It's still just a day, not the end of life. And remember those that help you pull it all together, even if they're on your payroll, are still human beings. They're your helpers not your punching bags or slaves. Be extra nice to your wedding planner. They will remember you!
Redditor shygirlturnedsassy reached out to wedding planners to reveal some of the scars inflicted upon them by clients by asking... Wedding planners of Reddit, what's your horror story?
Yeah, arranged marriages are still a thing.
GiphyI have seen brides fight their grooms at the reception, I've seen a bride bash a family member over the head with a bottle of champagne, I've seen small children whip burning tea lights at guests from a floor above, I've seen a guest try to fake a slip & fall to sue the venue. Probably the most "WTF?" was a very obviously arranged marriage.
Most of the planning was done by the parents, because they were local and the kids were "traveling overseas". Red flag. Day of, we meet the happy couple to be. I'm really bad at judging ages, but she seemed at least old enough to consent. And, I should add, she was gorgeous.
Could have been a model. The groom, however, almost a foot shorter than she, very lanky, looked like he was squarely in the middle of an adolescent awkward phase. My staff and I had difficulty not giving any outward signs that we were very uncomfortable. The body language was perplexing and then just sad during photos.
Culturally, its not uncommon for PDA to be kept to a minimum, but the way she leaned away from him and could barely look at him ...She was so obviously miserable. To this day I regret not offering to help her escape through a bathroom window. I told myself it was not my place to interfere and that I should just shut up and do my job.
I will never take another client without a face to face with the bride first. I hope they're not still together.
What a buzzkill.
Event Manager with a caterer. Pregnant maid of honor told the bride's sister that she's been f*cking the groom and the baby is his.
She was dead sober, which is what made it so odd that it came out like that. Needless to say we got to go home early that night.
I mean... wow.
GiphyI worked the most amazing wedding ever! The marriage didn't last 6hours! I was bartending for the reception. Everything seemed pretty typical and standard as guests arrived, drank, and conversed. The wedding party arrived and everything seemed to be completely normal. Everyone was happy, having fun, etc.
When it came time for the formalities, the bar closed and everyone took their seats. The speeches began, with the maid of honor, and best man. Everything was going as per usual for a wedding---until the best man finished his speech and the food began to be served. The groom grabbed the mic after the best man's toast and wished everyone a great night and a nice meal.
That's when sh*t hit the fan.
After his well wishes, he asked for the attention of his best man and bride. He told them that he knew they were having sex behind his back for the entirety of the engagement, and that he would be filing for an annulment on Monday.
He thanked everyone for coming, and apologized to the father of the bride saying " I would have called it off weeks ago, but I figured you would be way more pissed at your little princess when you couldn't get out of the bill for the reception." He turned to his wife and said "F*** Y**", then turned to his best friend and said, "From what I overheard--my dick is still bigger than yours."
Mic dropped---groom out the door---absolute chaos. Me and my fellow bartender looked on in amazement. We had to go into the kitchen to laugh and high-five.
Edit-- Thanks for all the comments! Many of you asked about what happened after. Here ya go.
Fallout....
Bride ran directly to the bathroom both furious and inconsolable, with bridesmaids running after. Mother, aunts, and about 20 other women tried breaking into the bathroom which she apparently locked herself in. She refused to come out until everyone left the facility. She left through a back door with her mother and a few of the brides maids after an hour and a half.
The best man was surrounded by the groomsman in what seemed to be a circular questioning of WTF? He made a run for the door, only to be followed by his parents who had the most saddening look of disgust on their faces. He made it out the door.
The groomsman and the majority of the crowd wanted him gone--for obvious reasons. He got in a cab with his family. Apparently his mother was crying from the moment he was outed until they left the facility. He was gone with his family in a matter of minutes. A lot of people were focused on the bride, and the majority of people were still in disbelief.
Outside of the embarrassment and the obvious anger from his immediate family--he got off easily. (Though I have no idea what the residual effects were the days following)--I imagine he lost quite a few friends, and the respect of his family.
