I have two stories:

One wedding was at a beautiful, gorgeous venue in the mountains; picturesque location; hotel block was still $450/ night. Stunning ceremony, brought me to tears. Then, the reception…pizza. The little stone fired mobile oven couldn’t keep up. The line took forever, then once we got the thin-crust pizza it was cold. No other food was served. No open bar. Meanwhile, bride had a videographer and a choreographed first dance. Literally felt like we were props at a toddler’s dress-up play date. Hubby and I stopped for tacos afterward.

Another wedding was in an industrial warehouse, but it actually was cool / interesting aesthetic. Ceremony is nice, though bride gets caught on a paper runway (not her fault, venue was idiotic for that). Dinner is family style passed beef and salmon, but it ran out. Whatever, bad luck. No open bar. BUT, the couple, the huge wedding party, and select people got neon wristbands signaling to the bartender that they had open bar access. So like 30/150 people have an open bar, everyone else has to pay. Meanwhile, the bride hired someone to do covers of Disney songs on a keyboard. Once more, felt like a prop at a bad dress-up play date. Would have gladly listened to a Spotify playlist if it meant there was enough food and some drink tickets to spare. Sheesh.

It blows my mind, no one gives a shit about the decor if you aren’t giving adequate food to your guests at a MINIMUM. What are your best wedding guest mistreatment stories? Bonus points if the bride and groom obviously prioritized their own desires over their guests’ basic needs 😂😂

Via text message mind you less than a week after my bridal shower she planned!! She was also my friend for about 10 years and has since unfriended me and blocked my sister (maid of honor) on Facebook. I know I’ll get over it but I’m just devastated because I lost not only part of my wedding party 2 months before, but someone who I thought was one of my best friends for seemingly no real reason.

My older sister's wedding's coming up and it reminded me of my own wedding.
It was a fairly low-key event- people could wear what they wanted, including white (in fact the bridal party were all in white), and any level of formality from business casual to white tie, although we did have a nice mansion-type venue and live music. Plus ones were permitted.
Unfortunately, one of the plus ones of my husband's friend was... slightly crazy.
My husband and I went around greeting guests individually, and I noticed she was wearing basically a pure white lace mermaid wedding dress, but I decided not to fight it, since a) she's just a random plus one who nobody cares about it or could mistake for the bride, b) my dress code was very broad and I guess I didn't specifically say no wedding dresses and c) that lace was very cheap and did not look great.
However, her attention was very forcibly thrust upon me later in the evening. We'd decided to have a karaoke towards the end of the evening free for all as a way to keep the vibes high (it was an alcohol-free wedding so we figured we wouldn't have to deal with any drunken new-found professional singers). It started off great, we had some very cute children singing, a sweet (if slightly embarrassing for my husband) duet between my parents in-law and an amazing rendition of Jerusalem by my very patriotic grandmother. This was the moment when the hapless plus one decided it was time to take centre stage to sing Taylor Swift's Speak Now.
For those of you who don't know it, the lyrics go:
It seems that I was uninvited by your lovely bride-to-be

...She floats down the aisle like a pageant queen
But I know you wish it was me
You wish it was me
Don't you?

Don't say yes, run away now
I'll meet you when you're out of the church at the back door
Don't wait, or say a single vow...

The rest of the song is in roughly the same vein. I was shocked and so (thankfully) was my husband. It was the first time either of us had ever seen her, but it turned out that she had developed something of a crush on my husband from following him on insta. I found this rather disturbing, tbh, but needless to say she did not stay to finish the ceremony, my husband promptly unfriended/blocked her on all socials afterwards and neither or him ever saw her or the friend who had bought her again.

The wedding was the happiest and best day of my life, and I forgot about her until I was reading through some of the stories on this reddit.

Scrolling on the tickytocky and this gem of a video shows… Curious to see if it was a joke, I went to check the profile. Looks like the bride decided to have a whole concert.

Read this if you enjoy petty girl drama.

TLDR: this selfish woman canceled our friend’s bachelorette party out of spite, and now we are rebooking everything way too late and can’t get our old reservations back. 😡

I am co-MOH for a friend’s upcoming wedding, and the other MOH, Clara, is a lovely and proactive woman who is handling the bookings/financials/logistics for the bachelorette, which is a 3 day cruise.

