Once you’ve reached a certain age in life, you’ve probably attended at least a handful of weddings.
You’ve also got a decent amount of experience with personal relationships, and when you put the two together, you find you can guess with some accuracy when relationships are going to stand the test of time.
Here are a few moments people witnessed at weddings that left them skeptical that the couple would be celebrating many anniversaries down the line.
I hope she found someone way better.
I was maid of honour. Me, best man and the couple went into a separate little room to do the signing stuff. Bride excused herself to go the bathroom and the groom started making pretty mean remarks about her cooking (sth she’s passionate about) to the officiary.
She came back, heard they were talking about cooking family meals together and gave him the warmest smile, thinking he had praised her. He scoffed awkwardly and changed the topic.
That always stuck with me. He wasn’t laughing WITH her but AT her, behind her back.
They lasted 7 months.
You have to laugh or you’ll cry.
As a wedding photographer I have been to more than my share of weddings.
It was a REAL shotgun wedding. Dad didn’t realize it would not stand up in court. Only time the groom was more excited to have photos than the bride.
She wanted a limo, he thought a hearse would be better and kept doing Lurch impressions. From the Adams family.
Her friends took turns motorboating her (females), and he said, get it out of your system as after tonight you never get to do that again. Was a good sign also when she dove into the pool with her bridesmaids at the reception…in her wedding dress.
Don’t know what happened… Sat down with bride and groom, filling out the contract. Got the deposit. He stood up, said forget it, and walked out. 2 months later I get told the wedding is off, 3 months later she calls to rebook, different groom.
Day of the wedding I am at the church… Got the final payment the week before… No one shows… No one, just me and the DJ.
Thirty whole days.
He ended up at the emergency room between the ceremony and the reception. He went out out the night night before with his sister and friends and got plastered. They had to hold a cold pak to the back of his neck to keep him vertical during the wedding photos.
Marriage lasted 30 days until they had a fight, she left the house and he filled the U-Haul truck with everything but her clothes.
The cringe is real.
Not the couple getting married but the Best Man and Maid of Honor who were married to each other. Best Man’s speech was all about how hard it was to be married. “I’ve been married for a year and it feels like 100 years.” Maid of Honor stands up to give a speech and just says “Ditto.” It was so awkward and really brought the whole room down.
Brother of the bride stood up and gave a nice impromptu speech about teamwork and having a partner to go through life with. How happy the family was to have the groom join their family.
Best Man and Maid of Honor were divorced within a year. Couple who got married are still married 30+ years later. I sometimes wonder if the speeches actually were helpful in how not to act as a couple.
For me the complex backstory. Bride’s brother is gay and has been in a longterm relationship for 40+ years. At the time he gave his speech about marriage he couldn’t marry the man he loved and I think his passioned defense of marriage was born from that. When people would say they were against gay marriage because it makes a mockery of marriage I’d think of that night.
The married couple who had no respect for marriage could easily marry (and did over and over again) and the man who stood up and defended marriage could not.
He’s married now and lovingly takes care of his husband as he battles health issues.
Not exactly subtle.
The groom showed up to his own reception wearing a t-shirt with restroom-sign style stick figures depicting a bride and groom captioned “Game Over.”
I need to know why she did it.
She told me two days before that she found her fiancé annoying and that she didn’t like him and that he was AWFUL in bed.
She was visibly, endlessly uncomfortable at the rehearsal wedding/dinner combo.
Then she sobbed the ENTIRE morning, day-of. She ended up not getting any makeup done cause she wouldn’t stop scream-sobbing and refused to get dressed, stalling the wedding ~35 minutes.
She then said 45 minutes of “vows” that she had prepared (9 pages of things like inappropriate vows to friends and family, his parents and sisters, none of them her husband), and then ALMOST didn’t say “I do”. Managed to get a, “uh, yeah, okay, yeah I do” out of her almost a full 60 seconds after she was supposed to say anything.
I could go on for HOURS, but it was the most painful and awkward wedding I’ve ever been to. I’ve got my money on 10 months. We’re 1 month in.
EDIT – 2.5 month update — I’ve distanced myself from them completely. She is really clingy and likes to gossip about how awful her husband is and I really don’t have the time. She’s also told me they’re in couples therapy after I expressed negativity towards some extremely concerning things she said regarding their relationship + lack of communication. But, I’m still betting on 10 months because she believes it’s all his fault and truly believes his parents and sisters are exactly the same (news flash, they’re all lovely people).
EDIT #2 – 5 month update — I no longer associate with them so I’m out of the loop regarding juicy details. Last I heard they keep moving all over the country and fight non-stop. No more lovey-dovey images on social media. Seems to be right on track for a 10 month breakup.
An actual horror story.
The bride had a bruised eye covered by make-up. Also it was visible that walking was hurting her. I might think it was because the corset was pushing on broken ribs.
Took her 3 years to run away.
Not a funny joke.
When they were doing the vows and the priest got to the “for richer or poorer” part and she said “for richer or richer and maybe for poorer.”
The officiant was not pleased. I think they made it a year.
He should have turned her right around.
When my sister married her first husband she mouthed to my father walking her down the aisle “I can make this work, right?”…
They were divorced 6 months later…. my whole family knew it wasn’t a good idea since the original engagement a year prior…
That second one though.
I’ve got two:
One of my good friends got married and I’d never met her before the wedding because “she’s just shy.” On the wedding day, she was belligerently drunk before the ceremony even started and couldn’t even get through the lines she was supposed to repeat (i.e. “I promise to love you”). She ended up slapping the groom, spilling champagne on her dress, and then crying under a table while he tried to comfort her. They lasted about 4 months.
