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 !

Yes, people don't give a shit about casinos, specific 'unique' entertainment etc if the food and drink budget has suffered as a result!

We had drinks and canapés during the photos. Guests expect to be fed. For those, who want to come to the ceremony, perhaps you should think about all going out for a meal together but make it clear you sre all paying for your own.

We didn't have much money to get married with so I had to wave goodbye to my dreams of glitz and glamour.

We had a 4pm ceremony in our local church, I chucked £200 behind the bar in the pub across the village green in case people wanted a drink in the sunshine whilst waiting if they got there early or afterwards.

Reception started at 5 in the next door village hall where I had a hog roast, buffet, pinks and three gurt barrels of local cider. No sit down meal, no speeches, no seating plans. I invited everyone to everything.

Can you either move your ceremony up or start your reception earlier? I think a gap is the most dire thing about weddings!

Worst wedding I've been to was one where the bridal party ate steak and drank champagne at their top table whilst the rest of us had a miniature (think 1 potato, two broccoli florets) chicken dinner with cheap vinegar wine.

Friends very small wedding in Gretna Green. B+G were skint but both sets of parents well off. Knew in advance that guests would need to pay for overnights in hotel plus pay for own meal. Brides father droned on during meal how much he was earning. After meal groom went round everyone asking for £20 a head. B+G then disappeared for some afternoon frolicks (we didn’t know where they had gone). Restaurant closed and we all had to hang around Gretna for hours with the other guests we didn’t know. Went to a really rough pub and played pool.

Wanted to just go home, but couldn’t as we had promised B+G a lift home next day.

Was a bloody miserable day for everyone except B+G. They had a ball, which I suppose is the way it should be. Although I think the afternoon love-fest was cringey.

Bitlost I’d add ‘long speeches’ to that list too!

I hear a lot of speeches in my line of work and believe me, NOBODY wants to hear you speak for more than 5 minutes. Nobody.

Also, 5 minutes means FIVE MINUTES, not ‘I wrote some notes and it probably comes to about five minutes but I haven’t actually practised it and oh whoops it was actually 30’!

Ceremony at 11am
Brief walk to the reception venue at 12pm, glass of bubbly on arrival
Bridal party disappeared for four hours to their rooms. No more food, bar only sold crisps. Expensive bar. In the middle of nowhere so we were 'captive'. DS was starving.
Bridal party re-emerge for photos - two more hours waiting
Wedding breakfast served at 6pm. Sat with all of DH's family on one table so nobody new to talk to.
Food was like one of those works Christmas party 'mass catering for cheap but charge ££' things
BIL3 spent the entire meal moaning, effing and blinding.
Speeches were long, boring and talked about stuff & people nobody but the bride & groom knew about (apart from bride's father who was lovely)
Move into the evening reception room. Bride & groom ignored everyone
There was a seating plan for the evening reception so no mingling. It looked very much like the bride and groom wanted the families keeping separate
Entertainment was a string quartet in the middle of the dance floor
No cake cutting - they wanted to take it home whole

OneCabbage
No food and just an evening invite for a 3+ hour drive from people in their 50’s.

“Oooh thanks for the stories. See I have a big gap between ceremony and reception nothing in between. As it’s register office quick ceremony. I’ve explained this to close family and told them I totally get if they don’t want to come to the ceremony save them going out twice.”

Would you consider have your registry wedding the day or so before with a few closest people as witnesses, & have the reception as a stand-alone celebration.

Maybe have your photographer/a gifted amateur record your wedding & play this at your reception? Maybe repeat your vows in front of your lovely guests at your reception in your full frockage & then have photos taken at regular intervals during the reception.

That way everyone is fresh for each event & no-one throws money around to amuse/feed/entertain themselves between the ceremony & reception. Everyone looks better in the wedding photos.

Registry weddings on popular days are very tightly managed. No late starts & large groups of people need to be & out of the chamber promptly. It can be a conveyor belt slick process.

Think outside the box...

beef thank you :)

My guests are all close family and friends and we've put them all as a priority, making sure we have good transport, lots of food, free drinks, lots of entertainment but nothing overbearing. They've not, and have never been, an afterthought.

MN is very strange at times, I don't let it get to me. I'm an extremely laid back bride, haven't demanded anything or forced anyone into anything at all, don't have any strange demands etc. I know it'll be fab

@popehilarious they were in South America, wanted to go home. Well there's London in the UK and one in Canada... they booked the wrong one and according to them they didn't realize until they were at the airport. They again according to them decided to go for it and extend their trip.

Being able to get a few people from a garden wedding should be easy. Not for them! They are very sweet though. Just not the people you want organizing anything.

I used to help out a friend who was a wedding planner so occasionally went to other people’s weddings for work. Here are my tips:

1. Feed and water your guests. Don’t scrimp on this. People remember the food & drink.

1. Don’t have guests stood around for ages doing nothing. It pisses people off. If you have no choice make sure you feed, water and entertain them during any wait.

1. Get the best entertainment you can afford. The entertainment is also what guests will remember.

1. Guests don’t care about flowers, colour schemes, etc. If you are inviting them to have a good time you won’t impress them with expensive flowers.

