Consequences Of Proposals At Weddings
“My wife’s cousin got engaged at our wedding. She barely even made the cut to get on the guest-list at our super small wedding. Her hairdresser boyfriend thought that right after toasts was the right moment to pop the question. They were sitting with my wife’s parents – who had been super unsupportive even though we flew to the other side of the country to have the wedding in a place that was convenient to them. Naturally, this couple was sitting at my wife’s family’s table. Her family did nothing but fawn over this ridiculous cousin all night and then talk about that and only that for the next several months. Wife’s mom threw a bridal shower for the cousin (not my wife), showered them with gifts (nothing for us). And what’s crazy is that my wife and I are totally on okay terms with her family.
Oh, and the cousin borrowed my photographer to take an impromptu engagement shoot on my dime out back (which resulted in my photographer missing the first dance).
They’re booking their wedding at the same venue (which was a destination location for us), with the same food vendor (it’s a stone hearth pizza truck on wheels) and even asked for a copy of our vows.”
Two Is Always Better Than One
“It would either have to be the groom’s dad, who was raging and interrupted our wedding toast with a 14-minute long ramble about his business, and how he built my husband up and how he wouldn’t have been a man without him, blah blah blah. And, he gave us $25 as a wedding gift.
OR, my husband’s co-worker, who not only brought his disaster of a wife, but his adult, mouth-breathing public masturbator of a son. She wore her wedding dress (to a barbecue, my reception was a barbecue), and they sat at our cake table. You know, the little table that the cake sits on by itself? They put their plates on it and sat there. Every single picture of my wedding cake has this guy and his brick stupid ugly family ducking into the shot, waving. I am still not over it.
The wedding was over 17 years ago, and the photos aren’t digitized, and it’s become a canon family story. We were very young, and none of us were confrontational. It was casual, so there weren’t ushers in the classic sense. My maid of honor was raging, the best man thought it was hilarious. I can laugh about it now! HA! Heh. Dave and his family are legendary, my husband worked with him for over 20 years, and I have so many good stories. And yes, at the time of my wedding his son was 34 years old, lived on his parent’s couch, watched lots of pro-wrestling. Functionally illiterate, and had been recently arrested for beating his meat in a convenience store.”
The Intrusive Wedding Photographer
“My wedding photographer did the following:
- Stomped her feet and whined when I told her I didn’t want to take any more pre-wedding photos as my feet were killing me and it was sweltering hot and I wanted to rest a few minutes before the ceremony.
- Asked my maid of honor when she was due. She wasn’t pregnant.
- Did not take any photos of my husband while I was walking down the aisle, even though she had two photographers.
- Complained loudly in the middle of the reception that she wanted to eat NOW and to find out where her meal was.
- Asked my grandmother and grandmother in law to get together for a photo. She then turned to my boss and said ‘Gotta get pictures of the grandmas! Who knows when they will kick the bucket right?’
- After the wedding, I gave her the check for the remainder she was due. I e-mailed her a few weeks after the wedding asking when we could expect our photos and she said: ‘Uh, as soon as you pay me what you owe me.’ I had to remind her I paid her at the end of the reception and she says ‘Oh ok, you’ll have your photos soon.’ I then receive two form e-mails from her in the next few weeks stating that my balance is due and I have to tell her AGAIN that I already paid her.
- I had a ‘trash the dress’ session (which I paid for) but I didn’t even want to talk to her ever again after all of this so I never did it.
I should have realized that she was a freaking trainwreck before I hired her. She met us at a coffee shop and spent the entire time talking about how her boyfriend had just dumped her and how lonely she was. I left her a scathing Yelp review and so did a few dozen other people. Even if they take good photos, sometimes it’s not worth it to deal with the crazy.”
Who’s To Blame?
“I had two guests, my two great aunts.
A week before my wedding, my great grandmother got really sick and was in the hospital. She pretty much knew it was her time. She was 94. We had several talks before that and she was pretty clear that if she passed, she wanted me to continue with the wedding. She was the only person who knew I was pregnant and she liked the idea of a life leaving and a new life coming. I was heartbroken but had good closure because I was able to say goodbye to her.
Me, my grandma, and my mom were the caretakers of my great grandmother. The two great aunts of mine weren’t really involved and they lived on the other side of the country.
So grandma is super sick and the end was coming so the two great aunts came to town. And of course, instead of getting a hotel room or something they just decide to live in great grandma’s house till she passes. Before my great grandma has even passed away, great aunts are going around her house with sticky notes, putting their names on things. It was the rudest, greediest, most self-centered thing I had ever experienced.
