Some marriages are just doomed before they even started—but often, guests aren't aware of just how bad things are until the ceremony starts. From shocking objections to all-out brawls, these weddings were filled with terribly ominous red flags...and the drama is so captivating you might just want to grab some popcorn.
1. Sister Act
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 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 doesn't really translate, but it 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 therein long enough to have consummated the marriage. Although nobody actually does it there; it's considered declasse. This is one of the things that actually solemnizes the marriage. So. After the yichud, the bride comes out and makes a shocking announcement.
She says, "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? 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 passed.
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...
2. Putting It Off
THE night before their city hall wedding, the bride and groom had separate big parties and got so plastered they both slept through the wedding. They didn't realize it until city hall called asking where they were, and they decided, screw it, we'll do it later. They did eventually get married at some point a few months after, and still are as far as I know, over 20 years later.
3. The Butterfly Effect
My husband and I were doing the catering for a small wedding of fewer than 50 people. They had actually had their first date in our restaurant and asked us to cater their big day, which was sweet. It was a seaside wedding, very DIY, and even my kids helped set up. Under each folding chair in the wedding "audience", was a box to be retrieved and opened by the guests when the officiant told them to do so.
The goal of this was well-intentioned. The guests would lift the tops of the boxes to free what would become a sea of delicate butterflies, symbolic of their marital journey "taking off". Well, it ended in a truly gruesome scene. The butterflies all died in their boxes due to oxygen starvation, and when the lids were collectively released, their limp bodies were swept up in a vicious yet timely gust of wind. In one glorious moment, united, they were whipped off forcefully into the horizon.
4. I Just Keep Coming Back To You
After the wedding at the reception, the newlyweds took forever to show up. They were nearly an hour late. When they did arrive, they were arguing loudly the entire time. They got "introduced" and 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 we were about to go back when the wife shows up, still obviously in her wedding dress, and continues to ream him out. Now for the first time, we can hear what the argument is about. As we listened, our jaws dropped.
He had invited his ex to the wedding. She showed up to the ceremony and that threw the bride off. Apparently, also...he had cheated on the new wife with this ex-girlfriend several times, with the last time being only about a month prior to the wedding. Additionally, the ex-girlfriend/mistress was on her way to come pick up the new husband 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 rust bucket sedan shows up with the ex-girlfriend in it. The groom gets into the car with his ex or whatever the heck she is and they drive off. Last words went to the bride, though, who screamed at him as he tore off: "Well, I guess I'm going to go back to sleeping with your brother then, you jerk”!
So, they are no longer married now.
5. Taking Bets
I used to work in catering for weddings. There was this one couple, who got this beautiful old English Tudor venue, and they paid out a huge amount for the catering; it was for about 200 guests. They were all expected to arrive after the ceremony at 1 PM. Three hours later, they rocked up to the venue without so much as an explanation. There was no call that they would be late, no sign of any guests, nothing.
The staff was all standing around speculating “maybe they called it off, someone was stood up, etc”., for hours. We started getting ready to pack everything up and just leave when we finally saw guests arriving. So, we started serving canapés and we saw the bride and groom for about two minutes before they walked off into the gardens to have a full-on screaming match.
The main topic of conversation with guests was literally betting on how long they would last, who is going to be the first to cheat, and things like that. They came back an hour later, now shouting at us saying, “Why aren’t the guests eating yet”? Meanwhile, we were waiting for them! After that, things actually went pretty smoothly. We finished serving and they started the toasts.
The guy’s friends were comedians, so the speeches are brilliant, but walking through topping up champagne, we could hear every table still murmuring offhand jokes or sarcastic comments about them not lasting, etc. I think they went off to argue a few more times after that. It was a lovely wedding with terrible people.
6. Keep It In The Family
Several years ago, I got a phone call from the maid of honor for a wedding I was going to attend (as a guest) two weeks from then. She was flustered, but managed to get out: "There's no wedding, Groom called it off. He's in love with someone else". Well, I didn't press. I was friends with both of them, so I knew that the full details would eventually make their way back to me. I could not believe what I found out.
Turns out, a couple weeks before the wedding, the groom called the 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, the groom and the bride's brother are married and happy. However, I lost contact with the bride shortly after her wedding plans imploded, so I'm not sure if she ever forgave the boys for that one.
7. The Family That Lies Together Stays Together
My sister and her husband. They met each other our junior year of high school, and she moved in with him halfway through our senior year. I never liked him and did not hide that fact. I especially didn't like him after he hit on me while they were dating. Didn't hide that fact either, but my sister brushed me off. Before he popped the question, she found out he'd been texting other girls.
He promised he'd change. The wedding was a train wreck, honestly. It was a small affair in our family back yard, with our aunt officiating. That same aunt started crying midway through the ceremony. My stepmother read a poem about them she wrote halfway through the ceremony—she always wants to be the center of attention.
The groom’s drunken father, who had been barred from the wedding, came stumbling in at some point during the vows to search for drinks, and I saw the groom grab one of the bridesmaids’ bottoms. I didn't point that out to my deliriously happy stepsister. I should have. A year later it turned out the groom had been texting racy stuff to my stepmom.
My sister somehow forgave both of them. She has low self-esteem. They got caught again a year after that. At that point, my dad had divorced my stepmother, so I have been distant from this whole shebang. But my sister—who I do still talk to—finally divorced that jerk. Divorce for everyone! Let's pull an Oprah.
8. One Wedding To Mar Them All
I once photographed a wedding that made me quit photographing weddings. My husband was my second photographer, and even he couldn't believe the day we had. We showed up early to get a feel for the venue and grab photos of guests and details. Then, I went to check on the bride and my husband checked on the guys. The bride was extremely angry with everyone because apparently her husband-to-be had been smoking earlier and when she had ordered him to stop, he decided to have a drink instead.
The wedding ceremony was very dry. No tears. No sincere words. Then at the reception, the brother of the groom got up to speak. His toast included things like, "I can't believe we're here today; no one thought you would make it this far" and, "You know we wish the best for you and we hope you're happy". All of the guests were cringing.
Immediately after the speech, the bride said to me, "I don't want photos of any of his (the groom's) family. I also don't want photos of my sister who thinks she's a model". That was the last wedding I shot, and it was nearly four years ago. That man was miserable. I could see it in his face and everyone else's.
9. Mom-Zilla
At my sister’s wedding, the mother of the groom arrived late…wearing a bright red, skin-tight mini dress with stilettos. She then proceeded to try to get in front of the camera so as to block it from taking photos of the bride. During the vows, she coughed loudly and made groaning noises. The pastor apparently decided it would be prudent to not ask if anyone objected to the union.
After the ceremony, as we were getting ready to leave, she tried physically attacking my sister, but there were enough of us to get in her way. They are no longer together.
10. And Another One Down, And Another One Down
I went to a wedding with a girl I dated in high school. Her uncle was marrying a woman that had already been married four times. Four. Times. As she walked down the aisle, instead of the traditional “Here Comes the Bride,” they played “Another One Bites the Dust”. I have no idea if the couple is still together, but I very seriously doubt it.
11. Hakuna Matata
The groom had his car stolen on the morning of the wedding and spent the whole day swearing and punching inanimate objects because, as we all heard a thousand times that day, not only was the car "the most important thing in his life," it also wasn't insured. The wedding was at a Boy Scout hall, for no apparent reason...maybe irony…but the reception was in the cafeteria at one of those "Underwater World" places. There was a glass tunnel that you could walk through to see fish swimming all around you, but no one was allowed to go see the fish because, get this: the whole day had a Lion King theme. Except for, you know, the venue.
Then, towards the end of the night, the bride got into a physical fight with one of the bridesmaids because she caught her sleeping with a groomsman. The bride then tearfully admonished the groomsman caught with his pants down for cheating on her (the bride). I have no idea how long the marriage lasted for, as I never saw or heard from them again.
12. Never The Two Shall Meet
I’m a part-time wedding planner. The bachelor party and the bachelorette party were being held in the same hotel in New Orleans. I tried to get them to do separate venues but nooooo, the group discount would cover an extra day in Carmel. They begin at 8 pm and collide drunkenly at about 3 am. It was some kind of drunken fistfight that turned…intimate?
Everyone was so ashamed the next morning they called it off. They made up six months later and got married. They picked something simple, like their backyard, this time.
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13. Gimme Gimme Gimme
Friend invites me to his wedding. He and fiancée are fairly poor and have lived together for years. They're both semi-disabled (his is PTSD, hers is physical) and on fixed incomes, and live in a somewhat expensive area. They have three gift registries (Target, Macy's, Crate & Barrel) and a HUGE invite list—over 300 friends and family members.
All the stuff on the registries is standard stuff like towels, coffee cups, flatware, etc. Anyway, people fly out, get ready for the wedding, and two days before the wedding is the bachelor party. That’s when the dark truth comes out. The friend has too much to drink and admits that she's not really his fiancée; they are just roommates and they have no intention of getting married, they just needed the stuff.
They're going to cancel the wedding tomorrow and keep all the gifts. I had to protect him from getting his butt kicked by about two dozen people. Then he had to have the fiancée come clean to everyone since he was too hungover. They ended up returning most of the gifts to people—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".
