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?

ThatFraggle I'd only little girl attendants, all my DH's nieces and got their dresses in Monsoon whilst shopping with a friend. On the day, the friends twins turned up in the same dresses and pretty much joined in.They skipped down the aisle and were in all the photos without posies but pretty much became impromptu flower girls. I felt a bit guilty I hadn't asked them from the outset but it was a bit OTT having 8 little fairies.

This wasn’t some remote village without options but inner city London. But I understand now that if the family was linked to that specific church it would make sense to have the whole ceremony, meal and evening party there.

Just thought it was a bit odd that everyone carried on drinking and partying (nothing heavy happened as far as I can remember tho) with Jesus up there “watching” people doing the Macarena. And the bring and share lunch had a real DIY feel.

But like I said, it wasn’t a bad day, I just thought that it was eccentric, or maybe “quaint” is the word I’m looking for.

Went to a wedding where the bride didn't like being the centre of attention. She wore long white dress with a veil. She had 4 adult BMs who all wore long white dresses with white hats (all different styles to suit the different body shapes/personalities). It looked amazing and the bride felt very comfortable with a lot of the focus on the BMs. Clever solution to the problem.

I'm wondering why she didn't just have a low key wedding? She could have just had a modest, short ceremony, ordinary outfit, job done?

She had the day she wanted.

I hope she did. She sounds like an introvert who doesn't want attention, which is tricky if you're a traditional bride at a big do.

That's not what introversion means.

NC for this.
A wedding I went to a while ago, the bride is on the short side.
She doesn't like BM and during his speech he says 'I didn't know Mothercare made wedding dresses'....
You could have heard a pin drop. I thought her dad was going to lump him.
Another, my then partner and I lived in a shared house. Another couple also living there decided to get married. We don't know these people other than to say hi to in passing or in the kitchen.
He asked my partner to be his BM 😳 partner agrees, anything for a piss up. See where this is going? Partners speech (nothing written down, even if he had he couldn't see to focus at this point) was 'Jim's a nice bloke, Claire is lovely, best of luck'.
Later on he groped a female and pissed himself.

If you want to see real cringe (bleach at the ready for your eyes) watch Daniel O'donnells wedding video 🤮
I had a lady on my books who adored him, and every time I saw her she'd ask me to put it on.
It's been some years but I can still see the ridiculous acting 🤣🤣

Ok. However, she's certainly not a person up for being the centre of attention, so I hope that she was comfortable doing so in the end.

Invited to a 'destination but in UK' wedding. We were all expected to stay on site, very expensive, and had to hire a car to drive the 5 hours. Didn't attend weddings often at that point in life, so new outfits, gift, 2 nights accommodation etc etc. Being young and skint, it took all the money saved for us to have a holiday, but that was fine. Coach was arranged for us to go from accommodation to wedding in the middle of no where, then canapes were served with drinks before the meal. About 120 guests. We all go to walk through to dinner, and turns out 3 of us weren't invited for the meal. Out of 120, only 3 of us!!! No one had mentioned this before hand - and no the invitation didn't specify a meal, just said "the wedding of..". Ende dup having to get the only cab in the area to take us to a local pub. But ended up in our favour. We had an amazing pub meal, went back but speeches over ran by 90 minutes and apparently the food had been quite sparse. We were the only ones not hungry, and had had 90 minutes of a free bar before the others joined the party. But who invites 120 people, 5 hours from where everyone lives, and then doesn't feed only 3 of them?!!!

Oh and the 'born again' wedding. Members of a small very cultish church. Members had to give 1/3 of their salary to the church every month. Wedding ceremony included a 15 minute section for personal prayer where people were speaking in tongues. But those of us who weren't 'members' of said church had to pay £50 to the church for being there. If I hadn't been told I had to be there, I wouldn't have gone. No reception afterwards either.

Read it again, slowly this time. Bridesmaid who went off with the groom was a frenemy, not the brides sister.

Then the wedding of a colleague I barely knew. So many people had declined she literally begged a group of us to go. Very very swanky central London wedding, celebrity chef, very famous relative, and very renowned religious leader leading the ceremony, so hell yeah I went!!!

Bride sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Not happiest day of her life emotional sobbing but full on sobbing throughout ceremony and afterwards. Refused to come out for the photos for 2 hours. Masses amounts of amazing food while we waited though and as much free champagne as we wanted. Only people dancing at the reception were the (now very drunk!) work group. Certain traditional elements of the reception were all undertaken by work group too. Bride cried as family wouldn't get involved. We were home and in bed by 8pm!

What had happened to cause a mass cancellation? Why was she crying?

That sounds to me like an administrative fuck up rather than something intentional. Still the same outcome for you, though! If so, odd that they couldn't squidge in three more chairs and meals...I assume caterers have a bit of spare food when they do big events.

Not a "mass cancellation", more that no one at work (she'd invited the whole floor) wanted to go as she wasn't a well liked person. I was young though and getting married a few months later myself, so really wanted the experience.

Never found out why she was crying so much!

No, it was the bride who stopped us when walking through to the dining hall to "remind us" we'd not been invited for the food!! I didn't know them well, but they were pretty good friends of my husband. Was very bizarre!!

(I will add, we did have 'evening only' invites to our wedding as we both have large families, so only our very closest friends were invited to the day, and everyone invited to evening only was local. Anyone having to travel was invited to the whole thing. But the invited made the clear)

35 years ago - my own wedding.
I was living 'oop North', my very London-centric parents were pillars of the community with many many friends who had all invited them to their childrens' weddings.