Well, I and husband get married and the aunts come uninvited to the wedding. Eat a ton of food, and then just sit around talking loudly about how rude and selfish I am for having my wedding while my grandmother is dying. Let me also mention, that I had a very small wedding with close friends and family and a potluck type meal. It wasn’t like I was out partying. I was just doing my thing. They didn’t even need to come considering we barely know each other.
Even though I and my husband had our wedding, we canceled our honeymoon because I didn’t want to leave town with great-grandma being so sick.
She passed the night of my wedding.
So the next day, these crazy aunts rent a Uhaul, load up everything in the house, and leave town.
They left the house filthy. So my grandma and mom just cried while we cleaned up the mess they left behind in the mostly empty house.
I refuse to speak to them or have anything to do with them.”
Death By Bridesmaid
“This was my sister’s wedding. Bridesmaid is an hour late, shows up and asks to borrow anyone’s car for some unknown reason.
Same bridesmaid is engaged to one guy, but a different guy shows up as her date to the wedding then she proceeds to publicly just climb all over the guy.
Everyone is leaving the reception, I’m helping my sister gather her things when we realize the guestbook is nowhere to be found. We are pretty sure that same bridesmaid took it. She left before the clean up because forget everyone else. We try to call her several times to no avail. Finally get ahold of her, she’s at some hotel with random date guy. She did ‘accidentally’ take the guestbook. Pretty sure it was some idiotic plan to get my sister to go hang out with her instead of her now husband. Knowing this, my husband and I drive to the next town (where the hotel is) to get it from her instead to foil this stupid plan.
Side note, she was ticked off from the beginning that I was the Maid of Honor (at my own sister’s wedding) and not her. She repeatedly tried to take over the easier of the MoH roles, of course not the helping with prep part because that’s just too much work.”
Sweet Karma
“One of the groomsmen in my best friend’s wedding was the worst. He got his comeuppance, though. My friend hated the guy but he was the groom’s cousin so she was kind about it. ‘Eddie’ disrupted the ceremony numerous times on purpose. He started out making faces and noises. Not subtly, more like a child making overtly ‘funny’ faces. It was like he was trying to work for the crowd. There was some kind of ritual involving holy water and he made this dramatic ‘funny’ show of being splashed a bit. He was so over the top it was like Uncle Joey from Full House in the middle of a very serious ceremony. He finally cracked a couple of jokes out loud toward the end. Nobody seemed amused at all and a few of us looked ready to fight. It was obnoxious and really embarrassing to witness, though the ceremony was otherwise lovely.
After, we all headed to the beach to take photos before the reception. The bride was extremely stressed and trying not to let it get to her. Eddie was whining about everything including how bored he was (he was in his 20’s at the time). Eddie was still standing around when a seagull flew over and pooped directly on his head and the shoulder of his rented tux. Everyone is pointing and laughing, including the photographer. The photographer got a wonderful photo of the bride and me in our big dresses, arms around each other, having fallen to our knees in the sand, pointing and laughing at Poop Head. Eddie flipped out and started whine-yelling, ‘STOP LAUGHING AT ME, THIS ISN’T FUNNY, STOP LAUGHING!!!!!!’ and stormed off. Drove back to the cabin, ditched the other groomsman (he was his ride), didn’t show back up until a few hours into the reception still steaming. We call this god’s wedding gift to my best friend.
Side note, the bride was already stressed that day for a lot of reasons. The groom’s entire family was absolutely awful. They all shared a big cabin and they wouldn’t even let my friend into one of the bathrooms to shower or get ready so she was rushed and late. They wore jeans to the formal ceremony/reception because ‘we don’t dress up for anything.’ They showed up two hours late to the reception and brought their own cases of Coors to the fully stocked bar. My friend had no family on her side because her family is extremely abusive. Her dear friend who was supposed to officiate passed away very shortly before the wedding. Between all this and the groom’s crazy family, she had a stressful day, but she kept a great attitude despite it and was nothing but sweet. That seagull truly helped brighten her day and we’ll all be eternally grateful to that bird.”
10 Ways To Fail At A Toast
“My brother picked his oldest friend against his (now wife) fiancée’s wishes. They were neighbors since birth so he figured it was the logical choice. She begged him (the ONLY thing I agreed with her, haha) to pick another guy, but my brother stood by his decision. It started off so well when the Best Man forgot to pick them up at the airport after their early honeymoon (honeymoon before the wedding due to work stuff).
Ok, the wedding. Things are going well. Beautiful outdoor wedding, nice weather, no rain, everything one could wish for on their special day. Then comes the reception. Oh dear lord, why Best Man, why. You could have made a toast about ANYTHING else except what spewed out of your mouth. You two basically lived side by side for twenty years. You could have talked about the time you were kids, you could have talked about the time the school bus almost left you at the McDonalds the next town over during a class trip, but no. You had to include the most inappropriate story into your toast Best Man.
