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.

At my pool-side wedding at a small resort in Spain. One of my DH’s friends who I had never met pushed one of the groomsmen into the pool. Only about an hour after the ceremony, during the drinks reception. I was well pissed off! My exact words were “it’s not a pool party FFS”. What a fucking knob! He never even had the balls to apologise to me. The groomsman was deeply apologetic. The knob came to visit several years later and brought flowers but I’m not sure if he directly apologised.

At almost midnight, a bunch of people got into the pool of their own accord, which I was perfectly fine with and was lots of fun.

I went to a wedding where the bride's parents were divorced. She was in tears because her father was late - refused to start till he arrived (45 minutes late). It was a a civil ceremony and another couple were waiting so it was very rushed.

I sat next to the bride's mother who brought her best friend (!) to the wedding. They were like non funny Ad Fab. The MOB spent the entire evening swiping on Tinder, with her mate, like a couple of teenagers.

They got seriously pissed and she started slagging off her daughter really loudly. I ended up pushing them both outside and getting them into an Uber as they'd reduced the bride to tears. Her father didn't turn up at the reception and her sister left early.

The marriage didn't last a year.

You win

A good friend of mine was getting married. None of us really liked the groom but wanted things to go well for her. I worked in a hotel so tried to give her some tips on dos and don'ts but she was very clear her wedding would be as she wanted.
The venue nearly didn't open after failing an environmental health check . She got married at 11, no food until 5 and nowhere to go. The venue was a small pub they had hired, no outside area everyone literally sat in their seats for hours. B&G didn't want the expense of a band or DJ so put a playlist together but they were very snobby about music so it was 70% b and album tracks no one had heard of. So no dancing, no atmosphere. Grooms scuzzy friends arranged for a drug dealer to do a drop off and the drugged up men (including groom) started fighting with brides relatives.

Thankfully she left him eventually.

Bride dislocated her knee during first dance, had to go immediately to A& E.
Bride left groom at altar (she was having an affair). A couple of years later they married!!
Father of Bride kicking up night before wedding that if his new girlfriend wasnt at top table he wasn't attending....
I worked in events management so I've seen a lot 🙈

Probably the worst one I’ve been to was of my ex housemates. They were both good friends of mine and a few days before the wedding the female friend told me that she’d been secretly shagging her finance’s best friend for ages, and they were in love. I told her she needed the call the wedding off and she was like “oh no, I can’t, it’s too late for that”. I was only 19 (they were older), and in hindsight I probably should have told my male housemate about what was going on, but I just didn’t feel able to drop that kind of bomb. So they went through with it and then she left him for his mate a couple of weeks later.

I know a female friend (bride)whose dad felt unwell between the church and the reception and he actually suffered a stroke. Thankfully quickly to hospital and survived.
A friend of a friend was at a wedding and the wedding was late as the grooms mum had sadly passed away early that morning after being rushed to hospital the night before. Such sad events on what should be a wonderful day x

That's called a wedding reception. Why did you leave?

My shoe broke after the ceremony, luckily my mum had borrowed a neutral pair of mine for the day and was about to switch to flats so I wore the heels. Take a spare pair of shoes!

As the verger for a busy church I probably see more weddings than most people. The one that sticks in my memory was when the bride was 1 year and 2 hours late. Yes, you read that right! I think they must have copied and pasted a friend's order of service from the previous year and forgot to change the year date. That was the year late. The other two hours were because the vintage car that was bringing the bride broke down some miles away. It is a rural area and it took some time to get a replacement there. However the driver 'put his foot down' trying to make up time and they got stopped by the police for speeding which further delayed her arrival. The vicar gave the waiting congregation a lecture about the history of the church while they were waiting

If they send it to that TV programme which shows 'funny' videos they may make far more money!

These are from a few weddings I’ve been to/a bridesmaid for. Some big, some minor but annoying

• Bride an hour late due to hair issues
• photos had to be completely changed and delayed due to an argument with the venue about confetti
• The WiFi went down so the bar couldn’t take card payments and no one had cash - still had a good evening but bride and groom were gutted and incredibly stressed that no one was dancing and having a good time - took an hour to convince venue to let them use their own alcohol left over from the meal
• photobooth never arrived
• dj completely ignored playlist given by bride and groom and did typical wedding party music. Also kept calling the groom the wrong name
• i was in a bridal party once where we had our hair done. I precurled my hair as my hair is annoying and I know what to do to make it stay in (it also takes about an hour to curl as it’s long and lots of it and didn’t want to hog time) Rest of bridal party’s hair went from curled to straight within two hours. If having hair done professionally I advise checking the longevity of the style as bride was very disappointed her hair dropped to straight by the photos.
• physical fight between mother of the groom and her ex husband
• people struggling to get home/to hotel because they hadn’t pre booked taxis in a rural area

It was a bit alternative, middle of nowhere. We had no food all afternoon whilst they had "games & activities" . Everyone was moaning they were starving. Eventually we got to queue outside in the rain early evening to get a plastic bowl of a scoop of curry and rice.
We left as early evening as we were painfully hungry and fed up. they divorced a few years later.

