A little while ago, Reddit user u/JimmyMcNultysDick posed the question, "People who have witnessed a 'there's not going to be a wedding' moment: What went down?"
Commenters shared some trulyyy shocking secrets and stories that led to a wedding being called off or an immediate divorce. Here are some of the top-voted answers:
1. "A couple weeks before the wedding, Groom called Bride and said he was coming over. They needed to talk. When he got to her apartment, he broke down in tears and confessed that he was in love with someone else. He loved her but couldn't marry her because he didn't love her in the way a bride deserves. There was much crying and shouting over it all, but eventually, the bride recovered from the news enough to ask him who he was in love with. 'Well,' Groom said, 'It's [Bride's brother].'"
"The wedding was definitely off at that point. Now, five or six years later, Groom and Bride's Brother are married and happy. I lost contact with Bride shortly after her wedding plans went tits up, so I'm not sure if she ever forgave the boys for that one."
2. "I'm a musician. I work on a street infamous for drunken revelry and debauchery. One night, a bachelor party came in around the same time as a bachelorette party. I brought them both up at the same time to do something special. In the middle of this, on stage, they started making out and did not stop. I finished my routine as best I could and got them offstage. Later, they were in the back corner just going at it, hands down pants and up skirts. At some point, they disappeared. I took a break and headed to the restroom, which was locked. I heard a woman screaming from within. Not moaning, not sighing. Screaming. I sat in the lounge area outside the bathroom for about 10 minutes. The bachelor and bachelorette come out, looking a bit disheveled."
"They saw me and immediately wanted to chat (for some reason, people always want to get to know the musicians here). There was curiously no guilt on them at all. I had to piss like a racehorse, but this was too good to pass up. Come to find out, they both were getting married to other people, but knew each other from having lived in the same small town of about 5,000 all their lives. They ran into each other for the first time since high school graduation at our bar, and old feelings emerged that neither had ever attempted to act on. They didn't stay long, and as they left, I heard the bachelor say, 'I have my own room, let's go there.' Anywho, I wound up seeing the 'bachelor' and 'bachelorette' together at our bar and out in the street every night for four nights, always holding hands and/or getting frisky.
They came back a little over a year later. They got married here in our town to each other instead of who they were engaged to that fateful night."
3. "At the bachelor party in Vegas, the groom hooked up with a woman and gave her his cell phone number so they could continue the party that night. The bride-to-be was sitting at home with the iPad, getting all of the iMessages from the woman. She canceled the wedding that day."
4. "I worked at a music venue in the Detroit area that was also a popular wedding reception location. Came into work one week in the fall, when pretty much every weekend is booked solid with weddings, and noticed Saturday was open with no one scheduled. Talked to the wedding planner, and she told me the groom cancelled. Odd. Spoke to the wedding planner's younger brother, who was our head barback. He told me that the groom, excited for the wedding, left work at lunch on Friday, bought a nice bottle of wine, and headed home to surprise his bride-to-be."
"Except he was the one in for a surprise, as he walked into his new house to hear sounds coming from their bedroom. He walked in to find his bride in bed with another man...his dad. We tried to talk him into doing a big fuck you party because we'd never fill the space and there was no refund, but he declined."
5. "I went to a buddy's bachelor party. Typical night of drinking downtown and hitting up all the bars we frequented in college. Two of us were single, and we got separated while chasing women. Got home the next morning to find the bachelor party attendees at my house with the groom in the shower. I asked the best man how the night went. He said he and the groom took a random woman back to his cousin's place. They didn't have a plan with her, but one thing led to another, and they had a wild threesome. The cousin's wife found out and was pissed because it took place in her kids' playroom, and she told the bride. Wedding off."
6. "Part-time wedding planner here. So the couple had been sleeping together for a few years, she got pregnant, and they decided to get married. Months of planning went by, and she began to show. Bride's parents wigged the fuck out and forbade her from getting married. The couple canceled the wedding, stole her parent's car to elope, and torched the garage on their way out. It was magnificent. I did not get paid."
7. "While working the night before a wedding at a hotel, the staff and I heard a loud scream from upstairs. Cue the bride screaming, sobbing, and shouting, 'The wedding's off!!!' while storming out. She was followed by the groom, stark naked, covering his nether regions with his hands, and apologizing profusely. Turns out she caught her mother and the groom hooking up. Safe to say we had an easy shift the next day as we didn't have a wedding to cater for."
