Weddings you went to where things went wrong?

[Bupo]

Please can you share any times you attended a wedding where things went awry. I’m just keen to avoid any possible issue.

The only one I can think of is where the bride was two hours late. Apparently her family were just really exacting with the make up artist and had a lot of the make up redone/touched up.

We were sat in the Church for aaaaages. It meant that the drinks reception/evening meal was really rushed as the bride and groom really prioritised the dancing.

Years ago when I was still in secondary school I was invited to my best friends older sisters wedding. Everything seemed to be going fine until the bridegroom didn't turn up. Eventually the Brides Dad said sadly no wedding took place but please all move on to reception. It was all a bit surreal. The bride went on the booked honeymoon trip with her best friend. About a month later the bride and groom got married quietly with 2 random witnesses off the streets and no photographs or even flowers. Not even any of the parents were invited. It was a case of the groom just couldn't face all eyes on him. They are still married over 40 years later.

Was at a friend of husbands wedding about 15 years ago. Groom and some of his pals were bouncers.
After the reception meal there waa a huge punch up between about 15 guys Police and ambulances on scene. Manager kicked every body out, and rightly so.
We spend the evening in a local pub with other friends as we're staying in a hotel in the town.
Groom spent the night in a cell. We still see him (divorced after a year as he cheated). It's still talked about to this day.
Truly awful day tbh. Felt so sorry for his wife and her family.

No food. Invited to the afternoon/evening reception at a lovely but very remote location. Invite said arrive at 5pm- by 7pm it became obvious that there was going to be no food at all, there was one bar and they didn’t even have crisps or nuts. Ended up traipsing two miles over fields in wedding finery to find a pub that served food. Returned to the venue to find many people absolutely blind drunk due to lots of alcohol but nothing to eat.

I was working on the bar at a wedding where the bride knocked a glass of red wine over herself at the meal. I didn't see it happen, just saw her leaving the room in tears with a big dark red splodge on her dress.

Years back and far away friends of mine were getting married. He was English and she was from a English Ukrainian family. He wasn't religious so it wasn't an issue to him to be married in the local Eastern Orthodox church favoured by the local Ukrainian community.

An hour before the wedding the young and understanding priest expected to do the ceremony was called off to give some elderly person last rites and so wasn't available. An older and less understanding priest was pressed into service.

First thing he wanted to do was to ensure that the groom was "acceptable" in the eyes of the church. This meant a lot of grilling and questioning his motives and his religious attitudes getting to the point where it was agreed that he would be baptised and confirmed in the Eastern Orthodox church as soon as they returned from their honeymoon.

Then the priest insisted that the marriage wouldn't be official unless a full mass was held. In Latin and Ukrainian. Which the groom, the groom's family and the vast majority of guest didn't understand. And the wedding ceremony too.

The whole thing should have taken about 30 minutes but ended up being nearly 3 hours.

My sil was over had late, she was so late most of the guests left. When she got to the church dh and his uncles rushed out to try and re gather the guests who has left. It was just me and two aunties left in the church from her side. Grooms side still mostly there but not looking happy. We then had to convince the priest to marry them still as he said there wasn't enough time until his next duty.
DH family have always been terrible with time keeping but I honestly thought she'd changed her mind as she was so late and not answering the phone.

A friend got married, massive posh wedding, Paris for the dresses, Country Club venue.
Groom announced on the honeymoon he was gay and came home.
No-one had even a clue, he's still with the man he left her for 35 years later.

I think I would have left and gone to the chippy or got some pub food.

Whilst getting the wedding breakfast tables set in the morning, one of the waitresses bumped into the table with our wedding cake on knocked it off!

Luckily my lovely friend who had made it was in the room too and managed to salvage it enough for us to have something to cut.

I also went to a wedding where they under budgeted for food so we got half a burger each for the evening and the sober groom did a strip tease for the bride at the reception in front of us all. He dm'd me the next day to ask if I enjoyed it 🤮 needless to say they were divorcing 9 months later ... She'd been having an affair

Who would give men and women a different meal?

Groom got brides name wrong in the vows

Fucking hell..

Massive floods, wedding in middle of now where and reception at church hall. We were evacuated in a tractor trailer early evening.

I remember reading a thread about a similar wedding once and it seems it's not uncommon. I was aghast. In our case we'd probably have to do an immediate swap as my husband doesn't eat beef and I do. It does smack very much of 'Here's your hearty MALE portion, sir, and here's a suitably tiny and delicate plateful for the LITTLE LADY'.

My DH is a bell ringer, so we see a lot of weddings. At one, the congregation was starting to get a little restless, when a message came that there had been an unforeseen hitch; that the wedding would happen but the bridal party would be late, and that they had sent some cases of champagne and glasses and crisps and nibbles and would people please help themselves while they waited. It transpired that one of the bridesmaids had had a nosebleed all over the bride’s dress and it had taken some time to get her out of it and get it clean and dry. The wedding did happen and was lovely - the moral of the story is that if something unforeseen happens, just think of a way of making the best of it.