The Brides father went from complete disbelief--anger--rage--tears, all in a matter of minutes. Nobody would say a word to him. Friends tried to approach and he pushed everyone away. He kept his composure better than most would from what I saw and heard. Just kind of faded to the back and tried to apologize as people gathered their things and left.
Weeks later I found out that my boss did give him a big break on the bill. My boss said he felt so terrible, and as much as he hated to lose money---he felt it was the right thing to do.
The crowd was like a group of zombies walking out the door. Quiet whispers and shuffling feet--with looks of horror on their faces.
Edit---I noticed the comments about hearing this kind of story or myth before. This story is 100% true. Happened in Cleveland, Ohio--2008.
He had one job.
Oh man. The poor bride was 6 months pregnant at the time of the wedding, puking regularly. The groom was 3 hours late to the ceremony.
By hour 2, he hadn't even picked up his tux. The venue almost cancelled the reception because the groom's number was the only contact they had and nobody knew what was going on.
He finally showed up and everything went as planned, albeit 3 hours later.
You can't buy class.
Years ago I was a waitress at a fancy restaurant where we regularly had weddings.
One night we had this massive wedding party. His side were one of those families with loads of money but not an ounce of class. Just rowdy, loud and incredibly rude, making sure to let everyone know how rich they were.
She was a quiet, shy girl with a small family full of boring mousy types. As the night progressed his family just got drunker and louder as hers hid in the corners, visibly annoyed.
At one stage the groom grabbed the microphone, and did a heavily intoxicated version of Frank Sinatras 'My Way' whilst his whole family cheered him on.
Afterwards he turned to his bride and slurred over the speakers: 'Tonight, we will do it MY WAY, wifey!!!' and then proceeded to make doggy style thrusting gestures.
The bride flushed bright red, got up and walked out, her mum on her heels. She didn't come back. The groom stayed and got so trashed his disgusting family had to carry him out at the end of the night.
It was spectacular. They didn't last long.
Nailed it.
GiphyMy SIL. She announced in front of everyone how her wedding was blessed by God and mine wasn't because she was married in the Catholic Church and I had a civil ceremony. 7 years later and I'm the only one still married.
Wow. I can't help but think people who are rude like this in front of a large group make themselves look dumb as opposed to the person they are trying to embarrass.
Wedding drama is not a good sign.
I had a wedding couple come to see me by appointment to plan the music for their church wedding ceremony. They each brought their respective mothers to the planning session.
Right out of the gate, they started arguing over choices for the Processional. The groom-to-be wanted something to show off the full organ whereas the bride-to-be wanted something smaller scaled and gentle.
There was no middle ground, no matter what organ pieces I showed them.
Then, of course, their mothers took sides and further intensified their bickering, even though I asked them politely to let the couple choose their own selections.
In the end, it really wasn't about the choice of music. It was about a fundamental crack in the foundation of their soon-to-be marriage: an unwillingness to compromise or to even hear what the other was attempting to convey.
Sadly, their marriage ended in divorce in less than 2 years. How they made it that long I'll never know.
They already can't stand each other.
GiphyI catered weddings for several years, and the subtle sign I always paid attention to was how closely the bride and groom sat next to each other during the speeches, dinner, etc.
The happy couples were always right on top of each other, sharing food, laughing, and just generally chatting. They were in their own world, while the rest of the wedding went on around them.
Other times, the two would be practically on the other side of the table from one another. The groom would spend the whole meal turned away chatting with his groomsmen, while the bride looked the other way staring into space.
Families can be assh*les, people get drunk, and nightmares happen, especially as the night progresses, but if you don't care enough to appreciate the presence of your spouse the very first time you sit down next to them, you have no chance once the real world takes over.
That ain't how it works.
GiphyMinister friend did a wedding once where in the vows the woman wouldn't say "for richer or poorer." Just kept saying "for richer or richer". And she wasn't joking. They didn't last long.
