Ever watch one of those crazy bridezilla shows and wonder what the poor groom was thinking? Ever wonder how those marriages actually turned out? Well, speculate no further! The husbands in these stories share what happened after they tied the knot with their bridezilla!
“Don’t Ever Do That”
“My brother’s fiancé went off on my mom in front of me and my sister when he was 45 minutes late to the rehearsal due to his best man’s car tire blowing out. ‘Where is your idiot of a son?!!?’ The dude should have never shown up for the wedding.
She was not only a bridezilla but a total utter sociopath. Her life was completely fabricated and her parents (who didn’t show up for the wedding) called my mom to tell her the truth about it the day after. She had a rap sheet a mile long and a prison record. But my brother, who just wanted to believe that people can change, stuck it out for seven years. Don’t do that. Don’t ever ever do that.”
The Bride Spent The Night In Jail
“Not a guy. Didn’t marry a bridezilla. DID, however, spend four years of my life working in a men’s formal wear sales and rental chain in the Seattle suburbs in the 90s. Specifically in downtown Kirkland, where the average wedding gown from the bridal shop down the street started at $3k.
My most memorable bridezilla was this woman who came in with her fiance. Poor dude never said a word. She wanted a very specific color of shirt to match her diamond white gown, in a mandarin collar, with a mid-range shawl collar two-button jacket. 14 of them. Okay, pretty straightforward. But. But. When you’re renting shirts, particularly these shirts because they were newer so some were closer to white and some were VERY ivory, and they’re coming from a warehouse downtown, I can’t guarantee that every shirt will even be the same color, let alone that exact shade of diamond white. Which I explained. Twice. And she signed off on it because this was not my first bridezilla rodeo. She agreed but emphasized the shirts WOULD all be the same color, and they WOULD be the right color. Okay, lady. I’ll do my best.
Cue six weeks later, the Thursday before the wedding. Bridezilla comes in with her poor fiance. We pull out the tuxes. OF COURSE, the shirts are exactly as I warned her they would be – several shades, and only one was her perfect color (not the groom’s). She lost her ever-loving mind. Screaming, crying, pounding on our glass countertop, WAILING at the top of her lungs that we were discriminating against her because she was Japanese (yeah, hon, so is like half of greater Seattle). She got so agitated she shattered our front counter with her pounding. The cops were called. The bride got arrested. Groom took his and everyone else’s tuxes and left. Still without a word other than profuse apologies.
Sunday, I happened to be accepting returns. FOG comes back with 14 unworn tuxes. He explains that the bride spent 24 hours in jail after my spineless manager refused to press charges. At the rehearsal dinner, the bride threw some insane temper tantrums, complete with throwing glassware, swearing, and finally punching the groom in the face. He…declined to proceed with the marriage.
I will never forget that woman’s crazy eyes or her insistence on the perfect colored shirts from a $90 rental.”
The Wedding Ended The Marriage
“She left me three months later. After the wedding and vacation was over I told her we need to pay the debt we just accumulated. She said she didn’t have much on her credit card and could pay it off in a couple of months if I picked up some of her bills. I agreed and three months later she had her credit card paid off she told me she wanted a divorce.
We had a budget for the wedding and should have had no debt at the end but in the last few weeks before the wedding she suddenly had to spend a ton of money on wedding nonsense I had never even heard of before. And when I say she spent a ton of money it came out of my pocket.
I feel I should give a little more explanation about how I ended up with the wedding debt since several people have asked why it wasn’t split evenly and about annulment.
We didn’t have any kids and only had assets we brought into the relationship. By taking the debt I was able to prevent her from hiring a lawyer to represent her in the divorce, which would have forced me to do the same and cost significantly more than the debts. The debt in itself was about $8,000 which isn’t a crippling amount but is still a lot of money to me. That was just the amount over budget on the wedding, she also had a car loan which I, thankfully, did not end up with. She comes from an upper middle class family and has a trust fund which is not something I could have gone after in the divorce. I make nearly double in income of what she does, a lawyer would have advised her to claim alimony. She wouldn’t have gotten a lot but she would have gotten something. The judge asked her repeatedly if she wanted to claim alimony.
Annulment is very uncommon where we live. We looked into it but did not meet the criteria for one. Instead we went to a quickie divorce lawyer who just puts paper work together and then we had to do everything else.
I luckily work with lawyers and was able to discuss things with them. None of them are divorce lawyers but they gave me a general idea of how things would work out if it got ugly.”
A Tale Of Tantrums, Eggs, And A Spiraling Divorce
“The moment he proposed she lost her libido. According to him she also basically stopped acting like the woman he fell in love with and started acting like her real self. Which was completely crazy.
A week after he proposed she quit her job because her full-time job was now planning the wedding. The wedding was horrible, I’m getting there.
