To ask about the worst wedding you’ve been too

[Whereisthecoffee]

I’m planning mine and I could just ask for tips but instead I’m going to procrastinate and read stories.
Please share your stories !

Five hours wait whilst the bride messed around having photographs done to her exact specifications. A few guests left. No drinks or food provided.

I dislike expensive bars, being persuaded to stay over to reduce the costs of the venue for the couple, little food and requests for cash.

If you are host, you should do it right and ensure guests are happy.

I’ve been to two outside in the blazing sun at the height of summer. Everyone dressed up and sweating because of the heat and humidity. The first was unpleasant. The second I was pregnant and actually started to fall down, but thankfully someone caught me. One person did pass out and end up on the ground.

My biggest wedding tip is think about guest comfort.

Although I enjoyed this wedding two things stuck out.
Lack of seats for the ceremony. My family was separated and some people had to stand. This was puzzling as the bride had told me she had paid for the chairs to be covered in specific colours.

Lovely summers day but inside the church was freezing. They kept breaking the service to take photos so the ceremony took far longer than normal. Service had been quite early but after trek to country house there were was no refreshments until late afternoon. Couldn’t even buy a drink. This was all whilst lots more photos were taken. For the only meal we were sat on a table with people we didn’t know. Fine usually but they all did and made very little effort with us beyond hello. They spent all the time catching up. This was compounded when the brides Mum - they were her friends - came and squeezed in making my husband have to ask for desert as she’d taken his and then effectively eat it on his lap. She was rude and talking through your the speeches even her husbands!

I think the OP's wedding is fine actually.

"You are invited to a reception to celebrate the marriage of xxx at 6pm.... blah blah
The ceremony is being held at XX at noon and you are very welcome to attend if you wish"

The key is that the guests have been told that there is no afternoon reception and no obligation to attend the ceremony, so its up to them whether they go and what they do in the afternoon.

Its invites for the whole day that includes a 6 hour gap and no warning (and often nowhere to go and buy food/drink) that is the issue.

I think the OP's wedding is fine actually.

"You are invited to a reception to celebrate the marriage of xxx at 6pm.... blah blah
The ceremony is being held at XX at noon and you are very welcome to attend if you wish"

The key is that the guests have been told that there is no afternoon reception and no obligation to attend the ceremony, so its up to them whether they go and what they do in the afternoon.

Its invites for the whole day that includes a 6 hour gap and no warning (and often nowhere to go and buy food/drink) that is the issue.

Canapes always seem like a good idea . You can cater for say 6 per person but in reality , what happens is that they get grabbed by those nearest the doors to the waiting people coming in and it gets worse the longer people have to wait for photos etc to be finished , I've been to many a wedding where you are lucky to get even one!

Posted too soon
No seating plan for a sit down meal!
My dcs say at a table and myself and dp arrived at the table at the same time as other guests. I told them that the already seated dcs were ours and instead of moving to another table the other guests just laughed and say down. I was furious but didn't want to cause a scene at the wedding.
To make matters worse, one couple were not with the others who say at the table! So the couple could have swapped tables with us but no being twats they insisted on ditto g next to our dc.
After the meal whilst I was speaking to my dd, one of the guest on the table asked if we were ok sitting away from our dc, quick as a flash dd1 retorted "Well it's no use asking now is it, you should have moved before."

My family often have long gaps between ceremony and reception because it is typical for the religion. The typical solution is to get a family member who lives near by to host a lunch. Nothing fancy. It might be sandwiches. Once it was chili. Everyone who doesn’t live close heads to the family members house, takes off their shoes, has a bite to eat, and generally freshens up. It’s very casual and gives out of town guests a chance to catch up. If it’s a big crowd, host at multiple houses, just assign them in advance.

the one where my dd then aged 2 years and 9 months was a bridesmaid for my Ex Best Friend. The bride had limited experience of small children and was really quite impatient with her over a few things. Such as not letting her go to the toilet after the ceremony because she wanted to get straight on with the photos and then taking over an hour having also disappeared off to have some more photos done in the park, with my DD and her much older (in her 20s) bridesmaid, no car seat provided for my DD just a normal seatbelt slung halfway across her neck. Poor DD had only been toilet trained for a couple of months, how she managed to hang on and wait for the best part of nearly 2 hrs I don't know, but she somehow managed not to have an accident.
Same bride complained when I changed DD out of her bridesmaids dress for the evening do into something more comfortable and insisted she put her dress back on (she just wanted to play with the other kids there by that stage and kept tripping over in her long dress which she had spent all day in already), and grumbled again when DD finally flaked out and fell asleep at around 9pm (several hours after her normal bedtime), as she wanted to show her off in her dress to all the guests who had only come for the evening do. DD had been good as gold all day (surprising as she could be a mischief) and had behaved herself, but I was not about to wake her as suggested so that she could be paraded around whilst exhausted - that wasn't part of the bridesmaid deal.