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14. Work Wife Vs. Real Wife
The groom spent almost the entire wedding glued to his female work colleague, to the point that the bride had to drag him away for their first dance. They also kept going off somewhere together. You could see the obvious hurt on the bride's face throughout the day. But that’s not the craziest part.
Prior to the wedding, he'd taken his colleague away abroad for his stag. It was just the two of them, despite the bride's protests, and in his wedding speech, he pointed his colleague out and told her that he'd had "the best time of his life" that weekend.
They're still together at the moment, but I don't see it being the happy ending that the bride was so desperate for.
15. Nothing But Complaints
The bride-to-be told me two days before the wedding that she found her fiancé annoying and that she didn’t like him, and that he was AWFUL in bed. She was visibly, endlessly uncomfortable at the rehearsal wedding/dinner combination. Then, she cried the ENTIRE morning, the day of her wedding. She ended up not getting any makeup done because she wouldn’t stop scream-crying, and refused to get dressed, stalling the wedding for about 35 minutes.
She then said 45 minutes of “vows” that she had prepared. It was nine pages of things like inappropriate vows to friends and family, his parents and sisters, but none of them were to her husband. Then, she ALMOST didn’t say “I do”. They managed to get a, “Uh, yeah, okay, yeah I do” out of her almost a full 60 seconds after she was supposed to say anything.
I could go on for HOURS, but it was the most painful and awkward wedding I have ever been to. I’ve got my money on it lasting about 10 months. Two and a half months later, she would gossip about how awful her husband was, and they were in couples therapy. At five months, there were fighting non-stop and there were no more lovey-dovey images on social media. They seem to be right on track for a 10-month breakup as I predicted.
16. Mistaken Identity
I got invited to the wedding by a friend and went because I was told that there was going to be a really good band and a high-level buffet at the reception. We showed up a bit early and things were still being set up. Someone needed some stuff from the grocery store, so I volunteered to go. A woman said she would go with me to show me where the grocery store was and to help get stuff, so I agreed. On the ride to the grocery store, she started talking about the wedding and how going to weddings was always kind of sad for her. I asked if she had a bad divorce or something, and she straight up told me that she found weddings arousing, but never had any luck finding a man at one.
Ok, red lights and warning buzzers should have been going off. I knew they should have. They were at some level, probably, but I totally ignored them—huge mistake. When we got to the store, she asked me to pull around to the side and park behind a bunch of empty semi-trailers. I did, and she crawled across the seat of my truck and started kissing me. Things progressed and stuff happened. It took maybe five minutes total. It was the definition of a quickie.
Afterward, we shopped and got the stuff that was needed and headed back to the Church. When we got there and the stuff was taken to the kitchen, I found my friend. She asked why it had taken so long and I dodged the question. I’m not a good liar, so she got suspicious and I dodged that. Then she got mad and demanded that I tell her what happened. So I did. And she freaked. She told me that the woman that I had gone to the store with was...the bride! She was not amused. I was not amused! The groom, when he walked up to me about five minutes later, was not AT ALL amused.
He just punched me. I went down, and he walked away. Apparently, a few people knew what had happened, as I was getting the stink eye from a number of people as I picked myself up off the floor. I asked my friend if we should leave and she agreed. I heard later that there was a three-hour delay and a lot of serious negotiating after I left, but that the wedding ultimately proceeded. The marriage lasted eight months, which was a good six months longer than anyone I talked to about it had given it.
17. For Richer or…Richest?
I once attended a really awkward wedding. The bride, who we all thought was a bit of a gold digger to begin with, laughed uncontrollably during the rehearsal when she was supposed to say the "for richer or poorer" part. She promised to get it together during the ceremony the next day. She didn't get it together. She burst out laughing again in the middle of the real ceremony, and she never did actually say it.
18. Liar, Liar
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. Sister of the groom calls him up and says he really needs to figure out if this is right. A few fights and some long thinking later, the groom leaves her and leaves town. It got worse though.
It turns out pretty much all the bride's friends had been lied to as well. They all stopped talking to her. She lied about all the normal details of a person's life. Where she went to high school, instead of a boring suburban school it was an expensive private school.
She claimed her family had a ton of money she was set to inherit. Claimed they had a home in Hawaii. Faked knowing people in the same industry. Small to large, didn't really matter, almost all of it was fake from what I heard. 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 second-hand.
I have no idea how she thought this would work for the rest of her life. I honestly think she had a mental condition. 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.
19. A Nasty Surprise
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, no one scheduled. I talked to the wedding planner and she tells me the groom canceled...Odd. Talk to the wedding planner’s younger brother, who was our head bartender.
He tells me that the groom, excited for the wedding, left work at lunch on Friday, bought a nice bottle of red, and headed home to surprise his bride-to-be. Except, he was the one in for a surprise. 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 father. We tried to talk him into doing a big screw you party because we'd never fill the space and there was no refund, but he declined.
20. A Whole Lot Of Fuss
This happened several years ago. My ex was the best man in a wedding for his best friend. The night of the bachelor/bachelorette party, the men and women each had their own get-together, and then were supposed to meet up with each other later that night at a bar downtown. I was with the ladies and after our party, we got into the party bus and headed down.
The bride called the groom and told him to leave to meet us there. We waited and waited. Groom is a no-show. Bride demands that I call my then-boyfriend and find out where they were. Boyfriend reports that they made a pit-stop at strip joint, which the bride and groom apparently had an agreement they wouldn’t do. The bride obviously flips out.
She grabs my phone demands that my ex order everyone to leave the club. Ex tries to explain that it is not going to be easy to get 40 highly intoxicated men out of the club when they had already "started". Meanwhile, the groom is still ignoring bride's calls. The bride demands that we all leave. The bride and groom's sister get into a physical altercation and have to be pulled apart.
The bride is screaming that she is canceling the wedding. The ex and I hightailed it out of there as it had escalated into a two-family brawl. The next day, the groom calls my ex and asks if we want to come over to watch movies with him and the bride. They got married weeks later and are still married.
21. Their Vows Didn’t Show Much Promise
The groom hated the bride’s family, and the groom’s family didn’t approve of the bride, which made for a very awkward wedding! The bride’s vows made things especially awkward. She said something along the lines of “I promise to try and be worthy of your family”—and we all raised eyebrows at each other.
The groom’s speech was all about how much he has helped his bride change for the better and how he “made her what she is”. My eyebrows were practically falling off the top of my head at that point. It’s been a few months so I guess we will wait and see, but I found it to be very controlling.
22. Teenage Wasteland Wedding
My cousin was in the Army, and his bride was six months pregnant, a senior in high school, and she had just turned 18 the previous day. Her grandfather was the officiant and he gave a big speech about how marriage was only between one man and one woman and no one can tear apart what God puts together. They opened their gifts in front of everyone like it was a birthday party.
There was no booze, dancing, or food. Within 30–40 minutes after the gift opening, the "happy" couple peeled out of the Boy Scout lodge, doing donuts while her teenage friends cheered them on. They spent the night at the hotel everyone was staying at—separately—which consisted of him getting trashed with his friends while she was alone in their room. In front of our entire family, my sister said, "I give them a year".
She was wrong, though. Within three months of the kid arriving, they had split and my cousin swears the kid isn't his. The whole wedding was one giant red flag.
23. The Groom’s Behavior Had The Bride Shook
After the ceremony, the bride, who had epilepsy, had a seizure and her family took her into a side room away from all the guests to look after her until she’d recovered. The groom’s reaction was brutal. He didn’t bother to go and help look after his wife, he was too busy getting sloshed and partying with all his mates. Even after the bride recovered enough to return to the celebrations, he didn’t stay with her or comfort her, and she sat there in tears for half the night. It lasted a couple of years before they divorced due to his selfishness and drinking.
24. Breaking News
I attended my niece’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, and they seemed to be genuinely in love. Then, shortly after the ceremony, the groom made an announcement to everyone, including his bride, that he had enlisted in the Navy and was due to report in a few weeks. She was beyond surprised. They didn't even make it a year.
25. Last Call
The bride got so inebriated at the wedding that the bar stopped serving drinks before midnight in an effort to cut her off. The groom was also smashed. People started leaving at midnight, and the bride got mad and yelled about how they were all "ruining" her wedding because she wanted to dance and drink more, but they all wanted to leave.
I was their designated driver to get them to their hotel. The entire drive there, they fought. She berated him; he cried. That was a long 20-minute drive. I could have scrubbed vomit out with cleaners, but the awkwardness has stained that car forever.
26. Turning The Other Cheek
When the priest equivalent at a wedding I attended said, "You may kiss the bride," the groom leaned in for a kiss—and the bride turned her head! What should have been the most romantic kiss of their lives turned into a peck on the cheek. Even as a child, that set off alarm bells for me. They have been divorced now for a long time.
27. My Big Fat Gay Wedding
The best man, the groom's lifelong best friend, was gay, and all but one of the groomsmen were gay as well. I knew the bride for years before the marriage, from before she met the groom. We never dated or considered dating, but we were part of each other's core social groups. The bride and groom met in college, where they dated casually.
