What are the best/worst things you've experienced at a wedding?

[Turniptracker]

Just started planning a wedding and it got me thinking about the best and worst things about weddings I've attended in the past. The worst was a wedding where we kept getting moved from room to room for each stage of the wedding, we were kicked off the dining tables after our last mouthful of dessert and had to stand up in a cold stable with no chairs to juggle coffee and chocs (hello indigestion). Best by far, but for all the wrong reasons, was watching a groomsman rip his trousers through vigorous dancing and he was so drunk he proceeded to just rip all his clothes off and dance in his pants
Any "best things" for good reasons also welcome!

Worst- a close friend married a real tightarse. Ceremony at a lovely church but out of the way. Wedding breakfast 20 minute drive away to which my partner and daughter weren't invited as limited space in the pub and we had to pay for our own meals and drinks.
Most weddings I've been to have been lovely but my bugbear is the photo sessions lasting for an age. My partner was best man at a wedding where I knew barely anyone and he was gone for 2 hours .

90's wedding and nouvelle cuisine. Even my 2 year old was so hungry we had to stop for pizza in wT home 😂

@draughtycatflap

Best - all the lovely weddings I've been to which have been relaxed and friendly.
Worst - wedding of school friend before I was married. Invited without a plus one so had to attend alone despite having lovely boyfriend (who is now my DH of many years) who would happily have gone with me. Sat at a table of couples who were all London lawyers working for big companies and who spent the interminable meal alternately ignoring or patronising me because obviously someone who wasn't a lawyer was stupid. I was very used - due to a previous job- to attending social events / formal dinners as a single person and know how to make polite conversation but lord this was grim. Post meal spent an hour chatting with a lovely older couple and then escaped as soon as I could. Haven't seen the school friend since.

Best: the mum & step mum of the bride both dancing with her dad to "I used to love her, but It's all over now".

Best and worst: my relative got married in the Lake District. Took me 7 hours to drive up. Called up table by table for the stews/casseroles which had mostly run out by the time it was out turn. Ages waiting for photos, but stunning scenery. Cracking best man’s speech by the groom’s brother. Brilliant kids’ room with loads of jars of sweets, I hung out there for ages with distant relatives.

Best: ceilidh. OK, not everybody wants to dance, but people don't have to dance if they don't want to! They can sit around and watch and chat (and plenty did).

Worst: freezing cold marquee in November. Horrible.

I'd say that most weddings I've been to have been pants, with the bride and groom giving very little consideration to guests.

I'm talking things like leaving guests standing around for 4 hours in a small cramped hotel bar with nothing to eat and nowhere to sit, leaving guests sitting outside in blazing 30 degree sunlight whilst the photographer took photos for 3 hours (photographers are also always so bloody pushy and dominating at weddings!), tiny buffets with hardly anything to eat, happy couples that don't bother to mingle at the reception or show any appreciation of the fact that people have attended their wedding. I could go on, and on.

Best, two of my old school friends married their dfs the same year DH and I married.

One wedding- had mixed the tables up and DH and I were sat with the bride's extremely funny aunt and uncle who we'd never met. Then afterwards we danced late into the night.

Other one church and venue were in walking distance in York, and we'd got a B&B in walking distance of that. Wonderful atmosphere, met up with loads of people we hadn't seen for ages. Full of joy.

I don't remember the food or the drink, just that we had a fab time at both.

At our wedding we sat the above couples together - although I'd kept in contact from school with both, they hadn't. Now we all meet up together and are godparents to each others children. It's lovely.

Weddings that are just too long.

No one wants to go to a 12 hour party. In heels.

I refuse evening do invitations. I hate them. A disco with a sausage roll. You’re ok

Back in the day photographers took an hour at most to take photos. Four hours seems a bit OTT.

Best - the weddings where the couple radiate joy and love. This even includes the wedding where the bride had to have anti-emetic injections the morning of the wedding and there was a bucket under the front pew, just in case. But they were so, so happy.

Worst - the never-ending Baptist service where the pastor went on and on and on about how it was great the bride's father had paid for the wedding, but he was going to burn in Hell unless he joined their church at once. Incredibly hurtful. It didn't help that DC1 had just turned 1 and I was pregnant with DC2 and the service alone took 90 minutes! DC1 had run out of the ability to sit still before the bride even arrived.

