Worst Wedding You've Ever Attended

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  • dixiech1ck
    dixiech1ck Posts: 769 Member
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    The worst wedding...my own.

    I turned up...big mistake :/

    Crazy. i'm hearing that from a lot of friends in unhappy marriages who knew going in, it wasn't right, but didn't want to be alone. Bummer.
  • askeates
    askeates Posts: 1,490 Member
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    The worst wedding...my own.

    I turned up...big mistake :/

    ^^ This :)
  • KristysLosing
    KristysLosing Posts: 683
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    Yes! I didn't know etiquette was a thing until I started planning either! And now I am just bound and determined to be a great host and to not be a rude bride. Open bar all night...no more than an hour between ceremony and supper, etc...and the ceremony and reception will be in the same place.

    And reading about invitations and how much etiquette there is to that...and inviting plus ones and etc...omg! There was so much I didn't know!

    I love reading about awful weddings though! It makes me plan to not do things at my own wedding. Keep 'em coming!

    Kudos to you for keeping the inbetween time short! With pictures, that can be tough. Or the bridal parties that go bar hopping during that time. At my husband's brother's wedding, I wasn't part of the party, so I was crazy bored while they were off doing pictures. And it was 90 degrees and they had an outdoor reception. With a polka band no one really danced too. We actually left early to get to use the pool at our hotel.
    Also - bad bridal party etiquette...my bro-in-law and sis-in-law (same ones from above) were both in our wedding party. We have a couple of pictures of the party where they are leaning their heads together and being close and cutesy. I really liked the picture, except for that, and decided not to make prints of it. I was pretty mad about that. These aren't pictures of you!
  • Maris_Swan
    Maris_Swan Posts: 197 Member
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    This is why I hate weddings so very much.

    Some people just use it as an opportunity to judge and critique people they're supposed to care about. Never once was it mentioned about how happy the couple looked, or that it was a beautiful thing to see them starting their lives together.

    Nope. Just cash bar, value of present, quality of food, even criticizing them for playing the kind of music they wanted at the dance. Oh the nerve of them...

    If this is proper etiquette you can keep it. I don't care if my friends have a wedding in their backyard and make it BYOB. I'm there to see them get married and celebrate their love and lives together. Not to be catered to for gracing them with my presence.

    You left your "friends" wedding in the middle of it because you didn't approve of her choice of songs. I think she did the right thing ending the relationship.

    THIS. thank you.
  • emma2309
    emma2309 Posts: 203 Member
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    An open bar in Ireland would ensure the happy couple be in debt for the rest of their lives haha!
  • alpine1994
    alpine1994 Posts: 1,915 Member
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    I've never been to one really bad wedding, but there were bad parts of a lot of them:
    1. No parking at the ceremony and/or reception
    2. Having 1 buffet line for food. It took 3.5 hours for everyone to be able to get their food and eat.
    3. Having a 45 minute commute between the ceremony and reception
    4. No AC/ventilation in the church in mid-August

    And just a note: Cash bars don't bother me at all. I always bring cash to weddings just in case, and I don't think it's "trashy" or anything like that. Booze is expensive, and you're already paying a ton for the wedding. I'd buy my own drinks any other time I go out so I don't expect the bride and groom to pay for them.

    My favorite weddings:
    1. A couple got married in Fiji and had it filmed. When they got back, they had an outdoor reception in the backyard of a mansion. They set up a big screen under the tent and played the video of them getting married in Fiji. All of the food and decor were made by the bride's family. It was classy and gorgeous but not over the top at all. Men were wearing khakis and polos and women were wearing sundresses. It was a blast.
    2. I love when the ceremony and reception are at the same place. I went to one at a winery which was really cool. My best friend is getting married at a children's book museum in 2 weeks and I'm really excited for it.
    3. Lawn games during the outdoor cocktail hour! There's nothing more fun than playing a good game of *kitten* or bocci while being all dolled up and having a buzz!