He would always take her to family functions back home, but when they were back at school he would distance himself. A few years after the wedding, the groom's father passed. Within a week of the funeral, he told her it wasn't working and moved in with the best man. Everyone did their best to act shocked. From the first time I met him, I knew he was gay.
This was before I met or even heard about the best friend. He didn't react at all to her, or to other women. His eyes just didn't go where the eyes of a guy who's interested in women go. He was fit and well-groomed, and I saw more than one female flirting attempt crash and burn. All her friends tried to warn her; we literally took turns. It's just sad that he lost so much time to keep from disappointing his father, and that she lost so much time participating in his lie.
28. She’s Just Not That Into You
The groom was madly in love with his fiancée, but always got the vibe she just wasn’t that into it. During the wedding, he was so nervous he stuttered. The bride rolled her eyes and looked mad. Then later in the night, after dinner and music had started, the bride got annoyed that people weren’t staying in their allocated seats. They had a “wishing well” for presents, and we added our anonymous gift with a card and thought that was that.
One week later, we got a infuriating call. They said that we did not put ours in. This ended up getting so bad it tore down multiple friendships for the groom. The bride wanted enough money to buy a house. It turned out the bride was cheating on him the whole time with someone who was also married. He ended up leaving her about two years later when a family friend told him about the cheating. She was then threatening to take half his business if he didn’t pay her rent for the following months.
29. The Bride And Her Lover
The bride was pregnant, and the groom might or might not have been the father. She also invited her lover to the wedding and got really angry with me because her lover was flirting with me. She had also slept with her sister's fiancé two months before the wedding. At the bachelorette party, she was snorting copious amounts of powder.
After her child was born, she got divorced and hubby got custody. She went back to live with her parents because she kept getting fired and couldn't support herself. It was the biggest trainwreck I've ever seen personally.
30. The Biggest Betrayal
While working the night before a wedding at a hotel, the staff and I heard a loud scream from upstairs. Cue the bride screaming and sobbing shouting, "The wedding’s off"!!! while storming out the place, followed by the groom completely unclothed, covering his nether regions with his hands apologizing profusely. Turns out she caught the mother of the bride and the groom getting it on.
Safe to say we had an easy shift the next day as we didn't have a wedding to cater for.
31. A Moment Of Weakness
Neighbor's jealous harpy frenemies convinced her to cheat on the husband-to-be at the bachelorette party. Her friends were very far gone and SnapChatted evidence to him as "a joke". Obviously, he didn't take it that well and left her. Packed up all his things in their apartment and drove to his parents’ instead of getting married. The bride apparently didn't leave her room for about three weeks, totally distraught with how her relationship fell apart.
32. More Than Just Friends
This was 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 drinking, my friend the groom breaks down crying, leaves, and walks home.
He didn't say anything to anyone, just left. Found out the next day that the bride-to-be had been banging that groomsman for months and they were trying to work through it. He couldn't get past it and canceled the wedding.
33. Friends Or Family?
When I got married, it was a Renaissance fair-style wedding outside at a large gazebo and the maid of honor had promised to purchase a stylized dress for my bride that they had agreed on. Three days before the wedding, she revealed that she’d been keeping a secret. She called to tell us she had no money and was embarrassed to admit it. So, we literally hand-sewed one together in 24 hours. In my opinion, it turned out pretty nice for what we had.
The bride’s mother was supposed to pick up the cake and drive an hour south for the wedding. She left her house 30 minutes before the wedding to pick it up. When she finally showed up an hour late, the cake was DESTROYED. She had put it in the back seat and drove like mad all the way down, slamming it against its box with every turn. But then there was another twist. During the one-hour delay, there was almost a fistfight between two groomsmen because the maid of honor showed up in the dress that she was “unable to afford”.
It was an obvious attempt to upstage the bride. After the ceremony, during her speech, the same maid of honor started off by saying, “When we all met, I did not like [the groom] at all. However, I found that he grows on you like a fungus”. Needless to say, the entire side of my family didn’t appreciate all of this. Since all of these issues were on her side of friendships or families, I was told to suck it up, and we would discuss it later.
I sort of assumed that a lot of these “friends” had just shown themselves the door, but it was quite the opposite. In fact, two years later, when I accepted my first well-paying job out of college, it became an issue that it was an hour and a half out of Austin, where we were living. My wife decided to just stay in Austin to be with her friends. I mailed her the divorce papers and since she couldn't be bothered to even show up to the hearing, I never saw her again.
34. Dreaming Of Another
I was a groomsman at a wedding. As the night was winding up, the groom was nowhere to be found. The inebriated bride, whom I’d met maybe three times prior, asked me to dance. Then she made a disturbing revelation. She told me that when she pleasures herself, she would think of me!
That was the first time she ever expressed interest in me. They had three kids in five years, and both caught each other cheating on the other. They divorced at the 5-year mark.
35. He Just Needed A Hug
I attended the very big, very religious wedding of a 21-year-old bride and a 22-year-old groom. They lied about where they met—it was on Tinder. The night before, the groom and members of the wedding party were playing truth or dare. During a round, the groom admitted his biggest love language was touch but that his significant other hated to express affection physically.
He said that all he wanted was to be cuddled sometimes, and she’d refuse. He said he hoped it got better after they were married. All the groomsmen made frantic eye contact and changed the subject.
36. Everyone Knows But Him
A week before his wedding, a friend of mine walked into a nightmare. It was his dad getting it on with his fiancée. The next day in a fit of rage he trashed their room AND THEN in the process found explicit love letters to his recently married best friend (and best man) in her underwear drawer. The letters were as recent as the past week. The wedding was canceled.
Whenever I ran into him at a bar I made sure he never had to buy his own drinks.
37. A Backup Plan
Not mine, but a friend of my wife. It was a destination wedding in South America; we live in the US. Because it was a destination wedding, they both had their bachelor and bachelorette down there. The bride-to-be went looking for the groom the night before the wedding. No one knew where he was...and we eventually found the dude locked in a bathroom with some local girl doing coke.
The bride was obviously angry but they went through with the wedding. But then the twist came in. Cut to a few years later, and we randomly went out to dinner with just me and my wife with the bride. Turns out she never mailed in the wedding certificate. All this time, they haven't been married. She said she had too many red flags to go through with it.
Dude has no idea they aren't really married, even though they have been married for years and have two kids together.
38. Rekindling An Old Flame
I'm a musician, and I work on an infamous street for revelry and debauchery. One night, a bachelor party came in around the same time as a bachelorette party. The show I work with does special things like funny songs for special events, so I bring them both up at the same time to do something special. Then it got awkward. In the middle of this, on stage, they start making out.
And they Do. Not. Stop. I finish my routine as best I can and get them offstage. Later, as I'm looking around the audience, my eye catches on them again. They're in the back corner just going at it while their respective parties hang out up near the front of the stage. And they are really getting into it. Hands down pants and up skirts. At some point they disappear.
I take a break and head to the restroom. It's locked. I hear a woman yelling…some very encouraging…things from inside the stall. I sit in the lounge area outside the bathroom for about 10 minutes. The bachelor and bachelorette come out, looking a bit disheveled, but not too bad and not at all weirded out. They see me and immediately want to chat.
For some reason, people always want to get to know the musicians here. All their secrets came spilling out. There's curiously no guilt on them at all. I have to pee like a racehorse, but this is too good to pass up. Come to find out, they both are getting married to other people, but know 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 don't stay long, and as they leave I hear the bachelor say, "I have my own room, let's go there". The rest of the party stays till the show is over, partying hard and having fun. Possibly the best bachelor/bachelorette parties I've had. Anywho, I wind 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. Most of their respective bachelor/bachelorette showed up for the event. With this story, I always feel torn. Did I participate in the destruction of two relationships, or did I facilitate the meeting of two soulmates?
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39. The Judge Tried To Warn Her
I worked as a county prosecutor. I did a sentencing where the guy was sent to prison for about two years. As I was walking out of the courtroom, his girlfriend asked the judge to marry her to her boyfriend, who was going to be incarcerated. The judge said she needed a marriage license and there was a two-day waiting period—he was basically telling her not to marry the guy. But she’d planned ahead.
Then, she pulled out the marriage license. The judge told her that she needed two witnesses, and she was alone. The dude's attorney grabbed me by the arm and enthusiastically volunteered us to be the witnesses. The wedding went through. The guy was in an orange jumpsuit and was shackled during the ceremony.
40. The Counting Game
The bride and groom secretly married and told no one because their relationship would cost him his job. They had a wedding one year later, about a month after she graduated college. While at the reception, we were playing a “counting game” which consisted of “How many groomsmen has the bride slept with”? It was all eight of them. The groom had slept with three of the bridesmaids so there was that, too.
Then, we started the betting pool at the reception which only played country music and served grits three ways with beers. I won the bet. It lasted six months after the ceremony, which isn’t too surprising, as the bride went home with the guitarist from the band playing at the reception instead of with the groom.