Even as a joke that is inappropriate, sure at the rehearsal whatever but during the actual wedding? Come on, I am not a big fan of weddings but that is too much.
Wait, what?
I am a florist and serviced a bridezilla and groom without a hitch on my end. On their end? They Had to go out of state to get married because they had protective orders against each other!
This is gonna be fun.
I work at David's Bridal. Most of the times...it's not the bride. It's a mother of the bride or maid of honor.
I work in alterations. Most of the time, it takes more than one appointment to get things perfect. Bride comes in for her 2nd appointment for us to do any adjustments. She needed a couple of things adjusted.
Her mother told me I ruined her daughter's marriage.
Not wedding...but marriage.
All I could think was if needing to adjust something on your dress and having to come back for one more appointment make you think someone ruined your perfect life with someone...well...good luck to her groom.
Layaway fail.
GiphyMy mom and I saw a great bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years back. We were in a small, local shop when another mother-daughter duo came in.
The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they were here to pick up her daughter's dress, so the attendant looks her name up in the computer, frowns, and says, "Ma'am, you never bought the dress."
"What are you talking about?"
The attendant shows the lady the notes on her computer screen. "You said you wanted to think about it, and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn't hear back from you, we assumed you didn't want it."
"Well, we want it now."
"It's been over eight months", the attendant explained, "We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order you another one, and have it expedited here in a few weeks."
And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. "This is unacceptable!" The mother shrieked. "We have her alterations scheduled in two hours!
The wedding is a week away! I can't believe you sold her dress!" The bride, meanwhile, is slumped against the desk and sobbing like someone killed her dog.
My mom and I are just open-mouthed staring at this point. The attendant was trying to be diplomatic, but is clearly as baffled as we are.
"Ma'am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn't yours until you pay for it."
After some more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant came back over to us and I asked her, "Does that kind of thing happen a lot?"
The poor lady just deflated. "All the time."
It baffles me to this day.
How do you schedule alterations on a dress that you never purchased? Why would you wait until a week before the wedding to pick up your dress?
How do you make it to adulthood without knowing how basic buying and selling transactions work?
TL;DR - Turns out dress shops can't read your mind, and you need to actually pay money for a wedding dress before it is yours. Go figure.
Ouch, that's cold.
I worked at David's Bridal and I have to say that I never really had a terrible bride. It was always the moms, grandmas, sisters and friends that were terrible.
Either they hated what the bride would pick out for them to wear or they would hate what she was picking out for herself to wear.
At DB we have kinda strict appointment guidelines when it comes to time and a lot of brides that would bring entourages wouldn't find a dress because everyone would bombard her with their opinions and overwhelm them.
The worst thing I've ever witnessed was when a bride that always struggled with her weight came in. She was overweight and had been working extremely hard on it over the last year.
It was a slower day and we all loved her story and wanted to make that day special so we all decided to help. She finally found a dress that she loved and she started crying along with most of us.
Then she looked at her mom and asked for her opinion and her mom looked at her and said "you look fat in it". We all stood there in silence and the bride lost her happiness. She asked to be assisted in taking it off and they left.
It was one of the saddest days that I had experienced there.
WTAF?
I worked at a high end bridal shop in my early 20s. One day, I had a bride-to-be shopping for a gown and she had brought her Mom, Aunt, and sister (who had just become a new mom) with her to her appointment.
The sister was obviously a little jealous that attention was no longer being lavished on her and her new baby, and instead the bride was the now the center of attention.
As I was fitting the bride in a $2500 Lazaro Bridal Gown, the sister decided to change her newborn's diaper in the dressing room & proceeded to hold the sh*t-filled diaper up to the gold- hued gown and exclaim "look the colors almost match!"
I excused myself from the room for fresh air and to regain composure. In my experience- the brides were rarely the problem- the family was!
When they don't understand how hotels work.
GiphyI worked management at a resort in a popular tourist town. When weddings are booked at our venue with the event coordinator we can hold certain number of rooms for guests attending.
