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 !

Friends wedding at an isolated hotel. We arrived late the evening before, there was a fight going on in the bar (guests of a different wedding). Our room was booked as a double. It was a single, and smelt like there was a dead rat somewhere under the floorboards. We complained & asked to move. The hotel was full. We ended up staying the 2 nights in the single bed. Food was poor & not much of it. Little alcohol was provided for the wedding guests, the wine at the wedding breakfast was vinegary, though we were happy to buy more & better. Basically large wedding on a shoestring budget at a horrible venue and it just wasn’t fun. There was a grotto to take photos and all the guests were lined up, but we only had 10 minutes and they were moving the guests on for the next wedding party, it was like a production line. We were so relieved to go straight after breakfast on the Sunday morning.

Didn’t attend but

The venue sliced the wedding cake up with the same knife used to chop garlic... the bride and groom refused to pay for the wedding breakfast due to the kitchen staff wrecking the wedding cake 🎂

Reception was in a church hall. As you walked in you were given a plastic cup and the choices of lemon or original Fanta, and that was it, no other drinks available.

There was no music, and this was about 16 years ago so nothing readily available on a phone.

Lasted 90 minutes, the clock watching before making a run for it type of 90 minutes!

One where the marriage was clearly doomed from the start.

The actual wedding was fab - posh US church + country club job, plenty of booze and food, all fully paid for, no long gaps for photography, easy to get cabs in and out. It would have been perfect if the bride and groom hadn't been so spectacularly unsuited to each other and if everyone in the room - including the parents forking out for the event - hadn't had a feeling of impending doom. (Marriage lasted 18 months, very acrimonious divorce, contested paternity of their one child, etc etc.)

a star wars one in a community center

bride was lala in full outfit,groom was luke(i did ask why as they are brother and sister)grooms dad was darth vader and brides mother was cp3o

best men was dressed as darth vaders white army guys

whole party was invite to dress as what character they wanted()i did not

they were married by yoda and everthing was 100 star wars

The only wedding I’ve ever been to that I didn’t enjoy had virtually no refreshments. It was a very low key afternoon reception in a marquee at the bride’s parents’ house, but despite the wedding lasting from 11am (so guests seated by 10.30) until 4.30pm there was only 1 glass of Prosecco and a cupcake per person. I thought it was so rude to have all those people come to celebrate you and not even offer a basic buffet!

If marriage is at 3pm -5pm and good 2 hours max after ceremony- then there isn’t a need for nibbles as really guests would have had lunch

Whereisthecoffee

Is there someone you can go after the wedding for lunch?
A local restaurant just something simple?
Then go from there to the reception?

As others have said, the waiting as a guest is the worst. Especially in venues with limited seating as standing around really hurts my back.

Longest wait was with an 11am ceremony so I had a light breakfast as I was busy getting ready, ceremony was lovely but we then had a 45 minute journey to the reception. We thought we'd best go straight away not realising the bride and groom were going elsewhere for a few hours for relaxing and photos together. Got to venue to find there was no food at all (we weren't expecting a lunch buffet but thought there would be at least some canapés). Instead we were given "free drink vouchers". The meal was eventually served at 6pm. By that point everyone was incredibly drunk as there hadn't been anything else to do and only a couple of people had thought to get lunch on the way, it was in the middle of nowhere so no chance of "just popping out" for a sandwich or anything either.

We did our best to avoid too much waiting for the guests at ours, meal was served 2 hours after the ceremony and all in the same venue to make it easier for them as many had travelled for hours as it was.

A open-sided marquee in summer, in a meadow garden on the bank of a river. A feast of human blood for the mozzies as soon as the sun went down.

Any wedding where there's waiting about. Once waited 4 hr post ceremony (wouldn't mind but they were in the same bloody place) with no nibbles, drink or sight of the B&G, whose children shrieked and screamed the whole time. I couldn't leave because I was the driver for several people and it was XH's family.

One in the middle of nowhere down south, where I again was the driver. Anyone who was veggie, lactose intolerant etc had been asked about this, but they ignored it. They had a ceilidh but not enough room for the dancers. I was starving, and again there was a huge wait between ceremony and food. I drove all the way back home up the M5 and M6 in one shot, about an hour after the meal, so I could sleep in my own bed and eat some toast.

The worst one was a friend from uni. She married her dh last minute to get a visa and going back to the US. Register office and she looked lovely. But they were skint and we went back to her parents house. They had one bottle of champagne sharing thimble full amounts between all the guests. Then builders tea and biscuits. Her parents refused to help out financially and her mother was hissing in anger in my ear about the last minute wedding.

2 hour catholic ceremony. followed by pictures (middle of heatwave, no shade). 1 hour drive to reception venue, more photos. the food, 4 hours after end of ceremony, so 6 hours after start....