41. His Frat Boy Ways
I went to my wife's coworker’s wedding. She was the sweetest person and her fiancé was a total slob. He was just a cocky, out-of-shape, burnt-out frat guy. He had told her to her face about all the girls he'd slept with and how he'd had perfect weeks where he'd slept with a different girl every night. I’m pretty sure this was a bad technique to try and make her stick around and think he was desirable. But he saved the worst for the wedding.
That was where he drank so much, he passed out before anyone had left and she had to take him to their hotel room while passed out. She didn’t get to finish her own wedding or have a wedding night. I felt so sad for her.
42. Foreshadowing
The cake cutting at my wedding with my ex was pretty telling. The whole point is that you each feed the other a bite of cake at the same time, right? Apparently he didn’t get the memo. He held his mouth open for the cake, while just holding the bit meant for me in his hand. I stopped and said, “Where’s mine”? Then he remembered and we did it the right way.
Fast forward 10 years later and he doesn’t want to get a job using the degree I supported him through because he feels I should just support the whole family. And that’s why he’s an ex.
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43. Priorities
The wedding was semi-destination, about a six-hour drive away, but all of the bride and grooms’ friends drove out there anyway. The reception was a bonfire with free booze and yard games and dancing. However, the new husband disappeared two hours into the six-hour reception…because he was bored. He just went into the house and hung out on his phone watching golf videos and refused to come back out. He ditched his family and friends along with his bride. They lasted less than two months.
44. Look To The Future
I was a bridesmaid in an awkward wedding. During the limo ride to her first wedding, the bride was planning her next wedding. Everyone was completely silent before her maid of honor managed to say, “Let’s just get through this one”. The couple lasted three years.
45. Dancing Around The Real Issues
My wedding was full of red flags. My ex-wife had a taste for theatrics and wanted a choreographed dance number for the first dance. She also wanted the whole wedding party involved, but there was no interest. I'd never danced, not even at a club, but was willing to take lessons with her with the understanding we would do something together, so she could have her dream wedding.
I sucked but got through a few lessons of slow dancing. The dance school wouldn't choreograph anything for us, so she promptly gave up. When it came to choosing the song, she decided she wanted “I Want You To” by Weezer, which was my favorite band and the song had just come out. It has a jamboree feel to it; it is not a song to slow dance to.
So, I suggested we choose something else, but she insisted we would just slow dance to it. I made her promise she wouldn't change her mind. Sure enough, 30 seconds into the song, she backed up and started dancing a jig. I just stood there in disbelief, fuming, while she kept shouting and motioning for me to dance in front of all our guests.
To boot, we had set a budget, and she exceeded it. Then her parents decided to chip in $5K, and rather than use it to offset what we were over budget for, she decided to spend more. In retrospect, that should have been a huge clue that she didn't respect me at all. She cheated on me and ran off with some guy a year later. She got remarried before we were officially divorced.
46. No Arguing It Wouldn’t Last
I was a groomsman at my friend’s wedding. The rest of the groomsmen were guys he met while stationed in the Air Force, and they knew his fiancée much better than I did. During the entire week leading up to the wedding, she would call him constantly and just straight-up yell as soon as he answered; then, they would argue.
During the week, the other groomsmen kept telling me that they didn’t like her and how much of a pain she was. At the wedding, one of the groomsmen came up to me and said, “I can’t wait to see you guys at his second wedding”. I laughed so hard.
47. Big Wedding Gone Bust
The bride didn't look happy to be walking down the aisle. She was smiling, but it was very much a pasted-on smile that I assumed was because she was nervous. I found out at the wedding that her parents had offered to pay for either a big wedding or pay for a small wedding then give them the money for a down payment for a house. She wanted a big wedding. Big mistake.
Where we lived, the housing market was insanely competitive and this was at the peak of the housing prices, right before the crash. Her parents basically offered her the ability to jump-start their lives together. Instead, she turned it down for the big party with her as the center of attention. It was over within two years, and she didn't even seem upset about it.
48. Mantic Matron
My brother’s wedding was extremely uncomfortable and awkward. My parents kept asking him if he was sure, because clearly they had misgivings, but he was adamant. The ceremony was super small. When it came time to kiss, they both went in for a peck, but the bride turned her face at the last minute so that he kissed her cheek.
My husband yelled for them to do it again because I was also their wedding photographer and he knew I didn’t get a good shot, but they refused. The best part was that my mom had had an engraved frame made—and had accidentally put the wrong date on it! All around it was doomed. The marriage only got weirder and worse from there. They acted like they were on an awkward first date every day. Finally, a year later, they divorced.
49. Paperwork Woes
My sister-in-law got married last fall and after the ceremony, the new couple got into an epic fight...over the marriage certificate. They didn’t even show up to their own reception until two hours after it started. I found out afterward that the groom and groomsmen did some pretty heavy stuff before the ceremony and continued to sneak off for more during the reception. The groom apparently had a bad trip; he freaked out, had a panic attack, and left without his bride.
50. Belated Bride
My sister-in-law is just a horrible, thoughtless person—but this took the cake. Her wedding to my brother was supposed to start at 3:00 pm. At 2:59, she was getting in a bathtub in her hotel room to “unwind” before starting to get ready. All of us bridesmaids were already ready. We had been ready for hours. I had to call my mom at 3 and tell her that we were at least an hour out, because my brother was already there obviously, and I didn’t want him to think he was getting left at the altar.
Oh, and did I mention it was October? It was actually Halloween, around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and windy. This is important because it was an outdoor wedding in a park with no indoor venue attached, so the guests literally had to wait in their seats in the freezing cold. They ended up waiting more than an hour and a half. The divorce papers have now been filed and should be final within a few months.
51. Down To The Wire
My aunt was visiting me, and a friend's daughter was getting married that day nearby. My aunt wanted to drop by the reception to bring a wedding gift. When she got there, she got horrible news. It turned out the wedding had never taken place. It seems they got to the altar, and when he said "I do," and they asked her "Do you take this man to be your wedded husband"? she said, "No," and walked out.
The weird part is they were both at the reception, hanging with their friends. He looked really unhappy. She looked delirious. If I were him, I'd never want to be within a mile of her ever again after that. I don't know what her reasoning was. Maybe it was good. But it was really incredibly rude of her to literally wait until the very last moment to break it off.
52. A Photo Finish
An ex-girlfriend was at a bachelorette party at a seedy male dancer's place. She came home from the party and said, "Well, the wedding is off". The bride was getting the usual treatment, sitting in a chair with the men gyrating around her, whipping stuff around, and then they got, uh, really frisky. When it ended, the bride kind of comes to her senses, looks around, and sees like 20 of her friends pointing cell phones at her recording and taking photos.
She starts freaking out. My girlfriend says she started screaming at everyone "you better delete that” and generally having a full rage meltdown. This tale of modern romance closes very shortly after, with the bride’s phone ringing in a call from her fiancé, who has already received photos from her “friends” of his bride-to-be getting it on with a male dancer in front of a crowd.
53. Knocked Up And Fed Up
My high school best friend got pregnant from the first guy she dated upon joining the Air Force. She grew up in a super strict, and really weird household. She didn’t know anything about birth control or dating. I moved back to our hometown a few weeks before she came home to get married. She asked me to be a bridesmaid, along with her five sisters, and I agreed.
The guy brought his parents and enough friends to fill out the party. We spent two days around her house just getting to know each other, which was pretty fun. I had been flirting with a couple of the guys, which annoyed one of the sisters. So, she called me out for having a “tramp stamp” and embarrassed me. I really hate being the center of attention, so it was extra awful.
I’m sure it was obvious I was mortified. The wedding went on. The bride bawled the whole time and was about six months pregnant at the time. After the vows, she disappeared for a little bit to clean up. The groom and I ended up chit-chatting while everyone was mingling. It was the first time I had even really spoken to him. He ended up talking about my tattoos, and how attractive they were.
I tried to play it off as him being polite until he said something about inviting me to his hotel room later to show me his own tattoos, which were apparently located in some inappropriate places. I had no idea what to say, so I laughed and said I needed to change out of my heels. It was awful, and I felt so bad for her, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.
Most likely, since they lived a couple of states away and had JUST gotten married with a baby on the way, I would have been the one who was blamed. So, I just lived with the guilt. She got divorced less than three years later, at about 22 years old. He cheated a lot, and she finally got fed up. She then took a vow to be celibate afterward.
Because she had a child with him, she chose to just be single rather than confuse her child with a new spouse. I never understood her logic, but I supported her choice. It’s been 10 years, and she’s still single. I don’t feel like she’s ever really even experienced what it’s like to be with a good spouse, and I feel terrible for her.
54. Keeping With Tradition Spelled Disaster
I come from a very large Indian family, portions of which still strongly believe in "traditional marriage", such as child brides, forced marriage, and uncle/niece marriages. There was one wedding where a woman in the family eventually found the guy of her dreams and wanted to marry him. However, as her older brother was unmarried, she was not allowed to marry until he did first.
So, their parents forced the brother to marry an emotionally manipulative girl. He clearly understood what she was like prior to getting married. He went through with it anyway on the pretext that he was okay "sacrificing" his life for the sake of his sister. It was a complete disaster.
Within two years they were divorced. He eventually married again, for love, but got divorced again. He is now preparing to marry for the third time, again at the behest of his family because "it's not okay" for the older brother to be single while the younger sister is married.