All eyes on him, Best Man proceeds, in front of his longtime friend, my brother, and his now brand new wife, how my brother basically more or less sold his body for a ride. Living in a city there are many strange people, and one of those strange people picked up my brother who wanted a ride (he was wasted and had no change for public transportation, decided hitching a ride was the next best thing) back home. The man who graciously gave my brother a ride was interested in…more. My brother, not one of confrontation, decided to meet the man halfway and show the man his junk in exchange for the ride.
And that is how Best Man was banned from my brother’s house for six months. Best Man was crazy.”
You Reap What You Sew
“She took the credit for everything that we did and heavily implied to friends and family that she financed the whole shebang. She did not. We paid for it all ourselves in cash, thank you very much. And my wife is an incredibly crafty woman who designed all of the decorations and designs herself, not that horrid excuse for a human being. There is no beauty in her life or her soul.
The other, far more insidious thing she did was try and spread seeds of distrust in my new wife’s heart by claimed she heard my family conspiring against her. She said that my father and brothers had been having an open conversation about how this marriage would never last and they were going to make sure of it. She also tried to convince my wife to leave me because she could tell I was abusive ‘just by looking at him.’
Which didn’t happen. But it took three years and a complete unmasking of this harpy before it all got out in the open.
You see, the woman was my wife’s cousin, but thanks to the intricacies that govern the way small-town families interact they grew up more like sisters. She and my wife were close for many years, and her cousin never hesitated to take advantage of this whenever the opportunity presented itself. Whether lying, cheating or stealing she always painted herself as the hero and my wife, naive to a fault, always believed her.
Like Grand Vizier Jafar she began whispering into my wife’s (then fiancée’s) ear. How she was her only real friend. How I was just trying to keep them apart. How my mother didn’t really like her. How my sister didn’t respect her. How it was only a matter of time until I started separating her from the family. And her words, like maggots, nourished themselves on the bull she spewed. My wife would come home from work (The Girl insisted they had to be in communication from when she got in the car to when she parked to ‘keep her safe from falling asleep’) and look at me differently. She twisted my wife’s perspective to believe that everyone else was lying, and she was the only one telling the truth. The only one she could trust.
The wedding wasn’t where it ended, just a continuation of the same. It wasn’t until the second year of our marriage that The Girl began to fall apart. She herself began to implode. She had finally told too many lies to too many people. And the last straw, the very one that broke the camel’s back? The person she told them to was me.
She approached me with a business opportunity. I was hesitant but let her do her spiel, which I initially turned down.
But she kept after me, and my wife kept after me, making bigger and bigger promises that there was no way she could possibly have kept… but she spun a good story. And god help me, I believed. Somehow, despite everything I knew about this woman, she managed to get into my brain too. Even when things started to go bad in the first few weeks I believed. And when my cheques started coming in late I held on to that belief. By the end, I was covering material costs on my own credit cards. Because she was good. I was out of my depth and out of my league.
And worst of all she still had my wife under her thumb. So when I would come home from that she would have already whispered into my wife’s ear all the reasons why the things I might complain about were my fault. But in the end, she just tried to push too hard. Her abuse started to get out of control, her home life started to fall apart, and in the stress she was under, and in one night she overdid it.
In the middle of the night, she showed up at my house, the mask off. She blamed every problem she’d ever had in her life on my wife. She blamed every problem she’d ever had in business on me. Every act she had ever performed as a human being had been to benefit us, despite how ungrateful we were. My wife was a bad person, a bad mother, a failure as a human being. I was a shoddy provider, a poor excuse for a craftsman, no better than a ‘puppy that had to be trained not to pee on the floor.’ Even her exit from my home was extreme, cracking the drywall a la Cruella DeVil.
For my wife, it was like waking up from a decade’s long dream. It took weeks before she really accepted that this was her real face. It took months before she could fully accept that I had been telling the truth. It took almost an entire year before she realized that maybe my family really hadn’t been conspiring against her this whole time. She had to be, essentially, deprogrammed. To this day she’ll have moments when she will suddenly stop what she’s doing, turn to me, and tell me something like: ‘I can’t believe that she had me convinced that I had to buy her kid’s groceries because she had no money, but could still afford smokes, weed, or anything else,’ or: ‘I can’t believe when her son tried to commit suicide she punished him for not understanding how much stress she was under.'”
Choices Were Made
“She was a redhead in a skin-tight, low cut dress. She announced to HER husband (he was in the wedding party), in the buffet line, that she should have married MY new husband. My family was in line right behind her. My mom heard it first hand. People couldn’t wait to come tell me. I thought it was hilarious. He knew her before he met me. He told me he couldn’t handle the crazy when she followed him around while we were dating. Given the state of crazy he has been married to for 15 years, she must have exhibited a master level of crazy.”
