People always talk about brides being "bridezillas" on their wedding days or a bridesmaid getting jealous and causing drama on someone's special day. What I don't think we talk about enough, however, is when the groomsmen do it.
No one is better at stirring up chaos than a best man whose had a litttttle (lot) too much to drink. So, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share their groomsmen horror stories. Here are 16 of the most chaotic ones:
1. "A few weeks after we had gotten engaged, set our date, and confirmed a few members of the bridal party, my husband’s best man got engaged too. They set their date for a week before ours, then he complained non-stop about having to cut his honeymoon short because of our wedding. He said he would be at the rehearsal, then didn’t show up, but walked in the next day like everything was fine. They had been friends pretty much their whole lives, and that ended it."
—Anonymous
2. "Bride here. At my wedding, one of the groomsmen got ridiculously hammered, then put his arm around my mom and asked how she knew the bride…"
—Anonymous
3. "The venue we chose had a five hour limit, including cleanup time. All of our bridal party had been specifically told that they needed to stay to help my (the bride) parents break down tables and pack up food. My bridesmaids stayed, but all of the groomsmen ditched 30 minutes before even my then-husband and me had our send off. In case you were wondering where they sped off to, well, they went back to our apartment, flipped every piece of furniture upside down, and scraped the labels off of every spice container and every canned item, leaving the trash in a pile in the living room floor. Not only did they leave my parents in the lurch, but —being super young and broke — my husband and I didn't book a hotel for the night and just went home instead. I'll never forget flipping my couch back over while still in my wedding dress."
—Anonymous
4. "At my wedding, one of the groomsmen showed up with my husband's uninvited ex-girlfriend as his date. She got into a fight with one of the guests because she was trying to leave with him in the middle of dinner. "
5. "After the ceremony, the best man downed a bottle and a half of vodka because he was so nervous about his speech. He threw up on the other groomsmen, then climbed over a wall. Two guests followed him and came back 45 minutes later with a story. Turns out, the best man had accidentally pushed one of them behind a reversing car, they got hit (gently), and he disappeared. Nearly the whole wedding party left to find him. Eventually, a friend of a friend called and said they thought they found him. He was passed out in their garage — a 45 minutes walk from the venue. His uncle had to come and get him, because no taxi would take him. After the fact, he was somehow annoyed with us and the two guests who went after him that we let him get into danger!"
—Anonymous
6. "At this one wedding, I saw two groomsmen show up dressed as Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. One was in a blue tux and the other was in an orange tux. They re-enacted scenes from the movie throughout the entire wedding and reception. It was not part of the theme, they just decided to show up like that and while it was funny. I don't think the bride or the groom appreciated it very much."
—Anonymous
7. "My older brother was a groomsman at my sister's wedding. He got embarrassingly drunk. There was also some woman who was the girlfriend of a guest, who I noticed was hitting on my younger brothers. This woman had to be in her late 20s and my younger brothers were 18 and 13. She was also super drunk. Well, at some point, no one could find my older brother. People started getting concerned, because they had seen how drunk he was and the venue was surrounded by several large ponds. The boyfriend of the drunk female was also looking for his date, who had gone missing as well. Well, a little later my older brother emerged from the nearby forest looking disheveled, with the drunk woman in tow. The woman's boyfriend was pissed and they left right away. This is pretty much how the reception ended and my sister (the bride) was pissed."
8. "I was in my best friend's wedding and was paired up to walk down the aisle with a friend of the groom whom I hadn't met prior to any of the wedding planning. He seemed like a riot the couple of times we all got together beforehand, and was a little flirty with me, but respectfully so. Cut to the night of the wedding, he got TRASHED, literally tried to fondle me in front of the entire reception, wound up breaking a strap off of my dress after he tried to pull it down, and THREW UP down the entire front of my dress. Luckily the reception was at a facility that had a room with a shower where we had all gotten ready, but I had to wear jeans and a sweatshirt for the rest of the night."
9. "I've worked in catering for years, and I can tell you that at almost every single wedding that serves alcohol, you'll find a drunk groomsmen acting stupid. In movies you see the best man give a killer speech, but I have yet to figure out why the best man at this particularly elaborate wedding didn't come prepared to give his. He wrote nothing down, and chose to wing it. He was so drunk, and made almost no sense at all. I cringed a lot for the whole family."
—Anonymous
10. "My husband's best man got a little too drunk at the rehearsal dinner, because he and his girlfriend at the time were having some issues. This lead to him accidentally stabbing another groomsman in the arm with a pocket knife he 'didn’t think was that sharp,' leading to a bloody mess at my family’s favorite restaurant. Thank goodness the other groomsman took care of everything without many people noticing and no stitches were needed. You better believe he was on his best behavior the day of the wedding. It was not too long after the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones, so that was a running joke with the bridal party for a while, trying to make light of the situation."