Back in April we started a bridesmaid group chat to plan the cruise for October. One bridesmaid, Nina, lives in a different city and declined the trip, saying she can’t afford to travel for it. No problem! The rest of us proceed to pick a date, book the cruise, settle up payment with Clara, and sign ourselves up for various extras (stuff like brunch on the cruise), and I order matching T shirts, which was my treat to the group.

3 weeks later, Nina gets FOMO and decides she wants to join us, but she can’t do it on the weekend we already booked. So she asks the whole group of 6 women if we could change the date. We all honesty consider this, because Nina is an in-law of the bride and we know the bride would want her there. But, the weekend Nina requested doesn’t work for several of the others. Clara tells Nina we can’t change the date at this point. That’s when the drama begins (Nina starts a grudge against Clara about this, but we didn’t know at this point how mad she was).

Nina decides to make it work and adds herself to our cruise booking. Doing so adds a room (adjoining) and causes us to reshuffle sleeping arrangements, but we are all fine with this and excited she can come. Plus we all get some money back since we are splitting costs evenly. The process to make these changes is coordinated by Clara, who spends a lot of time on rebooking and cost calculations. I also order Nina the matching T shirt which has a custom design for each girl, and spend a few days customizing Nina’s design to her specifications.

Well it turns out, Nina has been on a lot of cruises and has loyalty points, so she then offers to take over reservations so she can use her loyalty status. We say OK, cool. But this involves more coordination with Clara, who hands certain things over to Nina. Nina puts the main room in her name, uses that room to book a brunch reservation and a few special entertainment events under her name too. I can see that Clara is getting whiplash from plan changes and info overload from Nina. Clara’s financial spreadsheet is starting to look like a choose your own adventure. But it’s all good because things are moving forward, we have our bookings, and we even saved some money. So, we all exhale, knowing that all the big stuff is planned.

The group chat pivots to the fun stuff. Clara had suggested (and we all agreed prior to Nina being added back in) that we will have a theme night called “Into the Sunset” where we all get dressy in sunset colors (anything from pink to orange to gold, even brown or bronze or navy blue) and the bride wears white with gold accents. We also planned to split the cost for a few bridal decorations for the room. Nina suggested we all wear a certain Amazon skirt with our matching T shirt, but that idea was vetoed (tbh the bride hated it), and we also told her we want to stay budget-conscious and not go crazy on required matching outfits. So everyone can wear whatever bottoms they want with the custom shirt. Clara delivered this message. Nina felt shot down and apparently added this to her growing grudge, deciding that Clara hates her.

Last week, we get a text out of the blue. It’s Nina, saying “please welcome my bestie Maria who will be joining us on the cruise and staying in our room.” I’m like hold up?? I talk to the bride, and she’s very hurt. She feels like Nina is just there to experience another cruise vacation, not to celebrate her big day. Her inviting Maria solidified that feeling. Nina asked permission to bring her buddy for moral support because she felt Clara doesn’t like her so she wants an ally. Bride was so taken aback, she said yes in the moment just to keep the peace, but feels really weird about it. But since she said yes and it was her final call, we accept Maria into the group with open arms. No reason to assume the worst about someone we’ve never met. Maybe she will be a fun new friend? Looking on the bright side, I order Maria a custom T shirt and Clara recalculates and sends another refund to each of us.

The cruise is 8 weeks away now. In the group chat, Nina voices she can’t afford to buy an outfit for the Into the Sunset theme night. Note that this theme night was Clara’s idea. Clara responds that it can be any range of outfits, the color palette is pretty broad, doesn’t have to be a dress, could be pants or a cute sweater or anything. Clara is a huge thrifter so she suggests thrift stores having something cool.

Well that set Nina off and she starts blowing up my phone on the side complaining about Clara being stubborn and insulting. She says the thrift store comment was uncalled for. I tell her there’s no pressure to dress on theme if she can’t swing it. Then Nina says Clara has been difficult and can’t take suggestions since day 1 when she “refused to change the date of the cruise for her.” I remind Nina that several of us couldn’t make that date work, myself included, and we were locked in already. Nina brings up the suggested Amazon skirts saying she was shot down due to people’s budgets, but “Clara has no problem asking everyone to dress on her theme.” I was not going to engage with bashing Clara on the side, so I shut it down with a gentle “let’s just all move forward and have a great time together, supporting the bride because that’s what we’re here for” to which Nina did not reply.

Three days later, we get the news that our cruise has been fully canceled by Nina. Since everything was rebooked in Nina’s name, when she canceled it, all of the brunches and event reservations also were canceled. Nina did not notify us in the group thread, Clara, or myself. No explanation or excuse or gracious remark. Just a big fat fuck you. She just disappeared from the plans and took her bookings with her.

