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 !

Mocktails Nitpick? Mocktails?

Unless you are a Muslim or a Mormon that’s unforgivable.

Someone else could be on this thread saying ‘we once went to a wedding where we arrived at the reception and instead of being greeted with a lovely tray of champagne we got sickly, lurid coloured fruit juice, like they give you when you arrive in a hotel in Asia. I was almost expecting someone to proffer a tray of damp towels as well.’

I know a woman who insisted no alcohol should be served with the meal, only water, until the evening party because she didn’t want people to get drunk too early. I think she had her husband’s friends in mind specifically, some of whom had form.

My friend who actually went to the wedding said it disgruntled guests hugely, they felt it was mean, controlling and infantilising.And it did get talked about in less than complimentary terms afterwards.

Ceremony and reception at the same venue but hours apart as the wedding party went off the have photos done. Travelling guests had to
wait around with no food or drinks, or find somewhere in a small town to go. I was local so went home. Food was cocktail style at dinner time and ran out within half an hour. Drinks were stocked in a fridge on site and it was help yourself- they ran out within an hour. People were just sitting around waiting until they could politely leave.

Those brides who think they are going to be "fun and original" by seating people together who don't know each other.

DO NOT DO THIS. Put people in their family/friendship groups. This is a wedding not a bloody team building day.

Bride and groom left for three hours for photos. Not enough food. Open bar. Everyone trollied and starving.

My own (first) wedding. The BIL got very drunk and knocked my mother over. He then abused and swore at the groom (ExH) and vandalised my DF's car. My mother (absolutely loaded) was too mean to spend anything much on anything, especially food (this was the 70s, when parents paid for weddings), and it was all very cheap and dreary. She insisted on making my dress herself, (she couldn't sew, but it saved money)and told me I couldn't wear white because she was sure we had been at it like rabbits (we hadn't - both virgins). Her own parents had given her a no-expenses-spared wedding, and being traditionally English Victorians, had given her a marriage settlement for her own use amounting to 100s of thousands of pounds in today's terms. I look back on that day with sadness at how little joy her daughter's day brought her

Two worst weddings I’ve been to were dry. Zero alcohol. One has sprite after the ceremony (blurgh) and the other had cups of tea. Cups of tea at 1pm on a 30 degree day?!! No, just no. Also pet peeves of mine are bride and grooms spending hours getting photos taken while guests wait around getting hungry, marquee weddings when it’s far too cold and the guests freeze and wishing Wells! Asking for money is soooo damn tacky.

We deliberately didn't spend time getting photos done in between ceremony and reception. But that meant our photos with family groups are all awful - taken in the evening and everyone pissed!

The groom followed through at the top table he was so drunk and his best man was so drunk that his speech was cut short because he made the mother of the bride cry (and not happy tears)

My nephew's wedding. Church service was fine. Then close family (which did not include me, DH or my adult children, but did include the bride's aunts and uncles) went off to a more attractive venue for photos. My sister told my son that we could go straight to the reception venue. Got there and we were the only ones there. It was a village hall type building.
About an hour and a half later the photograph party turned up and we were allocated seats. People from their church were serving. Some people on our table were served but not us and they moved on to serving the next table. When DD mentioned that we hadn't been served the server snapped 'You will be served when it's your turn.'
My mother (who of course was in the photograph party and also served with the bride, groom and their parents) remembers it as a lovely wedding.

Years ago I went to a Uni friend wedding in Melbourne (AUS), they got married outside in the height of their summer so it was nearing 40 degrees (civil ceremony). There was no marque, everyone sitting in full blown sunshine for over an hour. Two people collapsed of heat stroke as no water or shade was on offer.

Following the ceremony there was an hour of mingling at the ceremony venue with booze on offer (but no water!) which would have been fine if not for the heat so a couple more collapsed.

Got on the bus to the venue. The food was terrible, a lot of shitty meat and potatoes (in that heat its worse), few vegetables or salad.