Grooms second marriage, had the same best man both times. Opening line of the best mans speech was "well isn't this deja vu". Mother of the groom stormed out !

@ExIssues DH got his own name wrong by mixing up his two middle names, he was massively stressed as had to say my full incredibly long name which includes my Chinese name.

DM said she wanted to sort out the transport. She did. She booked us a taxi, for both of us to arrive in.

We arrived on time though. However exH managed to get my name wrong. Twice. The first time he didn't say my full name (forgot the middle name) and the second time he said my middle name first.

I had my then best friend in charge of the cake (her choice). She picked up a decorate your own from M&S and then decorated it horrifically. It looked like a nursery aged child had done it.
At the after party, she came through with it already sliced and started handing it out to people, and couldnt understand why we were upset that she'd cut the cake herself.

Second wedding went really well. We did arrive 10 minutes late (we found it amusing that we came from different directions but both hit bad traffic) but after that it all went smoothly.

This Is many years ago but friends got married in a small Island in Greece (he was Greek). It was amazing, ran over several days. But during the ceremony there was some ominous rumbles of thunder. By the time is was done it was a full lightning storm, the roads turned to rivers, the outdoor reception washed away, half the guests went missing in a bus. We were all dressed in kilts and fancy dresses, and hitched a ride in an A board van to the harbour where we had a fab meal as the owner bemoaned all his tables and chairs being washed into the sea.

luckily we all convened the next night (indoors) and carried on. It was actually a huge adventure and a great story that made the local papers when we got back!

A post mentioning guests being mean about other guests reminded me of a friend's wedding.

We were all invited to the video showing (an uncle did it). I'd been bridesmaid so expected to attend the showing. Lots of family members all at the bride's parents house.

Watching the video, get to the scene where the bride's mother exits the car with the little bridesmaid at church. And you can hear her SIL saying on the video "rhat does nowt for her big bum and that hair-do extenuates those chins of hers".

SIL was at the viewing and left very meekly when the bride's mother said calmly " leave my house now please".

P.S. mother of the bride was tall and slim and looked stunning and has only 1 chin.

I’ve also been to one where the bride was two hours late. She’d made a big fuss about everyone being on-time/early so in the end we sat for 2 and a half hours in the venue waiting for her. The marriage only lasted about 6 weeks so it probably would have been better if she hadn’t shown at all.

The worst was a wedding at a hotel miles from anywhere, that had many many stairs, was dark, smelt and creepy as fuck, and we were all shepherded from one floor to another, for ages, for unknown reasons. It was like The Shining in there, horrible feel to the place. All the elderly/less mobile guests were in pain and exhausted from traipsing up and down all the higgledy piggly staircases to find the ceremony room. We sat through a very long boring ceremony in a freezing cold room, and then were turfed out for about 3/4 hours while the staff turned the room around and B and G had extensive photos in various areas of the clearly haunted hotel.

However there were no drinks or food provided, hardly any seating areas (large rooms with any seating were bizarrely locked) except for a couple of sofa right in the draughty reception area and no shops nearby. The hotel had a bar in an otherwise empty room (assuming all the chairs and tables were being used in the ceremony/reception room?) which for some reason was unstaffed and nobody around working at all. Eventually the guests started going behind the bar getting themselves drinks and crisps. When we were allowed back in to the main room, any food that was eventually served was stone cold and crap. Honestly it was the strangest venue and set up imaginable.

Another bad one was when tables had to go up to get their own food and it had run out by my table and the few after us! We were so hungry, someone who was pregnant and therefore not drinking, went off to a nearby village to find us some provisions!

Missing the point....

My god some of these weddings! I’ve never been to one where anything terrible happened, or not that I’ve noticed anyway.

One was a budget wedding where they’d tried to do everything themselves and on a shoestring. It was BYOB, fine by us, we took a cool box! But the venue was a barn with an open side - the wedding was in the summer but predictably it rained and the people sitting on the side exposed to the elements were soaked. Blankets and umbrellas had been provided! They must have spent a small
fortune on other things, the flowers and centrepieces were lavish and stunning, the table settings must have cost a lot (and were mostly left behind from what I could tell), the 6 bridesmaids dresses I knew were costly. And the food was a jacket potato van! I chose one, it was soggy and I didn’t eat it but it wasn’t the end of the world. Just felt so strange that they’d spent so much money on some things that are really insignificant (I guess to me as a wedding guest) and then really cut back on the important things - like keeping guests warm and dry and fed 😂
Anyway, we did have a bloody brilliant day and it didn’t detract from what was a cracking party but it’s just something I will always remember.