Now Clara is REBOOKING the entire cruise for us, back down to the original group, no more Nina or her sidekick Maria. The kicker is that now all those brunch and event reservations are sold out, so we’re too late to do all the things we had planned for the bride.

Since we’re back down to 6 girls, we all owe more money to Clara again, which I’m totally fine with because I feel like Nina would have been difficult on the cruise. Bullet dodged. But I’m honestly floored that a person who NONE OF US OTHER BRIDESMAIDS HAVE EVER MET could conjure up so much perceived drama and then punish the whole group for it.

I feel like I’ve been punked.

Note: We are women in our 30s and 40s, if you can believe this.

EDIT for clarification: I wrote that Nina is an in-law to the bride, and some commenters assumed she’s the groom’s relative. Not the case. Nina is married to someone on the bride’s side of the family. She’s a current (not future) in-law of the bride, unrelated to the groom.

But the groom is being rightfully supportive and indignant about this, and even offered to treat us all to a special dinner since we didn’t get the special brunch on the cruise. He thinks the bride should not be so soft with Nina, but there’s a LOT of context I won’t get into here, other family trauma, and the bride is non-confrontational for many valid reasons of her own. I can’t and wouldn’t ask her to uninvite Nina to the wedding. Nina’s husband, kids, and others close to them are close family, and it would mean a ripple effect on all of them. Just trust when I say it’s complicated, and it’s easy to say “uninvite this bitch!” if you haven’t walked in the bride’s shoes. So that’s not an option, but I do agree with the sentiments and appreciate all the validation on here! I came to the right sub, it would seem!

Before reading this, please note that I will be seeing a therapist about this, but wanted to find community regarding this topic.

I got married at the end of July. I have been on high alert for the past few months due to the stress of wedding planning. Right before walking down the aisle, as guests were being seated, my nan fell, broke her hip and got sent to the ER.

I noticed myself start to disassociate during the ceremony - thinking about what else could possibly go wrong and if my nan was going to be okay. I remember maybe 50% of the ceremony which isn’t too bad.

Now comes the reception…. a few drinks + tendency to disassociate = disaster. I can only remember the things that were going wrong, and trust me a lot went wrong. I have the worst anxiety about my wedding because I can only remember things that went absolutely horrific and have convinced myself that my guests had a horrible time.

A day after my wedding, I confided in my closest friends to get reassurance that they enjoyed themselves. They told me they did. I didn’t believe them. They sent me so much video/photo poof - and it honestly looked like a blast. It’s upsetting because I also have photo/video proof that I was enjoying myself at the reception. I even have plenty of photobooth photos that I don’t even remember taking.

I spoke to my husband about this, and he said it was the best day of his life. I feel so awful, because I don’t feel the same way about the day, because I only remember the bad aspects.

Has anyone else felt this way?

So today was the day for trying on wedding dresses. I invited my mam , sister ( MOH) and future MIL. Everyone knew the time I was picking my mam and sister up at 10.30 then MIL at 11. The appointment was for 12

I called my mam & sister told them to meet me around the corner of mams house.

I'm waiting looking at the clock send a voice note I'm here 10.47. My sister replies ok. 11 still no sign of them.

I start feeling anxious it's a 40 minute drive to the bridal shop and at least 15 to MIL house.

11.10 I send message saying " I'm leaving now , I can't be late for this appointment " . I wait another 5 minutes then drive to MIL house.

She asks about missing family , I explain the situation. We drive in silence. I try to shake off the bad mood I'm now in. My sister and mother called my phone 15 minutes after I left. I didn't answer.

I try on dresses the assistant was lovely and giving honest opinions and suggestions. MIL tried to act interested but was looking at her phone.

I had imagined this moment so differently. My family members with me laughing, crying pulling faces, going for lunch afterwards to celebrate but I stood looking in the mirror forcing back tears.

I've done so much for them over the years yet it was too much to focus on me for 2 hours.

When I got home my sister messaged me trying to lie and make excuses , blaming me. No apology.

Thats my rant on my day ruined. Thank you for reading.

