedding reception location. Came into work one week in the fall, when pretty much every weekend is booked solid with weddings, and noticed Saturday was open, no one scheduled. I talked to the wedding planner and she tells me the groom canceled...Odd. Talk to the wedding planner’s younger brother, who was our head bartender.
He tells me that the groom, excited for the wedding, left work at lunch on Friday, bought a nice bottle of red, and headed home to surprise his bride-to-be. Except, he was the one in for a surprise. He walked into his new house to hear sounds coming from their bedroom. He walked in to find his bride in bed with another man…his father. We tried to talk him into doing a big screw you party because we'd never fill the space and there was no refund, but he declined.
20. Dance Til You Drop
I do Audio/Visual for social events, a lot of weddings. At one engagement party, my co-worker tells the story of the soon to be groom trying to carry off his soon to be bride, you know because he's manly and will have his way with her. Anyways, she is SCREAMING at him to put her down and when he finally complies, she slaps him right across the face and yells "I'M NOT DONE DANCING.”
21. A Whole Lot Of Fuss
This happened several years ago. My ex was the best man in a wedding for his best friend. The night of the bachelor/bachelorette party, the men and women each had their own get-together, and then were supposed to meet up with each other later that night at a bar downtown. I was with the ladies and after our party, we got into the party bus and headed down.
The bride called the groom and told him to leave to meet us there. We waited and waited. Groom is a no-show. Bride demands that I call my then-boyfriend and find out where they were. Boyfriend reports that they made a pit-stop at strip joint, which the bride and groom apparently had an agreement they wouldn’t do. The bride obviously flips out.
She grabs my phone demands that my ex order everyone to leave the club. Ex tries to explain that it is not going to be easy to get 40 highly intoxicated men out of the club when they had already "started." Meanwhile, the groom is still ignoring bride's calls. The bride demands that we all leave. The bride and groom's sister get into a physical altercation and have to be pulled apart.
The bride is screaming that she is canceling the wedding. The ex and I hightailed it out of there as it had escalated into a two-family brawl. The next day, the groom calls my ex and asks if we want to come over to watch movies with him and the bride. They got married weeks later and are still married.
22. Why Not Keep What You’re Missing?
I was reunited with a family member just before her wedding. We went out drinking, and she proudly pointed out a guy at the bar that she'd just gone on a trip with and had a weeklong prenup romp. She seemed to think I'd think that was naughty and funny. I just felt bad for her future husband, but figured it was just a bad choice.
The day of the wedding, I went to see her in the bridal suite. She had the guy there with her. She'd screwed him the night before the wedding. They lasted a few years, but it was a miserable few.
23. The Biggest Betrayal
While working the night before a wedding at a hotel, the staff and I heard a loud scream from upstairs. Cue the bride screaming and sobbing shouting, "The wedding’s off!!!" while storming out the place, followed by the groom stark bollock naked covering his nether regions with his hands apologizing profusely. Turns out she caught the mother of the bride and the groom getting it on.
Safe to say we had an easy shift the next day as we didn't have a wedding to cater for.
24. Love Didn’t Ask for a Resumé
My wife and I had thought this one couple wouldn't last. The groom gave off a creepy vibe. We gave them two years max. Two years came and they were expecting a baby, so we gave them another few years. Few more years came, and another child was on the way. Then about a year later the poop hit the fan. Our initial thoughts were correct: dude was creepy and hiding some sketchy stuff from his past.
Lied about a lot of things, like his education. This explains why he always worked the lowest position in their line of work (they both work in the medical field). He claimed he had a degree, which would put him at a much better paying position, but he kept working the bottom tier job. Money was a huge issue for them, and she made the bulk of their combined income.
25. A Moment Of Weakness
Neighbor's jealous harpy frenemies convinced her to cheat on the husband-to-be at the bachelorette party. Her friends were very far gone and SnapChatted evidence to him as "a joke." Obviously, he didn't take it that well and left her. Packed up all his things in their apartment and drove to his parents’ instead of getting married. The bride apparently didn't leave her room for about three weeks, totally distraught with how her relationship fell apart.
26. Raise the Roof on a House Divided
My father-in-law was getting remarried in his late 60s. His wife died 20 years earlier because of cancer. His new girl had been married three times prior, twice divorced, one lost to death. When we met the new girlfriend at the time, two out of three of the children told him point blank that she wasn't a good match for him.
Of course, he couldn't (didn't want to) see it—and took out a loan of $20,000 to repair her house. The thing is, he's super stubborn, as in he is clearly in the wrong with evidence supported, and he will still argue it 20 minutes. And he's a yeller. If I raise my voice, then I'm more right! She is also stubborn and extremely religious.
He is also religious, but she took it to an 11. Any time they would get together while my wife and I were there, there was always a screaming match going on. They would find the littlest thing and start going off at each other. Well, it never did get better. Weeks leading up to the wedding just added more fuel as they had more things to shout about.
The day of the wedding it felt really tense. Very smiling through their teeth. They hardly came back from their honeymoon when he approached my wife and I, asking for advice. She served the divorce papers two months later, and he's still doing payments on her roof!
27. More Than Just Friends
This was my best friend’s bachelor party a few years ago. He had dated his fiancée for six or seven years at that point. She made a male friend at work that became a groomsman. I hated him, didn't trust him, and told my buddy that. The night of the party after huge amounts of drinking, my friend the groom breaks down crying, leaves, and walks home.
He didn't say anything to anyone, just left. Found out the next day that the bride-to-be had been banging that groomsman for months and they were trying to work through it. He couldn't get past it and canceled the wedding.
28. Maid of Dishonor
All of my interesting stories came from my time as an event server. Honestly, I felt like a lot of the weddings I saw at that event hall represented the culmination of two people’s most expensive mistake of their lives. Coworkers and I routinely placed bets on which ones would last the year. Our manager even told us about one time when they called a couple to clear up some minor details regarding the wedding a few months prior, only to find that couple was no longer married.
I have to say, though, that the best/worst maid-of-honor speech I have ever heard was the one where the maid-of-honor had formerly dated the groom. And she said this. In the speech. And she also mentioned that it hadn’t worked out between them for a laundry list of reasons, which unfortunately for my nightly entertainment, she did not delve into.
AND then she threw in a few wink-wink nudge-nudge comments about the groom’s sexual performance. The bride looked furious the whole time this speech was happening, and made a beeline for the bar as soon as it was socially acceptable. Can you blame her? The groom, meanwhile, is super awkwardly avoiding eye contact with the maid/his former lover, and the last thing I witnessed between the happy couple was a tense exchange interspersed with both of them chugging their drinks.
Yeah, I wouldn’t place any bets on that one.
29. Everyone Knows But Him
A week before his wedding, a friend of mine walked into a nightmare. It was his dad getting it on with his fiancée. The next day in a fit of rage he trashed their room AND THEN in the process found explicit love letters to his recently married best friend (and best man) in her underwear drawer. The letters were as recent as the past week. The wedding was canceled.
Whenever I ran into him at a bar I made sure he never had to buy his own drinks.
30. Here Comes the Party Pooper
I was a bridesmaid in my brother's wedding a few years back. The bride was okay throughout their relationship, but it felt very superficial, and she had done small things that signaled that she wasn't a very kind person. Leading up to the wedding, she got snippier, which we all brushed off as nerves, but she was being straight mean to her other sister-in-law (SIL), who was literally doing everything.
SIL planned the bachelorette party exactly as my bro's wife wanted—bro's wife pouts because we were talking to each other as well as her and just stands up and leaves. Just leaves. Other SIL is clearly very hurt, and we did our best to cheer her up, but she had to share an awkward hotel room with bro's wife, so yay. The rehearsal comes, and bro's wife sends SIL out to do all the last-minute errands that bro's wife was supposed to do but didn't because she's decided it wasn't her job but didn't tell anyone.
So, flowers, decorations, and tons of other stuff was missing, and SIL was blitzing to retrieve it. We didn't know until bro's wife both bragged about what she did, and whined about how SIL was late, useless, etc. I told her SIL was doing everything for her, she should be grateful, and then left while she was screeching. Day of the wedding, she's miserable, barely smiles, whines to everyone for everything, refuses to dance at the reception beyond the first dance because she wanted to pout over unknown reasons, tears open the gifts to see who was cheap and who was worthy, and then flounced out while leaving trash everywhere.
