to ask what's rudest/most bizarre wedding behaviour you've known of?

[PinkStarAtNight]

Lighthearted thread, inspired by the mention of wedding politics on another thread...just interested to know if anyone out there has experienced/known of any weddings/wedding related behaviour more bizarre/rude than the one I know of. Wedding guest behaviour, bride/groom behaviour and weddings that were just bizarre in general all welcome...

So, I'll start:
Couple getting married were on a very low budget (so much so that their centrepiece wedding cake was actually just cardboard with icing and decorations over it) but they still wanted a 'nice/fancy' wedding with sit down meal and servers...so they hired a town hall for an 'afternoon tea' luncheon type thing just after the wedding, with only close friends and family invited. They then asked other, less close, friends to 'have the privilege' of serving them at this 'high tea' event, free of charge, as a favour, instead of an invite to the wedding (not even the evening party that came later).
It was actually phrased as 'would you like to have the privilege of serving us at our wedding?' and people who were asked were very much expected to see it as an honour. Apparently it's somewhat of the 'done thing' in their circle.

These friends/servers were given waiter/waitress uniforms to wear. Just another reminder- they were NOT being paid. One of the people asked to do it was a friend of mine. She actually thought she was quite close to the family, had known them years and been round for dinner and things like that, but realised they obviously didn't see her that way when instead of a proper invite to the wedding she was asked to do this.

She said that she accidentally split tea whilst pouring it out for someone at this 'luncheon' (I mean its not like she was a professional server!) and the bride's father snapped at her. Everyone at the table treated her exactly like a professional server, not making wye contact, not even thanking her, barking orders at her etc, even though she had known all of them for years and spent time at their house for gatherings...all the servers were 'thanked' a few weeks after the wedding with a box of basic Cadbury chocolates, the type that cost about £5 from Tesco. These boxes of chocolates were elaborately wrapped up and sent with thank you cards. Once opening the box, my friend realised they were all white...looked at the sell by date and they were years out!! 😂

Now, it wasn't really anything to me because I wasn't close to couple (knew them, had mutual friends but never expected to be invited in any capacity) so didn't affect me at all, but I think the whole thing was completely bizarre and such rude and entitled behaviour towards people who were supposed to be their friends. Apparently being asked to dress up in a waitor outfit and take orders/serve people is an immense honour. I didn't, and still don't, have words 😂

Anyone else got anything to top this?

Definitely happens, two of my husbands family did it 🙄They’re well known for creating drama though when there’s danger of them not being centre of attention.

@Fancylike we would have been happier not to have been invited at all. Certainly not asked to save the date. It would have been lovely of the 'Zilla" had extended a hand of support in relation to her recently widowed aunt. But no.

Very poor manners were demonstrated. I find it extraordinary that you don't see that.

NC for this one.

Went to a wedding fairly recently, in rural Wales. Arrived at the wedding venue early and found myself sitting next to the groom's Aunt & Uncle with whom I made small talk (have met them once before).
Groom's Aunt said they'd had a terrible time getting there because they found the road signs confusing, what with them being in Welsh and English. Why couldn't they have things in just the one language, English? They had to look at the bottom of the signs to understand ALL of them. Then the minster came into the room and greeted everyone in Welsh. Aunt's face was an absolute picture.
She and the Uncle stayed for as long as it took to eat the meal at the reception, drank only glasses of water (despite the fact that there were plenty of soft drinks available as well as alcohol), made a huge deal about drinking ONLY water, said that they were driving home (somewhere in Kent) and left, moaning about the road signs.

@VinoVeritas1 in my view it was a deliberate sticking two fingers up at the groom. He had done really well for himself financially and there was and remains an incredible bitterness about it from one sister in particular.

Oh my god. What a witch. It’s awful but i hope this woman’s marriage didn’t last long enough for her to have children. What a disgusting entitled nasty bridezilla. Ugly is too kind.

A close friend of my boyfriend (now husband of 30 years) was getting married. Boyfriend was invited and the bride-to-be took me to one side & said that as we hadn’t been seeing each other long enough for me to ‘qualify’ as a plus one (about 3 months) she understood that I might want to be there. She said I could help out behind the bar so I could see my boyfriend. I politely declined & my boyfriend refused to go without me being invited properly.
The following year we got married & my boyfriend asked said friend to be his best man (wife invited properly - we had been out to dinner a few times since their wedding). All going well until a week before our wedding friend said he couldn’t do the best man bit because they were going on holiday with her parents.
Fortunately another good friend stepped in & was brilliant. We are still good friends with them. No idea what became of original couple.

I want to hear more about this one!

Me too

A few things have happened but I'll go with my own wedding.

My aunt was like a mother to me, and as my own mother wasn't around, I hoped my aunt would take her place. So I took her dress shopping with me and asked her daughter to be my bridesmaid. I never, ever expected or needed it, but my aunt gave me money for the dress as a birthday gift and sent me a text wishinh happy birthday and about the money. I never got the text so she took offence that I was being ungrateful (we never recovered from that).

Her daughter was an utter stuck up brat and would do nothing to help me but make snide comments. I ended up having to beg other friends to help me.

I stupidly told my aunt the table settings and she was furious I put her daughter on the same table as her 'and old people'. She ended up telling me to f off over that.