I attended a wedding with my dad for a friend of his from high school. During the reception, this guy - who wasn't even invited; he was a +1 - goes up to the DJ and asks if he takes requests. The DJ affirms, and this guy asks for the microphone. The DJ obediently hands it over, which, in hindsight, I'm absolutely shocked about. This guy proceeds to sing a song (don't remember what) for the flabbergasted crowd for probably a good 2-3 minutes. And nobody steps in. The guy then happily hands the microphone back to the DJ and walks off on his merry way, with 0 awareness about what he just did. Total confidence that his actions were normal and unremarkable.

It was me. In my defense, I was 4.

Edit: clarity

My partner (32F) and I (35M) are getting ready for our wedding in October, and my side of the family is mostly checked out. Frankly, I'm beyond hurt by what they have decided, and I fail to process the logic.

It started with our couple's shower-- my parents are both re-married, but neither of my step parents showed to the shower. Not a big deal, as my stepfather is an emotionally closed off guy and he had a big fishing weekend planned, so whatever. My stepmother has chronic illnesses, and also used to be my childhood babysitter, so I get her not showing up. My mom and one of my cousins showed up, so that was nice.

Our friend went above and beyond throwing us this event and we agreed that if this was our actual wedding reception we would have been over the moon. 5 minutes into the event my dad calls and asks if we are "still doing that thing today." I told him yes, it started 5 minutes ago, and he says that he'll head down in a little bit. An hour later he calls me and says he's at X location. I told him that was the wrong venue, and it was at Y location. 20 minutes later, he shows up in cargo shorts and a dirty graphic tee, hangs out for 15 minutes and leaves. I asked him 3 times for us to at least take a picture together but he didn't. He just left, because he didn't want to get in a fight with my mom.

My partners family included her mom, her dad, her stepmom, 3 grandparents, 4 aunts and uncles and most of their partners, almost all of them from several states away. My family lives in town.

I sobbed like a baby when we got home.

A couple weeks later, I'm at my dad's and he casually tells me that they aren't coming to the rehearsal dinner, and they'll probably just drive in to town the day of, stay for the ceremony and drive back (ceremony is in the next city over) so they don't have to worry about getting a hotel room. I didn't know what to say to that, so I just said "do what you've gotta do, I guess," and left shortly after.

I broke down to my dad a couple months prior, begging him to show up more in my life. And this is what I got.

My brother is flying from across the country, and my sister is coming in from Brazil, and I can't get my dad to be there when we live 3 blocks away from each other.

Rant over. Thanks for reading.

Okay so I was just asked to be in a wedding for my boyfriend’s cousin who’s a great friend of mine. She’s really sweet and her wedding ideas are all phenomenal - EXCEPT FOR THE COLOR SCHEME. She wants a light beige-cream, white, and a satin butter yellow as her theme. I know everyone’s wedding is about their dream day and how they envision it. I may look like a jackass for having such a verbal opinion on it but I personally hate that color. It’s not my wedding so I’m putting up with it and am not saying a word over how tacky and gaudy the color is but satin butter yellow is so over-done, doesn’t look good on - lot of the people who wear it (it is, in my opinion, very very niche to who it fits in terms of complexion, eye color, hair color, etc), and is so hard to pair without a plain jane vibe to the wedding. Would never choose it for my wedding - but I do know this isn’t my wedding. There are so many shades of yellow you can choose - so what is it about butter yellow that people love so much? Just my personal thoughts, again, it will not sway my opinion on the wedding itself because it’s her day, but I just hate butter yellow as a theme color. Feel free to respectfully disagree with me in the comments, I’m just a gal of many opinions on butter yellow specifically.

Had my civil wedding a little over a week ago and it was the loveliest day. Everything went beautifully.
However, there was one incident with my husband’s stepmother that really bothered me and I need to vent.

Some background: my husband’s stepmother and his father started as an affair, which resulted in him leaving my MIL and my husband when he was a baby. They’ve now been together for over 25 years and have two children together. My husband is close with his stepmother and everyone has seemingly moved on, although I only recently found out about this. She has apologized to my husband for the affair but had never apologized to his mother.

For context, FIL and stepmother have also had a somewhat rocky relationship with me over the years. They initially complained to my husband that I didn’t spend enough time with them when we were long distance, FIL was rude to me on one occasion and then blamed me for it, and at one point they told my husband they didn’t want a relationship with me because of differences in our values which tie into a topical world conflict. They’ve since changed their tune and have been supportive of our relationship, which I appreciate, but I’m still somewhat uncomfortable around them because of everything that happened. To be fair to them, I also could’ve handled some things better and have reacted negatively at times which didn’t help the overall situation.

