Wedding Guests And Participants Share 30 Instances When The Whole Celebration Went Straight To Hell
If you read any thematic website or blog dedicated to weddings, you will most likely come across various advice on how to make your wedding unforgettable. No, the advice is absolutely correct and appropriate - after all, what could be more boring than this decorous walking down the aisle, a solemn exchange of rings, a kiss to a storm of applause...
Okay, I'm just kidding. The calmer the wedding is, the better. At least for your nerves. Because otherwise, here is an absolutely mind-blowing collection of stories by netizens from all over the world who came together to answer the question “What's the worst thing you've seen happen at a wedding?” in the AskReddit community.
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
I was the matron of honor at my BFFs wedding.
Her dad was semi recently married to his 4th? Wife. So, brides “step mom” but only in name. She and the bride didn’t get along, but were surface level cordial to each other. Step mom is super weird about $. Because she had none, and married the dad for his. She was very upset about how much he spent on this wedding for his only daughter. So upset apparently, she showed up in a floor length, full on white wedding gown of her own.
The wedding coordinator sees them walk in, pulls me aside and let’s me know this b***h just walked in to the cocktail hour before the ceremony in a god damn wedding dress and asks if I think the bride should be made aware or if we should just hope she doesn’t notice until after the vows etc. I told her I would take care of it, and did. We did the “getting ready pics” in the bridal suite, and after she was all ready to go and it was 15 mins till showtime… I took the bride out to the patio overlooking her gorgeous venue, and watched her guests scurrying to find their seats and we shared a secret cigarette like we were teenagers again… and I told her that I saw her step mother in the lobby. And that i unceremoniously poured an entire glass of red wine down the front of her dress.
Very Christian ceremony. Priest is a total alcoholic who assured the wedding party he had experience. Shows up to the rehearsal and crushes a beer/finishes his smoke then doesn't know the groom should walk the isle first + a bunch of other details. Big day happens and he's drinking the church wine and forgetting his cues. Forgets to say the classic,"you may now kiss the bride". The entire audience is yelling "KISS HER" to the groom and Mr.half cut priest thinks they are egging him on. That's how the bride had her first kiss of the marriage with our local problem priest.
Alright, not a disaster, but funny.
My wife and I booked out a small hotel in Nicaragua for the wedding. I cue the music to start the ceremony, the music starts, and there's this long delay.....
All of a sudden, from around the corner we hear "MY VEIL IS STUCK IN THE CACTUS!!!!"
One of my best friends was the officiant and there's a great photo sequence of us going from puzzled to hysterical laughter up front.
I already wrote in one of my previous posts that the great Argentine writer of the 20th century, Jorge Luis Borges, divided all world literature into four main plot stories: the siege of the city, the return home, the quest, and the sacrifice of a god. I don’t know what Borges would say about this selection of wedding tell-tale stories, but they can all be roughly divided into three main plots: alcohol abuse, ordinary human stupidity and unforeseen force majeure circumstances.
My own wedding. My MIL is an alcoholic and we asked her not to drink. My FIL, her ex husband, was with his new wife. Long story short, when we were wrapping up reception she is so drunk she tried to hit him with a bottle of champagne and missed and swung around and knocked herself the f**k out..
Edit: I forgot to add the aftermath. Shocked at the upvotes because it’s a tame story compared to some on here.
We were asked to leave immediately obviously and had to do something with her. We were so mad that we decided to drop her off at the police station and they took her to detox for the night.. 😁
Edit 2: and this is the tamest story I have about my good ol’ MIL… imagine that..
Best man starts off speech with, "I've seen *the groom* with a lot of girls over the years...". You know the cliché speech where it goes on to say but you're the best for him, etc. etc. Turns out the bride and groom were dating long before the best man even became a friend. Essentially outed him as a degenerate cheater. She was super p***ed.
To begin with there were sustained 40 below zero F temps so a lot of guests did not attend at the last minute. The MOH and Best Man, who had just met the day before, disappeared for a bit and the bride searched and found that they had used the groom's parents van as a place to have sex. Problem was that MOH had just given birth to a baby a few weeks before and she was hemorrhaging. Bride left with MOH to go to the ER. In the meantime, a huge percentage of the guests started getting violently ill. As it turned out, the beef was tainted. The health department shut down the caterer some days later, and all guests had to be contacted to see who ate the beef.