8. "A friend invited me to his wedding. He and his fiancée were fairly poor and had lived together for years. They both had disabilities, were on fixed incomes, and lived in a somewhat expensive area. They had three gift registries (Target, Macy's, and Crate & Barrel) and a HUGE invite list – over 300 friends/family members. All the stuff on the registries was standard stuff like towels, coffee cups, flatware, etc. Anyway, people flew out and got ready for the wedding. Two days before the wedding was the bachelor party, where my friend got drunk and admitted that she was not really his fiancée. They were just roommates and had no intention of getting married; they just needed the stuff."
"They were going to cancel the wedding the following day and keep all the gifts. I had to protect him from getting his ass kicked by about two dozen people. Then, the fiancée had to come clean to everyone since he was too hungover. They ended up returning most of the gifts, but a surprising number of people let them keep the gifts. As his grandfather said, 'If you needed these things that badly to lie like this, you must have been very desperate.'"
9. "College friend was to get married to a guy she had only known for four months. She found out where the bachelor party was and wandered in to find the groom getting head – from the best man."
–[deleted]
10. "First of all, if you've never been to a Jewish wedding, the way it goes is, first they have the reception (with the bride and groom in separate rooms), then the ceremony, then the family goes away to sit for pictures while the guests sit down to eat, then the bride and groom come in, and the dancing starts. In between the ceremony and the pictures, though, is what's called Yichud, which approximately means 'isolation together' – the bride and groom lock themselves in a room and are observed by two reliable witnesses outside the door to have stayed there long enough to have consummated the marriage (although nobody actually does it there: it's considered déclassé)."
"After the Yichud, the bride came out and announced, 'Sorry everyone, the wedding's off. We'll be getting a divorce, and we're returning all the gifts...except for the bedroom set, where I caught my new husband trying it out with my sister last week.'
So, what makes this noteworthy? Well, think about this. She knew about the episode before the wedding. Why'd she go through with it? Because under Jewish law, if you've once been married to a woman, even after divorcing her, you aren't allowed to marry her sister at any time until your first wife has died. By going through with the ceremony, she in effect locked her sister out of ever being able to get together with her soon-to-be-ex."
11. "One of my best friend's wedding was cancelled when he learned she slept with a stripper after her bachelorette party. Like, three days after the party. The worst part was that it was a destination wedding/honeymoon, and he couldn't get a refund. So we all went anyway, and he was super sad the whole time. His family was all there, too."
12. "My cousin runs an upscale marriage venue and always tells this story. The groom's mom was a heavy drinker and got belligerent when she drank, so understandably the bride wanted the groom to try to limit her drinking. The afternoon before the wedding, the bride arrived to see the groom's mom smashed, with the groom himself giving her beers. Next thing my cousin knew (she was there to oversee preparations), the bride and groom were in a straight-up fist fight, which led to an Anchorman-style street fight between members of both families in the parking lot."
13. "My neighbor's 'friends' (aka jealous frenemies) convinced her to cheat on the husband-to-be at the bachelorette party. Her friends were very drunk and SnapChatted evidence to him as 'a joke.' Obviously, he didn't take it well and left her. Packed up all his things in their apartment and drove to his parents' instead of getting married. Bride apparently didn't leave her room for about three weeks, totally distraught with how her relationship fell apart. Fast forward six months later, the two are talking again. Not sure if they are trying to make things work."
14. "The sister of the groom chatted with the sister of the bride. Just casual conversation, but it came to light that almost 100% of what the bride had said besides her name was a complete lie. Where she went to high school? Instead of a boring suburban school, it was an expensive private school. Claimed her family had a ton of money she was set to inherit. Claimed they had a home in Hawai'i. Small to large, didn't really matter, almost all of it was fake from what I heard. The sister of the groom called him up and said he really needed to figure out if this was right. A few fights and some long thinking later, the groom left her and left town. It got worse though: turns out pretty much all the bride's friends had been lied to as well. They all stopped talking to her."
"I didn't really know her, but we were at the same company. People I worked with used to work in her department, so I just heard most of it secondhand. I have no idea how she thought this would work for the rest of her life. From what I understand, she tried to rekindle the friendships but quickly started to lie again, and that was it. She quit the company shortly after all this went down."
–[deleted]
15. "I attended my best friend's bachelor party a few years ago. He had dated his fiancée for six or seven years at that point. She made a male friend at work that became a groomsman. I hated him, didn't trust him, and told my buddy that. The night of the party, after huge amounts of alcohol, the groom broke down crying, left, and walked home. Didn't say anything to anyone, just left. Found out the next day that the bride-to-be had been banging the piece of shit groomsman for months, and they were trying to work through it. He couldn't get past it and canceled the wedding."
