Happily Never After: Memorable Yet Tragic Moments That Destroyed Wedding Celebrations

I played a wedding where as we started playing the set, everyone ran outside and nobody was to be seen for the rest of the night.

I originally assumed it was because nobody liked us but the bride came in afterwards and said there was a huge fight involving multiple members of both families and everyone basically went home upset, injured or in a police van.

We couldn't stop playing since we were paid and it was our job, and the only person watching was the drunk uncle dancing on his own asking for requests we didn't know.

Was a guest of friend of the bride, did not know anyone attending. Very expensive over the top place, several hundred guests of this very Italian wedding. Maid of honor grabs mic at the cocktail hour begins her speech, rambling, drunk. Quickly devolves to stating the recently deceased mother of the bride was against this wedding and that's basically what killed her. Plus Vinny will never give up prostitutes. She is tackled by several people and dragged away.

The happy couple is separated and divorced within a year.

father of the bride died suddenly 3 days before the wedding (pre-covid). 'daddy daughter' dance was mom, bride, and picture of dad. same with walking down the aisle to 'give her away'. lots of tears. not many smiles. even the bartender at the hotel knew the night before and was talking about it with me.

It was an uncle that pulled this at one wedding I attended. He got grabby with the bride's mother and the maid of honor at which point he was told to go sit at his f*g table and stay there or there would be trouble.

He didn't listen and tried grabbing the bride's a, at which point he was punched and frog-marched out into the parking lot by the groom and locked in the back of his own pickup truck with a bloody nose.

Not as dramatic as some of the comments on here but very awkward. Was at a lovely wedding .. really romantic .. all candle lit .. and the reception was lovely .. bestman made a good speech then at the end he said everybody raise your glasses to .. he said the grooms name & then accidentally called the new bride the ex wife’s name (of the groom) !!

Best friend's mom got remarried and had an expensive, beautiful wedding, but for some reason didn't hire a DJ. Last minute her mom asked me to manage the CD and gave me a list along with verbal instructions of when to play each. I tried to warn her that I simply did not follow, but she told me she had confidence in me.

Apparently all her life she wanted to walk down the aisle to some specific song, but I just couldn't figure it out. They had to get walking to match the sunset, so she went ahead down the aisle while I flipped through a series of incorrect songs to the horror/amusement of the crowd.

For years after when I called my friend's house and her stepdad answered, he'd say, "Is this the guy who fked up my wedding? How are ya?"

I was not born yet, but my parents rented the observation deck on the Hancock building in Boston for their reception. Tallest building in the city, beautiful view. My dad pored over historic weather charts to figure out what day was statistically most likely to be nice out. Day of the wedding comes and of course, thick fog unlike anything they'd ever seen before. Couldn't see a thing out the windows of the room they had picked specifically for the view.

Worked out well though, they were happily married for nearly 30 years before cancer took my dad's life a few years ago.

There's one other funny anecdote from that wedding: The wedding was held in Kings Chapel, which is an incredibly historic church here in downtown Boston that's somewhat of a major tourist attraction. To close that on a weekend afternoon for a wedding, it turns out, was not very expensive. The tourists waiting outside to see the church didn't know that, though, and someone started the rumor that my parents were incredibly wealthy, maybe even Kennedys. As a result, there were tons of people taking photos of them when they left the ceremony. Not sure if any of them ever figured out that my parents were most certainly not rich or famous.

A co-worker was at one of his best friends' wedding - there were very specific rules about the food - no nuts. There were a couple people there, including the maid-of-honor who were severely allergic. The venue served something that had nuts, maid-of-honor went anaphylactic. Epipen was not effective, and she died on the way to the hospital. Needless to say, there are lawsuits abound.

We attended a wedding for family member who didn't have a lot of money. It was hosted at an inexpensive venue but was nice. My heart broke when only a third of the people invited showed up. You could see the hurt in the couple's face. They came up to our table and said do you have any friends in (city, we lived an hour away)? They had all this food for 100 people but only 30 guests. They were willing to have complete strangers come down just so their money and food wouldn't go to waste. We hadn’t handed over our card with cash inside yet so my husband hit the ATM and added another $100.

My mother was a church organist, and attended many weddings.