Got back to my hotel room, sunburnt and dehydrated!

Wedding ms with receiving lines , cringe .
Wedding with 4 hour gap between ceremony/ meal and evening reception. Everyone waited in a local pub and were totally fed up and bored by the time we were allowed to travel to evening reception.

Ghanagirl no, although the bride is now remarried (I'm talking 20 yrs later) to a quite famous person, but this marriage was very quiet and not in the UK. Not revealing who out of respect for my friend's privacy.

Multimillionaire bride’s family.
Church mass followed by a long drive to an amazing hotel. Drive not uncommon in Ireland but glad we stopped for a McDonalds !
Everyone spending upwards of €250 to stay.
What appeared to be an aperitif when we arrived was actually a pay bar.
Hanging around, then as friends of the groom, stuck way at the back of the meal.

I’ve only ever been to one awful wedding. DH’s cousin. Gunshot wedding as the bride was unexpectedly pregnant, they were young and had only been together a few months and it was obvious her family had pressurised them both in to the wedding.

The whole thing was incredibly awkward. Snide remarks galore from lots of her relatives about DH’s cousin. The two families were VERY different (DH African American, quite middle class...her family hillbillies) and obviously couldn’t stand each other.

They got married in a huge church with eleventy billion guests, 8 bridesmaids, huge white dress - totally OTT - followed by a reception in a hideous ‘wedding convention centre’ (USA), where there were about 5 wedding receptions happening. You could hear the DJs music from the reception next door blaring throughout the meal and speeches.

Dreadful, greasy food. Minuscule amounts of alcohol provided and no paying bar, so you couldn’t even top yourself up.

Long speeches that were full of barely contained animosity to each other’s families and went on for so long, half the room slipped away to ‘use the loo’ or ‘have a cigarette’ to escape the boredom.

The groom insinuated that one of his cousins was gay and in the closet during a speech, which resulted in near fisticuffs afterwards. The bride’s mother made racist comments towards my mother in law and MIL left in a huff.

God, I cringe just thinking about it. The happy couple split up about a year later.

If one pf the people coming to the ceremony is good with a camera could you make a simple slide show or video to play on a loop at the evening reception so people don't feel a need to come to the ceremony?

It's a long boring wait between ceremony and food that spoils weddings.

Re the dreaded gap. Best - the couple wanted lots of photos of themselves so after the ceremony, there were 4 quick group shots then the couple made off with the photographer into the venue grounds whilst the waiting staff made constant rounds with trays of beer, chamagne, pimms, soft drinks and canapés. This was in a sunny courtyard with plenty of seating, shade and indoor area too. There was tea and coffee. It was a 50 guest wedding so most people knew most other people, nice and intimate. The perfect bridge between ceremony and meal. The worst was a very expensive (but beautiful) venue, 100 guests. Again b&g wanted lots of pics so everyone was left in a bar area buying their own drinks with no food, the area not conducive to mingling. At the meal there was a choice that wasn’t pre-selected by guests and by the time some guests were served, the only choices left were fish/seafood that a couple of guests were allergic too. Quite a few evening guests were invited but there wasn’t enough food for everyone and the venue was over crowded, literally squeezing past people to move about. B&g paid >£40k for that wedding. Happily married around 7 years on but admitted that the debt from the wedding has prevented them having a second child.

It was my own wedding! I paid £60 to get married as quickly and simply as possible. My mother and father were witnesses, but we forgot to invite my (ex) husband's mother, which caused a lot of ill feeling. There were no flowers, no ring and my husband was dressed in a pair of dirty old cords and a coat that stank. Our wedding 'breakfast' was a takeaway meal and there was no honeymoon.

Our marriage lasted for 16 years and it was definitely the worst £60 I have spent in my life!

My children, however, are priceless.

Worst weddings: over formal waiting hours for bloody photos to be taken, etc,

Best weddings I have been to have been self catered house and back garden affairs.

