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.

They should really have cancelled.

3 memorable…

I was BM for a girl I met in my first year of university. After we met, she got in with quite an evangelical Christian crowd. Each to their own, but these guys were “odd”. They used to “prayer walk” around our hall of residence, and in return God told them all sorts about the ungodly inhabitants’ spiritual needs (apparently). Also talking in tongues and - bizarrely - seeing evidence of God in extra-shiny fillings after prayer. Unsurprisingly she married a fellow evangelical and we all knew they were in a hurry because no shagging until after marriage. Her church provided the buffet spread for free and she paid for a marquee in the church grounds. The day started with glorious sunshine and we had photos in our finery at her parents’ house. The sky darkened a bit while we waited for the cars. By the time we pulled up at church it was a biblical deluge complete with hail, thunder and lightning. We all got soaked - dresses and hair - on the short dash to the church and just caught a glimpse of the marquee disappearing over the horizon. We couldn’t even hear the ceremony over the weather. The “reception” had to be held in the church, all the photos were taken in the church and to top it all, there was one glass of wine each (with a half-pork pie each buffet). It was utterly bizarre and after a full day of milling around in the pews, it was very long time before I felt like setting foot in that church again.

Second one: the groom’s friends very obviously didn’t like the bride and one turned up in a full-length (v pale silver) meringue.

Third one: after the speeches, bride and her daughter (musical theatre fans) dressed up like parody hookers and belted out a few show tunes from Chicago for their horrified guests. Most people had their heads in their hands, why on god’s green earth would that ever seem like a good idea?!

In my experience you have to be on the point of death before you get fast-tracked in A&E.

Over an hour long? A speech?
Who on earth can actually talk for an hour, and about what?!

My dbro married my now ex sil in one of the most bombed hotels in Europe. It definitely was a bad omen in their case... Awful, acrimonious divorce a few years later. Total mess of a marriage and they're unfortunately still at each other's throats fairly often as they have kids together.

My Dsis wedding, the bridal party and one large family of the bride table (including my father, who paid for the entire wedding) didn't get any cake and no champagne and had cold food brought out only after my DH went to check on it as my GM was frail and needed to eat. When we asked the server when cake was arriving, she said there was none left. My non-bride Dsis (we were both bridesmaids) and I went to the back and all the staffer were eating plates of hot food, plus the cake, and sharing bottles of champagne!

It's pretty stupid to lie to a bridesmaid about this as it's highly likely they are related to the people paying for the food.

It was a very cold snap in November, and the church heating was broken, it was bloody freezing, and the bride was more than an hour late turning up so we all sat there in our outside clothes and still shivering.

Reception was in another church hall, also with heating issues.

Oh I remember a few. We're early 40s now, and most of these weddings happened in our mid to late 20s except the first which was more recent. Our wedding luckily was uneventful!:

1. BM opened speech at Grooms second wedding with 'To those new faces (gesturing to brides side) welcome! To those familiar ones (gesturing to the grooms side), welcome back! Second time lucky, eh?!'

Bride is quite highly strung anyway, she wasn't happy.

2. BM (same one but different B&G, why anyone lets him do speeches I do not know!) was joint with another lad some years ago. They did a joint speech. Other lad told a few funny anecdotes. Usual fare. Daft one launches into tales of the Grooms heavily cocaine influenced nights out in his fairly recent past including the time when he got rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack but added in the detail that the Bride didn't know... that he'd been in a strip club at the time.

3. One where the church wedding was lovely but the B&G spent almost 3 hours pissing about doing photos and as the church was in a town centre everyone who wasn't in the wedding party buggered off to a nearby pub rather than stand outside in the searing heat waiting for them. By the time we were all getting phone calls to go to the Reception venue (also in the town) for the meal, most people were shitfaced.

4. A buffet in a working man's club type hall venue where it was gone before half the guests had been fed.

5. Same wedding as number 4, was held on the same day as a big England match so half the wedding went to the next door room to watch the match mid-reception. I didn't because I thought it was incredibly rude but when I realised the bride was watching the match I went, because they were selling pie and chips and I was starving!

6. Wedding in a beautiful country house hotel in the middle of nowhere where the wedding had the whole place booked. We arrived and realised (we were all in our 20s and not that flush with cash) that it was so extortionately expensive to buy a drink, think £9 pints, that the gents did a Tesco run and stocked up one of the hotel rooms with booze. Everyone went back and forth to the room with the stash all night (the room was occupied by daft BM from 1 and 2, though he wasn't a BM this time!) with his door propped open.