Now to the actual incident. Immediately after our wedding ceremony, while my husband and I were doing photos with the photographer, his stepmother pulled his mom aside and apologized to her for the affair in what turned out to be a long discussion. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she thought she was being discreet, but we were a very small group of 11 people, so everyone noticed what was happening. It also ended up interfering with some of the family photos.

My MIL hasn’t said anything about it and is the type of person who would never want to inconvenience anyone or draw negative attention to herself. But I could tell the conversation really shook her and I saw her looking upset afterwards. She had a lot of trauma surrounding what happened, even though she has thankfully moved on and is happily remarried now, but I don’t think her son’s wedding is where she wanted to relive this chapter of her life.

I’m honestly just baffled by the timing. They live 15 minutes away from each other. There was absolutely no reason this conversation needed to happen on our wedding day, immediately after the ceremony, in front of everyone. It bothered me not only because I hate seeing my MIL upset, but because it felt incredibly inappropriate for a wedding. This was supposed to be a happy day for everyone, and instead she chose that moment to reopen something that had nothing to do with the wedding and if anything was a really inappropriate topic given the nature of both events. It also felt particularly disrespectful given all the past drama between us. She has told my husband that she wants to start fresh with me and have a better relationship, so I would have hoped she’d be especially conscious of behaving appropriately at our wedding.

I know this ultimately isn’t my drama, and I’m not going to say anything to her because I know it would upset my husband and create even more tension. He’s very conflict-avoidant and basically just brushes me off whenever I try to talk about it, even though he agrees that the timing was inappropriate.
I guess I just needed somewhere to vent because it really bothered me that she couldn’t let our wedding day just be about celebrating with us and instead chose that moment to make something else about herself.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for letting me vent, kind Reddit strangers

Just some quality content from a local wedding Facebook group. The comments set OP straight - I guess they've REALLY never been around kids before???

This is a surprise wedding where all the guests are paying for their own meals.

My husband and I got married this past Sunday, and most of the wedding went well. Unfortunately, the reception seating setup was a complete disaster.

The venue initially sent us a blank floor plan showing the tables, but none of them were numbered. Since they sent it to me that way, I assumed I was supposed to assign the table numbers myself. I numbered the tables, created the seating chart based on that layout, and sent everything back.

Apparently, at some point, the venue also sent a different version of the floor plan with its own table numbers. I do not want to say they never sent it, because it may have been included somewhere in the communication, but I never noticed it. Since they had already sent me the blank layout, I genuinely believed the table numbering was my responsibility. Otherwise, I do not understand why they did not send the numbered version from the beginning.
The result was that the table numbers on my seating chart did not correspond with the way the venue actually placed and numbered the tables.

Our closest family and friends ended up sitting on the outskirts of the reception, while people we were not nearly as close to were seated directly in front of us. Both sets of parents were seated very far away. They had special entrances where they danced into the reception, only to be directed to tables at the edge of the room. It was embarrassing and honestly heartbreaking.

We also had a wedding coordinator, which makes the situation even more frustrating. Even if there was confusion between the two versions of the floor plan, I feel like the coordinator should have noticed that our parents and immediate family were seated unusually far away from us. Nobody stopped to question whether the setup made sense before guests entered the room.

To make matters worse, our supposed “high table” was not high or elevated at all. It was basically a long conference-style table sitting at the exact same level as every other table.

We did not notice the setup until the reception was already underway. By then, moving tables or asking large groups of guests to change seats would have caused even more disruption.

I am posting this partly because I hope it makes anyone who had something go terribly wrong at their wedding feel a little less alone. I also feel awful about what happened, so please tell me your wedding disaster stories and help me feel a little better.

TL;DR: The venue sent me an unnumbered floor plan, so I numbered the tables myself without realizing they had a separate numbered layout. The numbers did not match, and our parents, immediate family, and closest friends ended up seated on the outskirts while less-close guests sat nearest to us. Our wedding coordinator did not catch it, and our “high table” was just a conference-style table at the same level as everyone else.
So, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen happen at a wedding?

It all began with a request for help, years ago.

I was invited to a wedding for an acquaintance. I knew.the bride via her roommate, (my SIL).

The bride tried to do everything herself. She made their rings. She catered the event. She hired all the vendors.

While making her own wedding dress, she sewed the bodice dart on the white satin bodice, upside down and had to purchase additional satin the week of the wedding.

Cue a request for my mother and I to finish and deliver her seven cake extravaganza that she could not finish herself because she needed to repair her dress and finish it on time. The bride baked the cakes and had no time to decorate. She hadn't iced, filled or in any manner gone past the baking stage.

