Oh, no. Weddings are supposed to be the happiest times of your life but for these unlucky people, it has been a nightmare. Content has been edited for clarity.
Chaos Ensues
“I didn’t attend a wedding, but I worked at one that was a disaster.
It was many years ago when I was a barman in an Irish hotel.
The hotel was struggling, so I took a wedding booking from a well-known criminal family who was involved in illegal substances and burglary. Their daughter was marrying a member of a similar family from the other side of the country.
These families were very large, so the wedding was huge. The bride has asked us not to serve spirits, which was making people pretty angry as they were all in for the spirits and Redbull.
Most switched to cider, and we had an entire shed full of the stuff.
About two hours into the reception, things hit the fan.
The first sign something was wrong was that all the women suddenly made a beeline for the door. Thankfully one of the floor managers had seen this before and pulled the waitresses out the moment she saw it.
Once the women were clear of the floor, the men started laying into one another. I saw a bottle fly past and we pulled the shutter down over the bar.
It was the biggest brawl I had ever seen.
It was easily fifty men plucking the heads off of one another. Someone drove a car into our emergency exit. Chairs went through windows. The fight spilled out to the rest of the hotel, while the staff was locked behind the bar or in the kitchen.
We called the Gardaí, but they took their time coming as they obviously didn’t want to get into the middle of a massive brawl. They were happy to let them tire each other out.
We didn’t have enough security to make any difference since the owners were morons and couldn’t afford it anyway.
Finally, when it was over we had to comp every other guest.
We had a shed still full of cider, which we essentially had to do three for two offers on for months.
We spent the rest of that night, until about four in the morning, cleaning up blood (I’ve never seen so much blood before or since), glass, and human feces.
The place never recovered.
We had to cancel the next three weddings due to the damage. And once word got around, we couldn’t get any more. Locals avoided the place. It was sold six months later at a huge loss.”
Fly Away
“The wedding was at a Napa Valley winery, during the tech boom of the 90s.
The groom was frat-boyish and the bride was blonde, brittle, and glossy. They were both prone to using marketing and techspeak in conversation.
For example, they’d say, ‘Let’s right-click on that and drill down’ or ‘It’s not an IRL shop, more of a clicks-and-mortar thing.’
The wedding invitation was in the form of a merger announcement on a mocked-up Wall Street Journal page. It read, ‘Smith Global announces merger with Jones Limited. The combination delivers significant potential to drive long-term affection growth and market share of love.’
That kind of thing.
Still, the guy was a friend, and my date and I went to show our support.
The first really weird thing that happened was the bride’s twin brother came out before the wedding, got the bride to perch on a stool in front of everyone, and serenaded her, on his knees, with a guitar.
He wrote the song.
It was a love ballad with such barely-concealed incestuous longing that everyone was frozen with discomfort. He sang of how beautiful his sister was, how any man would be lucky to have her.
I can’t remember the whole thing, but this lyric seared itself into my brain: ‘Lips touching. Tongues dancing. They give each other the look that can mean just one thing.’
It was not done for laughs; he was crying as he sang, and everyone who saw, looked like they wanted to drop through the floor.
Then the wedding.
There were two sets of chairs set up in a lovely courtyard garden. The aisle down the middle led to a bower. We all seated ourselves on the chairs, which had white upholstery.
The ceremony itself wasn’t that bad. My date and I thought things might be picking up. It didn’t last too long, and there were no more lurid songs from the bride’s brother.
But then it ended, and the minister said, ‘And now, I ask each of you to reach under your chairs for the small, white envelope you will find there. Each one contains a live Monarch butterfly. We will release them into the air and let them soar free, as a symbol of the love these two have for each other.’
Everyone.
Froze.
Whoever had set up the area had put the envelopes on, not under, the chairs.
White envelopes. Little white envelopes, on snow-white chair seats. Open-mouthed with horror, all the guests reached down and found the envelopes. We opened them.
Most were dead and squashed into bloody smears.
But a good amount was just horribly maimed. These poor butterflies had been sat on for the better part of 45 minutes. We watched in shock as these broken and mangled butterflies that were missing a wing or some legs or a tail, flopped onto the ground and twitched out their death agonies.”
At Your Discretion
“The worst one was where the best man gave the speech.
This best man was a little too under the influence. But you know when some people get inebriated, they ‘spill the beans?’
Well, he did.
You could tell what was going to happen too. I sat there thinking he was going to say how he slept with a lady of the night on his bucks night or was actually into men. Or something shocking along those lines, but what he said was way worse.
The best man staggered up saying how beautiful the bride looked and was nice enough with those remarks. He then said she’d have trouble with the groom in bed because he had a rather small package.