This is all first hand factual info. I was there. I lived this. Thank God I ate the chicken. The couple divorced 18 months later.
Alcohol, of course, occupies a special place here. Of the forty-two stories presented in this collection, at least sixteen are related to the fact that one of the guests or direct participants in the ceremony had too much to drink. And two or three more stories are pretty questionable. No, we can certainly assume that the absolutely sober guests decided to have a little fight as a wedding entertainment, but something tells me that it couldn’t have happened without the participation of the demon drink. After all, the wedding fistfight is a long and noble tradition, dating back almost to ancient times.
Conservative Baptist sister’s wedding.
My older sister at her wedding reception had music playing on speakers, naturally (we grew up listening to a lot of RnB so a lot of this was playing). Suddenly the music just stopped and remained off for the remainder of the evening, really odd atmosphere. Turns out the pastor and his wife had gone up to her at her table and told her if she didn’t turn off her ungodly music they would leave. So she being a devout Christian girl just turned it off for them. At her own wedding. I would have just been like “ Ok don’t let the door hit your judgemental butts on the way out.”
I went to a friend of mines Aunts wedding. It was a second marriage for both of them so they wanted something “relaxed”
They threw it on one of the family members property and had all the guest do grueling manual labor to get the property ready for the wedding. We were literally landscaping in the Texas summer.
I was climbing trees to hang lights, we laid sod, we laid down stone for a walk way, my friends mom cooked food for days and made all of the floral arrangements. We were setting up tables and chairs, you name it. We worked from 6am until almost midnight for 3 days.
Finally the wedding happens and it’s beautiful. I was actually really proud of what we had done. It looked professional.
We go to cut the cake and the couple is no where to be found. They just left without telling anyone and went back to their hotel. I was offended by that because we had worked SO HARD for them and they didn’t even stay for the entire wedding.
We never got a thank you or any appreciation for it. Other people were upset too and took their gifts back before leaving.
In case anyone is wondering about the photo, the care home industry in the U.S. uses the term “elopement” as a euphemism for “escape” or “wandering off.”
Bride was dancing during the reception, fell and broke her left arm. Lots of pictures from the ER- photographer went with them! When the Dr. heard he’d be setting a bride’s arm, he put on a suit! They worked hard to get the swelling down so she wouldn’t have to have her brand new wedding ring cut off. Crazy.
ETA: I was in the wedding party, I was 10, this was a long time ago! The bride was my aunt. The fall happened after dinner. Before they left for the hospital the cake was quickly brought out for the bride and groom to cut. Everyone went on partying after they left. I haven't seen the pics since she got them back from the photographer. I remember pics of her and the Dr. in the suit, my uncles in their tuxes doing wheelies in wheelchairs, and her red rimmed eyes while cutting the cake.
“It’s not surprising that wedding stories are often associated with some ridiculous cases or drunken antics,” says Denis Tsykanovsky, a wedding host from Tel-Aviv, Israel, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment here. “In the end, a wedding is perhaps the largest event that the average person organizes in their entire life, and in the end, by the ceremony itself, nervous tension reaches its climax. Some people cannot stand it and break down right at the ceremony, others successfully overcome this stage and then relax... and then His Majesty Alcohol enters the scene..."
“I have seen a lot of funny situations at weddings, but professional ethics, of course, do not allow me to tell anything. I would like to note just one more nuance - very often at wedding parties there are many people at the table who either do not know each other at all or know each other very superficially. And where there are strangers and alcohol combined, all sorts of strange things can always happen..." Denis smiles.
As bride was walking down the aisle organist hit every wrong note. My friend said to me "this is the only thing you will remember about this wedding". That is until the brides father (who was marrying the couple) introduced the newlyweds as his new son in law and slightly used daughter. You could have heard a pin drop
The groom tried to do a little dip kiss on the bride before they walked back up the aisle… he dropped her a*s on the floor.