She had a fight with his mother because the bride demanded the groom’s mom pay for half the wedding but get zero input and wasn’t allowed to contribute to the guest list, which was 95% the bride’s friends and family.
Brid, who was 30 years old, subsequently egged her future MIL’s house.
When the bride and groom had a spat about the egging, he went to work the next day and she shaved her head and sent him a video of her screaming and sobbing as she buzzed her hair off in the bathroom. I worked with him, he showed me the video when he said he had to leave, and I strongly urged him to have her assessed by a psychiatrist. He made a dumb joke about getting it on with a crazy girl is the best kind of hanky panky, and I pitied him.
The wedding was in a pool clubhouse in summer, it was much too small for the 150+ people the invited. Someone forgot to turn the AC on until after the place was packed. A lifeguard showed up in a swimsuit to turn it on, but it did little given it was already sweltering.
Two rows of chairs in the clubhouse were ribboned off with ‘reserved’ signs on them, so no one sat in them. They were later occupied by the 6 seated bridesmaids (leaving about a dozen chairs open once the wedding started. The one groomsman stood by the groom and didn’t sit. Elderly people were left standing or reduced to sitting on the floor as there was no way to get to the chairs once the ceremony started.
The bride showed up 90 minutes late, having been unhappy with her hair (wig?) and makeup so she took it all off and did it herself, so all the guests are standing for the 1.5 hours waiting for her. Groom was literally standing at the altar sweating his butt off in a wool suit in the South’s high summer heat and was clearly not sure if she would show up. He looked like he felt sick.
When the bride showed up she burst into the clubhouse, marched down the aisle, and snapped at the officiant to ‘hurry up and get started.’
During the prayer while the religious groom had his head bowed she turned to wave at everyone (I don’t pray so I was looking up), then she told her mother to go get her some water. She drank a bottle of water during the prayer and kept grinning and waving at people in attendance, paying zero mind to her groom in front of her.
When the ceremony was over tables were crammed into the clubhouse and apparently only family and immediate friends of the bride had seats at tables. The rest of us were going to be standing outside during the reception. So I didn’t see a dance, a speech, the cake cut, nothing.
The food was served outside, in the Southern US July heat with bugs everywhere. The bride made the groom go get her food over and over. He meekly stood in line with the other 150 people, until people insisted he go sit and let them get food. Nope, she told him to get food, so he said he had to be the one to get her food.
She never left her table, never greeted any of her guests.
Apparently they had a massive fight as they were leaving the following day for the honeymoon, bride laying all the failures of the wedding she planned at him and his mom’s feet. She threw his luggage out of the car and tried to drive to the airport by herself, but he had their tickets and jumped on the hood to stop her from driving off in his car.
He got fired about a month after the wedding because he kept showing up late, leaving early, and leaving in the middle of the day, usually because she called him with some crisis.
One year after the wedding I got a thank you note for my wedding gift, which was signed by just the bride with a note that said, ‘As you may have heard Ryan and I have had a bumpy start in our first year as a married couple, and we’re separated now. Thanks for the lovely gift.’
They divorced a couple of months later.”
Gone In 18 Months
“Married a bridezilla. In the 18 months, we were married, she was such an unfit mother (too many instances to list here), that when the divorce was finalized, I got custody of our kid AND the kid she had prior to our marriage.
Also, she was a blackout drinker and cheated on me with several different men. The final straw was when I had to travel out of state to check on my grandmother. I came back a day early, saw used Marlboros in the ashtray – not her brand – I don’t smoke – and then I heard grunting and groaning in the bedroom. Yep, there she was. And there he was. And there HE was. Devil’s Triangle. Contacted a divorce lawyer the next day, finalized it as fast as possible.”
“We Got Married At A Chinese Buffet”
“According to my MiL I’m the bridezilla. We had a max limit of 36 people including ourselves and my son. My Mil gave me a guest list which included – you guessed it! – 36 names. She assured me that not everyone would come, but that they would be very appreciative of the invite. I felt gross by that and left the decision up to my husband since it was his family. Needless to say, they all got invites. I had asked for RSVPs to be given a few months before the wedding. Since the MiL had used up the guestlist I had greatly reduced my side of the guest list to just four people, with some on hold until I knew the exact numbers. I finally lost it two1 weeks before the wedding when I still didn’t have RSVPs. She said she would work on it and get back to me. A week before the wedding she said one family also needs to bring nine other people because they were going on a family trip and our town was on the way so they would all be here anyway. I flat out said no and called her out on the nonsense. I cut off the guest list, said that I was inviting the rest of my guest list and that whoever hadn’t RSVP’d didn’t get a chair or plate. Right up to the day of the wedding they were making changes.
We got married at a Chinese buffet so that it would be the simplest planning and everyone would have something that they liked to eat. My dress was $40 off Amazon. My flowers were $20 from Costco. We had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for the wedding cake.