55. Lack Of Devotion
I went to a beautiful wedding a few summers ago. It was a quiet backyard wedding, in a beautiful woodsy neighborhood. The couple had been happily dating for eight years and were about to buy a house. The only thing that seemed kind of off was the fact that the groom cried tears of joy, but the bride didn't. She spent the entirety of the reception dancing by herself or talking to family, not really paying her new husband much attention.
It was a busy day, so nobody really thought much of it. Two years later, she cheated on him with a guy she had just met, filed for divorce, and moved in with the new guy immediately. The husband was devastated and still hasn't moved on despite getting constant offers. His wife very openly didn’t care and has since flooded her social media with cutesy updates and pictures of her new relationship. I suppose the wedding day was a glimpse into the imbalance of devotion in their relationship.
56. Timing Is Everything
A wedding guest looking out of the window beamed at the groom waiting at the altar and said, "She's here"! The groom jokingly pretended to run away. Harmless ploy to get a laugh, right? Nope. It went down like a lead balloon because he had actually run away from his life the previous year. He literally just went out to the shops one day and didn't come back for eight weeks…while the bride was pregnant with their first child.
The bride's mother gave him a look at that should have wilted the wedding flowers, and the previously happy chatter in the room turned to frosty silence—just in time for the entrance of the bride.
57. Thrift, Thrift, Horatio!
At one wedding I attended, the bride kept telling anyone who'd listen that she had booked the wedding through Groupon and that it had been super cheap. Apparently, they hadn't actually even planned to get married until she had seen the deal online. I’m not entirely sure how long it lasted, but seeing as she posted a sarcastic comment about how successful her marriage was on Facebook on her first anniversary, I can guess.
58. The Show Must Go On
The bride and groom were quite young and had dated happily for several months. The bride was in a hurry to settle down and pushed for engagement; the groom was reasonably happy to oblige but not really ready to take the next step, so he wanted a long engagement. Unfortunately for him, the bride began pushing to set a wedding date almost immediately, and the groom grudgingly agreed.
As the wedding date approached, the groom made it known that he loved the bride, but wasn't ready to settle down yet. The bride wasn't having any of it and complained to her own immediate family, who then started harassing the groom's parents. The groom eventually agreed to go ahead with the wedding if the bride's family left his parents alone.
When he found out about the situation, the minister refused to perform a wedding in which one party wasn't on board. However, the bride insisted that the event go ahead and that they pretend it was real. We all immediately noticed something was up when the minister didn't say the words legally required for marriage, and no paperwork was signed. But that wasn't the worst part.
Then, the groom's parents refused to attend the reception, leaving table one half-empty, and declared they would not be paying for the bar service. Some guests took back their gifts and left. The bride and groom avoided each other the entire time except for a super awkward first dance. The whole thing was surreal. They split up a couple of months later.
59. It’s My Wedding And I’ll Cry If I Want To
At her bachelorette party, the bride broke down and told us that she knew she shouldn’t marry him and that she knew it wouldn’t work. The wedding was supposed to be the following week. We begged her not to go through with it, but she did it anyway. It only went downhill from there. On the day of the wedding, the groom’s uncle pulled him aside and basically tried to bribe him.
He said, “You don’t have to do this,” while counting out $100 dollar bills. The wedding itself was delayed due to a storm. This caused the bride to get angry and snap at everyone who even tried to talk to her. Eventually, the storm let up and the wedding took place. Then, midway through the reception, the bride angrily stormed out of the reception, which basically broke up the festivities. She started cheating on her husband less than a year in and they divorced shortly thereafter.
60. Princess Bride
A rich guy married a girl with stars in her eyes. The wedding was insane. As you walked in, there was a guy on each of the double doors opening them in unison. They actually paid two people to do this little dance and stand there all day. When you walked in, there was what must have been $10,000 worth of giant flower arrangements in the entryway.
Then there was another double door with two more guys opening them. The wedding was nuts with string quartets, and no expense was spared. However, during the reception, I overheard the bride saying something to her friends about how he better keep working to "keep her". I've seen this princess mentality before, it never works out. A relationship needs each party to be equal.
61. A Tainted Tribute
We were friends of the bride. We met the groom’s parents for the first time just before the start of the wedding. Instead of offering nice remarks about our friend—their daughter-in-law to be—they spent the entire conversation talking about how wonderful their son was, which struck my wife and me as odd. The marriage lasted a little less than one month.
It also resulted in the birth of a boy who has never met his father, who not only demanded a paternity test but who has never set foot in the state where his son lives. If he did, he would be forced to pay child support, which he has never done, despite the wealth of his family, who were so effusive in their praise of him.
62. The Best Man Got Things Off With A Bang
I was a wedding videographer. About 10 years ago, I was filming a rather prestigious wedding. Everything was going great until the reception. The best man got up to give a speech, and started by saying, “Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to let the groom know I’ve been banging the bride for years”. The room parted into “his” and “hers”, and the groom ran out, never to be seen again. The bride’s parents asked me to send them the video, as they felt so guilty over what happened. I got paid, so it didn’t bother me either way, but it was the best red flag I’ve seen by far!
63. She Was A Gold Digger
My cousin—who’s not a very nice lady—married some poor sucker rather quickly into their relationship. He was a super smart and successful accountant for an aerospace company and she was a nobody. Although that shouldn’t matter In love, in her case we knew what was up. We all knew the real reasons for this unholy matrimony, mostly because she was following in her mother’s footsteps, who was a raging forest fire of a magnum gold digger.
We took great pity for the pain, time, and large amounts of money this guy was sure to suffer. During the ceremony, this guy spontaneously developed a tick. He started throwing his head back and forth, almost as if the Good Lord himself was smacking him. His jaw must have started to lock up because he kept opening it as wide as he could and sticking his tongue out.
It was as if he had this sudden cramp in his entire speak-hole area, and he wouldn’t be able to utter the solidifying words. At the “I do” part, when it was his turn, he took three big violent shakes side-to-side and stretched his jaw super wide. A couple of months later, she was banging at least one other guy, accusing hubby of beating her and of being emotionally taxing, but we all knew better.
64. Sometimes, Opposites Don’t Attract
The groom was a major jerk; he was very snobby and he looked down on the bride and her family because they didn't have money. Because the bride's family didn't have much money and was paying everything they could for the wedding, it was very small, and we (the bridesmaids) did most of the decorating and setting up.
The bride's dad was the pastor of the Church, so we were able to get in and work on the reception room a day or two before the wedding. The entire wedding party was supposed to help, including the bride and groom. The groomsmen showed up, but no groom. He wasn't answering his phone, his parents couldn't find him, and his groomsmen had no idea where he was. He just dropped off the face of the earth for two days right before the wedding.
The wedding party looked like we were from two different worlds; she wanted turquoise blue as a wedding color, but he wanted gold; she wanted casual and comfortable, he wanted formal. So instead of either making any compromise at all, they each did their own thing with their side of the wedding party. This resulted in the bridesmaids wearing bright turquoise skirts and flip-flops while the groomsmen wore full suits with gold ties. In the photos, we look like two separate weddings that stumbled into each other’s photos by accident.
The opposites didn’t end there. The bride's family was super conservative and didn't drink; in fact, their Church did not allow it on Church property, which is where the reception was held. The groom, on the other hand, was basically still a frat boy—he actually worked for his fraternity for a year after graduation—and couldn't stand the "no drinks" rule. To get around it, he got inebriated in the parking lot before the ceremony. During the reception, we pretended like we didn't know that all of the groomsmen had full flasks of whiskey.
We had all spent considerable money being part of this wedding, but we agreed that if she called it off, we would happily eat the cost of everything and just be happy that she didn't marry him. No dice; she said she couldn't call off the wedding since everyone knew they were getting married and had already arrived. I've never seen a bride's parents look so miserable as their daughter got married; I couldn’t imagine being her dad performing that ceremony.
They lasted officially almost four years, but she left him about a year before that and moved into her own place. We found his dating profiles online, which were absolutely wild. It was so bad that her super-conservative Christian parents offered to get her a divorce lawyer...and his family took her side in the divorce!
65. What Happened To Equality?
I went to a wedding for an extended family member a few months ago. I knew it would be a little different, but I was surprised when, during the ceremony, the bride bent down and washed the groom’s feet in a bowl. It took a weirdly long time and it was super awkward to watch, but I figured it was just a cultural or religious thing.
The thing that bothered me was that he did not wash her feet in return. Then, the vows were all about how the woman must always submit to the will of her husband. It’s only been a few months since that wedding, but I don’t know how long it’ll last, as I don’t think the bride would happily be a servant.
66. Over His Dead Body…Literally
One of the most blatant bad omens I’ve ever witnessed occurred at a wedding I attended. Just as the processional music started and the bride was about to enter, the groom's great-uncle keeled over in the front pew and expired! After 45 minutes of futile CPR, they decided to continue with the wedding—complete with a priest who included the late great uncle in every prayer (Lord, bless Jane and Jim...and Stanley...). It was a bit of a downer, to say the least. The marriage didn't last long.