Another one was my wife’s friend. She’s a very conservative, religious white girl who married a black man. Most of her racist family didn’t approve of the marriage and didn’t show up. But she planned the whole marriage around race. Like a vanilla cake for her and a chocolate cake for him, the wedding colors were black and white, and even the meals were white meat for her side and dark meat for his. It was extremely uncomfortable as a guest. They lasted 2 years (but broke up because he was abusive and almost killed her, rather than the weird racial tension).
That’ll do it.
When the bride drank vodka out of a pint glass and spent a significant amount of time making out with another guy on the dance floor.
Turns out she’d been carrying on an affair with another guy (not the dance floor makeout guy) for quite some time.
It all worked out in the end, she married the affair guy and the groom went on to find someone who wasn’t s*%t.
Never to be seen again.
We’ll start three days before. The wedding was a ren-fair style wedding outside at a large gazebo and the Maid of honor had promised to purchase a stylized dress for my bride that they had agreed on. THREE DAYS before the wedding she calls to tell us she had no money and was embarrased to admit it….so we literally hand-sewed ont together in 24 hours. IMO it turned out pretty nice for what we had…
Brides mother was supposed to pick up the cake in ATX and drive an hour south for the wedding. She left her house 30 minutes before the wedding to pick it up. When she finally showed up (hour late) the cake was DESTROYED….she put it in the back seat and drove like hell all the way down, just slamming it against box with every turn.
During the one hour delay, there was almost a fist fight between two groomsmen because….well the MoH showed up, IN THE DRESS THAT SHE WAS ‘UNABLE TO AFFORD’. Obvious attempt to upstage the bride. The same MoH during her speech after the ceremony started it of by saying ‘When we all met, I did not like Drakkarim411 at all, however I found that he grows on you…like a fungus.’
Needless to say my entire side of the family was super cold to all of this.
Since all of these issues were on her side of friendships or families, I was told to suck it up and we’ll discuss later. I sort of assumed that a lot of these ‘friends’ had just shown themselves the door. Quite the opposite. In fact, two years later when I accepted my first well paying job out of college, it became an issue that it was an hour and a half out of Austin…so she decided to just stay in ATX to be with her friends.
…I mailed her the divorce papers and since she couldn’t be bothered to even show up to the hearing….I’ve never seen her again.
Wait for it.
When the bride tried to playfully feed the groom some cake, pulling it back once it got close to his mouth. The third time she did this, he slapped it out of her hand and stormed off.
In the ensuing awkward silence and wide-eyed staring, we all knew it wouldn’t last.
Surprisingly, they were together for nearly two years before the bride eloped away with her step-brother. No one saw that coming.
Speechless.
Not at the wedding itself, but I used to work at a David’s Bridal. Bride came in with tons of friends, we did the Say Yes To The Dress Thing, and an hour later she’d standing there in $3,000 worth of stuff and doesn’t have any money with her or in her account. She decides she wants to apply for the store credit card, I run it through the system, and she gets denied. She then calls the groom for his info (which, to be fair, people did all the time), and he tells her no. She threw a HUGE fit on the phone with him, standing on the bridal stage, literally demanding “WHY NOT? WHY?! WHY!!” like an actual child over and over again. I’ve never seen a 30 year old age backwards so quickly. She was just a brat. Literally stomping her feet in front of me, all her friends, and the other bride in the store. *I* was embarassed. At the end of all of that, she hangs up on him and her friend is like “I’m so sorry you can’t get your dress” and the bride stops crying instantly and just goes “Oh I’ll get the dress. I just have to do this at home and when he gets mad enough he’ll come get it for me so I’ll stop.”
Speechless. Sure enough. Girl came back two days later with her man and he applied for the credit card and bought the dress. He was livid and silent, and she was smug as hell. Can’t imagine they’re having a happy marriage if they are still together.
He’s not the guy.
Prior to my wedding I’d asked my husband to practice dancing with me because I’m uncoordinated, due to a disability. He blew me off and said we’d be fine.
As we were dancing, he spoke in my ear, not even quietly. “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you? You’re embarrassing me!!” We lasted 2 years. Leaving was the best decision I ever made.
A huge rift.
I’M WITNESSING ONE FROM THE SIDELINES NOW!!!
My wife’s brother just got married this past May. Bride’s mother is a big DIY person and went a little nuts with extra flowers, table pieces, decorations, etc… Note I said extra, it was already decorated by the venue, she just took it upon herself to buy and add way more stuff.
Anyway, a few weeks ago she sends my MIL (grooms mom) and email with receipts of all the extra stuff she bought ($7,000 worth!!! ) and asked that she pay half since it was technically set up in time for the rehearsal dinner for guests to enjoy. It’s causing a huge rift between the newlyweds since the bride is taking her moms side.
He took the call.
I was at a wedding when a phone went off during the ceremony.
In the middle of exchanging vows.
It was the grooms.
He took the call.
They are divorced now.
Drama for days.
My wife got invited to a client’s daughter’s wedding. The couple were both drama students. Many of the bridal party were drama students. The maid-of-honour’s toast consisted of tearful declarations of unrequited love to the groom, along the lines of ‘if it couldn’t be me, I’m glad it’s my best friend that’s marrying you’.
The best-man’s speech was a lusty declaration of ‘if it doesn’t work out, call me, babe… like the previous time you called me.’ Other toasts were similarly weird.
A guy at the table I was seated at was a friend of the bride and said to me that he was ‘this close’ to standing up during the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ thing.
I’m still not sure if the whole thing was a bunch of emotionally fucked-up 20-year-olds, or one big piece of performance art.
It’s hard to argue with this logic, right?
It would be interesting if people would come back and report later on whether or not they were right.
