Weddings by nature are memorable, but some weddings are memorable for all the wrong reasons. That's why I was pulled into this Quora thread asking, "What did someone do during a wedding that made you say, 'You gotta be kidding me?'" Here are the worst answers.
1. "A bridesmaid arranged her own spotlight dance with the groom. The DJ announced them, and the groom politely met her on the floor. The chosen song, mystifyingly, was 'Hopelessly Devoted' from the movie Grease. If you don’t know the film, it’s an imploring ballad about heartbreak. Then they slow-danced, with the groom smiling tolerantly while she clung to him and wept. Not like 'eyes glistening with emotion.' Her face crumpled up, and she cried, clasping his shoulders as if she needed support, for the duration of the song. I was at the singles table with a bunch of their friends I didn’t know, who were also goggling at the spectacle. I asked, 'Is that Rob’s sister?' Wordlessly, they shook their heads NO. And not his cousin or former babysitter, either. She was a childhood friend — now a mutual friend of the couple — who had always had an unrequited love for the groom."
"I will probably never know if the couple approved the dedication in advance or if she used her bridesmaid status to strong-arm the DJ and caught them off guard. But they could not have anticipated that uncomfortable scene. It was the bridesmaid’s masochistic farewell, played out for a captive audience."
2. "At my cousin's reception, her friend decided to, during her maid of honor speech, announce her own engagement."
3. "We went to the reception with about 300 other people. The bride’s parents paid for the reception, which featured six open bars and a full dinner. They also paid to rent out an entire art museum for the event, to lease a municipal parking lot for the overflow of guests, and for two city buses to shuttle people back and forth. While I certainly appreciate how much money they must have spent, I still think it was inappropriate that when the time came, her parents 'stole' the honor of the first dance. It also turned out to be the bride’s mother’s birthday, which she celebrated by opening presents at her table while we were seated for dinner. It just seemed as if the evening was more about their largesse than about the newlyweds. And to add insult to injury, we’ve never seen a single photo from that day."
4. "At my own daughter’s wedding, my ex-husband's new wife, married only a few months, changed decorations and added flowers the day of the wedding because what we had done was 'substandard,' and talked loudly about it. My daughter had planned and put together a beautiful venue on the budget we had. New wife was giving instructions and directions; I overheard a guest ask if she was the mother of the bride, and she said YES! She changed the meal seating. We let all of this slide, not wanting to cause a scene. The last straw was when she instructed the kitchen crew (we had prepared the food with the help of friends who ran a catering business) not to put certain items on the buffet. My dad actually pointed out that about a third of the guests had gone through the buffet, missing those items, when he finally got into the line…yep, she (new wife) had rearranged the guests so that grandparents were in the back."
"I quickly but quietly had the items added and apologized to guests that dishes had been forgotten, and invited anyone missing food to feel free to make another round of the buffet. This evidently sent new wife into a tailspin, as she had ex-husband (father of the bride) take her home in the middle of the meal, announcing that she had a headache. They only live a couple of minutes from the venue, but father of the bride did not return for the rest of the celebration. Sad."
5. "The officiant begins the ceremony, and the groom interrupts the officiant, grabs a beer from the back side of the arbor, cracks it open, and announces, 'I CAN’T DO THIS SOBER!' He takes a big swig and then hands it off to the best man."
"A few other times throughout the short ceremony, he snapped his fingers in the direction of the best man (who unsuccessfully tried to pass the beer down to the last guy in line to keep it away from the groom) so he could take another drink. When the ceremony ended and we began to make our way inside for the cocktail hour, the shop secretary said to me, 'Did you see that too or am I in a bad dream right now?' I replied that this was real life. The bride went in the back door and straight across the banquet hall and out the front door without saying a word. She got in her car and left. The bridesmaids went after her. The groom defended himself, saying, 'It was just a joke, I thought she’d laugh!' The bridesmaids went after her (she just went back to their home, about a mile away), and they convinced her to come back. She was threatening to shred their marriage license instead of filing it. I don’t blame her one bit! Six years later, they are married and doing well, but yowza, what a way to start your marriage!"
6. "I went to sit at the table, hoping that there would be some food served soon, because I was so hungry I thought I'd faint. There were the dances, and it went on for hours. We were there at 7 p.m., and by 10 p.m., there was still no food being served. Everyone started to complain about it, and my mom went to ask her sister (the bride) if the food would be served soon, since many people were starving at that point. That's when we found out that the bride actually had a buffet during the photo shoot where only she, the groom, and a few select guests ate, so they decided to postpone the dinner at the restaurant. My mom was upset that she didn't announce that to the other guests so they could have had some food as well instead of waiting for the reception."