A manager was always required to check in the bridal couple and I had been given a heads up by the coordinator on Bridezilla. They wanted a room on the highest floor and closer to the beach, they were booked into the Honeymoon Suite. 3rd floor, ocean views.
Nope, she wanted higher and closer. Had an absolute meltdown at the front desk when I explained there was nothing higher... Or closer. A colleague of mine ran for the event coordinator when she started screaming at me and her husband to be. He was very apologetic and trying to calm her down.
She was placated and sent off with keys, less than 30 minutes later she was back and demanding we empty the rooms next to and below her. Honey those rooms cost $640 a night and we are fully booked!
I was lucky enough to not be working the night of the wedding but I heard all about her abusing the wait staff, kicking the band out for playing a song she didn't like and the screaming match she got into with her mother in law. What a peach!
All up the wedding was about $40,000 and she made everyone miserable. The groom left out front desk staff and box of wine to apologize for her behavior.
Not the only Bridezilla, but definitely the craziest I had
Hol moly.
Oh I work as a wedding server, awesome job I love it. As soon as someone says bridezilla this one story where the manager of our hotel had to shut down the wedding halfway through comes to mind.
This was the bridezilla of all the bridezillas I've ever seen.
There were a lot of little things leading up that were casual bridezilla until the wedding took a sharp turn. At one point she accused the wedding server staff of stealing her veil... then the manager found it in her room and also showed her the card swipes to her room proving only she had been in the room that day.
About 20 minutes later she was screaming at some poor front desk employee accusing her of stealing her wedding boots.
Manager intervened and after a long talk the photographer told them he had a photo of the boots on the staircase of the church, and asked if she had worn them since... when she said no she told our place it was our job to have picked them up and made sure she had them (the church was not related to our place at all).
THEN shortly after she started opening the wedding gifts frantically inside the ballroom and screaming at anyone and everyone, guests included, saying someone stole her wedding certificate.
After that, our manager gathered the wedding staff and told us to take off our uniform jackets, Empty them in front of him, then to clock out and go home.
Which we all did, none of us stole anything , and we heard next day the maid of honor had the certificate and after we left the wedding was shut down completely. Room left as is for the bride to come back to in the morning.
Oh yeah, this marriage is gonna last.
I used to be a "Bridal Consultant" at a retail store which basically means I helped couples scan things onto their registry, although the training for it just meant I knew how to use the scanner and the computer and my actual job had nothing to do with bridal shopping.
This one couple came in to start a new registry, which quickly turned into only things the bride wanted. Anything the groom wanted to put down on the registry was deemed as "childish, stupid, ugly, unpractical, never-going-to-be-used."
I was cringing during the entire appointment, she kept asking for my input/opinion on everything and I felt so bad for this guy.
His bride-to-be seemed so selfish and entitled, couldn't believe the fact that he was soon to be married to this woman. The poor man just wanted a waffle maker, who doesn't want waffles?!
Oh no no no ma'am.
GiphyI used to work at a jewelry store.
This young guy (college age) came in one day to look at engagement rings. Very polite. Asking good questions. You could tell he'd been considering this for some time.
As I'm helping him and showing him some rings in his budget, She walks in. She's wearing a t-shirt from the high school senior class from the previous year, and she comes over by him.
"Oh my god were you seriously considering that ring??? Ugh. It's so ugly. Besides, it looks just like my LAST engagement ring."
How I wish I could have told him to dump her, run for the hills and don't look back.
Try again.
Caterer. Mother of bride found a single spot on a knife on a single setting. Demanded that the entire reception ($60,000) be free. She was not writing the check so she was shot down pretty quickly. But there was much rage.
No shoes no service.
GiphyI sometimes work for a wedding planner at the event the day of. There was one wedding that I was working at that was humming along right on schedule.
But about 45 minutes before the ceremony was supposed to begin, a bridesmaid grabbed me in a panic and told me the bride forgot her shoes. She told me that the bride absolutely needed her shoes.