Yet she still makes it out that I was the bridezilla”
He Dodged A Bullet But At What Cost?
“My cousin was married to a bridezilla. He doesn’t come from a very wealthy area, and has become successful himself after moving out of his hometown. His wife was extremely wealthy, even could say excessively. They married after a year of knowing each other, and boy was it a surprise to hear about the wedding plans. They spent +$250K on the wedding, including catering by seven different restaurants. Their food was from different cultures and cooked in front of you (think almost hibachi buffet style). They even had servers in tailored suits and white gloves serving taco bell after midnight once everyone was wasted. Once they got married, she was spending more money than he could make. She was getting mad because he wasn’t making enough, while she wasn’t working and they hadn’t even had kids yet. They got divorced, and she gave him the ultimatum of getting his ring back or keeping the dog. He kept the dog. Her sister, a lawyer, helped her file a restraining order on him and they haven’t spoken since. Forget her, but man did he dodge a bullet.”
Her Sister Was A Bridezilla. Now They Don’t Even Talk
“My sister was a Bridezilla. She announced a two-year engagement and asked me to be MOH. Then I got the opportunity to move across the country to pursue my career. It was 18 months before her wedding and her reaction to the news was ‘You’re going to leave me here to plan my wedding all by myself?’
Like I had signed away my right to have a life for the Honor of being in her wedding. She made us all spend hundreds of dollars on specialized dresses, the bachelorette party had a dress code and a steep price tag. For 10 years before her engagement I had consistently had blue/green/purple hair but knowing she is conservative I let the color grow out. I had natural color but a short bob with an undercut that she went on about. In the lead up we talked every few days to discuss her wedding it was the closest we’d ever been and then as soon as she was married I got radio silence, and she even forgot my birthday. Needless to say we don’t speak anymore so I have no idea how her marriage is going.”
Shallow, Judgmental Folks
“Our friend – he and my husband met when KIDS so think about almost 20 years of friendship – married a bridezilla, she is evangelical and religion is pretty much her life and he was agnostic, nice metalhead geek guy.
They asked us to be one of the best man/woman. Me and my husband we are both tattooed, and when we arrived at the wedding we were his only friends. Everyone in that big wedding was from her – now also his – church.
Well, the preacher kept saying to him he had his old life and now his new life, his old friends and now the new friends. Yada, yada, yada. But all the time criticizing his old ways – the authentic way – and everyone kept looking at me and my hubby like we were beasts. Worst day ever.
She is the kind of person that wants to be an influencer. EVERY DANG THING is on her instagram, their relationship seems perfect there but he always seems so unhappy, so apathetic, specially when we used to see him, before COVID. Always talking about how they are so different, how things are like she wants.
Her stories are basically she saying he does nothing right, it’s even humiliating.
She made him stop talking to us, this last week, he got out of every group we had, he stopped answering my husband – who is very sad he lost his friends – I believe she is the one replying the few weird messages he gets.
That’s the bridezilla. It seems to be really usual for the bridezilla to act up on social media but in the real life is all messy.”
Ever Heard Of A Groomzilla?
“A bit of a change up- not a Bridezilla, but a Groomzilla. A friend of my father was remarrying, it was both his and the bride’s second time around, both in their early 40s, and an arranged marriage (think Indian orthodox Muslim stuff). The guy was an utter groomzilla. He demanded that every event is at top-notch hotels with obscenely expensive catering and hired string quartets and what not for the entertainment. Mostly paid out of the bride’s family’s pocket, I might add. The parties on the nights leading up to the main wedding event were opportunity enough for him to make a rather public dunce of himself, talking at the top of his voice and showboating the entire time. But the kicker came the next day when the bride was missing from her own wedding reception. Obviously, it was very odd and conspicuous, and the few relatives from her side made some noncommittal excuses about her not feeling well, etc.
Turns out, this idiot had divorced the poor woman right after he’d had his wedding night fun. He said that he ‘didn’t like her enough’ (and that’s an almost literal quote). So he gave her the triple divorce thing, and that was it. The marriage was officially over before the festivities even ended.”
Weddings Do Things To People
“My GF of 10 years is VERY down-to-earth and level-headed. We finally decided to get married later this year for a few reasons, and she’s feeling a lot of phantom pressure to do things a certain way. It’s not like there is an overbearing mom or catty friends applying pressure or expectations. It’s just the whole idea is overwhelming and filled to the brim with opportunities to make a decision you might end up regretting later (or forever).
I’ve taken a more active role in narrowing down options instead of asking her to pick a perfect solution out of 5,000,000 possible options. It’s helped somewhat, but there is still a lot of pressure on her (seemingly out of no-where) to make a series of decisions that all depend upon the first few BIG decisions that are weighing heavily on her/us.