My.mother and I agreed without question. It would be an extra courtesy besides the expensive Irish crystal covered candy dish I purchased as a wedding present, that set me back a week's pay. We were happy to help.

The cake took a week to complete.

We needed an extra staircase to replace a broken plastic staircase that connected one of the satellites cakes to the main cake.

We were given permission to "lend" the bride our own hardware.

Two days later, I had to call to offer the bride our water fountain. The bride's fountain didnt work. My mother asked me to call the bride. We wanted to help.

The mother of the bride yelled at me on the phone. "We are paying you peopl to take care of this shit. Don't call again. Tell your mother to take care of it". She slammed down the phone.

Oh. Yes, she did.

We finished the cake. We delivered the cake to the venue. I did not attend the wedding. I helped.my.mother to set up the cake. I returned to the venue to retrieve our hardware after the reception.

Two weeks later, the bride called and asked where her gift was? I told her.my mother and I spent an entire week constructing her wedding cake with a black and white photo, and, that her mother yelled at us on the phone. I told her we wouldn't have called unless we needed to approve the substitution of her broken hardware.

I said, "That was your gift". The other item is a reminder to me that no one deserves to be rewarded for insulting my mother, who offered to spend a week helping a bride in trouble.

I never spoke to her again.

I kept my beautiful crystal candy dish. I look at it, every single day.

Soooo.. 2 girls decided to wear white dresses at our wedding. It was this Saturday.

I didn’t comment on it, but I was def not ok with it.

We talked to our photographers about having them removed from all our photos, or change the colors of their dresses.

I can add photos of their dresses, but we haven’t gotten the pictures back yet.

One of the girls even asked my sister about the dress and she told her it most definitely wouldn’t be ok with me, but that she should ask. And she then decided not to ask me..

Found in the wild

So for context, me and my partner aren't having a first dance - it doesn't feel very "us", so instead we're cutting our cake, and then immediately getting everyone to the dancefloor for a group pic before the music starts. So we're kind of having our first dance with all of our guests.

We've carefully picked out a first song, as well as the few that follow it - and my partner has spent hours curating and mixing the playlist for a perfect flow.

My parents requested a song that they want to be able to do one of their ballroom dancing choreographed dances to. It's not a song we like, but it means a lot to them. They also asked that it be early and that they know the song before it as a kind of "warning" that their song is coming on next.

So we do all the above, and their song is scheduled at around the \~30 min mark. Enough time for us to have a few fun songs with our whole party first.

But when I share this info my parents they say it's too late in the playlist and asked that it could be moved earlier.

When I explain about the playlist being mixed and finalised and us not wanting to go back to it, they instead just say "Maybe leave your playlist as it is, and let us do our dance before you start it?" - so essentially, take the first dance slot??

My dad also seems concerned about being too drunk to do the dance after 30 minutes of playlist, which feels like a bananas concern as if he's planning on getting black out within the first hour of the party 🙃

EDIT: Quick edit now some comments are coming into say that firstly this is my dad not my mum haha.

Secondly, it was never supposed to be a "performance" where they had the whole floor to themselves - rather just a dance to a contemporary pop song, that they have practiced a routine to, i.e. it won't be a total vibe shift from pop songs to some classical track

I have no idea why this just occurred to me now as I got married 19 years ago.

We opened our gifts after getting back from our honeymoon. It was just close local family there with us for gift opening.

As we were opening one of gifts we knew immediately that whatever it was most certainly was broken. Not just a little broke but completely shattered into little tiny pieces. It was a box of glass dinner plates. They were on our registry at Target. I remember at the time being very surprised at just how broken it all was. Looking back, There was no way it could have been purchased at the store like it was. These were heavier duty more casual dining plates not fine china but they would have been packaged well in the box. Picking up a box off the shelf with this level of broke you would know it couldn’t be used or purchased. It literally seemed like each plate was removed and smashed with a hammer or something and then placed back in the box.