So I asked where they were, she told me they were about an hour away. The wedding planner talked to the bride and told her that no one would notice if she didn't wear her shoes.
The bride pitched a fit and made an uncle drive and get them. It took him about 2.5 hours to get them. The whole time, we were trying to convince the bride to start the ceremony and she refused.
The worst part was that her family came from another Country and didn't really speak English so they had no idea what was going on at first. They got super restless and some people even left.
We told the bride that people were leaving and she didn't care, she just wanted her shoes. Everything was delayed by about an hour and half. People were pissed.
By the time the reception rolled around about 50% of the people left the venue.
Kindness is free.
GiphyI've posted this before, but this was my worst for sure.
I'm a wedding planner. We had an unexpected death in the family. Our 6 month old nephew had passed away in his sleep. I knew the funeral was going to be the day my clients upcoming wedding.
I gave her a call to explain the situation. She's clearly not paying attention to the call or the words I'm speaking because I hear her laughing with friends in the background.
I get irritated and tell her I'll call her later. I call back that night and again tell her what has happened and that I'd be sending an assistant to cover for me so I can attend the funeral.
She tells me that I need to send my assistant to the funeral and that I better be at her wedding. It took me a few seconds, but I calmly stated that I'd be sending her money back and that no one would be covering for me. Nicest way I've ever said f*ck off. I really wanted to bitch slap her.
Bride definitely knew I was attending the funeral, she was just a c*nt. Groom was equally c*nty. They deserve each other. I've been doing this for a while. I've seen some sh*t.
I've seen a drunk grandma heil Hitler in a room full of Jewish guests. I've seen a bride kiss an ex boyfriend while the groom was in the bathroom.
One attempted suicide. One very expensive and very short wedding. However, the majority of my clients are amazing. Still, sometimes there are just horrible people in this world.
The good thing is I've gotten much better at spotting them before we get to far.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Was helping a friend plan her wedding. We literally had everything planned, had called in favors with friends to do everything at cost, and she had personally asked my mom to officiate.
This was going to be gorgeous, and I did nothing without her. She was in on the entire thing, as she should be.
Her in-laws got involved and she started saying yes to everything they were saying without telling me. They then started asking me to ask my friends to do it all for free or give them a bigger deal than just cost.
When I pushed back on the price, suddenly I was making her wedding all about me and being made out to be a nut job. My friend didn't even take the time to tell my mom that she had found a catholic deacon to marry them (mind you, she's Muslim and the groom converted from Catholicism to Islam to marry her in another ceremony so SOMEONE lied about their faith here)! I found out 2nd hand, 4 days before the wedding.
I cancelled everything but the caterer (that was a favor my bf had called in and decided to keep only because his buddy needed the money), she bought fake flowers and the ceremony was a train wreck.
She got the Aisle 5 wedding she paid for and I got to save money on a dress.
When gravity wins.
Not a wedding planner but I witnessed this:
The bride and her mother insisted that the mom make the wedding cake. This was the wedding the week before ours at the venue we used for our reception.
They included the cake as part of the package but these folks insisted on their own. The wedding planner at the hall, who did all the planning stuff for all the weddings held there, told them that you need to include a stand in the middle of the cake for support if you are going to use a wedding cake topper.
The mother insisted she knew what she was doing and that her three cakes piled on top of each other were sturdy enough to support the large figurine cake topper.
FF to them setting up the reception, which we were there for in part as we had a meeting with the planner about final arrangements for our wedding.
The whole time we are meeting the planner kept apologizing for having trouble focusing because she kept looking past my then fiancé and I over at the cake thinking it was looking off.
We were wrapping up our meeting when suddenly she screams and bolts out of her chair. The topper had collapsed through the three layers of cake then thru the front leaving the entire front of the cake a pile of crumbs with frosting.
I never found out how that mess got fixed because my fiancé and I got the hell out of there.
Y'all need better friends.