I suppose the story that stands out was of the bride who when asked "Do you take this man..?" broke down and said "No, I can't - I don't love him" - and ran out of the church.

It was a smallish town, people found out that she had met somebody new, fallen hopelessly in love with him.

The bride's father was 45 min late to walk his daughter down the aisle.

While we were waiting the air conditioning broke in the venue. It was over 100 degrees outside and humid AF. The place was overcrowded. You could barely move without bumping into someone else and in the heat that was extra miserable.

I guess the air conditioning problem had also affected the refrigeration or something because most of the food was spoiled. The only food on the buffet was salad, spaghetti and rolls. Not enough to feed even half the guests.

Most people left after the first dance. Two of the bride's aunts fainted.

The bride and the wedding planner were crying.

A friend of my girlfriend was getting married. The wedding was quite normal: they got married in the local church and then there was the party in a nice restaurant. The photographer asked the bride and her bridesmaids (my girlfriend was one of them) to go outside for some photos. Some minutes later one of the bridesmaids come back asking for help: there were some swans that attacked the photographer and the majority of the people around him were not doing anything much more than laughing at this guy who was running around and screaming.

Big wedding. Around 500 people. All the future wife's doing. She wanted the huge, $70,000 wedding. I was a groomsman. Pre-wedding, he's nervous as hell. All these people have to be perfect, this is her dream wedding, Yada Yada. So, at some point the whiskey gets pulled out. It went from a calm the nerves few shots, to he's just about finished the bottle. We give him water, get him in the shower, and redressed. It's go time.

Midway through her vows, he pukes all down the front of her dress.

It was horrible, but it was great. They're going on eight years strong.

It was a big wedding, over 300 people. Turns out the bride had been having an affair with her cousin’s husband. The cousin had known for a little bit, but waited until the wedding to go table to table letting everyone know the bride was sleeping with her husband. Poor groom was blindsided. Worst part was his father in law was well off and opened up a restaurant for him. Well, he lost his wife and his restaurant

Maybe not “ruined” but it definitely got tense.

Started with the best man/groom’s brother just absolutely roasting the bride and her parents. Basically called them gold diggers and stuff in front of several hundred family and friends.

Then they cut the cake. Apparently, the groom was told under no uncertain terms not to shove cake in her face. Well, he did it anyway and she stormed off, not to be seen for 20 minutes.

Reception went on as planned, she got wasted and I’m told she passed out that night in the middle of the street while still in her wedding dress. Pure class. They’re divorced now.

My dad has vintage and veteran cars when I was younger he use to do some weddings with them, I loved clearing out the confetti from the car when he'd get home.

One week he arrived back and there was no confetti in the car... on the way to the church the bride changed her mind and instead of taking her and her father to church they asked if he could drop them at the local zoo as its her favourite place... so he did, left them there in full wedding attire. They were going to get a taxi home when they were done.

It was the days before mobile phones too so I'm guessing ppl were waiting at the church for quite a while.

Also, I've just called my Dad to ask him if he remembers this and he seems to think (from what he could over hear) that she was only getting married because she was pregnant and thought she had to, was early '80s. He also told me he did 2 weddings where the groom never showed up.

Went to a coworkers wedding about 15 years ago and this technically happened at the reception. It was a beautiful outdoor venue overlooking a lake. Anyways, the groom had planned to sing a song to his new wife and have fireworks launch as he was singing the last note. Well that last note came but the fireworks did not. He held that last note for a good 10 seconds before he finally yelled “MOTHERFS!!”, threw the mic down and ran to go fight the fireworks guy. No fists were thrown but somebody did end up in the lake. The party kinda broke up after that. They also ended up getting a divorce about a year later after the groom got fired from his job for showing his d*k to his boss’s underage daughter.

Bride and groom got super drunk. Get into fight. Crying yelling screaming, running out into the courtyard. Best man goes to check on them. Finds them rolling on the ground, not in a sexy way. Best man throws bride out of the way, slams grooms head into the sidewalk, and pins him down. Bride starts kicking groom in the face. Best man pushes her away while sitting on top of groom.