I don't know how, but she and my brother remained married for about five years. She was just nasty the whole time. My brother is also a turd, but damn, she really went all out to out-turd him. So she's gone, and we're all much happier without her. Still keep in touch with her brother and his wife (other SIL) though, because they're great folks.
31. The Show Must Go On
The bachelorette party is three days before the destination wedding. My sister (the bride) is taken by her friends for a dinner. I'm at the bachelor party with the groom, and we start getting weird messages. Garbled texts, and then we get a call from a local hospital. They’ve all got food poisoning from the dinner. The groom goes "Yeah, this isn't happening boys" and we figure one more shot and we'll make our way to the hospital.
Never underestimate the determination of a bride and bridesmaids. The wedding was delayed by only a day, to the Sunday, and she walked down the aisle with enough gravol shoved up her bum and shot into her veins that I'm not sure she knew where she was, let alone that it was a wedding. The bridesmaids were all various shades of grey, green, and ill.
It was open bar, and to avoid spoiling the party, the husband and groomsmen stayed back and kept drinking. My sister was so tired that she and the bridesmaids took another dose of gravol and all went to sleep in their hotel room. My mother, who is a retired ICU nurse, went to take care of them.
32. Sometimes A Bad Day is Just a Bad Day
My best mate and his girlfriend. They were from polar opposite sides of the world with the bride some 10,000 miles from home. They were both located in a country that was not where they were born, they did not speak the language and they both were under immense strain. The Bride had other issues too that I won't share, but that exacerbated the situation
The wedding was a small and simple affair—a registry office and a pub lunch, followed by a few beers by just very close family and a couple of friends. I was taking photographs. The bride's mood was annoyed at best. Her new husband would put his arm around her, and she would push him away. She stated to me she just did not want to be there.
More than once, she just stared at me in total despair. As a result, he looked despondent at times and almost heartbroken. I didn't think they would see the year out. 15 years later they are still very much together, very much a team and happy. They worked it all out, they learned from each other and they stuck to it. And for me, I couldn't be happier for them.
33. Bad Habits
The day of the wedding, the bridesmaids discovered a bunch of drugs and syringes in the bride's bag. The groom was furious and called off the wedding an hour before it was set to happen, but still let us enjoy the food and bar that had already been paid for at the venue. He dodged a bullet and I got drinks for free all night. Win-win if you ask me.
34. Some Mistakes Can Be Erased
At my cousin's wedding, she came to hang out in my brother's and my hotel room to hangout because apparently her new husband just sat down in the honeymoon suite, put his face in his hands and said something along the lines of, "I made a mistake.” They stayed together for five years, had two kids, and a very angry divorce.
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35. Don’t Get Distracted by the Wedding Bells
Welp, this one's depressing. They got married because she was pregnant, and they wanted to give the kid a good foundation, yadda yadda. However, before she was pregnant, she was a heavy drinker and a little too reckless with heavy drugs. There was a night they hung out with me before she got pregnant that made it clear that they had a lot to work on.
A few weeks later, she was pregnant. All the friends pretty unanimously thought it would end badly, but she sobered up while she was pregnant, and it really looked like things were looking up. The marriage was very sweet, everyone enjoyed themselves, and it felt like a wedding should. We were all remaining cautiously hopeful about them.
Sometimes having a kid really does bring out the good in a couple and gives them something greater than themselves to focus on, but this time it didn't. After their son was born, she got right back into drinking and drugs, and soon, she wasn't even staying at the house anymore. He tried to force it to work a few times, but it was over.
Before they had been married a year, she overdosed and died at some new guy's house. She was only 21. It sucked because we did get to see a brief period of what they could have been while she was pregnant, but then it all went south. Also, I think we all still feel a little guilty that we assumed the relationship would fail in the beginning.
On a more positive note, the baby is awesome, he has a lot of people that will be there to support him in his life, and my friend is a good dad.
36. A Backup Plan
Not mine, but a friend of my wife. It was a destination wedding in South America; we live in the US. Because it was a destination wedding, they both had their bachelor and bachelorette down there. The bride-to-be went looking for the groom the night before the wedding. No one knew where he was...and we eventually found the dude locked in a bathroom with some local girl doing coke.
The bride was obviously angry but they went through with the wedding. But then the twist came in. Cut to a few years later, and we randomly went out to dinner with just me and my wife with the bride. Turns out she never mailed in the wedding certificate. All this time, they haven't been married. She said she had too many red flags to go through with it.
Dude has no idea they aren't really married, even though they have been married for years and have two kids together.
37. Take Two
Yes, he proposed drunk and she took it seriously. He clearly wished he could take it back. Big wedding; they couldn’t afford, he was nervous. Everyone there was dressed like it was a BBQ and were all there to get drunk. As soon as they were married, they both had a smoke and a VB in each hand. Classy. Gave it two years. Boom to the day they were divorced, and she found another dude, and wore the same dress to her next wedding.
38. Rekindling An Old Flame
I'm a musician, and I work on an infamous street for revelry and debauchery. One night, a bachelor party came in around the same time as a bachelorette party. The show I work with does special things like funny songs for special events, so I bring them both up at the same time to do something special. Then it got awkward. In the middle of this, on stage, they start making out.
And they Do. Not. Stop. I finish my routine as best I can and get them offstage. Later, as I'm looking around the audience, my eye catches on them again. They're in the back corner just going at it while their respective parties hang out up near the front of the stage. And they are really getting into it. Hands down pants and up skirts. At some point they disappear.
I take a break and head to the restroom. It's locked. I hear a woman yelling…some very encouraging…things from inside the stall. I sit in the lounge area outside the bathroom for about 10 minutes. The bachelor and bachelorette come out, looking a bit disheveled, but not too bad and not at all weirded out. They see me and immediately want to chat.
For some reason, people always want to get to know the musicians here. All their secrets came spilling out. There's curiously no guilt on them at all. I have to pee like a racehorse, but this is too good to pass up. Come to find out, they both are getting married to other people, but know each other from having lived in the same small town of about 5,000 all their lives. They ran into each other for the first time since high school graduation at our bar and old feelings emerged that neither had ever attempted to act on.
They don't stay long, and as they leave I hear the bachelor say, "I have my own room, let's go there." The rest of the party stays till the show is over, partying hard and having fun. Possibly the best bachelor/bachelorette parties I've had. Anywho, I wind up seeing the "bachelor" and "bachelorette" together at our bar and out in the street every night for four nights.
Always holding hands and/or getting frisky. They came back a little over a year later. They got married here in our town to each other instead of who they were engaged to that fateful night. Most of their respective bachelor/bachelorette showed up for the event. With this story, I always feel torn. Did I participate in the destruction of two relationships, or did I facilitate the meeting of two soulmates?
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39. Marry The Monster You Know
Yes. A coworker. She was constantly telling us stories that made it clear that the guy she was marrying was emotionally and verbally abusive. She would dread him coming to pick her up. I’m not the only one who told her not to go through with it. Sadly, it sounded like her father was also really emotionally abusive and critical, so she’d grown up with that kind of behavior being normalized. They are thankfully divorced now. It was pretty ugly, but she seems a lot happier.
40. Down To The Wire
My aunt was visiting me, and a friend's daughter was getting married that day nearby. My aunt wanted to drop by the reception to bring a wedding gift. When she got there, she got horrible news. It turned out the wedding had never taken place. It seems they got to the altar, and when he said "I do," and they asked her "Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?" she said, "No," and walked out.
The weird part is they were both at the reception, hanging with their friends. He looked really unhappy. She looked delirious. If I were him, I'd never want to be within a mile of her ever again after that. I don't know what her reasoning was. Maybe it was good. But it was really incredibly rude of her to literally wait until the very last moment to break it off.