Same bride asked me to style my DD's hair a certain way (think multiple complicated French braids and ringlets) which I did. A couple of hours before the wedding she called me and asked me to go to her house (I lived on same street) and do the other bridesmaid's hair in the same style- which I did and it took me about 50 mins. She then said that her own hair wasn't going right, would I mind doing hers too? CF wanted to save money by not paying for a hairdresser, now I wouldn't have minded if asked in advance, but this was an hour before the wedding. All whilst trying to supervise my 2 year old and keep her out from under the feet of the bride, and MOB and I was still in jeans and tee shirt at this point. I had fifteen mins to dash home, and fling my outfit on, had to forgo my shower, run a brush through my hair and chuck on some make up. Bearing in mind that I had been up since the crack of dawn making food for her buffet, which was all home made from various family and friends as they didn't want to pay for caterers (they weren't struggling financially, just very tight). (Ex) Husband and I pulled up at the church at the same time as the bridal car, and met them in the foyer. She then had the cheek to complain that we were late!! We sprinted into the church ahead of them just as the bridal march started up.

Not friends any more, not to do with the wedding but because she was a selfish twat and I eventually came to realise this and cut contact with her when I moved away.

Agree with everyone else that long gaps and insufficient food are the worst. Best wedding I went to was mine haha. I'm not just saying that as most of the guests said the same- we're both very low maintenance so we treated it like one big party.

Wedding at 2pm for 120 guests... reception venue 10 minutes away in central London... food served at 3.30pm (free bar all day and night incl cocktails/ any drink of choice as we had a tab on the bar). Literally the quickest food service I've ever experienced at a wedding... the waiters were excellent. Speeches after food...short and funny... just 30 minutes for all the speeches. Evening pub food served at 8pm. And partied until 2am. Was fab...most guests didn't need to travel so could stay late and for those that did travel, being in central London meant there were plenty of travel & accommodation options.

We had such a good time that we completely forgot to take formal wedding & couple photos That's my only regret but maybe the day wouldn't have gone as smoothly if we'd broken it up for pictures.

I think if you treat it like the best party you're ever going to throw (dont scrimp on food, alcohol, seating, space or music) then guests will enjoy it. My dress was only £500, I did my own make-up so most of our budget went on food, drinks and venue.

What's an 'Irish goodbye', @PennyMordauntsLadyBrain?

It's when you leave an event without letting people know. I'm a fan of that kind of exit.

A colleague's wedding where there were lots of her relatives who were wearing clothes that weren't exactly appropriate for church (we could all tell one of them wasn't wearing any knickers ) and were quite drunk at the church service, this obviously wasn't a good start and it went down hill from there. The food at the reception was a buffet which was supposed to be hot but was actually cold and greasy and turned into a food fight when one drunken relative insulted the GF of another and the brides dress was ripped. I was pregnant at the time and used this as an excuse to leave early. Best decision ever as apparently it got worse after I left.
All other weddings I've been to have been lovely and they've varied from big extravagant affairs to lovely intimate ones.

As everyone has said waiting around with no food is the worst. The other awful thing is speeches that are too long. No speech should last longer than 10 minutes, or include photos or in jokes.

The worst wedding I went to, was actually quite a nice do, but the speeches went on for ages! There were two best men who did a 'quiz' for the couple, clearly designed to embarrass the groom, and had 30 I repeat 30 questions with multiple choice answers and they read out all of them! I was bored after about question 3, and then the best mate of the bride wanted to make a speech, which was also shit. I can't even remember the father of the bride one but honestly they went on for about 2 hours! Everyone has sobered up and we're just bored by the end.

Tell everyone who is making a speech to keep it snappy! Have them all wrapped up in 45 minutes if you can.

Middle of nowhere in a lovely venue. But due to location no phone signal, no nearby shops.

Wedding was fine - 11.30am. Champage/orange juice given after. Started lovely. No food until 8pm. 1 hog roast roll each, no sides etc. Everyone had pre-booked taxis for 11pm. Bride and groom left at 9.15.. venue reception and bar closed at 9.30 so no landlines etc accessible.. just all the starving guests and dj stood around waiting for 11pm/trying not to pass out.