    Make sure your wedding is exactly what you and your fiancee want and don't let people's opinions of what proper wedding etiquette sway your decisions. Everyone's opinions are different as you can see. Congratulations!
  • KristysLosing
    KristysLosing Posts: 683
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    It is very common in the UK to have evening only guests. I am going to a friend's reception (party only) in October and I will be traveling 600 miles to go. If you care about the person then attend the wedding, if you don't then they probably shouldn't have invited you.

    This is true. I think it goes both ways. I'd love to see you get married, but to travel so far and bring a gift when I don't even get dinner...we're not friends like we used to be. At least I felt that way in my case.

    ETA - the more I think about it now, if I wasn't friend enough to be able to have dinner at your wedding, I'd rather not be invited at all. I would take more offense to not being offered dinner, and only invited to the reception and ceremony, than being skipped.
  • jamers3111
    jamers3111 Posts: 495 Member
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    Yes! I didn't know etiquette was a thing until I started planning either! And now I am just bound and determined to be a great host and to not be a rude bride. Open bar all night...no more than an hour between ceremony and supper, etc...and the ceremony and reception will be in the same place.

    And reading about invitations and how much etiquette there is to that...and inviting plus ones and etc...omg! There was so much I didn't know!

    I love reading about awful weddings though! It makes me plan to not do things at my own wedding. Keep 'em coming!

    sounds perfect! I didn't follow much etiquette since my wedding wasn't fancy (outdoor beachside venue) but I wanted to make sure it was as convenient and fun for the guests as possible! I went to a wedding once where the ceremony was at a church almost an hour from the hall that the reception was held. I didn't get that. Just remember it's one day, and after a few weeks people will forget all about it, so don't stress (or spend $$) on the little stuff. That is the biggest thing I learned! haha
  • Dead_Darling
    Dead_Darling Posts: 478 Member
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    The topper was that at the end, she was making everyone help her clean the place up!!!! LMAO

    Yep, my brother and I set up a wedding and cleared the place up afterwards. Sad thing was, it was yet another cousin's wedding!! (All these cousins are on my mum's side, I'm sensing a trend here...)

    We drove back to the bride's mum's house at 2am, changed into our jim jams, and washed and cleaned 500 dishes and mop the hall :huh: and we had a 600 mile drive back the next morning. Yep, it was in France.

    It wasn't the worst wedding, because my brother met the love of his life there, and both families approve. Awww :smile:

    Yep, mom's side. This is the super frugal cousin. Her and my sister could be best friends. My other cousin and me are the frugal bashers.... lol

    I've never been to such a wedding. I could sound harsh, but I guess I could never imagine having a wedding where you run out of food and have to clean afterwards. Sounds terrible. How do you have more Tecate's than FOOD?! So basically there were Tecate cans all over! We were all picking up cans. :noway:

    Lucikly this wedding was a few minutes drive from the bride's house, but some people were cleaning up in their very expensive clothes :noway:

    Every wedding I've been to there was no alcohol or dancing!! When that happens, some people had to pretend to be drunk just so people can crack a smile!

    This is why I'm just inviting less than 10 people to my wedding. It makes sense lol
  • Mmmmona
    Mmmmona Posts: 328 Member
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    The worst wedding I've ever attended was the only wedding I've ever attended and I'll never go to another one.

    I don't think there was anything the bride could have done to prevent it, short of cutting off the liquor - which can ruin a party as easily as it can save one.

    One couple we had to sit with were just a-holes. Belligerent, obnoxious, rude, ignorant, arrogant, vile, foul mouthed, insulting and just downright horrible human beings.

    I spent most of the night trying to ignore them until at one point the man came up to me and asked me why I was such a b*tch. I replied that I had just spent too much time with his wife and she was starting to rub off on me.

    It went on like that for the rest of the night.
  • hsmaldo
    hsmaldo Posts: 115 Member
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    I think where it becomes horrendous is that some people spend upwards of $20K on the wedding, everything is elaborate and then you make your guests pay for drinks. If you're spending that kind of money, just take care of the guests. Even if you are only doing beer and wine.