Went to another just evening reception. Music was booming loud. We pulled on the carpark at the hotel and it was loud from inside the car on the carpark. Then there were no extra tables for evening guests so we were all sat on chairs in a line up the corridor adjacent to the disco, so loud you couldn't hear the person next to you, cradling a plate of food on your lap.

I went to a wedding reception where there was "entertainment" - a very amateur comedian who spent the whole evening roaming around the room picking on random people and making very personal and "off colour" remarks about them. It was mortifying. I was so anxious about getting noticed by him that I spent the whole evening with my legs crossed not daring to get up to go to the loo. The bride and groom were in stitches but most people just sat looking as uncomfortable as I felt.

Where a kilted guest got drunk and on the dance floor removed his undies and threw them across the room towards the buffet where they landed, gusset down, on a plate of sausage rolls.

Priest’s first ever wedding. He was an ex pub landlord. He rocked on the edge of the altar throughout the ceremony, I was ready to catch him! He called my husband-to-be Anthony throughout the ceremony. That is not his name. He hadn’t put out the hymn books/order of service, so I stood like a lemon in the entrance while my db ran round distributing both.

He hadn’t put up the number of the hymns on the wooden display as would be normal in a Catholic Church so had to find then announce them. He had put a wooden bench for us to sit on despite us saying we’d prefer to stand throughout the ceremony. He claimed we’d forgotten to bring the vows even though we’d said we wanted the bog standard order of service in the book he had. Throughout the ceremony, somebody was using a broom very loudly in the vestry. I think my uncle went to stop him/her at one point.

We’d asked the photographer to meet us at a local park after the ceremony for the main couple photos. He ‘got lost’ and didn’t turn up, so we had to rush to do photos at the venue.

At the reception-hottest day of the year-my dad dripped with sweat writing his speech then rambled on about me sneaking off to smoke with our unusual dog, so fairly obvious. Nobody laughed, it was painfully cringe worthy. My husband dumped me during the first dance and took off his shirt, his brother, the best man, joined him to dance, I just stood back. I wasn’t too bothered, I found it funny and I’ve never let him forget it, 26 years later.

I’m glad to say everyone was well fed. I deliberately organised a 3pm wedding so people wouldn’t be waiting long for food (5pm) and we had a huge buffet a couple of hours later for everyone plus the evening guests-very few people, just a few colleagues.

I don’t understand how she was a year late. And if she was how come everyone else was there.

Sorry if I explained it badly. All the orders of service said that the wedding was taking place in July 2018 when it was already 2019. A printing error

At my wedding we didn't really think how we were going to get the gifts home (underestimated the number and size of gifts we got!). Edited to add that we had a very small hire car and lived a long way from most family members!

Reception venue at a friend's wedding... we had the meal and speeches, then had to leave the room for them to change the tables etc for the evening. It was December, freezing out and literally no where inside to sit/wait. Just a couple of small corridors. After nearly an hour huddled in the cold, we got in the car and left.

I'm ill in bed and your story had me howling! 😂

it was v nice of you to make the cake they asked for, and the main thing is that it looked nice for the photos before the cutting!

🤣🤣🤣

Members of bridal party late as the cab took them to wrong location (think common church name like St Andrews) they ended up miles away

Funny, big chuds in the buffet

Mine: make up artist took ten minutes and I looked like Aunt Sally in a wedding dress. She was a local from the pub we worked at, she always looked well done make up wise so when my original one cancelled as she had taken up other work due to covid, thought that would save the day. Reader, it did not. DD saw me, looked shocked and I burst into tears. She helped me take the lot off and I did it myself, but am still not happy with how my photos look.
Wedding cake got too hot and slid at an angle. I also hated the design. Our boss at the time offered to have our cake made as a gift, asked how we wanted it. I said, very traditional, white icing, nothing too OTT. He had made a marble effect purple and white monstrosity with huge plastic flowers. It was rank as well.
The icing on the cake? Someone stole £3k at the reception from our cards. We know who it was but couldn't prove it. It caused a huge split in or group of mates.

At SILs wedding her very expensive photographer got pissed and was asleep before they cut their cake or had their first dance. Luckily I had a very nice camera at the time so stepped in. Not that I got a word of thanks off her but there you go. Buffet for the evening was locked away in another room. Staff were vile. Food was not great at the wedding breakfast, we were famished. They also got charged for a DJ despite her giving him a USB with a whole playlist on. We made the playlist. No word of thanks for that either, and we ended up with the shittest room at the venue, everyone else in the family had suites, we had a cupboard next to the cleaners station with a camp bed for the kids and a very old bed with springs poking through for DH and I. Yet we paid the same as those with huge suites. We are often seen as the poor relations of the family so apparently when they realised they were a suite short they "didn't think we would mind" having the shit room. They also declined to allow us breakfast saying it wasn't included with our room, so with two hungry children under 4 at the time and having been half starved the day before we left before anyone else got up. We then got called by family asking why we left without breakfast, turned out it was included for us too. We actually got a partial refund from the hotel but sil found out and tore strips off me for "embarrassing" her!

Another wedding I went to as a kid my parents were pissed off that they got invited to the evening do and the wedding but not the wedding breakfast. Soon changed their mind when all 100 guests who ate there got severe food poisoning. Bride was mortified and they sued.

I was at one where the best man forgot the rings.......