The madness started when I informed my mother that I had seen the dress I wanted in a department store where I was living. That wasn't good enough for my mum, who insisted that I come back to London to go wedding dress shopping with her. I understood that it was about her being able to be there when I saw 'the' dress, so I agreed. We then spent a full day going from wedding dress shop to wedding dress shop in the West End so that I could find a 'better' dress than the one I had seen. My only hard-lines were that it had to have no train as we were having an outside wedding and it didn't want it to get dirty, it had to be fairly plain and it didn't have any lace as I was allergic to lace. At around 4pm (we'd been at this since 9am), we finally went into a very big name department store on Oxford Street. We explained to the dresser my requirements who then screeched "Oh I have the prefect dress for you" and brought out a flouncy, lacy concoction with a 3 foot train. I went to put my foot down but my mum said "Oh it would be sooo lovely to see you in something like that". So I put it on (I was tired and fed up at this point and just wanted to get home) to shut her up. As soon as I put it on, I started to come up with hives (my reaction to lace) and by the time I came out to show everyone, I was covered in spots. "Oh my", said the dresser, "you didn't say you were allergic to lace! You'd better take that off quickly because the bride is coming to collect it tomorrow." Yes, she'd put me in another bride's already paid-for dress! My mum couldn't understand when I insisted on leaving immediately because there were more dresses we hadn't seen yet! I finally got my first choice dress which my mum fell in love with too.

The 'do' itself was large mainly because of all the people my parents wanted to invite - over 200 people. We were discussing guest lists when my DH-to-be and I were told that we could invite 10 people between us including my 2 MOH (my brother was the Best Man). At that point I told them that I was sure that it would be a lovely wedding and that everyone would have a lovely time and that they should tell us all about it afterwards because we wouldn't be coming! They finally agreed to give us 20 places and we could invite other friends to the evening-only part. (Back then, that was a thing in our crowd but looking back, I can see it was a pretty shtty thing to do to some of the evening guests who had come down to London from quite a distance and who hadn't realised.)

Jeeez this is wow! She sounds like a beast, I imagine you’re glad to have escaped the wedding, above all else.

I was maid of honour for my friend and she told me I had to be there for 10am, totally fine, as it was a bit of a drive my partner dropped me off and he just waited around until the wedding started at 4pm (no point him driving back and forth).

I was there 20 minutes and the bride left to get her hair done, she hadn't made an appointment so had to wait until 12:30 ish, then she went straight out for food with her family. This whole time I was left in the hotel room completely on my own and I couldn't leave as I didn't have a key to get back in to get my stuff. She saw no issue with any of this, never apologised or even accepted it was so rude.

Oh and she then also said she was only giving thank you cards to people who got her "actual" presents (money) despite the fact it had cost me hundreds to attend, I'd paid for all her beauty treatments before the day as a gift and I gave them a hand drawn personal photo gift. Just so unnecessarily rude.

Absolutely not. I actually posted a thread about it on here and everyone said the same, not to go. They also have not invited my partner. My brother also ignores my mum and she is going to go for some bizarre reason. I just could not put myself through it. I am on medication because of my brothers bad behaviour towards me already and this would tip me over the edge. Very strange though.

The hairdresser one has made me remember one.

My sil was getting married, I was just a guest which was totally fine.
However, she insisted I go to the hairdresser with everyone else around 11am the day of the wedding.

I have very thick but very straight hair, which at the time was around elbow length. I'm not into girly girl stuff at all, happy to have my hair brushed and washed. But SIL insisted.

Got to the hairdresser which was packed with bridesmaids, other SIL and others. It was quite a small independent operation, I'd not been before. You could tell straight off they were overwhelmed.

So I sit down and say, honestly, just brush it out and I'll be out the way, I'm only a guest, so don't worry

The head "stylist" says that won't do, SIL wants me to look tidy for a change (she has no filter, I pretty much ignore it and knew by that point it's just her way) and she shows me a picture of Kate Middleton, saying she is going to give me loose curls.

I was dubious, had tried curlers and the weight just means it drops within an hour but she was very convincing that as a "stylist" she could make any hair look the way she wanted.

They put some curlers in and sat me under the drier thingy.

Now, I'd never sat under one before. So I had no clue how long you're meant to be there. So when I was under it for 45 minutes, I wasn't worried, this was a salon after all.

Eventually, I was desperate for the loo so asked a passing stylist if I could jump out of it for a bit.

"Who are you, why are you under there?"

Yep. You're not meant to be under one of them for that long.

My hair was frazzled. Utterly brittle, dry as straw, not curled but just matted.

She tried to reassure me this was what she meant to happen but she actually broke a brush trying to brush it out.

I tried not to cry as obviously, not my day.
To make matters worse, they complained to my Sil cos I walked out without paying. Who then moaned to DH, who got cross. So that was fun all day.

DH looked at me and tried to do that thing men do when they try and say something nice when nothing is going to make it better

I had to wear a hat all day.

Saw the bride who said "I told you to go to the hairdresser now look at the state of your hair". She's lucky it was her wedding, because I bit my tongue. I wasn't included in photos because I looked like Wurzel Gummidge. I heard a guest I didn't know ask why did I turn up and show up SIL like that.

It took 3 bottles of conditioner, plus having it cut to the shoulders to even partially sort out the damage.

Never again.

Wedding at well known, upmarket venue. Grooms family turned up very casually dressed and explained that they didn't think it was necessary to make an effort as it wasn't a church wedding. Spent the evening moaning to people that they hadn't been told that people would be wearing wedding outfits for the wedding.

My God that's unbelievable.

Don't those chairs have minor alarms on them to alert staff when time is up?

And you'd need a LOT of skill and product to make very long, thick, straight hair hold a curl. If you were on a film set they'd probably just give you a wig.

And then she tried to BRUSH it? A wide toothed comb for loose curls, maybe, but a fucking BRUSH? When it was already matted?

Doesn't sound like she had a clue what she was doing even aside from barbecuing your hair.