Bride storms off with brides maid. Best man lets groom up who begins kicking and punching trees and breaking the posts off a gazebo saying "I'm gonna kill myself!" Best man tells brides maid to go grab the police officer from inside for assistance. Police officer comes out and tries to help get groom to his room (wedding was at a fancy hotel) Groom proceeds to talk st and be disrespectful with the officer and ends up getting arrested. Father of groom disowns him, yells at bride. Best man and his date end up taking care of bride and grooms child and staying in their honeymoon suite for the night.

Source: I was the best man.

I went to a wedding where the bride and groom bought the wedding package on Groupon. Which is fine, why spend a fortune for one day? But I guess the venue thought they could cut some corners. So they stuck us in a room that smelled so strongly of cat urine some people immediately left. The only drinks were those from a vending machine. It was next to an airport so every time a plane took off the ceremony had to be paused because you couldn’t hear anything. And the day after the event, every single one of us had food poisoning.

Bonus story because even though it didn’t ruin the wedding for the couple, it ruined it for the bridal party. I was a bridesmaid for my friend. Flew across the world for over 10 hours to be there. Had to do the set up of the venue, assign people to rooms, put signs on doors, finish the seating chart, transport food, redo her bouquet because she didn’t like it... etc. etc. The whole time she’s rude and tells everyone within earshot that “the bridesmaids aren’t helping.” Her maid of honor was absolutely bending over backwards trying to keep her happy and instead of being grateful she instead told her sister “I should have asked you to be my maid of honor instead.”

She was pretty cold to me and kept asking if I’d lost weight. I said yes because I had been ill but didn’t think much of it. At the reception her new husband takes the opportunity to read the speech she clearly wrote for him to say to me “we are so glad you fit into your dress.” In front of over 100 people. I don’t speak to her anymore and neither does her maid of honor or other bridesmaid.

This didn't ruin the whole wedding, but it surely didn't brighten my day. After the ceremony we were standing in front of the altar and people took turns to congratulate us. As it was my mothers turn she took my hand and told me she's sorry she raised such a bad person like me. Thank God my husband doesn't speak her language well.

Not me, but my elder cousin's story. He attended a wedding where the bride and groom got scammed by the wedding organizer. One hour before the wedding event, nothing there in the room. No food, no decorations, just few tables and basically it feels like unused ballroom. The bride and groom realized the wedding organizer scammed them and the wedding organizer took the money to bought themselves a big ol' house.

When the bride and groom decide to see the wedding organizer, they caught him sleeping in his house. It became a national TV news here and the wedding organizer got sued by few brides and grooms that got scammed by them, too.

The poor bride started her menstrual cycle on her big day, and she was nauseated and in pain all day.

She couldn't eat any of the buffet because her stomach hurt too much, and anything she tried to eat ended up being vomited back up.

She couldn't even stand properly either because of her cramps. She stayed seated.

In most of the wedding photos, she's grimacing instead of smiling because she was so ill.

I was invited to the reception of one of my good friends. They had been courthouse married for months and living happily. When I arrived at the location and saw the big crowd I knew something was wrong. Friend's wife is prone to panic attacks and is extremely agoraphobic to the point of breaking down and crying if she is overwhelmed.

Immediately call friend and ask what's going on and if this was okay. Turns out friend's parents invited everyone possible to be there without my friend knowing. After I sent him a picture of the crowd, him and his wife thought it would be better to go on a second honeymoon than have a reception.

He sent a message apologizing to all those his wife and him invited and telling them to leave without telling his parents. Parents had a meltdown as we left.

This was around 2009. On the second day of the wedding, the bride went swimming in the ocean. It took place in Tenerife. She swam out too far and was basically ‘lost at sea’ for 9 hours or so. She eventually found her way back but was in bad shape. Everyone was panicked the whole day and thought she drowned. By the time she got back, she wished she had. Her husband found her phone and read a bunch of messages supposedly from her aunt (but it was quickly clear from the sexy content it wasn’t her aunt at all, she had been having an affair with the best man for apparently years). They got an annulment shortly after. 60,000 down the drain. One of the most opulent weddings I’ve ever been to.

My own. It rained and was cold. No one bothered to turn the lights on so the few pictures I have are dark and grainy. My parents divorced earlier that year so my dad hated seeing mom for the 1st time and didn’t stick around to get a picture with me. My husband’s mom didn’t even take off work to attend, apparently the money was more important. Good news is that we just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary.