One wedding I went to there was a lot of hanging around after the ceremony while photos were being done. The photos included the guests but it was freezing cold and raining by this point. So everyone was a bit fed up.

We then went back to the hotel where there were canapés and a glass of champagne. These were served in a fairly small room and there were no seats. We then were left to hang about for the next 5 hours. There was no bar to get a drink from you had to find a member of staff to ask for one. But they were all busy serving the usual dinners to other paying customers, it turned out we had to wait until the dinner service had been all been served before we got our meal.

Eventually we were called through for dinner at 8:45pm where there were 5 courses, 4 of which were fish, I don’t eat fish. Had I known there was going to be fish on the menu I would have made sure to eat something big before the wedding.

It wasn’t a great time, too much hanging around, not enough food/drinks but during the meal I discovered that the wine was all free, not just restricted to a few glasses. Things got much better after that😁

One where i knew absolutely no one at all. Just the bride. We’d worked overseas together at one point and we were really good mates but I was so bored. It was a nice wedding, chilled, lovely riverside venue in London but having to make small talk for hours is excruciating.

Long waits during the photo sessions.
I went to a registry office one and the photos were in a local park. So we had to stand and hang around in a park for two hours while they did the photo shoot. We were all parched/starving.

• Having to pay for drinks always puts my nose out of joint. It's just unheard of where I come from.

• The beach wedding where the bride & groom didn't use a mic and they were completely drowned out by the noise from the waves.

• Thewedding where the bride & groom got married behind a wall out of the view of all their guests but 2 witnesses, we were just 20 yards away. It was so awkward.

• The wedding where we were invited to the wedding breakfast BUT not the ceremony, almost everyone else was?!?

Basically pay for the booze and let your guests actually see you get married.

Not keen on any ceremony where the bride and groom just repeat after the celebrant like sheep.

Tips for a good wedding:

• hold an early drinks reception the night before so your guests meet.
• no one wants to attend a wedding before 3pm.
• don't get uptight when something will go pearshaped. Something will.
• don't spend too long having official photos done, having fun & celebrating your new marriage is more important.
• don't invite people you don't want to invite.

F

My years working as a silver service waitress when I was at University was a real eye opener. The amount of brides that ended up in tears because they'd got bogged down in the details and stressed out. I used to think of all that money that had been spent and it didn't make them happy or give them the day they think they needed.
As others have said, long speeches, undercatering and long gaps just seem to mean guests will end up fed up or really pissed which then brings more drama.
It must have stayed with me as years later at my own wedding I had x30 guests, and a paid for pub meal next door - no speeches, no photos, no waiting around. Not everyone's dream for their big day but I wasn't stressed and people still comment how lovely it was 10 years later when wedding discussions come up! But I suppose they wouldn't say owt else
Oh, and worse wedding was when the bride confessed on the day she thought she'd made a mistake - eek!

a really badly planned one, lowish budget too [though i've been to a few cheap but good ones], we got turfed out of the reception venue really early, teatime ish, then to continue the celebrations had to walk quite a long way [i should think at least a mile, loads of people in new/impractical shoes struggling] to some dusty old church hall, had to let ourselves in i think which took ages, we weren't sure who had the key, no bar, we were meant to be dancing but i dont' think they had a proper speaker system or a band or anything, found ourselecs increasingly soberly dancing round a smallish CD player or something.

I was invited to a big wedding where the reception was a "tea dance". It was a great venue and I knew the bride had spent £££ on her dress, so I had high hopes. A pot of tea, two sandwiches and a slice of cake each. One glass of wine for the toasts.
We got a kebab on the way home.

Op can you move the ceremony back to 4pm?

I also say no to buffets!

Feed and water people loads.

I went to one where the date and venue were changed very last minute (less than a month before) from a weekend to mid-week daytime. As a result only a handful of immediate family and a small number of local friends and neighbours went. This would not have been an issue except that they'd clearly book assuming that everyone who accepted the original invitation would be going so in the ceremony and reception less than a quarter of the chairs set out were occupied so it felt very empty.
There was a typical cheesy wedding disco but only about 12 people in total stayed after the meal. The groom's mum clearly just wanted everyone to go home - she gave dirty looks to anyone who tried to dance, made comments about how many drinks people were buying (no one was getting drunk but she clearly felt than more than one was too much) and at about 6pm declared to the room that really anyone with children (most of the guests) should really get them home to bed.

One of the best I've been to was one where the B&G needed to keep costs to a minimum so just hired a church hall for the reception, had a friend run a cheesy disco and family members worked together on a home made buffet. Guests were invited to bring their own drink.
Everyone had a great time and for there was loads of really good food and drink

Ive not been to any shockers but my worst wedding was a mormon one. The lack of alcohol I could live with but the lack of tea or any hot drink was a real killer!