7. "It was an Orthodox Church wedding, where the bride and groom walk around the altar with their hands tied and candles and crowns. All in all, very picturesque. After the church wedding, the ceremony continued at the groom’s paternal home, a huge house, with the yard so heavily decorated with flowers that it was hard to breathe. Apparently, there were several customs for the bride to manage before entering the house. One of them was that she should lift the youngest child on the groom’s side (which happened to be his sister’s baby boy), kiss him, and turn him around a couple of times for everyone to see so they would have a lot of children as beautiful and healthy as that one."
"So the bride lifted the baby, but the baby didn’t like it at all. He kept kicking and screaming while she kissed him, and then there was the smell. Immediately, everyone knew what had happened, but no one wanted to say a thing. To hurry the thing and be able to return the boy to his mother for changing, the bride turned the baby a few times, but it was maybe too fast. Baby made a face, then threw up all over her wedding dress."
8. "When it was time for the bouquet toss, the bride insisted that I participate. I didn’t want to make any drama, so I took a position on the outskirts of the group. When she was cued to toss the bouquet, she spun to face the group, saw me, wound up her arms like a baseball pitcher, and fired those flowers straight at my gut. I twisted, but it was shock, not athletic reflexes. I moved, and the bouquet bounced off of me. It caromed sort of toward the next woman, who jumped backward. Seconds later, it was lying on the ground in the center of an empty circle of women who didn’t want it. The bride was furious."
9. "A friend of mine was the bridesmaid, so I crashed the wedding and sat in the back. When the preacher said, 'If anyone has any reason why this man and this woman ... speak now or forever hold your peace,” THE BRIDE'S EX STOOD UP AND PROFESSED HIS UNDYING LOVE AND ASKED HER TO MARRY HIM INSTEAD! The look on the bride's face was priceless. The fact that her father, the bride, and the groom all restrained themselves from pummeling the guy was admirable."
10. "Once the Mass was done, they directed their guests to the reception venue and turned up an hour later with no apologies. Now, this might've been acceptable if the guests had a place to sit! But the couple were so focused on the venue that they forgot to make sure they'd hired the right number of chairs for their guests to sit. So with people milling about as if they were in an overcrowded waiting room, the reception finally commenced. The meal they provided did nothing to ease the guests' discomfort, as there were no tables for them to eat at."
—Anonymous
11. "My wedding reception took place at the Millwall Football Club banqueting suite in London. At some point during the evening event, a security guard rushed up to me as I was making my way around the room, talking to and thanking our guests. He demanded to know where my husband was. I had no idea — it was a big area, and I couldn’t see all of it from where I stood. The groom and a number of his friends, all die-hard Lions fans, had ‘escaped’ through a window onto the terraces and, from there, onto the pitch. I have a memorable picture of them, some of them stripped to their underwear, posing in the goal mouth. I thought it was hilarious, but the security guard was not amused!"
12. "When I was at law school, I used to serve documents (as a process server). I rarely read them, just looked at the name and address and handed them over, but occasionally, especially when I couldn’t find someone, I would read through the documents to see if I could get a hint of where they might be. I was looking for this one guy, a Navy boy, for whom I had divorce papers. Now, serving military folks is the easiest gig ever. you just call up the right military department HQ and tell them you have papers for so-and-so, and they tell you where he is."
"Well, my guy had deserted, so I started to read the documents to see if I could find him. I’ll never forget the details…it said, 'After a verbal altercation at the wedding reception, the husband left the reception with the first bridesmaid, and the two have not been seen since. At that time, the wife determined that the marriage was over.' Looks like he had a long history of running away…she probably should have been going for an annulment rather than a divorce, but what would I know? I never did find him to serve him."
13. "The mother of the bride walked into her daughter’s wedding in a beautiful, expensive, extra-white, long, flowing, sparkling gown that outclassed, and outshone, her daughter’s off-white, cheaper, and less desirable-looking wedding dress. The mother also carried a bigger bouquet, had her hair and makeup professionally done, and was smiling and waving the entire time."
14. "A Royal Marine asked me to sing at a wedding. One of his company was the groom. The plan was that I would start singing when the bride entered the church. I was to be out of sight the whole time — standing in a side porch. I was given a walkie-talkie headset so that I could get the signal for when she arrived. Neil, the Royal Marine, was standing with me. Neil had no time for the bride. Me neither. The pair of us in the porch, he reminded me that none of the groom's friends wanted them to get married. I agreed, saying, 'Who would want to marry her, seriously? She's a fantasist..."
"The vicar hurried out into the porch and shushed me. The sound technician had messed up and fed my walkie-talkie headset through the pulpit microphone channel. Every word I'd said had come loud and clear out of speakers above the altar."
15. Finally, "A neighbor of my husband (for our reception) made rattlesnake stew without telling anyone what the meat was. People started asking when they bit down on tiny, little bones. I was appalled at his lack of consideration at MY wedding."
Do you have a wild wedding story? Tell us in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.