11. "My (ex) husband's best man had been his best friend for years. The best man was traveling salesman who arranged his route so he could visit our house weekly, and he and my boyfriend would drink and play backgammon until late at night. I really didn't mind this. However, I did mind that, on the night of our rehearsal dinner, he took me aside to let me know that I should not expect anything to change just because we were getting married. He still planned to continue to be our house guest once a week. He said this with a smile, but I could tell he was very serious. Again, I didn't care and did not want to stand in the way of his friendship with my husband. Then, on our wedding day, this friend and the other groomsmen brought pot and got my husband stoned before the ceremony. Good times..."
—Anonymous
12. "One of my husband’s best friends was a groomsman and a nightmare. The icing on the cake was him bringing his uninvited girlfriend of two months to a bridal party get together where we were supposed discuss various wedding details. I said hello and exchanged pleasantries, but I couldn’t spend my entire time with her. This upset him, and he sent me a long winded, threatening text message at 4 a.m. and started blowing up my phone. My husband was nice enough to try and deal with the situation himself, but the groomsman kept harassing me. I told him that I wouldn’t be entertaining his rants, because along with the stress of my upcoming wedding, it was iffy my grandfather would be able to attend due to his fast deteriorating health and I was stressed. The groomsman had the audacity to say that everyone was going through something. Needless to say, my husband eventually cut him from the bridal party. We haven't spoken to him since."
"P.S: he and his girlfriend broke up shortly after the wedding because she cheated on him. He lost a friendship of 20+ years because of her."
13. "At my co-workers wedding, his best man (his step-brother) got so drunk that he vomited multiple times, including on the dance floor. It was really gross and the worst part was that he didn't even care after he was told about his behavior the next day. Awful."
—Anonymous
14. "When we were married 18 years ago, one of our groomsmen had cheated on his girlfriend with our in-demand hairstylist before the wedding. Their affair didn’t last long, and he dumped the hairstylist after telling her that his girlfriend had money, so he could do whatever he wanted with her. Well, four years later he was a groomsman at another wedding when he learned that that same hairdresser would be styling and attending the wedding. He quit the wedding party and ended the friendship over this. His (same) girlfriend — who had also been good friends with the groom — wrote and mailed a three-page letter berating and name-calling the groom, basically blaming him for her many relationship problems. This letter included threats of breaking up the engagement or ensuring the groom left his wedding 'in an ambulance instead of a limo.'"
"All of this...just because of a choice of hairstylist, whom we'd been faithful clients of the whole time! The men were in their mid-thirties, old enough to know better. It was one month before the wedding – heartbreaking for the groom and traumatic for the bride, whose hair was fabulous."
—Anonymous
15. "I had a very small, informal wedding, and the only thing I would change is the best man. Everything went wrong with him. After my husband asked him, he completely went off the grid. My husband's other friend had to help plan the stag do (bachelor party) to Poland. The best man paid, then said he wasn't going, then changed mind again last minute. On the stag, he didn't participate in any of the activities and didn't seem very enthusiastic. Later on, he gave us a gift adressed to 'husband and [name that was not even close to mine].' My husband tried to laugh that off, but I wasn't amused."
"On the day of the wedding, he ran late, showed up at venue with no tie, and had to have my father-in-law had to give him his. The photos got held up because he was driving other guests around. My husband was scrambling to find him a hotel on our wedding day, because he didn't have one. The day after — while we were trying to relax and have fun with our friends — the best man's sister was constantly messaging us about the whereabouts of her brother. It was the worst."
16. "My husband had three groomsmen. One was a mature, fully-functioning adult, and the other two were whole ass clowns. My husband and the other reliable groomsman went and rented their suits at a reasonable time prior to the wedding. The other two waited until too late and the place ran out of suits to make everyone match. My husband and his other groomsmen had to cancel their suits, loose the money they spent on them, and scramble to rent different ones. They weren’t exactly what I wanted AND my husband's was measured poorly (and they didn’t have time to fix it) so his pants were about three inches too short in all the pictures."
"That's not all, though. Prior to the wedding, I came up with bachelor party ideas for them because I knew they’d put zero effort into it and my husband isn't much of a drinker so a bar wasn't his idea of a good time. I suggested race car experiences and a few other things and told them I’d pay my husbands way. I just wanted it to be special for him. They assured me they’d handled it. Reader, they did not handle it. They planned nothing and the night before the wedding — when I planned to go to a few breweries and wanted us to entertain our out of town friends — they insisted on him going to some lame dive bar to hang with them and playing pool for being his bachelor party.
Finally, they showed up to the rehearsal dinner — not dressed for the occasion — and sat awkwardly away from the tables and were generally being really immature. At one point, they were throwing straw wrappers at each other up and down the table. I called my husband the morning of the wedding and assured him that if they started any funny business during the actual ceremony, that I would dismember them ON SITE. I was DONE with their immaturity and disrespect."