He then started yelling, ‘Small package, small package’ while being dragged off by his mates.
The groom slumped his head into his hands out of utter embarrassment and had actual tears.
Obviously, something he’s had to deal with his entire life. His wife got up, was sobbing, and ran out. We sat at our table thinking how after not even 24 hours, this marriage was over. Turned out this couple had both been saving themselves for this marriage too.
I felt horrible for both of them.
Almost ten years later they were still married and had two awesome kids. And they were very happy together. Turned out she didn’t care at the end of the day and that he made her very happy (in the sack) or so they say jokingly whenever we catch up with them.
Still, the most awkward thing I had ever seen at a wedding.”
Guess Who
“I went to a wedding where the groom had dated the same girl for like six years.
And we all loved her.
But they broke up, and he married his jump-off piece like six months later.
When people got the invite, they glanced at it and assumed he was marrying his long-term girlfriend.
We got to the chapel, and were like, ‘Who the heck is this?’
It was an insanely expensive wedding with probably around 200 people, but basically, not everyone was treated the same.
I found out at the reception that only some people were given plus ones.
I wasn’t one of them, so my then-fiance had to stay at home while I went to this wedding where I knew absolutely no one.
I was okay with it because I thought it was a small wedding. But then I got there and started talking to people and we realized some folks were allowed to bring dates and others weren’t.
Awkward.
The bartender spent the entire reception trying to hit on the groom’s 14-year-old sister by plying her with spirits. I had assigned seating at a table full of the groom’s mean college bros.
To top it off, they did the whole ‘take pictures between the ceremony and the reception’ thing, which is fine.
Except it took four hours and they didn’t serve any food until the wedding party arrived.
They had split within a year or two anyway.
Good people, don’t get me wrong, but holy moly that was a bad wedding.”
Down Below
“It was my own wedding, and I wouldn’t call it a disaster, but it was definitely tragic.
We had our wedding in Costa Rica in a remote part of the Nicoya Peninsula. About 30 of our friends and family came along for the beach destination wedding, including two childhood friends of mine who were now together.
Everything was going great when about two hours before the ceremony my friend went for a quick swim.
He got caught in a riptide, was pulled under, and drowned.
After someone from the hotel staff got him out of the water it had been about 15 minutes, and he was definitely gone.
Myself, the man from the hotel staff, and my friend’s girlfriend started CPR while we waited for an emergence crew with a defibrillator to arrive. I alternated with the worker doing compressions while the girlfriend did the rescue breaths. It took just over an hour for the crew to arrive, check him, declare his death, and got ready to transport him.
Over an hour of CPR.
After that, we had about an hour before the ceremony. I went to a quiet yoga room, meditated for 20 minutes, got cleaned up and dressed, then got married.
The ceremony was beautiful.
It was somewhat hippy and spiritual with a lot of love. My sister married us on the beach in the center of a circle of friends and family. Everyone there was so emotional, it was very much a celebration of life and love.
Very intense.
As I said, I wouldn’t call the wedding a disaster, but the day was very tragic.
I lost an amazing friend, and the world lost a really great guy.”
Hidden Desires
“My husband’s stepmother approached me at the bridal shower and told me he was a loser and I shouldn’t marry him.
‘He would never amount to anything and had always been a disaster,’ she told me.
She later gave money to the best man and asked him to take my husband to an entertainment club, then paid for a lady of the night. She told several groomsmen to try and talk him out of it. My father-in-law asked why our wedding was so cheap.
I said because we were paying for it ourselves.
He said, ‘Your dad doesn’t have a job? He can’t pay for his own daughter’s wedding?’
I told him I was 26 and my father was ill.
This was on the morning of the wedding.
My brother-in-law brought a girl he was seeing, unannounced. The girl stood outside and smoked the entire time. The stepmom pulled me aside at the rehearsal and told me I needed to make more time to make the girl feel comfortable.
I should ‘find a place for her in the wedding, she said.
Later that night, my brother-in-law stumbled over to my hotel room, under the influence, and said his girlfriend was angry with him and they’d had a fight. Also mentioned he was a better catch than his brother, my husband, and I should give him a chance.
He lunged at me and started trying to kiss and lick my neck.
During the actual wedding, the stepmother and mother-in-law (husband’s mom) both cried loudly because we didn’t include them in the ceremony. They got into an argument at the reception.
My grandfather yelled at and shoved me when he saw I had a tattoo. He said they were forbidden in the bible and I should be ashamed of myself.
My husband was in the military at the time and we had actually legally gotten married at a courthouse six months before.