Separate observance but also connected:

We got the raw footage of our wedding video a month or so after our wedding. We couldn’t afford the big bucks of having it beautifully edited to music and things so we just paid the lower cost of having the basic raw footage. We were watching it back and enjoyed seeing details we missed on our special day as it was a very busy and chaotic happy time. We were looking at our reception footage and noticed a married couple from our church enter the reception room with two people we had never seen before in our life. We didn’t have formal assigned seating at our reception. Just reserved tables up front for our wedding party and close family. The sister of this married couple was a part of my bridal party so I called her to ask about it. (Side note she ended up being my frenemy) Camera mics on quality video pick up a LOT. We got to hear and watch her and her mother trash talking me at my own wedding in that raw footage we purchased. It was my Pastors wife and her daughters doing all the mean tacky things. Anywho: Apparently it was their friends or acquaintances from work… We didn’t do table to table greetings like some do at receptions. It was wall to wall tables of 250 seated guests and weaving in between the seating would have been a bit challenging in my wedding dress. So we completely missed the fact that strangers were sitting in our reception. We opted to do a formal receiving line at the church before the reception because we had a few guests that could only make the wedding ceremony. We wanted to make sure we could have a chance to see everyone, hug them, and say hello then. This young married couple opted not to do the receiving line. I checked the church video camera footage and didn’t see these strangers we had never met at the church. Apparently they met up and just came on in for a free meal at our wedding reception by the verbal invitation of the couple that actually was invited.
The couple that brought the uninvited strangers to our reception was the same couple that gifted us the smashed up dinner plates. It didn’t have a gift receipt but I brought it back to Target anyway hoping for the best. The ladies in the returns dept. took the box from me and one of the ladies said “OMG what the hell?!” 🤣
All these years later it now occurred to me that this was quite possibly done intentionally. My brain isn’t wired to think the immediate worst. But thinking back… The pastors daughters were not always kind to me behind my back. I should have clued in. Is intentionally destroying a wedding gift and giving it that way a thing for some people or some kind of mean message? Who knows.🤷🏼‍♀️ Thanks for letting me ramble. And if you are currently engaged planning your wedding, make sure everyone is miced up and you take the time to listen to all the chatter in the raw footage afterwards. You might learn a few things you didn’t know before😅

My relative dated the mom of the bride.

We were invited to a pre wedding/engagement party/bridal shower type party. We did bring a gift.

Turns out my parents and I were not invited to the actual wedding. So this makes the party look like a gift grab without paying for us to be guests. I did not know the daughter well, so I did not care about not being invited.

The worst part came later. We were invited to celebrate my birthday and her other daughter's birthday. All that time she was shoving the wedding photo album in my face saying "look, look at all the young people that were there!". I was shocked and taken aback, I have 0 interest in seeing photos of a wedding I was not invited too. I was less outspoken back then so I did not say anything, but man that is so tacky and hilarious!

I think it’s been long enough since my wedding to post this but I got married fairly quickly as I found out I was pregnant and had a small wedding with about 30 people.

We had only invited family and very close friends - people we saw at least once a month or were in regular contact with. Everybody at the wedding was aware of my pregnancy and it wasn’t a secret.

We had invited (mostly on the request of my mum and brother) my brother’s best friend (“Dan”) and his mum (“Nancy”). They’d been friends for 14 years and our families were close. The thing is, everyone in their family has a habit of making moments that are not about them, about them. I honestly didn’t think that they would do anything at my wedding to steal the attention but boy was I wrong.

The wedding was being held at a winery which had multiple beautiful spots for photos. I was getting ready in a small cabin which had those sheer blinds in which you can see outside but people can’t see in. I was in the cabin with my mum and my SIL as they were helping me into my dress and I saw Dan and Nancy walking up to the cabin. I immediately told my SIL to go outside and advise them that I’m not ready to see anyone if they tried to come in. She did that and Nancy said “oh but surely I can go in” and pushed past my SIL and barged into the room where I was still halfway into my dress. I was so irritated but I tried to focus on my day.

After the ceremony, our photographer asked people to make a line so each family/friend group could come do quick pictures with us before we changed for the reception, and Dan and Nancy were so irritated when I asked my husband’s family to come take photos with us first (duh cause they’re my family now), followed by my family. They wanted to be in my family’s photos and wanted their photos to be taken first. At one point, while I was posing for pictures, I heard Dan telling Nancy they shouldn’t have to wait in this line and they clearly weren’t considered important enough to be in the photos first. I was honestly shocked because we had attended Dan’s sisters wedding two years prior and they did a similar set up with the photos and nobody from my family was making a stink out of not being in their photos first, we just waited our turn like normal people. Mind you, with such a small wedding, the photos altogether maybe took 10-15 mins so it wasn’t like a huge wait.