One had a small professional marquee , bride’s family did a fabulous buffet, set up a couple of kegs of beer, loads of wine, a good local band in the evening.

The other they had a selection of gazebos in tne garden, Pot luck tea, then a local Indian restaurant brought massive pots of biriyani for the evening, a neighbour DJ ing.

Each managed about 60 people.

“the debt from the wedding has prevented them having a second child.”

This is where it all goes wrong!

When I was a child ALL weddings took place in the village hall or church hall. All were largely supported by friends and family chipping in by making food, doing the flowers themselves.
No one spent the equivalent of £40k’

After hours of waiting around after wedding we were sat down to a buffet style meal- pizza slices, mini sausage rolls etc.

the debt from the wedding has prevented them having a second child

An entirely self-inflicted problem. It’s hard to sympathise with people who spend money they can’t afford on throwing a party. Were it anything other than a wedding they would (rightly) be seen as feckless spendthrifts, but in some social circles borrowing money for weddings (as opposed to marriages) is somehow different from borrowing money to go down the pub and get pissed.

The worst weddings I've been to were terrible because of things they could definitely have changed. The first was when DH and I ended up on a table with people the groom worked with, DH knew one of them vaguely and I knew none of them. The best part was it was my family wedding, I knew everyone else and was completely isolated from all of them. My parents and sister sat together, my sister and I are very close and I get on with my whole family so no awkwardness to work around. At my wedding, this bride and groom had fallen out with everyone so they were very hard to seat.

The second was at a location far away from us and required 2 days off work, we couldn't work around the timings to do less either. After organising hotels etc the bride text to say she could no longer accommodate 'plus 1' guests so DH couldn't come (initially they were friends of mine but DH and I were married at this point and this bride and groom had both been to our wedding!). I said we'd paid for outfits and accommodation (2 weeks to go) and the bride said he could come if we paid for DH! So we did, mainly because getting time off work had been so difficult.

The ceremony was very long and then the bride and groom disappeared for photographs - for 5 hours. We were left in the very expensive bar with no food, the string quartet played for about an hour but then packed up and left and the venue couldn't tell us what time food would be.

Eventually the food was served, then afterwards we were ushered out so they could move the room around - for another function! There was no evening do. So we were miles away, no option to go home and it was all wrapped up by 7.30pm. I'm not sure why the bride didn't tell us any of this, she could have saved money on both of our spaces had we known!

Totally agree Reflectent, wasn’t suggesting otherwise. The bride has openly admitted to me she regrets spending what she did on her wedding. They have also moved into their dream home which is impacting their ability to fund another child however she definitely doesn’t regret that, it’s her “forever” home

The one where the groom was a close friend and was marrying someone none of us could stand. (I should perhaps add that we were all teenagers, the couple were 18 & 19, so lacking in maturity).

We spent 2 hours in the pub beforehand getting him pissed and trying to persuade him not to go through with it. The bride was waiting in the church porch when he finally rocked up, approx. 20 minutes late. The church was packed and there was some disruption as we (approx 10 of us) struggled to find somewhere to sit.

The reception was at the bride's (huge, posh) house. Almost everyone on the groom's side was pissed or well on the way. There was heckling during the speeches. The best man had a row with the bride's mother, who slapped him round the face. He called her a cunt and her brother laid into him and a brawl developed.

By this time, the bride had locked herself in her bedroom, hysterical and threatening to slash her wrists. I don't remember what happened next, because a large loudspeaker fell off its bracket on to my head, and I was in hospital having 12 stitches put in. Apparently, I had managed to bleed all over the living room, hall and stairs, and the cream leather upholstery of the Jag some kind person took me to hospital in.

My BFs lovely dad drove miles to pick BF up from the house, then to the hospital to get me, and take me home. I had concussion and felt dreadful for days.

The marriage lasted about 13 months. She had an affair and he left her.