16. "The night before the wedding, rehearsal dinner is at a distillery. Everyone got hammered. The groom's dad was so drunk that when he tried to give his speech, he could not even talk or stand up. After the rehearsal dinner, the whole wedding party decided it was a good idea to go out drinking some more at a karaoke bar. The bride drunkenly told the groom that she was not sure if she loved him anymore. The groom became enraged, left the bar, and attempted to walk (stumble) back to his hotel, which wasn't anywhere near the bar. The groom's brother ran after him, trying to calm him down, and they ended up getting into a huge fist fight. The next day, the groom and best man looked like they had both been hit by a truck. For some reason, the wedding was still on."
"The groom's mother decided the only way to fix things was by trying to cover the wounds with makeup. So then, you had the groom and best man looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost up on the altar, and then in walked the bride...drunk off her ass. They ended up both saying, 'I do,' but weeks later, as expected, they got divorced. Turned out that before the wedding, while the groom was on his bachelor party weekend, they met a bunch of women who were going to the same place for a bachelorette party. The groom hooked up with one of the women he met. Long story short, now he is married to the woman who he cheated on his ex- fiancée/wife with, and has been for the past seven years. It is always funny to think back on how much of a shit show that wedding was."
17. "The day of the wedding, the bridesmaids discovered a bunch of heroin in the bride's bag. The groom was pissed and called off the wedding an hour before it was set to happen. But he still let us enjoy the food and bar that had already been paid for at the venue. He dodged a bullet, and I got drunk for free. Win-win."
18. "A week before his wedding, a friend of mine walked in on his dad having sex with his fiancée. The next day, in a fit of rage, he trashed their room and in the process found explicit love letters between his fiancée and his recently married best friend (and best man) in her underwear drawer. The letters were as recent as the past week. The wedding was cancelled. Whenever I ran into him at a bar, I made sure he never had to buy his own drinks."
19. "This ex-friend of mine (who has a daughter with another woman) was at his wedding reception with his new wife. While dancing, she said he should forget about his daughter. He thought she may be kidding and forgot about it. Later on, she told him again to forget about his daughter because she could give him as many kids as he wanted. He got super angry, told everyone to get the fuck out, party was over. The bride didn't know what the fuck happened, but he was already gone. He went to see the bride a week after, just to return the ring the bride's family gave him. He never spoke to her again."
20. "A few years ago now, I went out with a group of guy friends. We went to a few bars and ended up at one with a bachelorette party. After talking to them, I was the only married one in the group, and one of the bridesmaids was the only married one. We spent a good portion of the night talking while the rest of the group got plastered. They loaded into a van, and we followed them to their hotel to continue partying. We were playing cards when the bride and one my my friends wanted to go get more booze. They left and were gone for about 30 minutes before we noticed."
"Went looking for them, and they were fucking in the back of his car. They finished up and saw three of us standing there. We left and the bride went back to the room. I'm still casual friends with the bridesmaid, and the wedding didn't happen."
21. "I worked at a jail. Every so often, we'd get people who'd been arrested for drunk and disorderly for their one last night of freedom parties. They'd beg to get freed in time to make it to the wedding. Had one bride who was screaming about missing her wedding and what the groom would think if she didn't show up. Guard was like, 'Groom's name? Don't worry. He won't be at the church on time either. We arrested him at the strip club about an hour ago." She went from being pissed about getting arrested for her drunken shenanigans to being pissed about him getting arrested at a strip club."
22. "I used to work at a banquet hall. The wedding was canceled because the bride caught the groom screwing one of the bridesmaids in the bridal suite."
23. And finally, "After the wedding at the reception, the newlyweds took forever to show up. When they did arrive, they argued loudly the entire time. They got introduced, we all clapped as per tradition, and they sat down at the main table in a huff. Sometime between the appetizer and the main course, the argument started again. The groom stormed off, and my girlfriend and I were nosey so we went to see what was up. He ended up in the hotel lobby on his cell phone. We thought nothing of it and were about to go back when the wife showed up and continued to ream him out. Now, for the first time, we could hear what the argument was about. He had invited his ex to the wedding ceremony, and that threw the bride off. Apparently, he had cheated on his new wife with his ex several times, with the last time being about a month prior to the wedding."
"Additionally, his ex/mistress was on her way to come pick him up to take him away from the new bride because she was 'acting crazy,' according to the groom. After a couple minutes of watching this train wreck of an argument, a shitty rust bucket sedan showed up with the ex-girlfriend in it. The groom got into the car with his ex, and they drive off. Last words went to the bride, who screamed at him as he tore off, 'Well, I guess I'm going back to fucking your brother then, you asshole!' Sooooo, they're no longer married now."
Any wild wedding stories you'd like to share? LMK in the comments below!
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.