41. A Trainwreck as Far as the Eye Can See
Yes. And unfortunately, she was my best friend from high school/college, and I was the maid of honor. Everybody in a 50-mile radius could see that, while they were both nice people, they weren’t right for each other. But he loved her, and I got the impression she just kinda wanted a wedding. She filed for divorce 10 months later. She and I eventually drifted apart when my husband and I moved out of state.
42. A Photo Finish
An ex-girlfriend was at a bachelorette party at a seedy male dancer's place. She came home from the party and said, "Well, the wedding is off." The bride was getting the usual treatment, sitting in a chair with the men gyrating around her, whipping stuff around, and then they got, uh, really frisky. When it ended, the bride kind of comes to her senses, looks around, and sees like 20 of her friends pointing cell phones at her recording and taking photos.
She starts freaking out. My girlfriend says she started screaming at everyone "you better delete that” and generally having a full rage meltdown. This tale of modern romance closes very shortly after, with the bride’s phone ringing in a call from her fiancé, who has already received photos from her “friends” of his bride to be getting it on with a male dancer in front of a crowd.
43. Better Stand-Up Than Stood-Up at the Altar, Am I Right?
They wrote their own vows. His were touching and endearing, about how his life was complete now that he was together with her. Hers were a bunch of passive-aggressive, sexist attempts at jokes. "I promise to never let you win an argument. I promise to never let you watch a football game in peace. I promise to leave the bathroom a mess and yell at you about the toilet seat."
44. Showing Her True Colors
I was at an engagement party of a long-time friend the other day, and everything was good until afterward. As soon as we got back to their house (I was crashing at theirs) they had an argument. I saw a side to her I never wanted to know. She got angry and punched him in the face twice, then said, "If you tell anyone I did this I'll say you're abusive."
He said he was done with her, but somehow the wedding is still on. I'm supposed to be the best man, but there's no way am I condoning the wedding in any form, and that includes going to the thing.
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45. Just Playing Around
Was friends with a girl, she's bit dramatic, emotional, and severe enough that I wouldn't want to date her, but not that bad that I wouldn't be friends with her. She introduces me to new boyfriend. Chill dude, into gaming like I am, becomes part of our group of gamers, and we have frequent LAN parties together. She's always whining at him about everything, emotional manipulations, yelling at him in front of the group of friends, but he sticks around, I have no idea why.
He tells me in confidence the one day that he sees her as the “right now girl,” not the “right girl,” and will be moving along shortly. Then, out of the blue, they announce their engagement. They were married and divorced a year later. He's now married to an awesome woman, have been together around 10 years now, and have one cute daughter. Their first date was my wedding.
46. Daddy’s Little Girl
This was my buddy's bachelor party. The bachelor got super wasted and the father of the bride, who was super conservative, was shocked and did not know the well-mannered/polite young man marrying his daughter was, in his eyes, a "raging alcoholic.” In fact, the bachelor got so tipsy, he began to let some secrets slip about his relationship with the bride.
Again, the father of the bride was a bit old school in his thinking, and the bachelor let the following slip: That his daughter was basically living with him since Junior year of college and her apartment in college was just for show. That even though he is drinking a lot, his future wife can outdrink him 2-1. His future wife has a cute tattoo on her inner thigh and that all their friends had seen it when they went skinny dipping at the father’s lake house.
That we had a massive graduation party at his lake house when he and his wife were in Europe for two weeks. Finally, the bride is into some kinky stuff. That drew the line. The father of the bride declared there would not be a wedding, and asked where had he gone wrong raising his daughters. He has four daughters total and this was his oldest and who he considered his best behaved. They married anyway.
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47. A Sibling Knows
Brother’s wedding. I told him he could walk away; he didn't. They weren't married long. Best man at his next wedding he asked me if I were going to tell him he could walk away, I said no this is the one. Been together a long time and married quite a few years.
48. The Bro Code Strikes Back
A dancer came to my buddy Jack's bachelor party and was playing around with condoms, but nothing truly untoward happened throughout the party. At the end of the night, Jack the groom-to-be was cleaning up a bit and put the condom wrapper in his pocket absentmindedly. The next day his fiancée Kristen was doing laundry and found the wrapper.
She freaked out thinking that he had cheated on her. Jack tried to reassure her and explain the situation. Kristen is a really cool lady and takes it pretty well and calms down...but she can't quite shake the feeling. So, Jack tells her to call me to confirm what happened. Kristen calls and asks, "So what happened last night?" Mind you, I'm totally in the dark about the situation, and Jack and I had never discussed what we are supposed to tell Kristen, so I totally downplay it to erase the dancer completely.
"Not much, the boys just had a few drinks and had some Havanas.” I hear YOU LYING PIECE OF—click
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49. Partners in Crime But Not In Life
My cousin and her husband had a pretty lavish wedding, one that seems like it should have been out of their price range. Husbands grandparents are wealthy, so the assumption was that they had paid for it. Well couple months go by and on Facebook they are posting about their new Maserati they bought. My cousin is a college student, and her husband is in “sales.”
After that, they bought a brand-new Mercedes and a yacht. Well turns out they had been running a Ponzi scheme and had defrauded people out of more than a million dollars. After they got caught, they turned on each other. Husband got nine years in federal prison, and my cousin got two years. Oh, and she gave birth to their child in prison.
Both of them are disgusting human beings so I’d hoped for more time in jail.
50. A Rollercoaster Ride
On man, so I have a good story. The night before the wedding, the rehearsal dinner is at a distillery. Everyone gets hammered. I mean everyone, even the grandparents, all extremely intoxicated. The groom's dad was so gone that when he tries to give his speech to the couple to be, he cannot even talk, nor stand up. After the rehearsal dinner, the whole wedding party decides it is a good idea to go out drinking some more at some karaoke bar.
At the bar, the groom’s little sister, who was in high school at the time, randomly decides to get on stage to try her hand at karaoke. However, instead of singing a song, she just starts talking about how she wants to screw all the groomsmen. Promptly, her family rips her off stage and takes her home. Later in the night, everyone is having a great time, but then the bride tipsily tells the groom that she is not sure if she loves him anymore.
The groom becomes enraged, leaves the bar, attempting to walk (stumble) back to his hotel, which wasn't anywhere near the bar. The groom's brother runs after him trying to calm him down and the groom ends up getting into a huge fistfight with his brother/best man. The next day, the groom and best man look like they had both been hit by a truck.
For some reason, the wedding is still on. The groom's mother decides the only way to fix things is by trying to cover the wounds with makeup. So now you have the groom and best man looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost up on the altar, and then in walks the bride…still soused. They end up both saying "I do" but weeks later, as expected, they get divorced. Then the plot thickened SO much.
It ends up that before the wedding while the groom was on his bachelor party weekend, they met a bunch of girls who were going to the same place for a bachelorette party. The groom hooks up with one of the girls he meets. Long story short, now he is married to the girl who he cheated on his ex-fiancée/wife with, and has been for the past seven years.
It’s always funny to think back on how much of a circus that wedding was.
51. The Party Never Stops
The bride got totally drunk. She sexily danced on the dance floor solo instead of her first dance, turned the wedding DJ into a Karaoke, and started a fight with the best man’s girlfriend. At the end of the night, she had to be carried to her room because she was that drunk. We've been happily married for 15 years now, so turns out I was wrong.
52. Second Thoughts
My cousin was a young, newly-minted US Marine and was set to marry some girl he met at a gas station near base. She had no job, no real aspirations, and seemed only interested in his benefits, but she was putting out and he was happy. Nobody in the family wanted this to happen, but we were all afraid to push too hard and risk alienating him, so we all, including his parents, just went along with it.
We figured that it would fizzle out well before the wedding date. Well that didn't happen. Until the actual day of the wedding, it all went off. On the morning of the wedding, she informs him that her best friend will be coming to live with them for the first year in order to help her acclimate to living on her own. He tells her that there is no way that this can happen, because he lives in base housing and there are strict rules against it.
Apparently, this was a deal-breaker and she backed out, with not too much protest from him. We later found out that he had been having misgivings but was too chicken to call it off himself. The reception was bought and paid for already, and my cousin's family were all very relieved that the wedding was off, so anyone who felt like sticking around after the non-ceremony had an amazing time.