Everyone let out a collective gasp, that immediately turned to snorting chortled laughter. It was the most awkward thing I’ve ever witnessed in real life.
Thankfully the bride was my sister, and I will get to remind her of this forever. AND have photo evidence 😂
My wedding. Evening was wrapping up and I hadnt seen my new-husband in a while. He had taken off to local bars to continue partying with friends. Without.His New.Bride. My BIL (as advised by my heavily pregnant sister) escorted me to find him somewhere. We were in our mid-30s!!
I'm daily grateful for my sister and BIL in my life. And even more grateful ex is long gone.
What can we even talk about if at my own wedding, or rather after it, when my wife and I were left alone in the bedroom, our curtain rod unexpectedly collapsed, and we spent nearly half of our wedding night putting it back in place and mending everything around it... I think you also have some incredible narratives under your belt, so please feel free to tell your own stories in the comments, but not before you read our entire list. Just believe me, there is something to crack up at here.
12 speeches, 2 musical numbers, one PowerPoint presentation.
My brother's second wedding. For the first dance, the DJ played the wrong song for half a second before stopping, and starting the right song. The Bride disappeared for 2 hours afterwards because "the wedding was ruined."
This happened at my own wedding reception
My mother's best friend just got out of a sloppy divorce. Truly horrible. She proceeded to get blind drunk. During the speeches, she gets up from her seat, completely blacked out, throws up all over her table. She proceeded to p**s herself and pass out on said table and flipped it. In the fall, her dress managed to rip and she was completely naked on the floor. We had first responders as guests at our wedding so they managed to get her wrapped up in a table cloth and carry her outside to an ambulance that showed up rather quickly.
Edit; I'm no wordsmith
Blacked out, vomits, pisses herself, flips the table and rips the dress to being butter naked....all in 5 seconds
My cousin married into a very religious family. During the after party somebody spiked the punch so to rid the room of the sin of alcohol one of the religious people set the table and punch bowl on fire.
A giant brush tail possum fell through the ceiling at my cousin's wedding. The bartenders managed to chase it with a broom into the supply closet behind the bar before calling security, who called a pest removalist.
I went to a small 20ish people wedding in the Tuscan hillside of Italy. It was at this old castle. As the bride was giving her speech a phone started to loudly ring. Everyone was looking around to see who the idiot was. Ended up it was one of the priests who was standing just infront of them…. What made it way worse was the guy picked up the call and started talking loudly. The bride understandably was like “are you f*****g kidding me!?”
Does make me kinda laugh to think how much they must have spent for their special day to have that happen.
I had to break up a fistfight between the groom and the mother of the bride.
I dated a girl in high school. It didn’t last, but we remained friends. At her wedding, her dad told me how he wished it was me marrying his daughter and how he always assumed we would get married. They had several pictures on display. I was in more pics than the groom.
My first time attending a Syrian wedding they raise the bride up on a chair on the dance floor and she fell right off, then they try to get the poor thing back up on it and shes like " I'm good" 😅
The bride’s water broke
Can someone please come up with a “plus one” joke? It’s in there, but I can’t figure it out!
It started super late, it was super hot out, the future father-in-law was wasted and left before it started. He then showed back up in a red bath robe and his gun. Cops got called. It was a whole thing.
Oh, and then after the reception we were all trying to convince one of our friends not to drive. He insisted he was fine... Drove his truck into the river.
Husband making out with a bridesmaid on the dancefloor. I know a portion of the friends there knew they had an open relationship but I seriously doubt grandma and Aunt Carol were in on it
We got to the church and took our seats. Vibe was off, but didn’t think much of it. Then the start time passed and nothing happens, didn’t think much of it. Finally I said something to a friend next to us, something like, “gee this is late?”
“Yeah it’s terrible isn’t it?”
“Huh? What?”
“Oh you didn’t hear …”
The entire wedding party got food poisoning from the rehearsal dinner the night before. One bridesmaid, then another, then siblings, parents, bride and groom, everybody. They had a small ceremony at the bride’s parents house. No church ceremony but a short talk from the pastor (in part to kill time before the reception). They made a short appearance at the reception, but that was it. Just wholly unfair.