Oh yes any with a bloody quiz, or interminable speeches. Another that springs to mind is a child-free wedding where a couple on my table had decided that they would just bring their noisy offspring anyway. They demanded a meal for him and he made so much noise and mess. They had a babysitter and had apparently been looking forward to the night off, but he whinged so they brought him!

One where the bride got carried away and invited more people than she had places and tables for. And she hadn’t done a table plan with names. So the groom’s family plonked themselves at the table which she intended to be for the bridesmaids, and refused to move. The bridesmaids had nowhere to sit so another group of guests agreed to give up their table for the bridesmaids and went to the pub down the road for a meal while everyone else ate the wedding breakfast.

And the bridesmaids were dressed like something from 1982 but this was last year.

Easter Monday. Easter sodding Monday.

Ceremony at 1, followed by meal for wedding party only, everyone else invited to reception at 7. Almost all guests were miles from home (held in bride's home town)

Evening reception had no food, very expensive cash bar. It was held in a four storey townhouse-style bar, so guests were dispersed into small rooms. No dancing, lots of people missed evening speeches and cake cutting as in different rooms. They were annoyed that people left before midnight to drive home ("why not just take Tuesday off as well?")

Was sympathetic to the bride and groom's need to do it cheaply until they told me they were going to the Seychelles on honeymoon

By contrast, best weddings: everyone in one place, no distinction between day/evening guests, short and funny speeches, copious amounts of food and drink. Have the wedding you can afford, not the one you wish you could afford but with corners cut (did I mention it was EASTER MONDAY??!)

The ceremony was at a hotel. Photos taken at the church across the road. Loads of waiting around, I was 8 months pg at the time, so not in the mood. Took ages to get food, there were not even any canapés. When the food arrived it was really basic with dry chicken. No food in the evening for the evening guests. They’re divorced now.

@ReflectentMonatomism

My wedding ceremony was at 2pm in the orangery of a beautiful old venue. Straight after, our string trio went to the private library where we had a champagne and canapé reception. While that was happening, the staff were setting up the orangery for the meal, which started at 4pm. There were indeed photographs, but all of ours were reportage style so nobody got whisked away anywhere. It was all lovely. After the meal, which was very relaxed, (10 mins worth of speeches and a whole bottle of wine per person, plus champagne) we went back to the library for coffee and chatter, which great. Massive comfy sofas, open fire, fairy lights everywhere. We then went back to the orangery where the singer was and had the evening reception there. Evening food came out at about 9pm, everyone was tipsy, full, happy and dancing. Nobody was waiting around. Nobody was dragged anywhere for pictures. So not every gap is planned to convenience the bride. Not every wedding is ill thought out for guests. Some are all within one venue and rooms must be vacated to be set up for the next stage.

Worst wedding I attended? A mum of a school friend when I was fifteen. Specifically requested by the bride that red, green or gold were not worn by anyone and she shouted at someone wearing gold jewellery as she was walking out of the church. Then at the reception in a ropey old village hall, she gave me a huge bottle of lambrini and told me it was practically alcohol free. I didn’t drink and was quite naive, which she knew, as I was her daughter’s friend. I liked the taste and she kept telling me it was fine, and smiling, so me and her daughter downed it like pop. I was sick in the car park and the bride came out and shouted at me for being an “attention seeking little bitch.” Her daughter was crying and asking why she always had to be like this. Was dreadful.

There was a fight by people from the brides family and the venue ended up calling the police!!!

@whereisthecoffee - I don't think the big gap is an issue so long as people are expecting it and there something to do/somewhere to go. If you're not having many guests it might be an idea to speak to them all individually to explain rather than relying on invites alone.

Worst wedding I went to; farming family who did everything themselves. Reception was in an unheated marquee in their garden. Was freezing, guests were all passing out emergency car blankets and ski hats to hapless ladies in skimpy evening dresses who were turning blue.

Only close family were allowed in the house to use the toilet, the rest of us had to use the farm hand toilets outside The mens was literally a hole in the ground surrounded by corrugated iron sheets. The ladies was in porta cabin that had been sawn in half

What's with this new-fangled 'bowl food' being served?

Went to a wedding with this. It was delicious, but some people were on their second or third bowl before we got our first as they grabbed them from the servers as they walked past.

An otherwise entirely lovely wedding until the FOTB speech.

He talked about how disappointed he was with her. We were waiting for it to be some long drawn out joke. Nope. 30 minutes on how she had always been his least favourite daughter. It was awful, the poor woman.

Years later it's all anyone talks about when we recall that wedding.