Even though the non-bride's family weren't there, I think we still drank almost all of the drinks.
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53. Didn’t Get the Memo
Groom’s mistress found out he was getting married and showed up at the wedding. In the middle of the “I do” part, she walked right up on stage and smacked him in the face.
54. It’s Not All Fun And Games
A buddy of mine was getting married. We went out for drinks, but his wife did not permit him to have an actual bachelor party. As we drank, he made a disturbing confession. She was mistreating him and masking it as intimate “play.” The wedding was two weeks away. Only, he hated the whole idea and only went along with it because he had low self-esteem.
She was really aggressive. She had come on to me the year before and I said no. She went so far as to wake me up by sitting on me naked on the couch when I crashed once at their place. I was trashed and thought I was dreaming at first but came to my senses before anything terrible happened. I told him about it later, but he chalked it up as just her personality.
He didn't seem to care, even though I knew better. Anyway, we come home from the bar and sit in the living room and watch TV. He goes off to his fiancée for a bit. About 30 minutes later, I wake up to my buddy putting stuff in a backpack. He says he is going to go to a hotel, that he cannot stay here with her anymore. Says he will drop me at home.
That's when she comes out in full leather gear with another man following her. Starts yelling at him and doing some fairly familiar “dominant” commands. He isn't having any of it and leaves, while yelling at her for cheating and also leaving me there. Then she yells at me for not trying to stop him. I had the perfect response: "You're the one with handcuffs." And I walked home.
The wedding was canceled by him and she spent the next month saying stuff about how he was intolerant of her lifestyle. All I cared about was my buddy getting out of a horrible relationship. He is now married to one of the best women I know. So, a happy ending!
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55. One Wedding and One Funeral
The groom stabbed his new brother-in-law to death, with the knife used to cut the wedding cake no less. Well, technically, it happened at the reception, not the wedding. Backstory: About four years before the wedding, the wife's brother had shot her in the leg during an argument. Yes, alcohol was involved. At the reception, he started loudly telling the guests that he wished he'd shot her in the head instead, at which point the groom got stabby. Alcohol was again involved.
56. It All Comes Out Eventually
How about the father of the bride, happily married with kids, sleeping with the maid of honor the night before the big day? Yup. That didn't go over too well with the bride. Even better, this is how it went down: The bride walked in on them bangin' boots. Big fight ensued, yada yada, then the maid of honor spills the beans that the groom ALSO had slept with her.
A few months before. Yeah. None of that went over well at all.
57. At Least She Admits It
At the rehearsal dinner, the groom's mom is in tears, because "he looks miserable" and he was, we all knew it. During the vows they had written for each other, the bride starts with "I know I can be a pretty terrible person, and I don't know why you've stuck around, but that's all going to change starting today!" They were divorced a year later.
58. Bonnie And Clyde Y2K
So the couple has been sleeping together for a few years, she gets pregnant, and they decide to get married. Months of planning go by and she begins to show. Bride's parents wig right out, call her every name in the book, and forbid her to get married. But the couple got their revenge. They cancel the wedding all right, then take her parents’ car to elope and torch the garage on their way out. It was magnificent.
59. Out-Law for an In-Law
I thought my sister's wedding was. Her husband got blackout drunk and they got into an argument. He passed out and she ended up throwing a bucket of ice water in his face to snap him out of it. She was devastated about it. Happy ending: He made it up to her big time. Also, he felt very out of it, even the next day. Turns out he had traces of Rohypnol in his system.
His own brother roofied him in hopes he wouldn't marry my sister because he wanted their own friendship to remain the same. My brother-in-law has disowned most of his family because of this, and his brother just got out of a four-year prison sentence.
60. Watching Out For His Own
This ex-friend of mine, who has a daughter with another woman, was at his wedding reception with his new wife dancing. While there, she says he should forget about his daughter. He thinks she may be kidding and forgets about it. Later on she tells him again to forget about his daughter because she can give him as many kids as he wants.
He gets super angry, tells everyone to get out, the party is over. The bride doesn't know what the heck happened but he is already gone. He goes to see the bride a week after just to return the ring the bride's family gave him. He never spoke to her again so she gave up and a year later she sent him the divorce papers for him to sign at long last.
61. Beware the Dragoness
The bride, whom I didn't even know, apparently designated me to help decorate the reception hall prior to the wedding. I went to do so, and her mother was there, telling me in a hushed, scared whisper that I better not mess anything up because the bride would be FURIOUS. Everything was to be a certain way, and if it was wrong, there'd be hell to pay.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt (chalked it up to wedding anxiety), and during the reception, I tried to chat with her a bit, and she literally rolled her eyes at me. I also didn't see her look at the groom once at the wedding or the reception. They were split less than a year later. Later, the groom confided to me and my husband that the morning of the wedding he'd been filled with an overwhelming feeling of dread and spent several hours just sitting on his lawn, thinking, "I shouldn't do this."
But it was already paid for, a huge crowd full of guests was waiting, a ton of family (including us) had come in from out of state, and he just felt he had to go through with it. Apparently, the bride had a long history of being awful and controlling. I have absolutely no clue what made him propose to her in the first place.
Just Facebook stalked the (ex) bride. Her latest status update is announcing her wedding date with a new guy. Someone "jokingly" asked in the comments if they've set a date for the divorce. Oh snap.
62. Finding His Fit
One of my dad's friends got way too wasted, left with a dancer at the club, disappeared for a few days, and then came back dating said dancer. But here’s the best part. Eventually, he actually married the dancer and they've been together for over 20 years. They seem pretty happy too. Romance can be weird and you find it in unexpected places, I guess.
63. Anything Goes in the Mountains
Holy moly. My cousin "Jan's" wedding was basically just a preamble to an elaborate Dance of Divorce that we all knew was coming from the moment the engagement began. For context, this took place 15 years ago in the backwoods of North Carolina. My family is just a generation or two removed from snake-handling in church, so some of the wackiness is the product of upwardly mobile inbreeding, and redneck gumption.
Just a few things that come to mind: Her fiancé proposed to her OVER THE CORPSE OF HER FATHER. He was over with the family watching TV when Jan's dad collapsed on the floor. He died before emergency services arrived. Her boyfriend grabbed her hands as she was sitting next to her father's body, pulled her up to her feet, and then asked her to marry him.
He later said that he "didn't want her to get away.” The fiancé then disappeared for a month the week after the funeral. Nobody knew where to reach him. The bride's white trash mother told Jan that she had to get married within four months because she (the mother, my aunt) planned to move to another state with her new boyfriend to avoid bill collectors.
When Jan's fiancé showed back up, he was cagey and weird. Eventually, it came out that he'd been living with his ex-girlfriend because she insisted that he had to give her a month of his life, or she'd take him to court for child support that he was supposed to be paying on their infant son, but had never paid. Throughout all of this, Jan continued to insist that she wanted to marry him.
My mother and I did most of the wedding prep and arrangements. Jan's mom, despite insisting on the 4-month timeline to help pay for the wedding before her move, never contributed a dime. We were both pretty convinced that the wedding was going to be canceled at any moment. But, the day arrived, and so did the principle players.
At the wedding itself: The groom walked around drinking PBR out of a massive travel thermos with a novelty straw and told everyone who would listen that Jan was a good "starter wife.” Jan threw several tantrums about stupid stuff, including one in which she accused the groom of stealing her drink. He told her she was a "dumb slag,” but it all worked out because then she found her drink.
The groom pulled the ring off of Jan's finger during the reception and swallowed it "as a joke.” The groom picked a fight with his father because his dad had asked the ex-girlfriend to stay at home, and the groom had really wanted her to be there. Jan was in the dark about this invitation until the fight broke out. Shocking precisely nobody, except possibly Jan herself, they eventually did divorce.
Eating the ring caused the groom some discomfort, so they had to cancel their honeymoon to the mountains so that he could go to the ER and get hospital-grade laxatives. They lost money on the cancellation and the ER visit, which they really didn't have to lose. That resulted in some immediate debt problems, and they lost the trailer they'd planned to rent when they couldn't come up with the deposit.