We only had the wedding because all these family members had multiple grandkids from a variety of unmarried partners and wanted ‘at least one’ of their children to have a church wedding.
In retrospect, the whole thing was stupid.
I wish we just eloped and had a tiny thing on the beach where he was stationed.”
Minus One
“I was the best man’s date to a wedding.
Through this, bear in mind, that I was only the best man’s date and knew nobody at the wedding.
There were seven bridesmaids. Three of them got into a car crash on the way to the rehearsal dinner. Fortunately, no one got hurt but the car was totaled. One of them went home and didn’t go to the wedding. They hadn’t arranged transportation for the wedding party from the hotel to the rehearsal. I offered to drive, but was kicked out of my own (new and first ever) car to make space for another bridesmaid, because ‘that’s what the bride asked for.’
The rehearsal dinner didn’t start until 11 pm and most of the bride and groom’s families didn’t come because they couldn’t wait and ate early.
The bride was several hours late to the ceremony. It turned out the horse and carriage that were supposed to transport the bride to the wedding had gone to the wrong hotel.
This delayed it by over an hour.
Eventually, they made it to her hotel and picked her and the wedding party up. The carriage was drawn by two horses. On the way to the wedding, one of the horses fell into a ditch and broke its leg. The other one watched this, had a heart attack, and died. The flower girl was on the carriage and was told that the horsey had gone to sleep.
Also, the bride’s sister had a severe allergic reaction to the food at the reception and had to be rushed to the hospital.”
Placing Bets
“My poor husband and I had to attend a wedding last year where he had the dubious honor of being the best man.
The bride was dressed in what looked like a negligee but neglected to wear underwear.
Every pube was visible and so was each and every dimple on her booty. Even if she had had the figure of a supermodel, this dress was just too lightweight and see-through to go without underwear.
The ceremony was super quick but then came an interminable wait for the guests whilst they had pictures taken.
The father of the bride’s speech consisted of ‘as this is the third time we’ve done this, I’ll keep it short and just welcome the groom to the family.’
Yeah, and she was only just 30.
The groom’s parents left by eight pm.
No guests turned up for the evening, so it was only the daytime guests who were there. The bride had selected a playlist for the DJ. Mainly consisted of songs like Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda.’
Uncensored.
With kids there.
Most of the guests had gone home bored by nine pm, but my poor husband and the groom’s sister managed to keep upbeat until even the DJ got bored at 10.
It was awful.
Really really awful.
Even her friends were not being quiet about how long this marriage would last her and how the groom will be chewed up and spit out in no time because she’s such a jealous control freak.
Heck, my husband asked the groom if he would be his best man.
But he wasn’t even allowed to come to our wedding, let alone be best man because he’d see other women there.”
Blown Away
“My second cousin got married in Vermont in the springtime and the weather report called for a ‘chance of showers.’
As a result, they rented a huge, circus-sized tent to put up and covered the entire meadow they were going to have the reception in. It easily covered all 80 attendees, plus the tables and chairs.
It was massive.
The meadow was also next to a pond, which will come into play a little later. The ceremony beforehand was in a church about two miles away. The bride arrived via motorcycle because her dad was in the local Harley Davidson club.
During the ceremony at the church, it started to rain outside.
Just a drizzle, no big deal.
The bride and groom hopped onto the backs of their motorcycle convoy Harley’s and rode off to the reception venue. About a minute after they started off, the light drizzle turned into full-on tropical storm winds with sleet and hail. They did not turn back but rode through the storm to the venue.
When the rest of us arrived, we found quite a scene. The tent had come off of its moorings. The groom and groomsmen all had their shirts off and were wrestling the tent back into place. The bride was completely soaked through her white dress and was covered in all of the groomsmen’s jackets while she waited for her change of clothes to arrive.
She was actually very calm and cool the whole time, even laughed it up a bit. She was a pretty rad chick.
The wind was blowing so much that the pond had two-foot waves crashing over its edge and splashing one of the tables near the bridesmaids.
The rest of the guests and I all ran up to help with the tent. And just as we were getting it back in place, the wind gusted in the opposite direction and literally blew one of the bridesmaids into the pond.
So things did not go as planned.
The bride and groom, however, remained jovial the entire time; they were terrific and never stopped smiling.
The wind died down about 20 minutes later and we were able to have the reception, with the only downside being that there was about an inch of water throughout the meadow for a while.
Everyone got drenched but we all had a good time, and two beautiful people got married.”
It Won’t Stop
“I work as an event planner.
It was the wedding of two fairly wealthy families, and the bride had decided on a rather rural, ‘shabby chic’ aesthetic. The reception, she decided, would take place on family property, in a historic barn.