    ^this!!

    Out here, it's pretty much impossible to plan a wedding for under $20K....$50-$100K is the norm.

    One of the worst weddings I attended was when the best man got up to make his speech and brought up all the drunken stuff he and the groom had done in college and the girls and girlfriends he used to have...it was SO embarassing. Other than that, the wedding was beautiful, the food was great, music was good and you can tell they were on the $100K side of things...but that best man kind of ruined it all!
  • Athena53
    Athena53 Posts: 717 Member
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    Fortunately I haven't been to any weddings I considered really bad. I was surprised at my first (and only) cash bar, but it was in TX and I was from the NE where that's not done. I just went out to my car and fetched some cash out of my purse in the trunk. I spent LOTS of time on theknot.com when I was planning my own wedding 10 years ago, and I think what would bother me would be the ones where you have to wait forever between the ceremony and the reception while pictues are taken- especially if it's someplace uncomfortable (outdoors in July in KS), there's insufficient food and drink or there's a very long wait.

    It would also be depressing to see a big, splashy bash that was obviously the result of debt taken on by people of modest means. A guy on a personal finance board I'm on went into long tales of his cousin, who was paying child support to a baby mama and had a menial job, who had the wedding of the century, and they begged and borrowed from family and loan sharks to do everything over the top, including HumVee limos for the bridal party. The food was overly fancy stuff for the mostly-Haitian famiy and freinds, who sent most of it back to the kitchen uneaten because it wasn't what they were used to. He posted pictures (faces blurred, of course). It was beautiful. They're now living with her parents.

    DS was married last month. It was a daytime wedding and the reception was brunch foods, no alcohol. It was a little too heavy for my taste (unlimited bacon!) but the love you could see between the two of them would just melt your heart, and they were surropunded by friends and family. It was perfect.

    DH and I had the rehearsal dinner and, knowing that it was a minimal-alcohol group, chose to pay on a per-drink basis. Over 3 hours, 65 adults (bride has a lot of aunts and uncles and we chose to include them all) went through 6 mixed drinks, 12 bottles of wine and one beer. Yeah, ONE beer! I did make a speech but it was short, profound, funny and free of filler words (ah, um, you know) thanks to 9 years in Toastmasters. I just paid the credit card bill. Worth every dime.
  • kenzietate
    kenzietate Posts: 399 Member
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    The worst wedding I have been to was probably the one that had the potluck reception dinner. It wasn't b/c it was pot luck...it was b/c there were a total of 20ish people who brought dishes and all of them brought either collard greens, meat balls in teriyaki, or pigs in blankets. ALL OF THEM! (North GA wedding!) It was in a Southern Baptist Church so no alcohol or music or dancing. The kids (I was like 12 at the time) were all just sitting outside the door on the steps b/c there was nothing to do.

    My wedding, I wanted to make it as relaxed and fun as possible but I was on a pretty strict budget. We had unlimited beer and wine and then some champagne for toasting. But we had music and dancing and appetizers for everyone. It was an early afternoon wedding so everyone was gone by 5 in time for dinner. Everyone I have talked to had a blast even though we didn't have a full open bar or anything! I know I enjoyed it alot!

    ETA: We had about 1.5 hrs between the end of the ceremony and when my husband and I entered the reception but we had the reception open with drinks and for lack of a better term bar snacks. Pretzels, nuts etc. Then when we came in the caterer put out the actual appetizers.
  • cmpollard01
    cmpollard01 Posts: 246
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    I'm in the middle of planning my wedding, and there will be NO bar. I can't afford to pay for my family and friends to be lushes all night, and even if I could, I wouldn't. Alcohol should not be required for my wedding to be fun. Plus, we're getting married in a state park-alcohol is not allowed.

    Now I will say, it is strange to me that there are weddings where some people are only invited to certain parts. That seems a little less than cordial. We're having a small-ish wedding/reception (hopefully no more than 100 people, and that's with eliminating most of my family!), but we'll have *kitten* and ladder ball outside, fun music, and great food (i'm talking bbq chicken, beans, mac & cheeese...good ol' southern food!).

