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?

@A303 so grim!!!! Was the bride enjoying it? Are we talking a quick peck or more?

I have a few:
-friend had a massive tantrum because someone brought their 2 day old baby and it should have been ‘left somewhere’. Few years later she was ranting her 3 year old was invited to a wedding.
-had an invite to a hen do for a girl I went to uni with who had made my life hell. Liked to think she had no friends, totally ignored it.
-DHs brothers wedding. FIL and siblings refused to leave at night and partied until 4am meaning all the staff had to stay (owners were friends with brides parents so didn’t want to call police, was a very very expensive nice hotel). Drinking their own booze. PIL refused to get out of bed until the afternoon the next day, where there was another wedding and room was needed. When eventually he got up he was shouting at the front desk because they wouldn’t make him a full English. We eloped.

work colleague was obsessed with another colleague and was put out she wasn’t invited to her wedding. So she dressed up in something very colourful, stood outside church and got herself in the photos. We still all laugh about it 20 years on.

This is sad for your mil but it wasn't about her. It would have been nice if they had though about it but I don't think they were unreasonable here at all.

Some incredible stories here! Mine aren’t that out there but include:

• Invited to an evening do, turned up at the allotted time and we weren’t allowed in as the wedding breakfast had overrun and they hadn’t finished the speeches. All the evening guests had to wait outside like lemons. When we were finally allowed in, there was no food at all. We left about 9.30 as we were starving and went to the chippy.
• Another evening do, for a wedding at a country house which was approached via a very long, unlit dirt track road surrounded by woods. There was no mobile phone signal whatsoever at the venue and we hadn’t thought to prebook a taxi home, and there were no staff at the venue to call us one via a landline (it was all outside caterers etc). A group of us ended up having to walk about a mile in the pitch black down the dirt track road back to civilisation so we could get taxis!
• University friend who got engaged a couple of years after we left rang me very excitedly to tell me the news and that she wanted me to be her bridesmaid. I was a bit surprised as we’d grown apart a bit already since leaving uni and didn’t see each other that often, but happily accepted. She set a date quite quickly, but literally never mentioned me being her bridesmaid again and ultimately we only got an evening invite!! Which was absolutely fine, as I say we weren’t that close anymore, but I just thought it was super cowardly to never acknowledge that she’d asked me to be her bridesmaid and then clearly had a change of heart but not bothered to let me know! I should have confronted her about it myself at some point but I am generally avoidant of awkward conversations so I just never mentioned it either!

Quick peck mostly. One or two close male friends were pushing their noses in and shaking their heads from side to side while growling. Groom was loving it too.

In the local pub years later you would often hear them describing with much merriment how they physically did the deed that particular afternoon. Idle hands and all that.

For various reasons, PIL's didn't attend our wedding. They sent a card with a cheque- but told us not to cash it- because they couldn't afford it!

A week later, they took DH's sister, husband and their 4 children to Disneyland for 2 weeks!

We were invited to a wedding (one of DH oldest friends) in a very well known historical building in central London. Bought gift from list, new dress, ordered black cab etc and off we went.

When we arrived that were around 30 people milling around in a corridor waiting to be let into a room. We assumed it was the room where the ceremony was going to be and joined the waiting... But no, it turned out that the 'special' guests were in the ceremony room which was now full and we were to wait in a library. We finally got in and the library was roped off so we had an area smaller than. my spare room. Nowhere to sit and boiling hot. We all stood in there practically shoulder to shoulder to 90 minutes, sweltering.

Bride and groom finally appeared outside the room grinning from ear to ear and noone wanted to spoil their moment so we all shouted congratulations etc. We were then ushered out of tiny space into a courtyard where we were pointed towards a pay bar - not even a glass of free prosecco - and thirty minutes later it was all over. The wedding breakfast was happening in a restaurant with Team Elite - so home we went.

Complete waste of a day and money. I didn't get a chance to speak to bride or groom and in total the day cost us around £300. If you can't invite people properly - not enough space/budget/whatever JUST DON'T INVITE THEM. Seriously - why do people do this?

