Tell us about your worst wedding experiences?

[ENormaSnob]

Inspired by diamondsonthesoleofhershoes thread in aibu.

The worst wedding I have ever attended was an attempt at a big traditional wedding done on a tiny budget. Freezing cold room, luke warm daytime buffet with 2 choices served on paper plates that bent when the food hit them, no drinks at all, not even a toast after the speeches. There was a pay bar which is fine with me but not even one glass of wine with the meal seems mean. The night buffet was worse than the daytime one, a few plates of dry sarnies and 2 plates of mummified chicken. No pudding of any description throughout the whole day I was cold and hungry all day. The bride had told me before hand that most of their budget had gone on outfits for the wedding party and the cars. Cars which no one saw anyway On a positive note, the drinks weren't extortionate like they are in some places.

I am not a fussy cow btw, my ideal wedding as a guest would be a village hall type of affair with everyone bringing a plate and a bottle.

Eventually, Buppers -- I will keep you posted :o

I do wedding photography by invitation only - in other words, for good friends who can mainly be relied upon to plan great weddings for them and their guests. So I do get to go to a few weddings and find them quite diverting when behind a lens! I've been to a couple of fairly disastrous weddings as a guest and without exception, one of the outstanding features in my catalogue of rather crap days has been the hanging around for hours without anything to do or eat.

Two and a half hours will pass in no time for a bride and groom. Especially if they have the sort of photographer who thinks 2,000 pictures that mainly feature the label in the bride's shoes or a winsome vignette peeking around a tree actually makes for a decent record of the day. However, that same time period for a guest is pretty well interminable. Because there rarely is anything to do at a wedding - the do is the wedding - and you are often surrounded by people who you don't know well. No matter how nice they might be. Time passes a great deal quicker if you can at least eat something.

You'd better had! I am going to come in an Isabella Blow-esque headpiece.

This is why DH and travelled to the venue together and had our poncy photos done before anyone got there for the ceremony. It meant we had some nice time together before the madness commenced and there was no worry or pressure about people waiting for us. Also we got married at 4pm in winter and wanted some outside pictures so it all fell into place :)

Dude, if you don't wear purple glittery penis-boppers, you're not coming in.

This one didn't actually happen but was a theory being floated around during wedding planning stage of a friend's wedding:
Bride and groom to invite only 2 friends each, dictated by groom as was a handy number for him. Bride on the other hand, had loads of friends and would have wanted to invite more than this. Groom does have a large family but still

Partners of friends' only allowed to be invited if they are actually married to the friend - no boyfriends, girlfriends, partners whatever. I have heard this referred to as 'no ring, no bring'. Is this the very definition of 'smug married??? Would have been hideous for me as DP and I are very much not married and I would have had to choose between DP or friend. Thankfully it never came to that

Luckily the bride or someone managed to put their foot down and these theories were scratched and replaced with something a bit more normal.

is it me or are the wedding photos ott now.
they seem to go on for hours

I was 10, I was a bridesmaid in a cotton short sleeved dress - it was freezing and I was cold. A relative lent me her shawl to stop me shivering.

We hadn't had breakfast before we lft, a 1 hour drive, another 1.5 hours for RC mass and wedding then outside for photos.

By the time the buffet was served (about 3pm) I was famished and the bitch serving wouldn't let me have two slices of ham.

I wasn't allowed to change out of my bridesmaid's dress for the evening do.

When the party finished my parents tried to get a taxi. Have you ever tried to get a taxi from, what was then, a large mental hospital, in the middle of nowhere, and still had 'asylum' written in the stone work at 2am? The taxi promisses to collect you and then just doesn't turn up.

You might at this point be wondering why the reception was at a mental hospital, it was actually the social club for staff and one of the bridal party worked there.

So we started to walk, down a country lane, me still in the bridesmaid dress and the silver sandles worn in the 70s / 80s.

Eventually a taxi did arrive, we flagged it down and told the driver, yes there was a social club, no it wasn't a joke and no, people were not trying to escape a locked ward.

We spent the night at my grandparents. In the morning I found out I had no 'normal' shoes just the sandles that had torn my feet to shreds.

Went to a wedding years ago where both of the bride's parents and both of the groom's parents were divorced and re-married. All 8 sat on the top table glaring at each other.

Both fathers of the bride insisted on speaking at the reception and saying how much they'd done for the newly weds. It ended up with one father presenting his new son-in-law with a match and getting him to burn the IOU for £8,000 he'd given them for a house deposit.

sashh - you poor thing! That sounds just awful but your story did make me laugh, sorry

I bloody hate weddings - this thread reminds me to be glad that I hardly ever get invitations

My dn's wedding had no evening buffet at all. The theory was that as the wedding breakfast was at 5pm, people wouldn't be hungry .
Goodness knows how the evening guests felt, be we'd had the wedding meal and still were scoffing packets of crips from the bar by 9pm, we were ravenous!

TBH this wasn't a bad experience, as I had lots of fun and I think it was a lovely day overall. The worst wedding I've been to was probably the one where people were placing bets on how long the marriage was going to last, in weeks/months I didn't join in.

Went to a wedding in the Lake District. Beautiful warm day, amazing location, loads of good friends - lovely. Ceremony was at 10am, reception at a country house nearby started at 11:30am- had the grand total of 1 canape each and half a glass of fizz, then hung around in the lovely grounds waiting for the photos to be over. And waited. And waited. We found the cash bar and got hideously drunk.