That resulted in both of them moving into the groom's parents' home, into his old bedroom. Things went downhill from there. The groom's ex-girlfriend popped back up less than three months after the wedding, heavily pregnant with his second child. She went after him for another "shared month," but Jan wasn't cool with it. The ex ended up taking him to court for child support.
Jan got a second job to make ends meet while resigning herself to living with her in laws for a while longer. One day, after he'd dropped her off at work, the groom sold Jan's car. He then disappeared for several more weeks. She lost both jobs, and shortly thereafter realized she was pregnant. The groom accused her of cheating because he thought he couldn't have more than two children in a lifetime, and his ex-girlfriend had already filled the quota.
As I understand it, this is what ultimately caused the rift in their relationship.
64. Getting Cold Feet
On weekends I work at a place that hosts quite a few weddings. At about 2 pm one day, our in-house event planner came back downstairs looking really uncomfortable and asked if anyone else would go back up to the dressing room area with him. Turns out he rounded a corner to find the groom sobbing uncontrollably and being consoled by the bride's mother who kept saying, "It's not too late, you don't have to do this."
This was all made even more uncomfortable by the fact that the bride was pregnant. Wedding went off without a hitch and staff reported that the couple looked "very happy" once the trigger was pulled.
65. No Praise for His Own Creation
When the father of the bride (!!) tells the groom, "How can you marry somebody like her? You are too nice, you deserve better." Surely enough, the marriage lasted less than three years.
66. Let’s Call It Even
I had a buddy whose fiancée slept with a male dancer at her bachelorette party. He found out but wasn't totally irate about it. They had a pretty open relationship and flirted all the time with other people. Anyways, a couple days before their wedding…he got wasted and slept with one of his fiancée’s friends. But the outcome was hugely surprising to all of us.
He told her what he did, and they both basically said "truce." They got married. Eight years later, they're happy with two kids. It's weird though, because the friend that he banged still hangs out with all of us...no one really talks about it. True story man.
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67. Destination: Nowhere
We knew the couple was in trouble when they frowned during most of the ceremony and later didn't go on a honeymoon because they couldn't agree on a destination. They had plenty of money–just no desire to compromise.
68. Flying Too Close To The Sun
It was the party the night before the wedding. The groom and the groom's friends, as well as the bride and the bride's friends. They rent a cabin at a cool little state park for the party. We are all sitting at a picnic table, drinking, talking, nothing wild. The groom is stabbing a pocketknife into the picnic table top—not hard, just sticking it in the wood.
The bride-to-be says, "If you keep doing that, you are going to cut your finger off." Groom replies, "No, it's a lock blade, it won't close". Next stab: lock blade closes and cuts his pinky off. He was rushed to hospital with his pinky in the cooler. We have to hold the groom up at altar the next day due to his pain medicine. Pinky reattached, and everything was eventually cool.
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69. Nothing Between Us
At the end of the reception the guys are sitting at a table away from everyone else talking and we ask the groom why he proposed. His answer? "Because she was naked." Marriage lasted about a year and a half.
70. With Friends Like These…
For some reason, a guy I know decided to have a co-ed bachelor party and invited all of his friends from college, from youth, etc. This took place in a large city, and a lot of us that knew each other from high school all went to the same big commuter school in the city and lived with our parents through college, so it was a really unique group. Lots of lifelong friends, and a bunch of new friends from college we brought into the fold.
So here's our groom: Mr. Perpetual Life of the Party. Charismatic, fun, likes to have a good time. Marrying a total buzzkill of a girl, but darned if she isn't crazy hot. Also very, VERY Catholic, and won't let the groom into her pants before the wedding. Groom has been angry about this for a while, which led to some accelerated wedding plans. Anyway, co-ed bachelor party.
It was a big beach house rental. Girls and guys, and it turns into a total debauch fest. About half of us had dated or fooled around with each other through high school or college, so people are sneaking off in various states to do various things—everything from smooching to full-on three-ways. It was messy. I had really only dated a couple of girls in the group, one of whom I couldn't find, and the other was already busy in a bedroom, so me and another loner girl got it on out of pity for each other.
We had just finished what turned out to be a remarkably good pity session when we heard the door to the next room close. These old beach houses had all been renovated a bunch to cram in as many bedrooms as possible, so the walls between were often thin. I couldn’t believe what I witnessed. It was the groom, talking with my sort-of ex that I hadn't been able to find earlier.
From what we could hear (everything) and what we learned later, it seemed that they'd been talking about the fact that the groom's bride-to-be was a real chilly person, and his lack of intimacy with her was really chafing. Well, you guessed it. They went hard, and the girl ended up getting REALLY loud. Like, pretty much everyone knew what was going on.
So. Three days later, everyone under the age of 40 at the wedding knows the groom schtupped this girl, but nobody says nothing. Four days into their honeymoon, the groom comes home early and calls me and some other folks. Turns out he and the girl had been texting about their adventure while he was on his honeymoon with his wife and included a choice bit about how his new wife was bad in the bedroom.
She saw the texts. Choice offered: Ditch every friend you have and stay married, or leave. Guess which one he picked? Spoiler alert they have like eight kids now.
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71. Why So Serious?
During the ceremony, when the priest started asking the bride "Do you take this man to be your...", she started laughing uncontrollably and couldn't stop. It was cute for about 10 seconds and then things got real uncomfortable. They lasted a year and change. We all kinda knew the only reason they were getting married was that she got pregnant.
72. Better Late Than Never
I was a bridesmaid. All of her friends (including myself), her parents, and anyone else with half a brain had been telling her to get rid of him all along, and to definitely not marry him. He had no job, and he was physically and verbally mistreating her. We'd given up by the time of her wedding, and I was trying to be happy for her. Instead of saying “I do,” though, she just started looking around the room and then ran back down the aisle.
We were all dumbfounded, except for her father who yelled a variation of what we were all thinking: "Thank You Jesus Christ."
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73. Love is an Open Door
Groom got so drunk at the reception he passed out in the honeymoon suite by himself, but not before he latched the door so it couldn't be unlocked from the outside. Seeing the bride kicking the door and hollering at the top of her lungs to be let in at 3 am was not encouraging. They divorced like two years later.
74. Up Close And Personal
My friend had a cousin who was getting married. The night before the wedding day, we were at a bar that had hired a dancer. There were like 50 men there. When the girl showed up, we came to a mind-blowing realization. Turns out she was the wife's sister. Nobody knew this was her side job. The family was in a terrible mood so the wedding was canceled, though they got married a month later.
75. Something Is Wrong With This Picture
I was at a wedding as a videographer. Bride was really happy and everything, but the groom seemed disinterested and bored. Film the ceremony and everything, and we need some shots of the guests mingling. My buddy says he hasn't got any footage of the groom and asks if I've seen him. I say no but offer to walk around and look.
I eventually find the groom way down by the lake sitting on a bench and chatting with one of the bridesmaids. They don't notice me, but I see them share a kiss. Mentioned it to my buddy, who just shrugged and said we were there to film the wedding, so it's not our concern.
76. Reading The Tea Leaves
When I was in 6th grade, my mom decided that she wanted to marry her boyfriend of eight years. I had never liked him and he had never liked me, so I asked her why she wanted to marry him. The only reason she could come up with was that we needed help with money. My step-dad is a really angry person, and is emotionally abusive to women.
I told my mom that I didn't approve of her choice, and she told me that what I wanted didn't matter. I needed this man in my life. They had my little brother involved in the wedding. He was the ring bearer. My two step-sisters and I refused to take any part in the ceremony. They didn't like the idea of the marriage, either. Well, in the middle of whatever the preacher was saying, he turns to us three girls and asks us, "Do you approve of this union?"
I look at my oldest step-sister. She looks at me. "No." "No." “HECK no.” It sort of ruined the entire lovey-dovey atmosphere that was around before, but at least we weren't kidding ourselves. Fast-forward to now, my mom has a five-year-old boy with my stepdad, and is very unhappy. My stepdad tells her that she is worthless as a woman if she doesn't cook and clean all by herself.