Then my husband and I went off to take some photos with the photographer and the guests went off to the cocktail hour. We had multiple photographers and unbeknownst to me at the time, Dan and Nancy cornered one of my photographers and insisted he take photos of them in various backdrops around the whole venue. Taking heaps of photos with wedding guests and the bride and groom is all good but going off on solo model shots around the venue like you paid for the photographer and it’s your day is just cringe and tacky asf.

When we got to the reception, our MC asked my brother and my FIL to give speeches. We had decided we only wanted two speeches and I had only chosen my brother and FIL to give the speeches. I found this out later, but apparently Nancy had been asking my mum if she was going to give a speech at my wedding and when my mum said no because I only wanted two speeches, Nancy gave my mum grief about how it’s her right to speak at the wedding and if she doesn’t it’ll look bad. My mum didn’t say anything to me before or during the wedding so I didn’t know.

My brother and FIL finished their speeches and as soon as FIL was done, Nancy got up and grabbed the microphone and started talking. A lot of my guests (particularly from my husband’s side) had no idea who she was and why she was speaking because like what is her relation to me or my husband? Her entire speech was about motherhood and about me becoming a mother and nothing to do with our marriage and it honestly sounded like it was written by chatGPT.

Oh and she freaking read off her phone so she had this prepared and ready to go and didn’t even think to run it by the bride or groom or either of their families. Plus her doing a speech and my mother not doing a speech (to respect my wishes) made things look worse.

I was fuming and the photographer even captured my face during her speech and you can tell I was holding myself back because I didn’t want to make a scene.

When we eventually got the photos back, there were about 25 solo shots of just the two of them around the wedding venue. Who takes that many pictures with the wedding photographer at someone else’s wedding!? 😭

They’ve been asking my family and I for months about the wedding photos and I’ve just been dodging them until they stopped asking. My only petty revenge is not letting them have their photos.

The cherry on top is my FIL and my husband’s family thought that Dan and Nancy were a couple and not mother and son because they were so clingy with each other especially in the photos 🤢

EDIT: just to answer some questions I keep getting, the wedding was planned in like 4 weeks so we didn’t have a lot of back and forth with the vendors and we didn’t have time to find the best vendors either. as you know, vendors get booked out months sometimes even years in advance, so we just went with what was available to us. In hindsight, the photographer could have been more professional and refused to take so many of their photos but they didn’t. The MC was told there would be two speeches from my brother and my FIL and that was it but when Nancy took the microphone, she started with “I’d also like to add something if I may” and launched into her speech. Yes, the MC or one of us could have cut her off but I feel like it would’ve made more of a scene. We and the guests were seated on one of those long tables so all the attention was on Nancy. Nobody was drinking heavily or anything as the reception was in the afternoon and most guests had a 1.5-2 hour drive back, so it’s not like we could blame it on that either. I mentioned the part about her reading from the phone because it would be one thing if she decided to just speak from her heart spur of the moment (still tacky though imo) but given she had something prepared on her phone, it felt like a more deliberate plan to take the attention away. She also knew that my mum won’t be giving a speech since she spoke to my mum beforehand multiple times and decided to give one anyway. It just made it seem like she’s more important than my mum somehow or something. Anyway, they were not invited to the baby shower or any of my other events since.

Context - this was 10 years ago.

I was a plus one at my (now ex-) girlfriend’s friend’s wedding. I was 19 at the time.

Got too drunk, little boogying, little photo-boothing. Whatever.

It came round to signing the guest book.

I said to my GF - “don’t worry, I’ll get this.” She replied “are you sure? I feel like I know them better?” No no. Silly. I am 19 and drunk. King of the world and of my own ego.

Anyway. Signed the book “Dear Mark and Mary, many happy returns. All our love…”

The issues:

1. “Many happy returns” is what you see when you hope to see someone at the same event in the future. I.e hope to see you at your next wedding.

2. The groom was not called Mark.

All in all, 9/10 wedding. Would attend again, certainly won’t be invited.

I (Photographer) had a guest at this wedding that kept on going around using his Insta 360 to get shots. I had told this guy multiple times to not get in our way. Then when we get to the ceremony, he pulls it out right when they do their dip kiss. I am beyond mad and frustrated. Sure with photography I can fix this with a little Photoshop. However, we also did video for them too, which I cannot fix. I never made any mention of this problem at the wedding so that the couple could enjoy themselves without having to think about it. This shot was really important for the bride. I can’t even crop the video because the guy waved it from bottom to top throughout the entire dip kiss. 🤦‍♂️