67. The Groom Got Busy
A family friend's daughter got pregnant accidentally, so the "happy" couple decided to get married. On the big day, the guests had congregated outside of the venue waiting for the wedding ceremony when all of a sudden, another woman barged in demanding to speak to the groom. When she started talking, our jaws hit the floor: She proclaimed that the groom had also gotten her pregnant!
Wide-eyed, we watched the drama move to behind closed doors while we all waited outside. After a whole lot of commotion, the wedding proceeded. It turned out that the other woman was right though, and the two babies were due within two weeks of each other. We quickly left the reception. Took some cake. It was good. The happy couple didn’t stay married long.
68. The Odds Were Stacked Against Them
I was at a poker table in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend; it was late Saturday night. Next to me was a lady in her mid-20s, a naturally pretty country girl. She was a decent poker player, having a good time. Next to her was a dude, also in his mid-20s, in good shape, and rough around the edges. He was a decent poker player, but he was drinking and getting loud.
It was about 11 PM, and these two had been married for about 3-4 hours at that point. She had a bad hand, but it didn’t doesn't matter, as she was breaking even for the night. He dropped about $300-$400, and I noticed that a couple of players were keying in on him. By midnight, he was getting louder, and was warned for swearing at the table.
Everybody at the table was hoping to get a piece of his money when he started going crazy.
At 1 AM, he was down $1,000. They were going to play all night, as their plane was leaving in 10 hours, and they didn’t have a room at any hotel. At 2 AM, she was up $100 and was rock solid. She's gone from chatty to super-quiet. Her hubby was all over the place and was dropping about $200 an hour to the table.
At 3 AM, I left the table. I couldn’t help but wonder what possessed a “solid 8+ of a woman” to marry a pathetic trashed mess of a boy. I can't imagine a world where he didn't do something bad that night that she had to clean up. And, looking back, I can't imagine a world where he doesn't do something bad that she has to clean up every few days.
69. The Bride Had A Dark Side
A guy I know met, got married to, and divorced this girl in under two years. She was ten years younger than him. He came to find out that she was a pillhead and was buying all sorts of dope on the dark web. She had a rich family who kept giving her money and meddling in the details of their marriage, like buying car insurance, buying a mattress, and such.
Said rich family made them get married on the family property. During the wedding, the bride’s dad said to the groom, “That empty lot over there is a place for [my daughter] to have a house”. There was no mention of him. But that’s not the worst part. She was cheating on him with a guy elsewhere in the state, and when my friend found evidence of their relationship, she told him that the guy had assaulted her.
She took this claim so far with her family that they never knew the truth until the last round of divorce negotiations, when my buddy’s lawyer dropped all the evidence he got from her phone on them, along with transactions for her dope dealings. She got nothing.
70. Double-Dealing Dog
I was the best man at a wedding, and the groom disappeared on the morning of the wedding. He went AWOL for several hours. My wife overheard the bride in tears in the bathroom at the reception, saying she shouldn't have married him, and asked what she was doing. It turned out his absence was to go and speak to another full-on girlfriend—who none of us knew about—to break up with her before he got married. He was leading a double life. They split up within a couple of years when it all came out, but sadly not before they had a kid.
71. An Exercise In How Not To Act
It wasn’t the couple getting married who had red flags flying, but the best man and maid of honor, who were married to each other. The best man's speech was all about how hard it was to be married. He said, "I've been married for a year and it feels like 100 years". The maid of honor stood up to give her speech and just said, "Ditto". It was so awkward and really brought the whole room down.
The brother of the bride stood up and gave a nice impromptu speech about teamwork, having a partner to go through life with, and how happy the family was to have the groom join their family. The best man and maid of honor were divorced within a year. The couple who got married was still married 30+ years later. I sometimes wonder if the speeches actually were helpful in how not to act as a couple.
72. A Call For Help
My one friend got married in Jamaica, after dating the girl for less than a year. They fought all the time, and the night before the wedding, my friend called me and we had a heart-to-heart about how he didn't think they should get married because there was no “spark”. He ended up getting married, and I found out a few months later that I was one of eight people he had called that night. I think he was hoping one of us would talk him out of getting married and make him cancel the wedding. They lasted about a year.
73. Pathetic Fallacy
During my second wedding, when the Officiant asked if anyone had “any reason these two should not be wed,” Mother Nature apparently had a reason. A storm was coming, and at that exact moment, a very low-pitched rumble of thunder came from the sky. Everyone just kind of stopped and looked up. I just said, “Maybe try that again”?
Everyone chuckled, he asked again, and no thunder. I should have listened. I found out five months later that she had been cheating on me for a while. We aren’t together anymore.
74. Tone Deaf
Sometimes the speeches and toasts of the bride and groom can be a good predictor of wedded bliss...or marital misery. The husband's toast was about how excited he was to start a family with her, and what a great mom the bride would be. The bride, however, had been admitted to medical school and would be starting in the fall.
She had no intention of having kids until after school was finished, another four years from then, and by no means was she willing to be the stay at home mom. This man clearly had a dream that she would give up all her hard work and goals to be his wife. They got divorced a year later.
75. Bros Before Brides
A relative that I didn't know well was getting married and even as a teenager, I saw two glaring red flags. Firstly, the wedding was super rushed and even though she didn't tell anyone, the bride was pretty clearly pregnant. Secondly, the groom didn't want to spend his wedding night with the bride; he wanted to go out drinking with his friends.
His explanation was that "his boys were in town" and that he rarely saw them. Again, this was his wedding night; he had literally just walked down the aisle 15 minutes previously. They didn't make two years.
76. Sham Wedding
I attended a destination wedding in a beautiful setting in 2019. Over 80 people flew in for the wedding, which was a 6-hour flight for many of us. It was very lavish, but I noticed that the bride and groom didn't sign any paperwork after the ceremony and thought it was weird. I was informed shortly afterward that the bride hadn't actually divorced her first husband, so the wedding wasn't a real wedding. No one, except for a handful of the bride's closest friends, knew about it.
77. Happiness Is Key
I had a destination wedding. The night before, another couple was getting married, and they had to pass through the restaurant we were in to get to the reception area. The looks on their faces said it all. They looked miserable. They weren’t holding hands, not excited, nothing. It was like the ending of The Graduate. I originally gave them some slack, thinking that having a wedding is hard and exhausting.
However, the next night, at our wedding, we didn’t stop smiling for a second. When we were alone, passing through the restaurant to get to our reception space, we were both giddy, excited, and nervous, but we were happy.
78. The Bride Wanted A Frisky Frolic
My friend got married to his baby mama after their kid was a few years old. Their wedding had a good reception and the bride was a great wing woman, so the bridesmaid and I left to have a party of our own. We came back and joined the after-party and everybody was feeling pretty good. Soon enough, the bride was sitting at the bar by me, started making comments, and getting pretty grabby.
I tried to get away, as things were getting awkward. So, I waved my buddy—the groom—over and told him what was up and he should probably get her out of there. She told him she just wanted to feel my willie but I wouldn't let her, and they proceeded to get into a fight. Years later, they were still together, but there is no way she's been faithful, and he refused to see it. I wish him the best of luck.
79. Time For A Change
When my cousin met his wife-to-be, she gradually chipped away at him by molding his personality to how she wanted him to be. In the end, gone was the cheeky lovable personality, his friends, and his hobbies. I barely saw him anymore, and neither did most of his family. The last I saw him was at our grandad’s funeral after they had been married for about a year.
Aside from the fact it obviously was a sad occasion, he was a completely different person. Even at the wedding, he was noticeably miserable. They divorced another year or so later. Apparently, he was boring and not the man she fell in love with, so cheating on him was the logical thing for her to do. I haven't seen or spoken to him since the funeral but I hear he's doing okay.
80. The Groom Became Texas Toast
My best friend was getting married. I met the bride-to-be about six months before the wedding. She was the southern Texas “treat me like a princess and I’ll tolerate you” type. I was the “loud obnoxious city slicker that will say things to see how you react” type. She started to disallow him to see me, even when I drove two hours just to see him for the day.
By the time the wedding happened, I walked down the aisle of the wedding party bus taking bets on how long the marriage would last. No one, including the bridesmaids, said over three years. The bride got mad at me for undoing my tie at the $30K reception. I looked at her and just shook my head. A year and a half later, I found out the dark truth about her. She was banging the marriage counselor her father was making them go to see because he couldn’t have his clients knowing his daughter wanted a divorce.
I ended up helping my friend pack all of his stuff in a box truck and driving him across the country for a new start. I ended up being his best man in his second wedding and they are perfect together.
81. All About The Groom, But What About The Bride?
I was the maid of honor at a wedding. They seemed like the perfect couple. They had been together for nearly ten years and had this big, expensive, beautiful wedding. The bride would have been happy with a small event, but she told me the groom had a big family and had insisted on a larger one. Alarm bells hit when I sat with her parents in the front row.
I realized the groom-to-bride ratio was so massively off. The groom had three best men, as well as ushers, etc. His sister and one best man read something during the ceremony, and then all three said long speeches about him at dinner. It was all about him. The photographer was even his friend’s mom, so she kept whisking away the boys for these “hilarious” guy shoots.