The bridesmaids gave a short* presentation about some mlm health and beauty thing before the wedding ceremony. Apparently it was the bride's idea.
*Like half an hour
Grooms dad had a pool running on how long before the couple split. He had 3 years locked in. I put fifty bucks on 5.
They're still together, and, honestly, they deserve each other in the worst way.
Well, let me tell you about this one time I saw the groom accidentally confess his undying love for the maid of honor instead of the bride during his speech. Chaos ensued. Good times, good times.
… week before the wedding my then gf, groom and his fiancée were driving home for four hours from another persons wedding. Fiancée wasn’t nice to him. Just the kinda things you don’t say in general and def not in front of outsiders.
Two days later, 4 days before the wedding, I told him I don’t think he should marry her. She’s not nice to him. In our culture it’d be a thing and I told him no one who loves him would care. I did this in a public setting as I was fully expecting him to punch me. He did not. We finished our beers and went home. I was still invited to the wedding.
Day of wedding we are all seated and waiting for stuff to start. Grooms brother comes and says “groom needs your help”… I thought it was help with tying a tie because he was bad at that.
I get upstairs to the room and he’s in a wife beater and basketball shorts with his mom and dad. He says “you were right. I can’t do this. Help me”. Parents want to slaughter me but I know deep down inside they were happy about it. I know this because I am just that arrogant and believe no one would ever be mad at me for real.
I offer an escape plan. He leaves.
I return to sit next to gf and say “no wedding. Play it cool”… ten min later brides mom comes down says wedding is off and leaves the room.
Everyone is stunned. We casually leave.
Gf wants recap of my convo from the bar. I tell her. She blames me. I say love works in mysterious ways. She says I’m an idiot.
This was roughly 15 years ago.
The best man giving the toast at the reception and saying the groom’s first wife’s name instead of the current one
Note: this post originally had 42 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Pandas., if I ever. say I'm going to get married you all have premission to show up at my house with bats and actual angry pandas.
Bats as in baseball or the flying kind? (I have access to both.)
Load More Replies...
Acquaintance married into an toxic marriage. I asked her later after all this drama came to light, did she know he was like this before the wedding. She said yes, she knew. I asked why she went through with it. She said too many people were involved in making the wedding happen so she didn’t want to cancel it. Like potential kidnapping, restraining orders, and the like type toxicity. Seriously people, if the red flags are a waving, DO NOT go through with the wedding. It’s not worth it !
Ah, wish I could add my stories. Let's see, at my sister's funeral, our cousin pitched a fit b/c she felt mys ister's death overshadowed her Big Day (which was the next day) and to which none of us were even invited anyway; groom pushed cake into bride's face and she decked him; drunken groomsmen in kilts kicked up their feet and gave entire of everyone a glimpse of their circumcision status; man planned a surprise wedding, and she said no (smart move in her case); and at my lunch, which was all the "wedding" we had (went to a judgge), my dad and my FIL stood there telling us we were utter idiots for marrying. Ah,t he warm fuzzies.
Pandas., if I ever. say I'm going to get married you all have premission to show up at my house with bats and actual angry pandas.
Bats as in baseball or the flying kind? (I have access to both.)
Load More Replies... Acquaintance married into an toxic marriage. I asked her later after all this drama came to light, did she know he was like this before the wedding. She said yes, she knew. I asked why she went through with it. She said too many people were involved in making the wedding happen so she didn’t want to cancel it. Like potential kidnapping, restraining orders, and the like type toxicity. Seriously people, if the red flags are a waving, DO NOT go through with the wedding. It’s not worth it !
Ah, wish I could add my stories. Let's see, at my sister's funeral, our cousin pitched a fit b/c she felt mys ister's death overshadowed her Big Day (which was the next day) and to which none of us were even invited anyway; groom pushed cake into bride's face and she decked him; drunken groomsmen in kilts kicked up their feet and gave entire of everyone a glimpse of their circumcision status; man planned a surprise wedding, and she said no (smart move in her case); and at my lunch, which was all the "wedding" we had (went to a judgge), my dad and my FIL stood there telling us we were utter idiots for marrying. Ah,t he warm fuzzies.