Not a planner but a photographer's assistant/second shooter.
All of the brides and grooms I've had the pleasure of working for have been incredible, but the groomsmen and bridesmaids have been some real pieces of work.
One wedding the maid of honor wanted to control the formal portraits, told the main photographer how to do her job, freaked out at the caterers because the cake was late even though they weren't connected to the bakery at all, told one of the other bridesmaids she should have lost weight to fit into her dress better, and was really just an all around bitch who stressed the bride out all day long.
Another Maid of honor didn't write her speech beforehand because she was going to improvise, then got so trashed while getting ready and during cocktail hour that all she managed to slur was "John and Jane.... I love you so much." And started sobbing. The bride was pretty upset at her irresponsibility.
Groom had been married before and his best man was his older brother who had served as best man in his previous wedding.
He began his speech with "ladies and gentlemen, welcome back! Same occasion, different lady." Which was bad enough. He ended with "cheers, and I'll see you all again at the next one!"
Bride and groom were both understandably pissed and asked the best man to leave.
Good, he deserved it.
GiphyA drunk, screaming groomzilla screamed and pointed in my face (while his poor bride cowered behind him) because the venue ran out of Grey Goose at 11:45pm.
The wedding ended at midnight. I filled up an empty bottle with water are served it to him and his douchey friends.
I hear funeral music in the near future...
I had a couple and her mother come to see me by appointment to plan wedding music for their forthcoming church ceremony.
Each time I'd demonstrate a potential processional on the organ, the bride and groom liked it, but the bride's mother objected and asked to hear something different (when asked what her idea of "something different" might be, she had no ideas).
The situation got more and more tense as the groom and bride's mother argued. Finally, the mother said, "Listen - I'm paying for this wedding, and you'll do it MY way, and that's the end of it!"
In an effort to bring harmony, I said to the mother, "It's the couple's wedding, not yours or mine. Let them make the choices they like, and I'll provide music at no charge, so the question of who's paying for it is no longer a factor."
That solved the problem instantly. But the groom left glaring at his future mother-in-law, probably wondering what he was getting into for the long term.
(To my surprise, the best man came to see me at the organ on the day of the ceremony, and gave me an envelope containing double the normal amount.)
All's Well that ends well?
Over an hour into the meeting, the groom-to-be still hasn't shown up. The bride called him up all pissed and yelled, "If this is your attitude to our wedding planning, maybe we shouldn't get married!"
The groom yelled, "You're right! Cancel the wedding!"
It wasn't a joke. They actually broke up.
Only a bunch of deposits has been paid, and it was split almost 50/50 by both families. Apparently, they can't agree on who needs to pay who back, and neither wants to back down, so both families decided they'll both have a party instead of a wedding instead.
The wedding planner ended up planning 2 separate "Christmas parties" for 2 feuding families, in the same ballroom. People showed up out of morbid curiosity and apparently it was awkward.
Save that for Jerry Springer!
GiphyA bridesmaid from one side meets up with a cousin of the groom and they spend the night falling in love with each other while the great-aunts on either side work themselves up into a gang war.
The bride screws every single groomsman out of spite and then a not-so-single groomsman, one of the lady guests on the bride's side turns out to be the high school bully of one of the lady guests on the groom's side and revenge is set up.
Several young children plot out and execute a commando raid on the wedding cake, and the bride's grandfather has a heart attack, leading to the fire department showing up and the wife of the cheating groomsman hitting it off with a hot firefighter after the CPR.
Is all the cast here?
Wedding day comes, everything is great, everyone is seated in the church. We close the outside doors to prepare for my sister to walk in.
The wedding planners are standing outside with us doing a final check. Everything appears to be okay.
Except no one knows where the priest is. He is no where in any part of this small church. My sister comes out and calls the priest, who as it turns out, thought the wedding was actually an hour later than it really was.
So he started speeding towards the church, in the mean time, the harpist that was playing keeps playing and everyone inside is getting a bit antsy.