The bride was ignored most of the day and in the evening, the groom got too trashed, spilled a drink over her wedding gown, and danced with his friends. It felt more like a big birthday party than a joint event. I’d never seen that side of him, but I felt so sorry for my friend. It was like she was just there to be a prop to his plans and look good. Later, I learned the dark truth.
Three months after the wedding, he began being emotionally disparaging to her. A month after that, he admitted he’d been having an affair for years, then left. If I hadn’t seen the way he behaved at the wedding, I never would have guessed he had that in him. Four years later, my friend hasn’t been able to trust or date again yet, but I think she learned never to be a backseat passenger in a relationship again.
When he left, she told him that he would never see her, or hear from her, or about her again. She dropped all friends that had any connection with him and made sure he would always live his life wondering if he made the right decision and what she was up to.
82. Online Offer
A bride and groom that I know had their wedding in a beach house and got their guests to pay for it in exchange for staying in a room. Invitations were sent out via the bride's Facebook statuses. Basically, she just posted a status of "Who wants to come to our wedding? message/text me and Paypal me for your part of the beach house"! every couple of days for a while.
The whole thing just stank of two teenagers playing wedding. We did not attend, as I knew that there would be copious amounts of illicit substances and really creepy people with guns. I think they actually lasted almost two years before she fled the state with another man. He still posts sad stuff about her on Facebook.
83. A Little Help Here?
My good friend was marrying a guy who we will call Ned. Ned definitely had a drinking problem that everyone swept under the rug. He promised my friend (the bride) that he would keep it under wraps for the wedding; he made it down the aisle sober, but by the reception, he was binge drinking; by then end of the night, he had completely disappeared. No one could find him.
A few nervous laughs turned into mild panic when the lights were turned on in an effort to find him that turned out to be fruitless. My husband decided to go look for him in the parking lot—and made a disturbing discovery. He found him–face down in the dirt. He had apparently done some illicit substances on top of drinking and had got the spins. My husband tried to talk sense into him by reminding him, "This is your wedding dude"!
He got Ned to come inside and accompanied him on the most cringe-worthy walk of shame I’ve ever seen, past the bride's family members. The worst part about the whole thing? Ned was supposed to be the designated driver! He was supposed to drive himself and the bride 11 miles from the venue to their hotel in the bride's grandfather's vintage Corvette.
Ned was too inebriated to drive, so the bride’s grandfather drove them. The bride had to sit on the middle armrest with no seatbelt. Grandpa dropped them at the hotel, and the bride barely got the groom up to the room before he passed out on the bed. The bride had to wander the halls looking for someone to help her out of her wedding dress, since her groom was passed out and she couldn’t reach to do it herself. The word “annulment” was definitely floating around that next morning. As crushed as the bride was, she stuck it out. Three years later though, they are separated and divorcing.
84. Cake Smash
During the cake cutting, the groom at a wedding I attended smashed cake in the bride’s face. She immediately started crying and disappeared to the bathroom for about 30 minutes. Then they got into a huge fight and barely spoke to each other for the rest of the night. Shockingly, they are still married, but they still fight all the time. She's my friend from college so we keep in touch occasionally. She never has good things to say about him.
85. Chivalry Is Over
At my wedding, I asked my husband to hold my bouquet whilst I gathered up my skirts to get into the car. He refused, with the excuse that he “wasn’t gay”. So, I awkwardly got into the car while holding both my skirt and the bouquet. Ten minutes later, my mum asked him, “Doesn’t she look beautiful”? He looked at me, shrugged, and said I looked “ok”.
Both of those moments may as well have been red flags accompanied by sirens, and I felt my heart sinking with foreboding. It was 30 years ago, and I can still easily recall the feeling. Unfortunately, I was right and I left only 11 months later.
86. Third Time’s The Charm?
I attended a wedding for two people in their 60s who had both been married before. The groom had lost his wife to cancer about a year and a half previously, and she had encouraged him to get re-married if he found someone he loved. After a while, he decided to get married to a woman who was completely opposite to his first wife; his family was intrigued, but didn’t intervene.
During the wedding ceremony, the bride kept looking into the crowd as if trying to get someone to help her. Then, when the Officiant asked her if she took him as her husband, she hesitated before saying yes. The Officiant then had to remind her to say “I do”. They went on the honeymoon together…and came back separated.
87. Their Relationship Was Loaded With Problems
I was dating the best man at a wedding. The groom spent all his time hanging out with his buddies, and the bride spent all the time using illicit substances in the bathroom. I spent more time with the groom at the wedding than the bride did. She also flipped his brand new Jeep the day before the wedding because she was driving while loaded, and quit her job the day after the wedding because he was supposed to take care of her now. They were married in November and separated by January. The groom later confided in my then-boyfriend that he thought getting married would solve everything.
88. Hitched On Hypocrisy
Both the bride and the groom had their stags the night before. The groom and bride stood in the church, hungover, both mad at the other because they were hungover. At the party afterward, they practically refused to talk to each other because they were still mad at each other. It all came to a head at about midnight. They were fighting about literally being in the same condition as the other one but not wanting the other one to be in that condition.
I was kind of shocked, to be honest. There is a threshold of being just hypocritical and being entirely devoid of the ability of self-reflection. Both stood firmly in the second category. Here's the kicker, though. Both wanted a divorce because they both cheated just three months into the marriage. To this day, both blame the other for cheating and ruining the marriage because of it. In some very weird way, they fit each other perfectly.
89. A Photo Finish
I was at a wedding where the couple had four professional photographers and two two-man videographer teams running around the wedding, capturing everything. The bride paid them more attention than her guests and only acknowledged the groom when she was being filmed. Her mailed-out wedding invitations were styled after a gossip magazine and were six pages—FRONT AND BACK.
They had about 12 photos of her looking lovey-dovey at her ring, or with a “surprised” face, and the groom faded in the background on his knee. There were more photos of her dog than the groom. They are currently in marriage counseling, but it’s not looking good. She has a laundry list of narcissistic things she’s done since the wedding, which was less than three years ago.
90. The Signs Were All There
I was the groom attending a Roman Catholic church for a wedding that was a full mass as well as the wedding nuptials. The priest’s sermon was about the effects of divorce in today's society, of all things. When it came time to exchange vows, the bride-to-be looked bloody terrified and not what you would expect a woman to look like at that point in time on her wedding day.
I, on the other hand, was well and truly in the moment, fully embracing the commitment I was about to make in front of my family, friends, and God. But, the emotional state of my fiancée was becoming more and more apparent to me. So, when the priest asked, "If anyone here has any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony let them speak now, or forever hold their peace", my expression and glances around the church were, in hindsight, a desperate cry for help.
It was the kind of foreshadowing that should have been laughably obvious at the time, but what does one do in that situation? I just wish I knew what I could have done at the time, and not gone on to suffer through a one-sided loveless marriage for over 26 years and lose everything in the process. While we were separated, I found out that she had somehow managed to divorce me without my being served divorce papers and had remarried.
91. Rather A Roomie Than A Groomie
My friend was gay and his best friend was getting married. We all used to joke that she was already his husband because they were roommates and had a very Will & Grace type of relationship. I didn’t know her that well but, I and some of our other friends, were invited to her wedding. After the wedding, at the reception, we were sitting with my friend.
The girl came up to our table, a little tipsy, and started crying about how she wished my friend was straight so that she could have married him instead. My friend took it all in stride while we and the other guests were horrified. The bride and her husband broke up 18 months later, and she and my friend are roommates once more.
92. Don’t Rock The ‘Ship
I went to one wedding...this couple who was doomed from the beginning. They had been together for over a decade before deciding to tie the knot, but had also been stuck in a classic bedroom rut for almost the entire duration of that relationship. At the ceremony, the groom wouldn’t dance with the bride and forced one of his friends into dancing with her.
The marriage lasted less than 72 hours. They slept in separate rooms that night, and then spent the rest of that time fighting and discussing why they wound up in that situation.
93. The Sky Is Falling
On the day of my sister and her (now ex-) husband’s wedding, we had a MAJOR hailstorm. Yes, of course, weather happens; but they were married in Key West, Florida, during the summer. It NEVER hails. And I’m talking hail so big that the golfers were losing track of their golf balls. If that ain't a sign, I don't know what is.
94. Let the Man Have His Cheesecake
The groom was a co-worker of mine who loved cheesecake. He wasn’t obsessed with it, per se, but he loved it enough that his co-workers knew that he loved cheesecake. His only request for the wedding was to have cheesecake for the wedding cake. Get this: the bride refused! Not letting this guy have this one relatively small thing that would have made him happy just felt super-telling about how selfish this woman was.
A few years later, they were divorced. He ended up remarrying, to a different coworker. Based on their Facebook posts, they seem very happy together. I don’t know what kind of wedding cake they had though.
95. Plot Twist
I went to a wedding that my wife and I said will not last more than two years. The wedding was in the backyard of the bride’s house. They had all the chairs and wedding "arch" setup outside.
They setup a plastic tarp running down the aisle to walk on. Just before the wedding starts, there are darkening clouds appearing. It should have been a sign to move the wedding inside, but they invited too many people to the thing.