    I say go for what you'd enjoy in a wedding, and if no one else likes it, oh well. You can't please everyone all the time. As long as you enjoy yourself, that's the important part!
  • oX_Vanessa_Xo
    oX_Vanessa_Xo Posts: 478
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    My own
  • Lisa1971
    Lisa1971 Posts: 3,069 Member
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    I was a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding and it was AWFUL! I ended up helping an elderly woman leave the church and the limo going to the reception left without me! So I had no ride and had to ride over with the groom's parents (Hello...awkward!) Then the reception hall was FREEZING, the food was terrible and my other cousin (bride's sister) got completely loaded and trashed the women's bathroom and started a fight! It was by far the worst wedding EVER!
  • Mutant13
    Mutant13 Posts: 2,485 Member
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    Try the website E.hell and its' daughter site Hell Bells. All about wedding etiquette and horror stories
  • KristysLosing
    KristysLosing Posts: 683
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    While no fault of the bride and groom, to my knowledge...we went to a wedding where we had to stand and wait to get into the reception hall. We were really really crowded and it felt like forever. Partly because we had our 1 yr old daughter and I was pregnant. So we finally get in to the hall, and dinner doesn't get servied for a couple more hours. They brought around some appetizers after a while, but it took forever to get our meals. Between being pregnant and our daughter, it was rough. My fault for not having more snacks for her, but I didn't know dinner would be 2-3 hours late!
  • SyntonicGarden
    SyntonicGarden Posts: 944 Member
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    Outdoor wedding that started almost an hour late. Then the cocktail hour was probably 3+ hours long and didn't have much in the way of things to eat. (So now we're four+, almost 5 hours in, I'm the DD, AND I'm ravenous. The two small cookies in my purse are long gone and my stomach is singing a sonata.)

    We finally were seated outside at a table with multiple toddlers in meltdown and this women lets her kid drop trow and pee right behind my chair. RIGHT behind my chair. I understand that kids have to go. Really. I do. I get it. But within 2 feet of where I'm eating?If the kid HAD to go, couldn't she drop the kids trow behind her own chair? She didn't even dilute the pee with water.

    1. Try to avoid seating your married, without children friends with your friends with kids. Sit the kids together. Maybe that'll help tire them out faster. I'm guessing your friends with kids are also going to probably be more tolerant of a little bladder peeing behind their chair.

    2. It's 2013. If you're serving snacky food, there's nothing wrong with throwing a crudite tray into the mix. It's vegetarian, usually gluten-free, has options that are low on the glycemic index, and if done right, is considerably less expensive that some of the other options out there. Go out for crab rangoon some other time and swap it with a veggie tray instead. Overall, it makes almost everyone happy.
  • SaviEve
    SaviEve Posts: 2
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    Don’t know about worst wedding but the best wedding I have been to was my cousins last summer. They had a lovely ceremony in the church in the village they lived in and once the ceremony was over, the villagers had tied a ribbon across the entrance and had to cut it to show they approved of the match and accepted them into the community (guessing this was just for tradition as they had lived together in the village for a couple of years by the time they married!).
    We then all walked the short distance back to their house where there was a marquee in the garden filled with wild summer flowers, bunting and candles. The wedding breakfast was a picnic box for each table full of classic English picnic treats. They had brought in a load of beer and wine from the supermarket and were selling drinks tickets for £1 which was great because you felt that you were contributing a bit but didn’t have to spend a fortune.
    The speeches did not drag on and by the end the entire marque of 150 guests were both laughing and crying!
    After the reception another 50 people arrived and the tables were pushed to the side and the whole thing turned into a great party!
    They didn’t need to spend a fortune on the day or provide an expensive fancy dinner and free bar, everyone left having had an amazing time celebrating a couple who they love and the success of the wedding is still talked about and I’m sure will be for a few years to come. I’m only disappointed my cousin thought of it first and that I can’t copy it for my wedding this year!

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