77. The Family That Lies Together Stays Together
My sister and her husband. They met each other our junior year of high school, and she moved in with him halfway through our senior year. I never liked him and did not hide that fact. I especially didn't like him after he hit on me while they were dating. Didn't hide that fact either, but my sister brushed me off. Before he popped the question, she found out he'd been texting other girls.
He promised he'd change. The wedding was a train wreck, honestly. It was a small affair in our family back yard, with our aunt officiating. That same aunt started crying midway through the ceremony. My stepmother read a poem about them she wrote halfway through the ceremony—she always wants to be the center of attention.
The groom’s drunken father, who had been barred from the wedding, came stumbling in at some point during the vows to search for alcohol, and I saw the groom grab one of the bridesmaids’ bottoms. I didn't point that out to my deliriously happy stepsister. I should have. A year later it turned out the groom had been sexting my stepmom.
My sister somehow forgave both of them. She has low self-esteem. They got caught again a year after that. At that point, my dad had divorced my stepmother, so I have been distant from this whole shebang. But my sister—who I do still talk to—finally divorced that scumbag. Divorce for everyone! Let's pull an Oprah.
78. Prince Charming Right Here
I worked as a cook doing banquets at a high-end restaurant and hotel. We were prepping on Friday night for the wedding reception on Saturday when one of the salespeople comes down and tells us we might not be needed on Saturday. We all look up with confusion and ask why? Turns out screaming was heard down the hall, so someone reported it.
They bash the door down to find the groom attempting to kill the future wife. Officers take away the groom that night. But wait, it gets worse. The mother of the groom tries to keep the wedding going and claims it was all a misunderstanding. The officers did not agree with this sentiment.
79. Four Is a Crowd
The bride ugly-cried for the entire reception until herself, the groom, and her mom got into a yelling fight about it. They both made it clear the only reason they got married was that she was pregnant with their second child. The best man—of a different race, it’s relevant—seemed very jumpy the entire time. Fast forward to six months later, and the baby is clearly biracial.
Less than a year after the wedding, bride and groom are divorced and she’s with the best man. I feel like I should add that the groom was not unhappy to get a divorce. The general consensus was he was probably as guilty as she was, she just had the misfortune that her infidelity was a lot more obvious.
80. Those Who Can’t Marry, Teach
My eighth-grade US history teacher was left at the altar before. She was large and in charge, and she would get flashbacks from that moment she was left at the altar during class and turn from chill to crazy in a matter of seconds. She even had photos of the two of them with his face scratched off and whatnot in the classroom, and she would always reference him and talk about throwing him off a building or something similar. Long story short, I got a B in that class.
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81. The Dress is the First Problem
Went to a wedding where the groom accidentally spilled champagne on the bride’s dress. Now, she's probably not the only bridezilla out there who would go mad. But this turned nasty in a matter of seconds. It started with her being irate over the dress, to blaming him for everything wrong with the wedding (which no one noticed), issues with his family followed and to top it all off she questioned his mental health—he'd had problems in the past.
All this, while screaming at the top of her lungs in front of about 150 people. Poor guy never stood a chance.
82. Nothing To See Here
I was not in attendance because I was like two at the time, but a cousin of my dad was on the altar ready to go, then the groomsmen showed up with the groom still messed up from the night before. The groom threw up on the altar when he got up there. The wedding was called off and the two never married. My great-grandfather prevented everyone from eating all the food at the reception and everyone just kind of went home.
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83. I Now Pronounce You Co-Beneficiary and Wife
My sister-in-law's first wedding. Never really liked the groom from the first time I met him. After a year or so, he proposed. They started planning their wedding that was to take place in a year. But then, on whim, they get married in a civil ceremony with plans to still have the big ceremony later in the year. A few months after the civil ceremony, the groom goes in for heart surgery, for a bad valve he's had since he was born.
The big ceremony finally comes except every major aspect of it has been stripped away. Less than a year into the marriage, my sister-in-law brings me a credit card bill and asks me if she knows what this $600 charge her husband has on it. A little internet research and I find that he's tipping cam girls. They're officially divorced about a year after that.
In retrospect, it became obvious what had happened. My sister-in-law was grifted for a new heart valve. He didn't have the insurance at his job to cover the surgery, so he convinced her to marry him—earlier than expected—to get on her insurance, get the heart surgery, and then split.
84. Grief Makes People Do Stupid Things
My college roommate was engaged to a college sweetheart of hers. She graduated and moved out of state for work. He had one more year of school, but he passed tragically in a drunken walking incident. He fell off a two-story parking garage. This is not even the craziest part. See…in her and the guy’s brother's fit of depression and sadness, the brother of the dead guy knocked her up.
So four months after the funeral, we were all gathered again for a quickie wedding. Only it wasn't your regular wedding. She was Indian, so it was a day-long traditional ceremony. I had barely recovered from the puke-flu and HATE curry, so it was all I could do just to attend. The dad of the deceased spent the entire day crying on my shoulder about how wrong this all was.
Well, he wasn't kidding. Within the year, his surviving son would beat the heck out of my old roommate and she filed for divorce.
85. Blast from the Past
Got invited to a wedding of an ex-girlfriend. There was one of those cheesy dollar dance things where bride and groom shake down the crowd for more money. Fine, I suck it up and dance with the ex for a fiver. During the dance, she whispers, "This should have been you." Freak-out time. I left very quickly after that. Needless to say, they didn't last.
86. One Moment Gone So Wrong
Best friend got wasted, as did everyone, at the lake house during the bachelor party. One kid wanted to take the boat out in cold, cold water. No life vests. With three of them in the boat. At 1,000 feet from shore, they tipped the boat. Only one tried to swim to shore to get help. He was so cold by the time he got to shore that it took him an hour to reach the nearest house for help.
My friend stayed with the other guy holding onto the upside-down boat. The other guy had heavy clothes and boots and they couldn't get them off as it was dark and their fingers were numb. I don't know how long they managed to hold on waiting for help until they went under. The wedding party the next day became a search and rescue.
Many months later, they found the body. Sometimes I hate him for not swimming to save himself. Sometimes I admire him for trying to save his friend. I miss you so much watermelon.
87. Objection Overruled
I used to be a Deputy Sheriff and part of my job was taking in-custody defendants to their court dates. One particular defendant happened to have two court dates on the same day. The first court date was, to my surprise, his wedding date. The other case was for roughing up his girlfriend— the same one he was marrying. They were getting married so the bride could not be compelled to testify against the groom.
So when we were at the wedding court date, the judge did the usual thing and asked if there was anyone who objected. The Assistant DA in the back stood up and proceeded to blow my mind. The entire courtroom went dead silent until the Judge spoke, 'Well who am I to stand in the way of love?' And with that he banged his gavel, they were married.
The ADA's case fell apart, and the defendant was released that day. He was, however, back in prison by the next week. I'll let you guess what he was taken in for. So what happened in the end? The good news is: no he did not kill her. The bad news? The last time I saw her she was pregnant with his kid.
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88. One For The Memories
My best friend’s ex was getting remarried to his long-time girlfriend. The new wife has two sons from a previous relationship, as does my friend and her ex. The new wife was nice enough, but she was a bit uptight. To give you an example, her two new stepsons are not allowed to call her by her name and they have to refer to her as "Miss Kate.” Anyway, up on the altar during the wedding, the pastor asks the sons how they are feeling on this "joyous occasion."
The younger of the two, who was about eight at the time, leaned forward and said quite clearly into the microphone: "I honestly don't like it. Her sons are mean, they make me look at naked ladies on the computer, and she hits me with a wooden spoon when I am naughty." My friend caught it all on her cellphone as it happened. Best wedding video ever.
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89. Twin Trauma
My cousins are identical twins…and I mean identical. On the wedding day of one of them, something bizarre happened. He and his girlfriend had been dating for quite a few years, so she had no good excuse. What happened was that during the reception, people were clinking their glasses for the couple to kiss. Well, the bride got up and kissed the wrong twin.
90. Probably Not Worth It
I have a brother who is about 10 years older than me. This happened when I was 14, and I didn't learn about the full extent of the events that happened until a few years later, when I was older and had a better understanding of things. My brother was one of the groomsmen at a friend's wedding. Typical college sweetheart story: The bride and groom had dated all through college and he had proposed on their graduation day.