This caused a huge flurry of issues, between having to have the barn cleaned, the fact that we needed auxiliary tents as the barn wasn’t large enough, and the fact that the property lacked electricity and running water.
The latter was solved with a bank of generators, tubs of water for catering, and a side tent with portajohns hidden inside.
The bride had, to be honest, been quite a bridezilla, but it was my job to deal with those things. At this point, the ceremony had ended, happy hour was shutting down and professional photos were taken. We were prepping to transition to the entrance of the bridal party, which would be followed immediately by the first dance and cake cutting.
During this, the dinner would be staged, so every aspect was being fairly carefully timed out.
I was speaking to the caterer when I happened to glance over and see the most curious blend of expressions pass over the bride’s face, and she frantically waved down my assistant.
A few moments later, my headset beeped on, and my assistant said, ‘We have an issue.’
It turned out the bride had gambled on a fart and lost in a big way.
Now, the bride was wearing a huge, full ball gown, with a fitted, bones strapless top in a sort of embellished mesh. Underneath, she had a shaper garment and hoops and slips.
We had already realized there was zero way of her going to the bathroom. We had issues getting her into a limo, and having her use portajohns meant one of us would have to get personal.
That was my assistant’s job.
I radioed everyone to expect a fifteen-minute delay, and they headed towards the tent.
The fifteen minutes passed.
Then twenty.
Finally, my earpiece beeped. ‘The previous issue is more than we anticipated.’
I ran over to find my assistant looking horrified.
The bride, it turned out, had been using some health shakes in an attempt to fix last-minute bloating.
This had mixed poorly with the refreshments from earlier, and she had eaten a fairly decent breakfast. The substance had come out of her body as a result defied explanation. It was slimy, oily even, with stringy bits and the consistency of hair gel.
Not only had it been a rather profound accident, but the smell was unrivaled.
Generally, a substance no human body should emit.
But the thing that set it over the edge was that the shaper the bride wore was a latex deal that came down over the thighs and up to her bra. Waterproof, the poo had just sort of filled it, like a water balloon of horror. My assistant had opened up the snap crotch and just released the evil trickling down the bride’s thighs.
My assistant quickly sealed it back up and she and the bride vainly tried to wipe up the goo, dry, with toilet paper.
This just spread it around, so they decide to give up.
Now I have a shell-shocked assistant and a crying bride.
You can smell her four feet away. The bride was flipping out that she was making her guests wait, that she has a choreographed dance waiting to happen, and she needs to be introduced now.
I’m just looking at her manicured nails.
There was a residue of diarrhea embedded in her nail bed.
I tried to scrape the poo out with a fabric stain wipe, while the bride insisted that the show must go on, immediately.
I gave in that this was an issue that would have to wait, and signaled to start introductions. The groom looked vaguely disconcerted by his new wife’s odor, but I told my assistant to distract him until they took the floor.
Introductions happened, the dance started, and we found some fresh horror.
The dance was a choreographed affair, and as the groom spun his bride around, hand on her waist, he was squishing the poo up the insides of the waist trainer, up and out the back waistband.
To our horror, we watched as an oily stain spread across the mid back of the gown. As we were still cringing from this, the groom set his hand firmly in the middle of the poo stain.
The action had to be taken.
As soon as the couple left the dance floor, it was obvious. And I left my assistant in charge while I made preparations.
She kept radioing me, ‘The stain was spreading, she could smell the poo from her spot by the DJ.’
They were cutting the cake now. They were feeding the cake to each other, both now with poop-stained fingers. Each was looking downright repulsed.
As they left the dance floor, I had someone rush wet naps to the groom and to bring me the bride. The support tent was closed down for me, and I pulled a tub of clean water from the caterers. She walked in to find me in dish gloves and a poncho, like ‘American Psycho.’
The five minutes I was sponging down a sobbing, undressed bride, while I questioned every life decision that lead to this point.
The diarrhea was everywhere, spread in a thin layer across her body. It may be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever dealt with. With her clean, I threw away the waist shaper and scrubbed down the fifteen thousand dollar wedding gown back in a plastic basin. The inner lining was a loss, and I cut it out completely.
Dressed again, and offered a Xanax, the bride was a little worse for wear, except for missing her dinner.
The support tent smelled like a sewer and was closed for the remainder of the event.
The groom was a sport, he never directly said anything. But he asked if we could cancel the garter toss as he didn’t really want to go under her skirt.
Pictures from the event appeared in a magazine.
Still, the photos, away from the smell, were beautiful.”