Eventually, at 4pm we sat down. Most of the young children had got very hungry and upset long before this point, and we'd managed to get the kitchen staff to provide some sandwiches for them, but nothing for us as we were promised the food was 'just coming'. I'd eaten breakfast at about 7:30am, same as the rest of my friends, so was starving. The fact that the food was almost inedible was not great, but I was so hungry I ate more than I would normally have done. Not since my uni days have I seen a roast potato that was both burnt to a cinder and raw inside! I didn't touch the chicken as it was very undercooked. Luckily we were all drunk enough to find it hilarious, although I don't think the bride was too amused. I don't think she ate any of her main course at all.

Thank god for the evening buffet. Bride and groom were first in line

I got a migraine after that and spent the rest of the evening in a quiet room off the bar. Apart from that, had a really good time!

Lottapianos

You couldn't make this stuff up could you? - glad you had a laugh. There were some high points, the daytime reception was in the town hall, downstairs there was a flower show so I (and the other naughty bridesmaid) went down to try to enter our flowers.

I was quite disapointed at one wedding I wwent to, the bride was RC from Irish stock, the groom's father was in the Orange Order - and not a fight or wrong word said.

BIL's wedding the food was served with a loving.... splat.

Pudding was meant to be trifle. It looked like they had put the trifle in the bowl and stirred vigorously before serving. Everyone's faces were like Dh's aunt said it was a perfect example of how not to serve... once she'd finished laughing.

DP and I (along with about 10 other guests, all friends of the groom, funnily enough) were invited to a wedding and evening disco but not to the meal itself. "It''s fine!" says DP. "We'll get our own lunch at the bar there, no problem!" while I silently seethed at the cheek of it.

The wedding was at a country church, after which pictures were taken and we were involved in them. After this we found that no transportation had been arranged to take all those who arrived by train to the village where the church was, over to the venue which was several miles away, so we had to beg a lift off another guest to the venue. Several others who had arrived by train had the same problem. When we got there we had one lousy drink before the 100+ other guests sat down for dinner and the 12 of us went off to find the bar/restaurant to order and pay for our own drinks and food. Except there was no bar/restaurant. So we had to pay to get taxis to the nearest town and find a place to buy our own dinner. Then pay for more taxis back. Not surprisingly some of the 12 decided not to return for the evening party.

I am still upset about it!

Disability is a constant source of good wedding fails.
Brides and grooms please note that a stately home with a quarter mile gravel driveway looks great in the pictures but is not ideal for pushing your grandfather in his wheelchair, especially if it's on a slope. If you do wish to use it anyway then please delegate a strapping usher to push the wheelchair rather than leaving it to your septuagenarian aunt in her best heels.

Likewise, basement nightclubs reached by precipitous spiral staircase and ladder may be excellent for your university mates, but less good for your great aunt who's waiting for a hip replacement (bride's father had to hoist her up the ladder with a shoulder under her bum when she needed the loo).

oops

toby the "bridezilla" remark was tongue in cheek but it hit a nerve, obv. Sorry.

I just cant get over the amount of weddings on this thread where the bare minumum of civility/thought for guests was made. As another poster so rightly said, you would not treat guests at your house like this, so why is it ok at a wedding???

I had 3 physically handicapped people at my wedding - and I was thrilled they made what was for them a big effort and came - but I made sure that the church had the ramps over the steps (its a medieval church so not disbaled friendly!!) and that the photos didnt take HOURS and that the venue was easy to get to via car and no stairs to get the reception room(s). I also made sure that the vegetarians and diabetic guests were catered for. I thought that was just being, you know, normal

I went to another wedding where they crammed so many to a table (venue far too small really) and so the poor harrassed waitress got a bit of each course I had on the shoulder of my jacket

Don't panic. No nerves were hit. I just assumed you were attempting to be insulting, but failing.

I hope your wedding day(s) go well.

I always kept in my mind that as nice as gorgeous flowers, lovely food, good booze and pretty dresses etc are its all just "garnish". The important bit of the day - getting married - only takes about 2 mins!!!

The worst wedding ever was an evening reception in the middle of nowhere.
It was over one and half hrs away. We arrived starving as had been rushing around all day.
The only food available were bowls of crsps and nuts. there wasn't anywhere nearby to even get a kebab. Lots of people had amde an effort, bought a present and travelled far to get to there and I think it was very poor to not at least have some buffet food for the evening guests.

the one where the (female) best man (one of three) made her speech all about when her and the groom were going out together and the groom, sitting next to his FIL going on about how great his new wife's tits were (in not very subtle euphemisms)

Dh and I were invited to the evening reception of the wedding of an old school friend of dh's.

We travelled for two hours and arrived at the appointed time. We went in and everyone was still sitting at formal tables. We hovered in the doorway for a while and then the groom came over and said to dh that they were still in the midst of the afternoon reception and could we wait at the bar outside. We were joined by another old school friend. After a bit it dawned on us that the only guests for the "evening" were... us three! And there was no food.

How could someone actually invite only three people to an evening reception?! And then not give them so much as a crisp or a drink?

We all agreed to leave and dh never spoke to the groom again. Plus we took the present home with us.

Of course I'd forgotten about the Thai wedding we went to where the brother of the groom was insinuating that his new SiL was a prostitute.
Or the one me and DH went to in the wilds of Yorkshire. We'd mislaid the map and decided to follow another set of guests to the reception.
Tragially one navy metro looks very much like another and we followed a random couple to their house. They were a bit startled TBH.