Everything was all set for a beautiful summer wedding. However, the bride-to-be was having doubts. She had only ever been intimate with one man, her fiancé, and knew that the groom to be was in the same situation. One lover his whole life, his fiancée. Apparently she had been reading a lot of self-help books on the subject and she had come to the conclusion that lack of experience was the number one destroyer of marriages.
So she came to my brother's friend (the groom to be) with this idea that they participate in a foursome, or a partner-swap with the best man and maid of honor, their two best friends, the night before the wedding. Brilliant, right? I swear you can't make this up. The groom to be fights the idea for a while, but his fiancée threatens to call off the wedding if he doesn't go through with it.
He talks with his best friend, and he reluctantly agrees. She talks with her best friend, she reluctantly agrees. Everybody's in. So the night before the wedding comes, and the four are getting plastered at the happy couple-to-be's apartment. Here's where it goes down. Apparently, the groom drinks too much and can't get it up (at least that's what he says happened) and what essentially occurs that night is a threesome between the maid of honor, the bride-to-be, and the best man.
The groom to be, humiliated and distraught, leaves the apartment in the middle of the trio's lovemaking and drives his car straight into a freeway median. The wedding's called off due to the accident, and the groom ends up paralyzed from the waist down. Great guy, the paralyzed wood-be groom. They never got married. My brother and I play pick-up with him once or twice a month at the local rec center.
The paralyzed groom doesn't like to talk about anything that happened, and I'm pretty sure he and his would-be best man don't talk anymore. I saw the bride at a Christmas party my parents threw a few years ago, since her parents are family friends. I think she's now married and has a kid or two.
91. I’ll Take That Chicken Parm To Go
It wasn’t a good sign when the bride uninvited me from the reception dinner while I was at the wedding because she thought I would try to take the groom away from her. I got to go home and take off my heels and not have to socialize with people and my boyfriend came back with delicious leftovers. So honestly, I think I was the real winner here.
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92. The Shirt Off His Back
I attended a wedding where the groom, when asked to say, "I do,” passed out straight away, falling down a small flight of stairs. After coming to a few seconds later, he got a look of panic in his eyes and ran out of the building. Five minutes go by. Someone goes out after him. Then 10. Then 20. Several people have left now to see what's going on.
Now people are wondering if he'll come back at all. He re-enters the church now, with only his mostly open tuxedo jacket on and a bare, hairy chest showing. He looks pale as a ghost. He apologizes for being "too hot" (it was the middle of winter). He slowly walks up to the altar, bare chest showing. And the ceremony resumes, chest hair and all.
They actually did get married that way. But man, that was flipping the weirdest wedding I've ever witnessed.
93. He Gave Marriage A Shot
We all met at the groom's house on our way to the bachelor party. We gathered around for a shot and his toast, verbatim, was, "To my future ex-wife." We all looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, but ultimately didn't think much of it and had a great night. It turns out he was already cheating on her, ended up having a kid with the other woman, and got divorced when she found out. He is obviously no longer a friend.
94. Party Foul
Not a party I attended, but not too long ago there was a story on the news about a bachelor party. It was a normal party from what I understand, but at some time during the evening a bunch of guys roll up the bachelor in a rug and put him outside against the wall, then leave him there just to mess with him. They go back out there a little while later and release him from the carpet.
But to their surprise, they have left the bachelor upside down in the carpet, and he's now dead.
95. This Monster-In-Law Is A Little Extra
My wife’s brother just got married this past May. The bride’s mother is a big DIY person and decided to go a little nuts with extra flowers, table pieces, decorations, etc. Please note that I said “extra.” You see, the hall was already decorated by the venue, she just took it upon herself to buy and add way more stuff.
Anyway, a few weeks ago she sent my mother-in-law, the groom’s mom, an email with receipts of all the extra stuff she bought—$7,000 worth!!!—and asked that she pay half since it was technically set up in time for the rehearsal dinner for guests to enjoy. It’s causing a huge rift between the newlyweds since the bride is taking her mom’s side.
96. No Happy Ending
I had a very good friend in high school (a girl) and she and her groom had their bachelor and bachelorette parties on the same night. They got back to their hotel room, got into a huge argument, and he beat her so bad, he thought she was dead—she wasn’t. So he went and drove his car into a concrete road divider and offed himself.
She's doing OK now, this was about 10 years ago. She's married with two kids and I'm still friends with her. She actually openly talks about it when asked.
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97. Crying Over Spilled Champagne
One of my good friends got married and I'd never met the bride before the wedding because "she's just shy." On the wedding day, she was belligerently inebriated before the ceremony even started and couldn't even get through the lines she was supposed to repeat (i.e. "I promise to love you"). She ended up slapping the groom, spilling champagne on her dress, and then crying under a table while he tried to comfort her.
They lasted about four months.
98. Putting It Off
THE night before their city hall wedding, the bride and groom had separate big parties and got so wasted they both slept through the wedding. They didn't realize it until city hall called asking where they were, and they decided, screw it, we'll do it later. They did eventually get married at some point a few months after, and still are as far as I know, over 20 years later.
99. Drama 101
My wife got invited to a client's daughter's wedding. The couple were both drama students and many of the bridal party were drama students. The maid of honor's toast was so disturbing, it’s unforgettable. It consisted of tearful declarations of unrequited love to the groom, along the lines of “if it couldn't be me, I'm glad it's my best friend that's marrying you.”
Somehow, that’s not the worst part. The best man's speech was a lusty declaration of “if it doesn't work out, call me, babe...like the previous time you called me.” Other toasts were similarly weird. A guy at the table I was seated at was a friend of the bride and said to me that he was “this close” to standing up during the “speak now or forever hold your peace” thing.
I'm still not sure if the whole thing was a bunch of emotionally messed-up 20-year-olds, or one big piece of performance art.
100. Child Bride
I used to work at a David's Bridal and a bride came in once with tons of friends. We did the Say Yes To The Dress thing, and an hour later she was standing there in $3,000 worth of stuff and didn't have any money with her or in her account. She decided she wanted to apply for the store credit card. I ran it through the system, and she got denied.
She then called the groom for his info and he told her no. She threw a HUGE fit on the phone with him, standing on the bridal stage, literally demanding "WHY NOT? WHY?! WHY!!" like an actual child over and over again. I've never seen a 30-year-old age backward so quickly. She was just a brat. Literally stomping her feet in front of me, all her friends, and the other brides in the store.
I was so embarrassed for her. But then I got a big surprise. At the end of her tantrum, she hung up on him and her friend said, "I'm so sorry you can't get your dress." The bride stopped crying instantly and said: "Oh I'll get the dress. I just have to do this at home, and when he gets mad enough, he'll come get it for me so I'll stop."
I was speechless. Sure enough. Girl came back two days later with her man and he applied for the credit card and bought the dress. He was livid and silent, and she was over-the-top smug. I can't imagine they're having a happy marriage if they are still together.
101. Privacy, Please
It was a bachelor party in Vegas. The bachelor hooks up with a girl, and gives her his cell phone number so they can continue the party that night. This backfired in the sharpest way imaginable. See, the bride-to-be is sitting at home with the iPad, getting all of the iMessages from the girl as they are coming in. She canceled the wedding that day.
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102. Keep It In The Family
Several years ago, I got a phone call from the maid of honor for a wedding I was going to attend (as a guest) two weeks from then. She was flustered, but managed to get out: "There's no wedding, Groom called it off. He's in love with someone else." Well, I didn't press. I was friends with both of them, so I knew that the full details would eventually make their way back to me. I could not believe what I found out.
Turns out, a couple weeks before the wedding, the groom called the bride and said he was coming over. They needed to talk. When he got to her apartment, he broke down in tears and confessed that he was in love with someone else. He loved her, but couldn't marry her because he didn't love her in the way a bride deserves. There was much crying and shouting over it all, but eventually, the bride recovered from the news enough to ask him who he was in love with.