A LOT more happened but what really pissed me off was on the day, some of the people coming had changed. I noticed someone had written in biro on the table order the new names....it looked a mess. I thought it had been the wedding planner and was so upset...my aunt admitted it was her after after, giggling.

Suffice to say, the scales fell from my eyes and I know her for what she is now. I anNC with her over decades of emotional abuse.

This is not the only batshittery I had to put up with. The other being my caterer having a complete nervous breakdown and slagging me off on Facebook all due to a misunderstanding. My DH aunt boycotted the wedding because she thought we had uninvited her children. We hadn't.

Weddings bring out the utter batshittery in people!!!

I wonder if there are any intrigues from the weddings of spooks? Can just imagine the various covert ops happening with various aspects of the weddings.

Yes, bride’s family were CoE and the groom’s Catholic, so they had a priest and vicar celebrating.

But how old fashioned? The wedding was 2002/3 and to have the whole affair inside the actual church was a bit odd. Everyone doing the Conga while Jesus is on cross at the altar looking down on us.

At my cousin's wedding, my brother was the best man and could bring his DW to the wedding as a plus one along with their kids. My brother decides to then come with his own best friend and his wife, to which ended up with my cousin and brother arguing over him bringing people he didn't invite to the party.

I blame my brother, who honestly does this? Haha

I don’t know why but I love this one 😂

Bringing “make room for Jesus” to a whole different level

Was that you Hookie Wookie?

At one wedding me and my daughters and my sister and her girls were put on a table so far out we joked we were almost in the car park. Last table furthest away from the ‘Top table’, last to be served but closest to the door to the kitchen so we had to sit watching every one else get served before us. Couldn’t hear the speeches. Friends of the grooms mother were sat with us, never met them before but we all made the best of it. Our waiter took pity on us, brought a couple of bottles of wine over, extra chocolates with the coffee.

Main reception is family and maybe a couple of close friends, evening - any one who knows you, work colleagues, neighbours, parents of your kids friends if you have kids, the postie, the person who does your nails, your hairdresser, someone your mum met in the supermarket queue last week, the person you bought your car from, if you have pets then you might invite the vet who spayed them.

The evening do is basically a piss up with food for anyone who vaguely knows you.

Will probably have to NC after this.

It was in a very swanky and quite large venue. Privately hired. The groom was a very, very high earning, very arrogant and good looking but largely likeable man. The bride was a lovely but slightly neurotic woman, I suspect in part due to his behaviour and because she was her parents’ favourite. I couldn’t have lived with someone like him. She worked but did not earn the lifestyle his work afforded them and made no bones about how she would stop working once married.
The bridesmaid was a stunning but pretty cutthroat woman, would be a ‘man’s woman’ type according to my grandmother. I suspect a bit of a frenemy really. She loved a power play with other women about men and she probably always won. Men loved her. The bride’s sister has moved out of London after uni, lived on the coast, very different to her sister.

Those are the players in our horrid little set up.

Bride was very fretful about all details of the wedding. She wasn’t a bridezilla type per se, but she was hard work about a lot of things. Her easy-going sister knew how to handle her and had just taken on the role of sorting her out when she’d get tightly wound.

It was post dinner, a lot of champagne was going around, lots of wealthy types getting very loose. Bride had noticed groom was gone for a while and was becoming quite worked up. I expect she suspected he might be doing something he shouldn’t be.

Sister had been looking for him and obviously found him. His chums outside had tried to stop her going in by physically blocking her. She didn’t cause a scene but unfortunately the bride had been following her sister and barged in to the aftermath. The screaming was unreal. It went on a long time. Bridesmaid slipped out and disappeared off, laughing, with groom’s chums (callous), not to be seen again. Bride screamed at groom for a long time. Sister left them to it. Wedding carried on until 4/5am ish.

They’re still together, she indeed did give up work, they now have a baby, I doubt for one second he’s changed at all, not heard much of bridesmaid. They go on a lot of holidays.

So the bridesmaid was the bride's sister, or are they two different women?
Why would you stay with someone who had cheated on you with your sister on your wedding day?

@sashh - so why would a postie or a complete stranger your Mum met in the supermarket queue get invited? Anyway, that confirms what I thought about evening dos.

Well it's a piss up with food, you want a fair number of people there.

Sounds like an expensive thing to do, but lots of people do it, so...

@Mars27 my church doesn't have a separate hall. On Sundays we clear the chairs away. In the week we do baby group and boys brigade with children racing, playing, throughout the church (though not the sanctuary).
We do cheese and wine at choir concerts.
Birthday parties. Council meetings. Citizens advice.

Some villages run a post office and library mindweek.

In medieval times they held markets in churches, including animal markets.

It's the heart of the community.

In my experience 30+ years ago, the ceremony and reception were for 'family' guests. The couple's best friends, but predominantly family, parents' oldest friends etc. often older people.
The parents would be paying for it.

The evening was more about the young couple- lots of people, buffet, band/disco. Oldies would leave early, youngsters would party on.

The 'done thing' has changed a lot over the years.

We are so much more affluent now, despite the current pinch. It's a very modern thing, really, the all singing all dancing event where the bride has her day and mustn't be upset.

There we’re about 12 bridesmaids. Two of which were the sister, and the one being fingered.

Money! Lifestyle! I assume.