1. Don’t arrange to disappear for hours for photos. It appears rude from a guest point of view. They came to celebrate with you and you’re not with them.

All of this is of course a moot point if you’re not bothered about the guests. In which case I’d say go smaller in order to make it more about you.

I know a wedding is supposed to be your day but if you choose the path of a big wedding where guests spend money on outfits, gifts, travel, drinks etc then the above are my tips for not having them say what a shit wedding it was on mumsnet in the future.

April ah that's okay, after my experiences I also wondered if 2 hours was for photos.

I think food at any time is fine as long as guests are told and know what to expect. It's the hours with no food that I think is awful - I would think that even if I was told in advance, tbh.

I havent been to any awful weddings, but a lot of samey ones in which the ceremony is circa lunchtime so we've all skipped a meal and are starrrving, only to wait literally hours for travel to venue, photos before food fiiinally arrives.

I liked my wedding the best everything under one roof, quick group shot after the ceremony then unleashed everyone on the buffet. My mum made a swift speech just to thank everyone.

Food was awful, venue was a lovely school but we were in a tent , hardly any food , dessert was an ice cream from a cart , which we had to walk half a mile down the hill to and it WAS a hill. We couldn't wait to get from there , the Brides Mum made the cake and it was dire and we all had to stream past it and admire it. Thing was they all thought it was fabulous darling! It was awful.

A wedding where I was invited without my husband, heavily pregnant and and hour’s drive away, for the ceremony and then the evening do i.e. not the meal. So I was expected to wander round town for 5 hours in between. B&G split within the year anyway.

op you must change things around or make it absolutely crystal clear what the day will be.

I feel for you though, it sounds like you have been bamboozled into the party bit

cheesenpickles oh god I think that’s the worst one yet!

I think people forget that wedding guests are just that, guests! So many couples act like you’re supposed to fall at their feet and weep with gratitude just for being invited.

I went to a wedding a few years ago where they’d invited too many people (way, way too many) so I and about 40 other people were put in the ‘overflow’ space. This was quite insulting but I knew there had been some mix-up with numbers so I had some sympathy and tried not to be annoyed.

However...

1. The overflow space was several rooms away from the main wedding breakfast, not even connected to it in any way

2. There weren’t enough seats for all of us, let alone a seating plan or anything like that

3. We didn’t get any of the wedding favours that were given out to the people in the other room

We were literally just sent to this room and left there. The staff were also appalling and made it clear that we were just in their way and that they wanted nothing to do with us. We did get some food eventually which we ate on whatever seating we could find. It was weirdly a bonding experience for all of us rejects and sort of ended up being quite fun in the end, but I have been soooo careful about numbers for my own wedding as a result!

Grace I agree, with the wedding we went to a good while ago it was the waiting around with no food or drinks that got to us. We were happy enough all sitting chatting but after a while with nothing to eat it was pretty harsh. Hence the crap ton of food at ours lol

Worst-
Long wait while the bridal party had photos done. 3 hours. In the hot, no food or drink, 7m pregnant unforgivable.

People remember good food, good drink and good company at weddings. And the Brides dress.

What pisses people off is hours after hours of pointless photography that your guests will likely never see, gaps between things happening and generally feeling like you've been hoarded into a cattle truck and starved.

Best wedding I ever went to was on a Friday... church at 1pm, hotel just up the road by 2.30pm, champagne and plentiful canapes on arrival in a lovely sunny walled garden with croquet and games out, food at 4pm and lovely lovely short but heartfelt speeches after everyone had eaten. Was just a perfect day.... mainly because the Bride had a 5 month old baby and only had family/friends doing the photos as she was very self conscious (in spite of being one of the most beautiful people imaginable).

Wedding at 12.
Welcome drinks at 3ish - no nibbles.
Food at 4ish - or at least in theory. Sweets on the tables. No starter. Takes over an hour for everyone to go up for fish and chips. Small serving. No pudding. Cake table insufficient for ravenous guests after.

We provided full English, generous picnic buffet, 3 course dinner then huge cheese and meat platters for the evening.

And the roll-players’ wedding where they did a ‘performance’ instead of speeches and left a real sword on a chair with kids running round 😵

Distance between venue & reception was 30 miles & no transport put on for guests.
Didn't drive at time, so had to catch the train from our hotel to wedding, then back again to be at reception before bride & groom.
Then at end of night, no taxis to get people back to hotel.

Made me decide to either have 1 venue for wedding & reception or make sure transport is put on for people.

Basically ones where there is poor transport links and the church and reception aren’t within 5 mins of each other.
Ones that last more than 1 day.
French ones where you can only get to them via some dirt track to a chateau.
Ones where you hang about having drinks waiting for millions of photos.

My wedding was my favourite wedding ever, it was organised and catered for by a company called Easy Gourmet, wasn’t cheap but they did everything, the transition of the day to night was seamless, there was food and Prosecco galore and no waiting around. We also had no photographer and my MIL did the cake, our friend was the DJ and my friend is a florist. No point scrimping on food and drink, it’s what people remember the most!