In my 20’s the whole family were invited to a cousins wedding (my godfather who I had zero contact with was groom) and I was put on the children’s table, with 6 year olds, despite younger than me not seated at this table!

More odd than rude but to be fair they really didn’t have to invite us in the first place so it was nice to be invited. Lovely wedding to be fair.

The other one was a friend getting married in the States and me being invited to a pre wedding hike the day before, but no invitation to the actual wedding… didn’t occur to ask what that was about until afterwards - apparently it was assumed I’d know to go to the wedding!

I went to a wedding with a new boyfriend he was telling me all about the groom and how he was shocked he was getting married as he didn’t think he was the marrying type

when we arrived I knew the groom (we pretended we didn’t know each other) and I was shocked to as only a few months earlier he was in an on/off relationship with my friend. He would often try to get me involved in a threesome 🙄

later in the evening we were all dancing he come over and whispered in my ear ‘I’m still up for that manage a trois’ he wasn’t joking

the marriage ended the following year. I have never seen a family so obviously disappointed at a wedding (the brides)

We went to a Sunday wedding in a church at 1pm, wedding party of 20 went to restaurant across the road while the rest of us were left to fend for ourselves in a rather quiet part of the new forest where most places we shut for

lunch at 2pm. With the service and photos it was gone 2pm and about 50 or more guests are driving round looking for pubs / cafes / a shop anything that has food. We all end up in the tiny cafe with people sharing seats and some standing because it’s the only place open. They were due to close at 3pm but the lovely owner let us stay (and probably took more money that day than any other).

we didn’t know any other guests but one couple as we were friends with the bride from work but that couple were weird and we kept trying to lose them but they kept finding us.

The evening venue opened at 5pm so we all turned up to find the event didn’t really start until 7pm but we bought drinks and sat in the pretty gardens. Bride and groom finally arrived at 8.30pm and canapés were served and speeches done. They finally cut the cake at 10.15pm and did the first dance at 10.30pm.

we’d planned to leave at 10pm as we had a 2 hour drive and work on the Monday but felt bad leaving before cake and dance (lots had left). Cake turned out to be blocks of cheese and none I could have in pregnancy.

it was a hot day and I was pregnant and starving. We left and found a McDonald’s service station on the way home.

It screamed of “we want a country house wedding but can’t really afford that”. Friend was lovely and sadly they divorced 18 months later. They had delayed their honeymoon and he ended up taking his affair partner instead of our df (his wife).

All in all, very odd.

A few years ago, me and my husband were invited to the wedding of his then work colleague.
The invite stated the time and venue for the ceremony and reception in a fancy hotel.
We had to decline the invite due to being away on a pre booked holiday.
When my husband returned to work, a couple of other colleagues who had attended the wedding told him about how on arriving at the hotel and being seated in the restaurant, all the guests were handed menus by the waiting staff.
The couple had just booked enough tables for the wedding party, as you would a normal reservation.
Not only did they have to choose their own meals, but pay for them themselves too.
Apparently it ended up a bit chaotic.

I'll always remember the guest vicar at DH cousins wedding. Bride and groom belonged to some odd CoE offshoot so brought in their own vicar as well as the one doing the ceremony.
He went on for 15 minutes about how tonight would be the first time they'd experience physical love and they'd should not expect it to be a great experience..
We all died laughing after the event.

Well at least they didn't need to cancel the cheque!

There was a stealth bridesmaid at a wedding where I was MOH. It was a same sex wedding and each bride only had chosen one witness/MOH each. The other witness' partner was less than enamoured of not being included or the idea of her OH doing the first dance with me so she bought a near identical dress to mine (other MOH was in a suit so it wasn't to match her) and muscled her way in to all the wedding party photos, spent all the wedding dances drawing me daggers from the sidelines then got very drunk and started grinding on a male family member of one of the brides in order to wind up her partner. Awkward evening all round.