Bride and Groom decided to "go get a few pictures" right after the ceremony. They disappeared for about 5 hours. We all waited at the venue. Since no one got any word from them, the buffet wasn't set and the DJ didn't play any music. After 2 hours most guests decided to collect some cash and we talked the manager of the venue to get out the buffet and the DJ to play music. So we basically started the party without the wedding couple. When they finally got back, they were in shock because basically all food was gone, people were drunken and happily dancing and everybody forgot that this was their wedding...

So the wedding itself wasn't ruined but everything around it...well...us guests had a great time after all when we took things in our own hands.<

I'm a wedding photographer.

I was at one really fancy one a couple of years ago, typical outdoor deal at a swanky location in the middle of nowhere.

The place was really nice, had a large concrete stairway flanked by water fountains that led down to the altar area, so the bride could be seen by all like she was ascending from heaven.

The ceremony begins and the bridal party come down and take their places. Then the bride appears with her father. She takes 3 or 4 steps down the concrete steps and her shoe twists on her, she tumbled down a good 12 feet or more and busted out the majority of her front teeth in the fall. So much blood all over her.

With the place being so isolated, it took a good 40 minutes for ambulance to arrive and she was in intense pain. Ultimately she was ok and I got an email from them weeks later with the reschedule date. This time there was no stairs anywhere in sight.

The wedding was at a state park that's famous for its giant gorge/waterfall. I don't know whose idea this was, but someone suggested a photo overlooking this gorge and everybody was game. The wedding party went around a stone security barrier and the maid of honor literally fell off the cliff to her death. It was like 500+ feet.

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This didn't happen at a wedding, but at a 30 year wedding anniversary.

I was working as a waiter, at an Inn. We had ballrooms for private parties and other bigger events. The bride and groom had spared no expense. About a 100 guests, 5 course meal, an open bar, a whole day party. we where supposed to close it at 4 in the morning. It was grand, and one of the biggest parties, I had waited on so far.

After the main course, the Husband stood up, and held a speech. A long one. He started out reminiscing of when they had met. Their early life together, the hard times they had endured. He then talked at length about how he loved the children, she had birthed him. And told each of them how proud he was of them, their character, and accomplishments.

So far it was one of the better speeches I had ever heard. It was heartfelt, he had a lot of charisma. He was well spoken, and funny.

But then he turned to his wife again. He told her that he had hated her for the last 4 years of their life together. That she was a toxic narcissistic ct, that had made him feel miserable, and almost had driven him to suicide.

He told her, that he knew she had a lover. Pointed him out in the crowd, next to his wife and children. He had evidence and was suing for divorce, intending to take everything. He gave her the divorce papers right then and there.

Then he announced to everyone, that he had gotten, his own apartment. That movers had moved all his stuff while they where at the party, and that he would be leaving shortly. but everything was already paid for, so they should stay and enjoy themselves. In the stunned silence that ensued, He tipped all staff. dishwashers, bosses, waiters, and busboys 200$ each and left. Needless to say, all except family had left the party, within the hour.

I was studying photography and used to act as an assistant to a well known wedding photographer. Went to a couple's wedding. He shot digital and I shot black and white film. Spent all day with the couple from 9am through till 2am the next morning when we left. I could see how genuinely in love they were. It was only a day but I got to know them quite well and really liked them both.

The next morning, I get a call from the photographer and his voice was shaky. He explained that the groom had been murdered that night after the reception party. Three guys had broken into their bungalow to steal wedding gifts. The groom got out of bed to stop them and they executed him in front of the bride. I was in shock for about two weeks. This story was in South Africa if that helps explain how or why this happened. The next weekend, the photographer and I went to the bride's house to present her with the photos.

We'd worked together to get the job massively accelerated so she had the photos of her husband. We did it at our own expense and didn't charge her a penny for the day or all the prints and album. Sort of the least we could do. Because my photos didn't matter as much, I'd been able to simply capture those natural moments between them, rather than staged wedding photos. So they had the normal album pics but also about 150 snaps of just them being a couple. She was in tears from the moment we arrived till we left a few hours later. She was a shadow of the women I'd met only a week earlier. That still haunts me.