"Well," Groom said, "It's [Bride's Brother]." The wedding was definitely off at that point. Now, five or six years later, the groom and the bride's brother are married and happy. However, I lost contact with the bride shortly after her wedding plans imploded, so I'm not sure if she ever forgave the boys for that one.
103. I Just Keep Coming Back To You
After the wedding at the reception, the newlyweds took forever to show up. They were nearly an hour late. When they did arrive, they were arguing loudly the entire time. They got "introduced" and we all clapped as per tradition and they sat down at the main table in a huff. Sometime between the appetizer and the main course, the argument started again.
The groom stormed off and my girlfriend and I were nosey so we went to see what was up. He ended up in the hotel lobby on his cell phone. We thought nothing of it and we were about to go back when the wife shows up, still obviously in her wedding dress, and continues to ream him out. Now for the first time, we can hear what the argument is about. As we listened, our jaws dropped.
He had invited his ex to the wedding. She showed up to the ceremony and that threw the bride off. Apparently, also...he had cheated on the new wife with this ex-girlfriend several times, with the last time being only about a month prior to the wedding. Additionally, the ex-girlfriend/mistress was on her way to come pick up the new husband to take him away from the new bride...because she was "acting crazy" according to the groom.
After a couple minutes of watching this train wreck of an argument, a rust bucket sedan shows up with the ex-girlfriend in it. The groom gets into the car with his ex or whatever the heck she is and they drive off. Last words went to the bride, though, who screamed at him as he tore off: "Well, I guess I'm going to go back to sleeping with your brother then, you jerk!”
So, they are no longer married now.
104. Sister Act
First of all, if you've never been to a Jewish wedding, the way it goes is, first they have the reception with the bride and groom in separate rooms, then the ceremony, then family goes away to sit for pictures while the guests sit down to eat. Then the bride and groom come in and the dancing starts. In between the ceremony and the pictures, though, is what's called "Yichud" which doesn't really translate, but it approximately means "isolation together."
The bride and groom lock themselves in a room and are observed by two reliable witnesses outside the door to have stayed therein long enough to have consummated the marriage. Although nobody actually does it there; it's considered declasse. This is one of the things that actually solemnizes the marriage. So. After the yichud, the bride comes out and drops a bombshell.
She announces, "Sorry everyone, the wedding's off. We'll be getting a divorce, and we're returning all the gifts…except for the bedroom set, where I caught my new husband trying it out with my sister last week." So? Well, think about this. She knew about the episode before the wedding. Why'd she go through with it? Because under Jewish law, if you've once been married to a woman, even after divorcing her you aren't allowed to marry her sister at any time until your first wife has passed.
By going through with the ceremony, she in effect locked her sister out of ever being able to get together with her soon-to-be-ex...
105. Missed Encounters
At a wedding of a college friend of my husband’s, we learned that the bride (his old friend) had been in love with him for over a decade. We learned this from the women at our table at the reception. We introduced ourselves while we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. They were horrified that we were there—and extremely worried.
My husband had NO idea that she had feelings for him. She bee-lined right for our table after the "introducing Mr & Mrs" thing—ignoring her family and leaving her husband standing alone. She clung to my husband and sobbed—lifting her head to glare at me. She had to be pulled off of him.
She repaired herself, then followed us as we tried to leave quietly—her parting shot was to stare at my chest and say, "Well I guess I know what I was missing all along!" Her new husband was in shock and my husband was horrified and embarrassed—he was completely clueless and would never have gone to the wedding if he'd know she was obsessed with him. It was bizarre.
106. My Way Or The Highway
I’m not a wedding planner, but I was going to be at a wedding as a bridesmaid. The bride-to-be took us—the maid of honor, another bridesmaid, and myself—out to pick out dresses. The bride's mother and the groom's mother also came at her insistence. We arrived at the dress shop only to find that the bride, her mom, and the groom's mom had already picked out the dress she wanted us to wear for the wedding.
Okay, that was fine in theory, but we had been under the impression that we'd get to pick our own dresses. Whatever, it was her wedding. When we tried the dresses on, however, we realized something disturbing—they didn't really look good on the two of us because we both had different frames and sizes. We came out, showing the bride and two moms, and the moms were in agreement that the dress they picked really didn't work. The bride’s response, on the other hand, was jaw-dropping.
The bride was very upset that we didn't magically look great in the same dress. She then started making snide, subtle comments about our appearances, implying that we'd need to lose weight to look good in them, and telling one of the other girls how she'd need a push-up bra to look "normal." The moms ignored the bride's attitude and flagged down an employee to help us find some alternatives.
We live in a small city, so the selection they had wasn't the best, but the employee found at least half a dozen other dresses that come in the color the bride wanted. We tried them all on, but because we vary so much in body type, most of them didn't look good on both of us. For example, the strapless ones looked bad on the busty girls, while the long dresses didn't fit right on the short ones, etc.
The bride continued to make comments about our bodies. Finally, the last dress we tried on was generic enough that it looked fine on all of us...except the bride didn't like it because it didn't make us look "sexy" enough. To make matters worse, the dress had pockets. She absolutely did not want her bridesmaids to have pockets.
At this point, every single one of us was happy with this choice except for her. She reluctantly agreed to let us pick that dress but she was very clearly not happy. So then we picked out shoes. The bride told us we will be wearing the same shoes as her but in a different color. Weird, but again, we didn't argue with her.
When we tried them on, though, there was a snag in her plans. I have very small feet (technically a 3 in kids, though some size 5 shoes will fit). The heels she wanted were sky high and strapless. When I put them on and tried to walk, my feet kept slipping out. They were also open-toed, so I couldn't really stuff the front as I'd done in the past.
To top it off, just standing in them to try them on, the front was absolutely ruining my feet. I told her this, and she watched me try to walk in them only to have them flop off. Her mom asked me if they came in a smaller size, but they were fancy shoes, so no, they obviously didn't make them for kids. The bride's solution?
"Once you start to wear them, your feet will swell and they'll fit then." She then walked off. The bride's mom assured me that we'd "figure something out" and bought all of our outfits as her condolences. I never got to know how that would have worked out, though, because the bride and groom simultaneously cheated on each other, and they called off the wedding.
The bride didn't even have the nerve to tell me herself; I had to hear it from the maid of honor. We are no longer friends, and it's sad to me that this wasn't even the reason why. I can't believe I let someone treat me, and other people she called friends, like that.
107. Leaving So Soon?
When I was in college studying photography, I got friendly with a fellow student who had a wedding photography business but was still studying to get his qualifications. After seeing my work, he asks me if I want to assist him at his next wedding. I agree to do so. The big day finally comes and I'm all prepared to go in and see the groom, the best man, the ushers, and a bunch of other participants to get some pre-event photos of them getting ready and whatnot.
To my surprise, the groom refused to be in any pictures, stating that he was feeling under the weather. I kinda thought he should just suck it up. It was his wedding day, after all. Nevertheless, he was insistent, so no pre-event photos were taken of him. A little while later, the ceremony comes and goes. It’s now time for the bridal party photos at the church.
Once again, the groom refuses to be in any photos, much to everyone's annoyance. We all get to the reception, the speeches begin, and, midway through the father of the bride’s speech, the groom just straight up leaves. He once again repeats the fact that he was feeling a bit ill. This is where the bride drew the line—she went into a full-on rage. She started pulling the small groom and bride figurines off the top of the cake and stomping on them.
She shouted, "I knew I shouldn't have married him!" There was a lot of hullabaloo at this point, with guests trying to console her. Everyone agreed that he was being dramatic and was basically a huge jerk. We got paid in full even though at that point we were done. I go home, put my feet up, drink a few beers, and then answer an unexpected phone call from my friend.
I was expecting him to just be calling to joke around a little bit more about how crazy that wedding had just been. Not even close. In reality, he was calling to inform me that the groom had passed away shortly after leaving the reception hall, and that our photo job would now be turning into a two-for-one wedding and funeral service.
108. The Grandmother Of Tantrums
I had a friend who threw a temper tantrum complete with screaming and foot-stomping because her grandmother had the audacity to pass a few hours before her wedding. She said it would throw off the seating arrangements since there would be a big empty space. She is currently halfway through her second divorce.
Sources: Reddit, , ,