All this to say… I can see how this kind of stuff could turn a normal woman into a lunatic. These types of events tend to bring latent family and friend drama to the forefront, and emotions are high before stuff even really gets started. My guess is that a lot of the Bridezillas was actually lovely people who calmed down and returned to being lovely people after the stress of the wedding stuff is removed.”
Mama Just Needed Something To Take The Edge Off
“My mom was a mother-of-the-bridezilla. She’s an alright lady generally, with her annoying habits here and there — but dang. The woman cried because we refused to have a receiving line…. we got married in our backyard. The reception was on the other side of the yard. Why the heck would we have a receiving line?! She was beside herself for the better part of an entire year worrying what we would do if it rained (we had a giant tent, and ordered like 20 umbrellas). She also had a cow that the hem on her dress had gotten pulled loose by the ridiculous rhinestone stilettos she chose to wear (to a wedding in a yard… on the grass…) I told my MOH to get her some duct tape and my mother, again, cried her eyes out. To this day she complains about the fabric runner we used for the aisle because her heels dug into it – saying how silly of a choice that was; everyone in the wedding party was aware of it, and wore wedges or flats, but she snorted that that wasn’t elegant. She LOATHED that I wore ballet flats. She was also appalled that our rehearsal dinner, which was at our home, since that’s where our wedding was, consisted of takeout from our favorite local pizza and sandwich place and the rehearsal itself was all of 10 minutes. She decried it for being “borderline trashy.”
Thankfully following the ceremony my brother gave her a joint and all was well and happy for the party thereafter.”
A Self-Admitted Bridezilla Apologizes
“I was a bridezilla. It was a small wedding, like 50 people, was going to be at a park, very casual. Everything was handmade or from the dollar store. I only ended up with a dress from a David’s because my first little boho dress i ordered was more of a shirt, so my mom and friends took me dress shopping. My mom told the lady not to tell me any prices, but I told her under $200. I tried on one dress and cried because I loved it so much. My mom bought it, and I later looked it up and saw it was $3000. So that changed everything. No more wedding at a park. So we booked a small venue. We served pizza and pies still, and the groomsmen were still wearing polos and shorts. Bridesmaids were still in some Rue21 dresses I bought for them.
I only became a bridezilla the day of. None of my family I had invited showed up, so my husband’s side was full and mine was empty. Even our friends sat on his side. Our MC read the speech I wrote before we were even at the altar, our camera died so we didn’t get the recording, I tripped going up to the altar, I had herniated a disc a week before the wedding, so I was miserable and in so much pain. I cried so hard afterwards.
It felt like it was terrible. Like everything was ruined. I did my best to hold it together, but I was so relieved when it was over. If I could do it all over, I would change everything. Especially how I acted. None of that excuses my snippy behavior or my crying. Just because I was stressed and upset and hurting, doesn’t give me the right to make others feel bad.”
A Reverse Bridezilla? I Think She Has It All Figured Out
“I think I was reverse-Bridezilla. I’ve been married twice. The first time around, had a medium-sized stressful church wedding. Parents probably spent $20k on the whole shindig, about 20 years ago. The marriage lasted less than five years.
The next time I got engaged, I was like, yeah… been there, done that on the whole ‘big wedding’ thing. Kinda think it’s a scam, not interested in planning or paying for one of those ever again. My parents had already been tapped enough and I still felt bad that they’d had to shell out for a wedding when the marriage was over so quickly. I said we should go to the JP and maybe have a nice dinner at a restaurant.
However, my husband was a little younger, had never been married, and his (huge) family was all excited over the idea of a big white wedding for their only boy. So he dug in his heels and said that he really wanted a wedding, and could we please come to a compromise.
My compromise (which I did not expect him to take me up on) was that if he really wanted a wedding, he could plan and pay for it himself. He excitedly agreed.
Well, folks… I’m here to tell you that he did was as good as his word. I was 100% checked-out of the entire wedding planning. Zero stress level. (I was a few months pregnant and working, so this was very agreeable to me.) I literally showed up when he told me. (I did go buy a wedding dress from David’s Bridal. Pointed to the first reasonably priced, reasonably attractive gown I saw, tried it on, and was out the door with it in 15 minutes.)
Wedding day comes, and my husband-to-be has gone ALL OUT. His whole family had pitched in, and they had produced a band, a sit-down dinner, flowers, a cake, horse & carriage, photographer, everything. Considerably more fun than my first wedding, and less money spent overall. Never had so much fun in my whole life. Everything was a surprise because I legitimately had no idea what he’d arranged.
My parents were so thrilled that they didn’t have to pay for a big wedding again that they sent us on a pretty nice honeymoon instead.
So I guess I married Groomzilla? But it was pretty awesome all around, no complaints!”