The only other issues seem to be weather dependent - November weddings freezing outside while pictures were taken; a May wedding when the temp suddenly shot up to 30 degrees and there was no shade and nothing to do between the midday service and the 5pm dinner, except stand in the sunshine in the grounds of a castle (no seats either). DH took us all into the (cool, very shaded) bar in the end, as the DC were were getting more and more uncomfortable (and hungry, and antsy and cross - the box of cereal bars in my handbag was gone by 2pm!) and I was 36 weeks pregnant and about to pass out! Much muttering from older relatives about our behaviour there.

No one wants to go to a 12 hour party. In heels

I'm game.

No one wants to go to a 12 hour party. In heels

I couldn't go to a 12 minute party in heels these days.

Ooh just remembered another wedding low - marquee in Scotland in October, absolutely freezing. So unpleasant.
Then it was a hog roast with tables called one by one, serving took absolutely ages, we were starving and our table was close by the serving table but we were last so had to watch everyone else get theirs. And then for our turn the food was cold and had nearly run out.
THEN there was a ceilidh but not really enough space to do it, and someone trod on the top of my foot with their stiletto heel. It was so painful! I had a bruise for weeks.

Worst; hanging at round for hours over lunchtime waiting for the photos to be done. No seats. Everyone was miserable.

Best; Camping ones. Where people hire out a campsite, have a food truck or bbq. Seats are hay bales. Probably lots of peoples idea of hell tho.

The weather has played its part in a couple of weddings I have been too. One which was due to be outside of for the majority, with bbq, outdoor seating, games, outdoor band, dancing etc. It was torrential rain all day, so all guests ended up squashed in to the small marquee and various small barns and a conservatory. It was very disjointed, and the couple were devastated.

Another was a very large wedding, over 300 guests. It was held in a country house with huge conservatory, where the majority of the dinner tables were. The day of the wedding was one of the hottest days on record, over 36 degrees outside. Inside the packed conservatory it topped 40 degrees, we were all so uncomfortable and as soon as dinner was over a lot of people left.

All I can say is that the people who think a pay for bar is 'unheard of' in 'their circles' obviously move in very wealthy circles!!!

The only free bar wedding I have been to was my friend who's parents own a multi-million pound company and paid for absolutely everything - including for all of the 100+ guests' accommodation and taxis.

Worst - extremely long, boring speeches with endless photo slides and cringey best man jokes that half the guests couldn’t even hear in a huge hall with no microphone.

Best - generous catering of food and drink. Always goes down well.

On the subject of free drinks - it depends.

If you’re on a budget and make it clear ‘we are paying for a meal and wine, then a paying bar opens later if you want to stay to dance etc’ - fine.

If you’re expecting guests to dress up, bring a gift and then take part in a long and elaborate day of service, hanging around for photos, pre-drinks, a meal with drinks, then a dance and bar...and you don’t offer them some free drinks, I think that’s extremely tight.

Don’t have a big, longwinded white wedding if you can’t afford it!

The worst wedding I went to was when the bride's father had a huge stroke in the middle of the ceremony. Obviously everything was halted and one of the guests, who was an A&E nurse, was providing what help she could to the poor man. By the time the ambulance arrived it was fairly clear he wouldn't recover but they took him to the hospital and the bride, groom and her immediate family all went off to the hospital.

The rest of the guests stood outside the church not quite knowing what would be appropriate - to leave or to wait. In the end the best man started sending people to the reception venue. The bride and groom had decided that the guests should go ahead to the wedding breakfast. The bride and groom joined much later and only to say that her father had died and to thank everyone for coming.

They got married a few weeks later but with only immediate family present. They are still married twenty years on and we went to their eldest's 18th birthday party last autumn. No-one ever mentions the wedding.

Another cousin got married and her parent's were going through a horrible divorce at the time and it was like a soap opera wedding with the different factions all being kept apart. I felt so sorry for my cousin, it must have been a really tense and draining experience. And the seating plan must have been a logistical challenge!

My dad (bride's father's brother) couldn't stand his brother and so we were trying to just stay well clear of everyone and just be there for my cousin who was (and is) a lovely person (dad says she takes after her mum!) I was only about 12 years old but I felt very uncomfortable all day and the atmosphere was horrible.

Haven't been to many, and they ranged from pretty good to bloody fantastic. The best was my Dsis, where the meal was in the church hall, and the evening do had a live band made up of the groom and his mates. Added bonus: my youngest brother had been at college with most of them, and he hadn't seen them for 30 years.

We had a really budget wedding, and we still provided unlimited Prosecco!

I've only ever been to one free bar wedding. It was the one with the brawl. Nobody round these here parts expects a free bar at a wedding.