Then we realize that while we were figuring this whole thing out, no one bothered to clue in my soon to be brother in law, who was just standing alone at the altar.
After this event the planners added "Check that the priest is there" to the list.
Role Call
GiphyMy cousin's wedding, everyone is there and has a role. I'm a scripture reader, my little sister and cousin are in charge of handing out the programs.
Cool right? Until the wedding planner runs up to the girls minutes before the guests arrived and ripped the programs out of their hands, chastising them for not standing outside to greet the guests.
It was 98 degrees outside, a mild spring day for Texas. The bride had to come away from photos to tell her own wedding planner to f**k off and leave the church for making the girls cry.
We later found out that the planner was only there at the mother of the brides insistence, and the bride just planned everything herself while her mom and the planner would get drunk at brunch "planning" the wedding.
The girls were fine and the wedding went off without a hitch.
Drink up and pay your tab!
Wedding Coordinator here - The couple that never paid their final balance for the reception.
I'm a "day of event" coordinator (so I'm not part of the arrangements, only handle the details to make sure everything goes smoothly. This was one of the rare times it didn't)
Once the ceremony started, I headed over to the reception hall to oversee the setup, only to find out that the couple paid the deposit, but never paid the balance-about half of the total cost (IIR about $30k).
The catering hall was refusing to hold the reception until they got their money in cash (no personal checks allowed). It was a Sunday before a bank holiday and while most commercial banks would have been fine, their local bank was not open until that Tuesday.
Slightly panicking, I called the main coordinator who was still at the church with the couple to try to figure this out. The older brother tried to help by trying to get money from relatives, but they were obviously short of the sum needed.
We were at the point where guests were starting to arrive. After going back and forth, the catering manager said they would hold the cocktail hour since the deposit covered that.
When the couple arrived, the groom, the brother, and my lead coordinator met with the manager and they basically offered their money box, along with whatever payment they were able to round up to hold as ransom until they made the payment.
The reception went on as planned, and once everything was set, I broke my work rule and had a strong drink.
This takes the cake...
Mom made wedding cakes for almost 20 years in the 1990's-2000's.
Several of her horror stories involved Precious Moments figurines, of all things. They're the ones that look like creepy babies/angelic children. For some ungodly reason, Precious Moments cake toppers were all the rage for awhile. Unfortunately, they are made of ceramic, and can be a bit heavy to place on top of stacked pastry.
One time, Mom was mid-cake-setup when the mother of the bride (MOB) handed her a 5 lb. Precious Moments wedding car, and told her it was their cake topper. Besides being heavy, it was also larger than the top tier of the cake. My mom flat-out told her, "No way. That thing is way too heavy, it will crush of top the cake." MOB didn't want to take, "no," for an answer, and kept insisting that the wedding would be ruined if they didn't have this cake topper.
Mom refused, and explained several more times that the cake could not support the car. She placed the car next to the cake, and got a pretty spray of flowers from the florist to put on top, instead.
An hour later, she got a frantic call from the reception hall, because the cake fell, "all by itself."
Turns out, MOB waited until Mom left, placed the car topper on top of the cake, and left for the ceremony. The reception manager found the cake all over the floor shortly after.
A similar scenario occurred with a motorcycle- themed Precious Moments figurine several months later. Mom banned all Precious Moments after that.
Yeehaw!!
GiphyI felt so sorry for the wedding coordinator for my niece's wedding. It's always a bit of a white trash show with that part of the family, but they went all out for the wedding.
Mother of the bride was noticeably drunk (like leaning over to one side drunk) and noisy during the ceremony. The stepmother of the bride was in a snit. The father of the bride was being his typical spineless self. The bride, groom, and wedding party were all chain smoking and drinking natural light beer before, during, and after the ceremony, and most of them were a lovely shade of orange from the fake tans.
The officiant showed up in a t-shirt and sweatpants. There wasn't enough food for the guests, not even enough for everyone to get a bite of something.