The hotel rumbled what was going on and went to ask him to leave... his girlfriend went back to their room to find hotel staff attempting to rouse him. Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps!) he was so pissed that he was passed out face down on the bed with his bare arse out and flowers from the tables stuck between his bum cheeks.The hotel didn't see the funny side of it, nor did the B&G and he was roused early and booted out the next morning!

7. Wedding abroad, excessively hot, zero shade for wedding party who were left sat there for over 2 hours getting heatstroke and sunburned whilst the B&G had a barney. Person doing the ceremony used wrong first names for the B&G throughout the ceremony.

I'd like to disapprove as some of these aren't very decent behaviour but we did have some good fun!

I attended a wedding on a remote (gorgeous) rural property. During the cocktail hour, the groom had an appetiser and the piece of meal got stuck in his throat. The best man and he had to rush to the nearest hospital (1 hour away) as all attempts to dislodge the meat didn’t work. It was a very somber wedding dinner as there was no groom (but thankfully he made it back for dancing and speeches later).

I went to a wedding like that years ago - it was a 'fine dining' buffet with extremely small portions and nothing else for about 10 hours.
A group of us left as early as we dared and went for a curry.😄

Please may I be your plus one for future weddings.

What happened after you found the staff eating all the food and cake after leaving guests with nothing?

This made me burst out laughing.

Been to two where women other than the brides, have publicly declared their love for the groom during the ceremony. Awkward.

Bride was a total bridezilla, and a ridiculous tight arse when it comes to money. I knew that she hadnt factored in much of the way of food as she had told me the cost of "catering". We were giving a couple of people a lift and I just had to tell them so they could get something to eat. The whole day, no food, no drinks, get to the reception and literally there was the tiniest buffet ever known to man. Everyone was starving, to make things worse the bride and groom went first and had plates full, everyone ended up with a mini scotch egg, and some crisps.

Horrendous day all round

Tell us more.....

One of my friends booked a secluded Airbnb for their wedding night accommodation in a charming nearby village.

Bit too secluded as it turned out because at midnight in the dark the taxi driver couldn’t find the address, no phone signal to ring them or use maps to check, and they ended up going back home to her parents’ to spend the night in her childhood single bed.

So make sure you know what’s happening after the wedding has finished…!

How silly of them not to check where it was, or at least check with the taxi driver when they started the journey.

My DH's cousin's wedding was pretty ghastly. The bride (we didn't know her; the groom was DH's cousin) sobbed all through the ceremony. Didn't seem like happy tears, more like inconsolable sobbing. Awkward.

The reception was in rooms above a pub on the hottest day of the year, and the windows didn't open. To make matters worse it coincided with a big football match (Euros final I think; I don't follow football) and so pretty early on loads of the guests migrated downstairs to watch the football in the pub, leaving the bride, groom and a handful of family members to make the best of things upstairs in the sweltering heat. I felt awful for them tbh. They're divorced now.

That is so bad!!!

Wedding delayed over an hour as MIL turned up late. My family convinced I came across as the prima donna bride, but we could hardly go ahead and have her walk in late. We literally sat in the car and waited for her, circling the church…. she’s not even aware that she turned up late. Even worse, we gave her a fake start time - so she was two hours late by the time we have her.

Same MIL was also 20 minutes late for her own MILs funeral - they did not wait that time. She ran down the aisle to the top of the church mid funeral mass.

Even worse, she was late to her own mother’s funeral ceremony and arrived at the church after the hearse. That’s a big no-no where we are from, out of respect to the person who passed. We’d believe that you wouldn’t leave them alone, arriving at the church and the family not there for them.

Father of the bride presenting the happy couple with a stuffed fox.

Was it a competently stuffed fox in good condition, or one that you'd see if you googled 'bad taxidermy'?

@TheChosenTwo unless you know differently, I would guess that maybe a friend or family member had done all the flowers/ centre pieces for them - perhaps either at cost or as a present. Love the idea of the BYOB though.

It wasn’t at the wedding per se but we all got back to the hotel guests were staying at (not the wedding venue) and there’d been a wedding there. Said wedding had ended in a massive fight sparked between the the brides dad and someone in the grooms family. I guess the lesson is try not to have it end in that.