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?

Any hen do where the bride is paid for by the 'lucky' people invited on it.
No.
Fuck off.
You're getting married so YOU should have budgeted for YOUR hen.

Plus - why is it now an entire fucking holiday? Just go out for a meal and have a nice time with friends. Then you can't whinge about not having money for wedding things.

She sounds horrific and it was handled shockingly but did you not wait to definitely confirm the baby was allowed prior to bringing him? Especially if the best man said that he'd get back to you? If they had in her eyes decided on a child free wedding and was none the wiser that her partner had provisionally invited the baby, I don't really blame her for being shocked and annoyed because a baby was brought along uninvited despite their wishes.

100% agree

We've not gotten as far as the wedding yet.

Firstly I was invited to the hen do of someone I used to worked with for 4 months. Seen her once in the now three years since she left, at her engagement party. They want £400 for a 3 nights away in a UK based villa. Not including food and the booze. I decline but I see through the WhatsApp group it getting scaled farther and farther back until it's a meal in town and a bit of clubbing. I still declined. I received my 'save the evening' card. Didn't hear anything again for ages. Assumed I'd been disinvited (not upset, I never hear from or see the bride and don't know the groom). Another year on I received a evening wedding invite (I'm not against these like much of mumsnet, but I didn't expect any invite by this point). This latest invite was sent via WhatsApp. I ignored it. Maybe I'm rude. I don't have social media so I have no idea what she's getting up to. There is no facade of friendship upheld by likes and comments. No contact at all, except to keep inviting me to hen dos // wedding.

No story to tell but isn't dummy wedding cakes fairly common?

One of my closest friends, of a group of 4, was getting married, and we were all so excited. We had known each other for years and years.
Shortly before the big day, she uninvited like me to make way for a distant uncle
who her mother wanted to attend. The others from our friendship group went. I was told there wasn't even room to attend the church service.
Our friendship didn't survive, and neither did her marriage.

I was invited to the wedding of a couple I had helped set up and got together, I was single so had a plus one (my friend was coming with me) a couple weeks before I got a call saying " while you're single you only need one space, and my mum wants her neighbour to come' 😵‍💫. I had to sit at a table as Ms single. Also it had been a morning service and the first time we ate had got to about 5pm after f'in hours of photos. I left as the evening guests started to arrive.
Not the worst but was quite put out.

I didn't think so, its the first time I'd ever heard of it and everyone I've told has thought its weird. I'm off to google it now!

@DoneWithHer so a quick google/read through of a couple of articles suggest that it IS a thing (I'm not sure about common) but its usually just one or two tiers of the cake that end up getting substituted with something like polystyrene, usually to make the cake look bigger/taller/more impressive than it is...or perhaps there's the main cake and then the 'dummy' cake that gets put in a different room, for decorative purposes...but there always is actually still some real cake in there somewhere.

In my story, this was a 'cake' made completely of cardboard, there were no real tiers, no other cake, no cake present at all. I just found that really bizarre. If you can't afford a cake then just don't have one? Why trick people with a cardboard cake on display the whole time, only for guests to find out near the end that there's no cake to take home because the whole thing is made of cardboard? Just seems really strange. But, each to their own I guess!

The guest list is a balancing act but to invite the other three and not you is awful.

Why didn't her bf (as he was) say anything!?

@RiseYpres - this sounds like me! My 1st visit to the UK was to meet my boyfriends parents. It coincided with a wedding celebration for his sibling.

On the wedding day though- MIL hands me a camera and announces that I'm the official photographer for the day! Umm- hang on! I'm not a photographer, I was not asked beforehand, and would say I'm below average for taking even basic pics.

Ironically though, my now DH have been together over 20yrs and he is the only sibling from that day, including the marrying couple- that are still together.

Bride/bridesmaids/flower girls went to the hairdressers the morning of the wedding to get our hair done. There were two flower girls and one of them had their long hair styled in the most gorgeous curls by the hairdresser.

Once all finished she walked up to my friend (bride) to show off her hair and my friend took one look at her, looked massively cross and said “sorry but I’m the only one having curls in my hair today”. The little girl, who was probably about 8, looked so sad. And the next minute the hairdressers got the straighteners out and removed all the curls. Imagine being worried about being upstaged by a child on your wedding day

What? This is mean. It’s totally standard to share the cost for the bride.

I tend to agree about the hen do holiday… but if you don’t want to go then you just don’t go…!?

20 years ago, I was at a wedding as a single person. All the single people were placed at the same table, fair enough, but there was a toast to say "here's to the single people at table 9, may they find love". And everybody looked over pityingly, heads tilted, and raised their glass to us. 😮‍💨

This is INSANE

I didnt realise this was even a ‘thing’ (and a very rude thing at that imo) until it happened to me - a group of us pitched up for the wedding then had to go for food elsewhere and come back for the evening. I couldn’t believe it at the time and still think it’s the height of rudeness.

A few years ago I was invited to the wedding 'afters' as we call it by an old college friend, ie to the dance bit after the meal. It was a massive wedding 200+ and I didn't expect an invite as we had lost touch but about 15 of the old gang were invited together. The wedding in her home town was about an hour from the venue, which was right by my house. Dh and I told the group we had spare beds for 2 so 2 single lads living in another city agreed to stay with us and made their own arrangements to drive together. It was only en route when the driver took an exit that the other lad asked why they were going here, only then did they realise 1(the driver) was invited to the full wedding. Don't know why the other lad thought they were leaving about 6 hours early!! Other lad stayed in the car in the car park crouched down in the back seat for the whole afternoon for fear of the bride seeing him and getting embarrassed. We laughed so much later when we heard!

Groom throwing a bucket of water on guests sparklers as he said it was too early to light them for the photographers. Incidentally the photographer has asked all guests to lights theirs but he misheard. Went in a strop and threw water on some. One of the guests dress was soaked. The couple are now having issues as he is unreasonable. Think that was proven at the wedding …

Great thread, OP! What happened to you - with people being very happy to belittle and rudely bark orders at their friends/peers, just because they'd been assigned a serving role, sounds like a wedding equivalent of Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment!

I guess they thought an impromptu page boy would be super cute.

That reminds me of the legendary MN 'stealth bridesmaid'

I've only heard of this in the Second World War. My mum told me stories about it.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Just weddings I've attended then 🤣

errrr tell me more about this stealth bridesmaid?!

I was invited to a wedding where it was written in the invitation that we should bring food as in a "bring and share lunch".

After the ceremony, everyone was moved outside the church for pictures, however, the outside wasn't a pretty garden but the burial plot/cemetery.
Some of us (lucky me) were then asked to stay in the church, help move the benches/pews and mount the folding tables and chairs because, as the church didn't have a hall, the meal had to be inside the church itself. A "buffet" was then put on some of the folding tables lined up together with all the food brought. No designated seats, you could seat wherever you wanted. Once the food part finished (can't even call it a meal), we had to dismantle all tables and chairs again to make space for the evening disco.

The funny bit is, I'm not English and I only had been here for only a year or thereabouts, so I thought all English weddings were like this

This just sounds like a thrifty wedding… was the issue that there wasn’t enough food or something?