It's definitely both cheeky and rude

We also got invited to a wedding on a Wednesday 5 hours away in DHs home town. A very religious wedding with no alcohol. We didn’t go, I’d never met them or indeed ever have 25 years later, even at a funeral. They were furious and kept telling my MIL they had booked a children’s entertainer specially, we did not have children.

my friend decided everyone needed to do a speech at her wedding. Her, husband, dad, FIL, MIL, best man, some random uncle. it went on for several hours and was, I can’t stress this enough, fucking horrendous. Nobody had eaten. Every speech was a boring ramble (best man just talked about nights they had been out on for 45 minutes). Literally people were bored to tears. Bride thought it was amazing.
They also invited lots of elderly relatives and not many young people. Then played heavy rock at the disco. Bride was furious people weren’t dancing. Lots of people invited at night didn’t accept as it was in the middle of nowhere, a different county to where they lived. She was also pissed about that.

@storypushers I shall beg to differ. Whilst it wasn't about MIL, the bride and groom and their families host an event which marks the joining of two families and friendship communities.

This was the only wedding for which I've been requested to "save the date" and then received an invitation so clumsy. I'd have preferred and it would have been more polite to have invited us just to the evening party. But then again, if there were funds for a full on sit down reception for 80, there would have been funds for a buffet for 120 and to treat all guests with equal respect.

At my wedding my bridesmaid's husband "minesweeped" the tables, drinking all the dregs from other peoples glasses, there was no need as the bar was free. He then started vomiting at the table into the empty wine glasses, he had brilliant control and could turn it on and off so no vomit was wasted. My bridesmaid looked on proudly.

Dummy cakes were normal in the war, as people didn't have enough ration points for the eggs, butter and sugar. And weddings were arranged at short notice, as the groom was going off to fight, so couldn't "save" ration points.

Mine's hardly worth mentioning compared with some of these stories but the groom made a rather cheesy speech thanking bride's parents for giving him bride. New mother-in-law made it very clear she didn't like it, really grimacing in front of everybody. In later years she would tell people never liked groom, not good enough etc. though the marriage lasted quite OK.

This was fifty years ago, but I still feel guilty.

I was back from uni for the summer holidays, my mother told me that a girl I was at school with ( not a particular friend, just a class mate) was getting married in our church and suggested we went along to the wedding to wish her well. This was totally normal then, weddings didn’t take over the church and regular members of the congregation were welcome at weddings, christenings etc., and the events were notified to the congregation during the vicar’s notices.

So we went along, sat at the back though the church was fairly empty. It was obviously a bit low key because the bride was visibly pregnant ( that wasn’t as normal as now). After the ceremony, the bride and groom were greeting their guests as they left the church. My DM and I lined up to wish them well .

Unfortunately , the best man turned out to be a guy I had gone out very casually with a couple of times at Uni, he wasn’t local to us, he knew the groom who wasn’t local. He obviously carried a bit of a torch for me, because he seized hold of me, kissed me and invited me to the reception. Obviously, I said no, we just came to wish The married couple well , I and my mum were going home. Then my Mother, who had the tact of a drunken 🦛 on a good day, started urging me to go,! The bride looked as if she could kill me, the best man was still clutching me, the groom also invited me presumably to do his friend a favour….it was grim.

I managed to get out of his grip and legged it home. I still cringe, fifty years on.
Fiona, if you are reading this, I am really sorry.

How is it reasonable to ask a stranger, your guest, who is not a photographer, to take pictures?? If she volunteered, okay, but she didn't! She was completely taken advantage of, IMO

Love this! Did they do it?!

Sadly, I don't think so! It's what I would have done, but then again I wouldn't go to a wedding if it was evening only. Never mind having to disappear for hours.
Some people really are greedy and inconsiderate hosts.

My cousin's wedding. Girl was a total Bridezilla and had alienated all of our side of the family with her behaviour leading up to the Big Day.

Big Catholic Mass and she fell out with him for taking communion during the mass. Audibly. It was awful.

They're divorced now...