Stealing The Thunder
“At my cousin’s wedding, one of her bridesmaids just happened to be engaged to be married maybe 3 months after her day.
She was tolerable throughout the ceremony, but one of the first things she started doing at the reception was ‘working the room,’ going from group to group showing off her engagement ring, and making subtle comments about how much nicer it was than [cousin’s].
An hour and many drinks later, she progressed to talking about how they’d never last and she tried to talk her out of it. Finally, about 3 hours in she’s completely wasted and starts making a huge scene about how [cousin] was ‘stealing her thunder’ by scheduling her wedding earlier.
My cousin had their wedding planned almost 6 months before she did…”
Only When The Wedding Planner Is Finished
“This guest happened to be our wedding planner. Aside from all the excuses and stuff she gave us leading up to the wedding, she had the gall to tell us that because SHE finished her meal, we needed to stop eating (we didn’t really get to due to all the greetings/congratulations) and cut the cake so she could have dessert. Luckily for her, we were surrounded by people we did like and respect, so we didn’t beat her.
The reason we even had a wedding planner was because my mother insisted on having one of her friends who just broke into the business help us to give her some experience. Needless to say, she caused more trouble than her ‘help’ was worth. Best excuse was: ‘I can’t help decorate the day before the wedding because I signed a promissory with my daughter’s dance teacher to never ever (she emphasized this) miss a dance class.'”
The Horrific Bridesmaid
“It began weeks before the wedding and continued weeks after, but just that day:
- Hair, nails, makeup for all women in the wedding was paid for. It was their time to hang out before the wedding. She showed up too late to get anything done.
- Showed up hammered.
- Apparently parked her car at the reception before the wedding. The wedding is over and apparently she ‘lost’ her car. Or it was ‘towed.’ So we spent 20-30 minutes looking for it and trying to figure out if it had been towed. Nope. Parked in the same spot.
- I believe she walked out to announcements, but I never saw her again. There are no pictures of her at our reception anywhere. She apparently went to a bar down the street to drink, even though drinks were free at the wedding. Found out later she went and met the guy she was cheating on her husband with.
Really ticked me off.”
Because Insecurities
“Up until my wedding, I assumed the women on Bridezillas were all overreacting to play up for the camera. After my own wedding, I sort of get it, there’s always someone determined to be a problem the day of. One of my bridesmaids stayed with me the week leading up to the wedding and every day that went by just more and more episodes of her tomfoolery filled me with dread for what she would do the day of.
Most of her antics the week before were shenanigans. Annoying but not really causing issues. The night before the wedding she begs to move into our house, changes her plane tickets, and falls over onto a table.
The morning of the wedding she lifts her shirt to everyone coming into the house to pick up supplies for the reception. People she’s never met get to see her bruised chest and bra at 7 am. She’s also refusing to get ready to leave because she didn’t want to leave me alone with my maid of honor because she’s insecure.
My parents come and anytime they would ask me a question she would answer for herself. I don’t think I actually spoke to my own mom until four hours into getting our hair and makeup done. She tried to start stuff hours before the ceremony with my sister after getting taken aside and told to stop acting like a brat. No one wanted to talk because you would instantly get talked over by her complaints of being hungover. Rode to the ceremony in complete silence.
Got drinks as fast as she could at the reception. Jumped in front of the photographer all night and made obscene gestures in front of lovely family photos. In one of them, my mom was holding my year old nephew and she jumped into the frame and grabbed my mother’s chest.
Got upset that she would always be alone, tried to drop her drink on my dress while we were dancing, then left to go try to hook up with my coworker.
I broke off the friendship when she later tried to start a fight between me and my husband. Forget that.
The Odd One Out
“She just showed up to the wedding. She wasn’t invited to our very small, intimate wedding. To really ice that cake, she showed up hungover and dressed like a dirty slob. You’d think if you were going to crash a wedding you would at least shower for it.
To add some details, we had an outdoor wedding at a public garden, so really anyone could’ve come and crashed the ceremony I suppose. There were 10 people in attendance plus us. This girl was an on/off girlfriend of a former roommate and good family friend of mine. My friend had been invited to our wedding, and he and his lady friend were ‘off,’ so I assumed he wouldn’t bring her. Not to mention the past issues I had had with her and my clear distaste for her as a human being. Well, I assumed wrong and she showed up in jeans, a greasy ponytail and reeking. I was super ticked, but I also wasn’t going to let that hag ruin mine and my spouses day. It still turned out to be a great day even with ‘that’ guest there.”