Just as they start the wedding, it begins to rain lightly. That’s when it all began to fall apart in the most hilarious way. The father of the bride is walking the bride down the lane and slips on the wet tarp and falls on his behind.
The bride is now at the front, and it's raining harder. People start to cover up with whatever they have. Some people start to get up too. I’ll never forget what happened next. The bride turns around and says to all, “THIS IS MY WEDDING, NO ONE IS GOING TO RUIN IT, YOU BETTER ALL SIT DOWN”!
We all sit back down and the wedding resumes. It is now raining pretty good. The grass is now turning into mud. A few ladies in the crowd and the bridesmaids' makeup is now running down their faces.
My wife has taken my jacket as a cover from the rain. They finish the vows and kiss, and then everyone runs to the house and garage to get out of the rain. Oh, remember how I said the grass was now mud? Yeah, lots of people slipped and fell in the mud on the way to the house.
We got to the house, many people look terrible from the running makeup, muddy clothing, and soaking wet. A few of the women had to cover their chests and waists due to wet clothing becoming see-through.
Most of the men were loaning their coats to the ladies to cover up. Dirty looks all around. The wedding cake was outside, and now brought in. The rain made the decorations on the cake turn all runny and it looks horrible.
The bride and groom began to cut the cake and feed each other. Cue the next disaster. They smashed the cake pieces into each other’s faces...then began a food fight with each other. My friend’s wife got hit in the face with purple icing cake.
The priest got hit with it too, putting yellow icing on his white robe. There was nothing left of the cake to serve. The food being served was still frozen in the middle, and the stuff that was not frozen was burned.
The dessert was supposed to be the cake, but as said above, there was nothing left. There was a goodie bag that people got on the way out. It had a lollipop, a coupon for ice cream cone at McDonald's, a pencil with the bride and groom’s name on it, and Halloween-size M&Ms.
My wife, whose dress was filthy, makeup was out of whack, and hair was a mess, said to me that she does not want to see those people again for six months, she was so mad—but the story doesn’t end there. The couple divorced 11 months later when the groom came home from work and found his wife getting it on with two guys.
96. Crying Over Spilled Champagne
One of my good friends got married and I'd never met the bride before the wedding because "she's just shy". On the wedding day, she was belligerently inebriated before the ceremony even started and couldn't even get through the lines she was supposed to repeat (i.e. "I promise to love you"). She ended up slapping the groom, spilling champagne on her dress, and then crying under a table while he tried to comfort her.
They lasted about four months.
97. Missed Encounters
At a wedding of a college friend of my husband’s, we learned that the bride (his old friend) had been in love with him for over a decade. We learned this from the women at our table at the reception. We introduced ourselves while we waited for the bride and groom to arrive. They were horrified that we were there—and extremely worried.
My husband had NO idea that she had feelings for him. She bee-lined right for our table after the "introducing Mr & Mrs" thing—ignoring her family and leaving her husband standing alone. She clung to my husband and sobbed—lifting her head to glare at me. She had to be pulled off of him.
She repaired herself, then followed us as we tried to leave quietly—her parting shot was to stare at my chest and say, "Well I guess I know what I was missing all along"! Her new husband was in shock and my husband was horrified and embarrassed—he was completely clueless and would never have gone to the wedding if he'd known she was obsessed with him. It was bizarre.
98. Whoops!
I work wedding bars often in between library shifts, and I saw a wedding where the bride never turned up to the altar and texted the guy 15 minutes before saying, "Sorry but I'm not coming". It was super depressing, they went ahead with the 'party' and the groom ended up leaving at around half 7, the rest of the guests at 10.
What had happened was the bride had spent all day with her parents the day before and they apparently hated her husband to be and had convinced her not to show up. Last thing I heard was she came to his door the next morning and apologized, they're still together as far as I know... Man was that an awkward work night.
99. Mean Girl
There’s a lot of drama with my fiancé’s sister. She’s always been rude to me and I don’t know why. When I first met her she seemed nice and I liked her, my fiancé’s friends told me to be careful because she always acts that way at the beginning and then she shows her true colors, which she did.
Even my fiancé told me not to trust her and not share much with her because she tends to use and twist whatever she sees and hears from other people. Despite all that, I always treated her with respect and was nice to her, until I got tired of her behavior.
She started with mean looks, mean comments about my accent to other people, not saying hi to me when she saw me, completely ignoring my presence and talking to whoever was next to me but not me, and then she started making comments about my family (we all speak Spanish so we have an accent when we speak in English).
She started saying things to my fiancé like, “Do you even understand what they are saying”?, which he ignored, then she one day just closed the front door when I was walking towards it after watching me struggle with grocery bags, complaining to her friends about how much she wanted me to go away even though I was engaged to her brother.
She's constantly making offensive jokes at lunch with her grandparents, she even insulted me in Spanish and when I called her out for it, she just laughed and ignored me. My fiancé has talked to her multiple times, but nothing changed, she just got defensive and started yelling at him, which seems to be what she does whenever someone tells her something she doesn’t like.
Despite all that, I tried to be civil around her for her parents’ sake since we get along really well and love spending time together. That was until one night she went off on me when her parents mentioned our upcoming wedding.
We were talking about guests and she started saying who should go and who shouldn’t, how I should think about their family and not mine when it came to guests (mind you, there will be three times more people from my fiancé’s side than mine), all of this because she wanted to invite her friends, so we tried to tell her that it was our wedding and it was our decision to see who we invite.
She said, “Well, we are paying for it”, which is not true, my fiancé's parents offered to help pay for the wedding and we are incredibly grateful for that, but she’s not giving us anything. She even went as far as saying, “We are just doing this because of your dad”, and that set me off.
A little background: my dad can’t come to the US because he doesn’t have a visa so my fiancé and I decided to do our wedding in Cabo. It was our decision because of course I have to have my dad at my wedding, and Cabo is a beautiful place for a destination wedding.
Going back to that night, after she said that, I just lost it on her. Things went bad really quick. She started yelling, I raised my voice because I was not going to let her talk about my family and wouldn’t let her yell at me, and then my fiancé and I left. We saw her only once after that (of course, she never said hi to me or acknowledged my presence), and we avoided her since then.
Now our wedding is coming up in five months and, of course, she’s going. We didn’t want to invite her but we knew we had to in order to avoid a fight with his parents, but now we just really don’t want to have her there because we know how much she likes to start drama. We’re even more anxious because we rented a villa so both families can be together and make a vacation out of it.
We’ll have it for a full week but we totally forgot about having to deal with her, and now we’re regretting it. My mother-in-law said her daughter will only go for the wedding, but it turns out she decided to go for the full week and made (yes, made), her dad buy her a plane ticket for those dates.
Her mom suggested that we could have a sit-down talk with her to talk about these issues and make sure we “clear the air” so nothing happens during our wedding week, but she also said she can’t promise it’ll go smoothly because her daughter is very difficult to deal with, and I don’t know if I want to do that.
I really don’t want to see her again because I know it’ll turn into a fight if we decide to have that talk, I don’t feel like I want to deal with that.
100. It Was His Way Or The Highway
My ex-husband kept completely bulldozing the wedding plans. For instance, I didn't get to choose ANY of the music at all. He shut down things and made me feel small. I just kept acquiescing to his non-negotiable wedding ideas. He was also mad because people didn't execute them as he wanted. He wasn't smiling as I came down the aisle because the DJ got the music wrong.
All that should just have been a red flag that it was an unhealthy relationship. I was young, naive, and stayed way too long. It lasted 10.5 years, and those sorts of things never changed. We could never talk and compromise; it was either his way or the highway. If it didn’t go his way, I was a horrible human being for not giving him his way.
If I suggested a paint color for the living room, it was shot down. If he arrived at the same color on his own, it was great. I literally could not suggest something without being made to feel inconsequential. But, he expected me to jump, cater, and give in to anything he wanted, exactly as he wanted. He was always so critical of everything. Never again will I put up with that.
101. For Goodness’ Sake Forsake Already!
I filmed a wedding in Louisiana once. In the hours leading up to the wedding, the bride was getting pretty loaded with her bridesmaids. Rain delayed the wedding, as it was all scheduled for outdoors next to a rustic barn. In the final hour before it was time, the bride was getting pretty angry at her mom who was criticizing this item here, or this guest here, and her drinking wasn’t helping anything.
Somehow, they made it through without a catfight, but the biggest red flag came from the groom-to-be. During the vows, when it got to the part where the line is, "and forsaking all others", the dude simply could not utter those words. So much so, that he was getting emotional on his face, and shutting down completely. I focused on him with the camera, so when I edited the video later, I played that part over and over, trying to guess what was going on in his head.
The bride was laughing and smiling at him, so either she was too sloshed to care, or she was in on some partner-swapping action with him, and thought it was hilarious. The preacher offered to alter the line, and said something like, "Okay how about, and only loving the bride”. The groom regained a little bit of his composure, nodded, and muddled through the rest of the vows. The marriage was only about three years ago, but sure enough, she has a new man she is with.
Sources: Reddit, , , , ,