Arguments broke out all over, between all members of the bride's family. If there had actually been dinner, it would have been a great "dinner and a show" thing.
Oh Guuuurl!!!
I planned a wedding where at the reception where the maid of honor (sister of the bride) had a fight with her boyfriend and threw herself onto the hood of his car as he tried to drive away with her poor father trying to pull her off.
In a purple satin, puffy-sleeve 1987 atrocity. Mass quantities of alcohol was involved.
Don't feed the animals...
As an aside, I did see a wedding coordinator talk down a full grown groomzilla from screaming so loudly at my manager in a gourmet chocolate shop that she almost called the cops.
Just full on red faced "DO YOU KNOW WHAT A WEDDING IS? WE'VE HAD IT PLANNED FOR MONTHS TO HAVE HAND MADE GODDAMN ARTISINAL CHOCOLATES FOR ALL OUR GUESTS. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH MONEY WE WERE PLANNING TO SPEND? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN TOO SHORT OF A TURNAROUND? YOU B! I CAN SEE YOUR STAFF SITTING ON THEIR HANDS, YOU'RE TELLING ME YOU'RE TOO BUSY? ITS A GHOSTTOWN HERE AND ITS. BECAUSE. YOU. ARE. S**T!"
The wedding planner was fluttering around him like an anxious moth while my stone faced manager had to explain to this full grown man that just because he wrote it down in a binder months ago it didn't mean he'd placed the order.
And that it's way too late to order 400 individual chocolates for a wedding a week out.
Why bother coming?
GiphyThe bride and her party were an hour and a half late with no explanation, the music they provided was low quality, the ring bearer lost the rings, the main musician insisted they control the mic power from the headset receiver but forgot to turn it on a lot, etc.
I got paid very well tho so I'm not complaining.
I'm a professional violinist who works with wedding planners, and I've seen some things.
Once I got an email from a bride asking me if I'd play at a wedding, for free, in bleak midwinter, in a pavilion waaaay down the path of a hiking trail. Uh, no ma'am.
My first college gig was a wedding that was supposed to be in a beautiful sunny garden, but being in the Deep South, guess what?
There were actually tornadoes that day instead. The families decided to go on with the wedding... so they had the wedding under the reception tent instead and moved the actual reception indoors (weird thinking, huh).
Things were actually going ok until near the end of the ceremony, when weather sirens went off. We didn't get hit by a tornado, but the rain and wind that eventually came in made it so that it was even hitting us under the tent.
We obviously couldn't couldn't play for the recessional and had to run a short distance inside to pack the instruments up rather than risk staying outside and getting the instruments soaked.
The wedding was completed outside ASAP and everyone made a beeline for indoors as fast as possible once it was over! The bride was laughing thankfully but everyone was wet and worried about tornadoes and it was just such a crazy day.
Also another Deep South wedding I played for: two avid football fans left their own reception early to watch their team's football game that was on that day. (I knew the girl personally. She divorced him a year later, he ended up being an egotistical, abusive, cheating ass).
I also played in a quartet at this gorgeous mountainside wedding and we got there quite early to set up.
A fight broke out between who I later realized was the bride and groom, they busted out of the clubhouse behind us literally kicking and screaming at each other.
They appeared ok during the wedding amazingly, but I would be surprised if that marriage lasted.
And last but definitely not least was the day my sister and I played a wedding when my grandfather died in the hospital.
My family had been called to the hospital as I was getting ready to leave for the venue, and got the news he passed when I finished. I knew he was dying the whole time, though.
Playing an entire wedding and reception through the death of a loved one is something I never, ever want to do again. I had to keep my sobs in so hard I got the hiccups.
Treat your wedding musicians well, most of us deal with and see a lot of crap.
From the Altar to AA...
Most recently was a wedding planner who charged some 5k for a wedding and then almost ruined it. She had told the couple the venue would provide glassware for the bar.
The venue did not. We had to scramble to find glassware for them. The couple had asked her to place handmade, customized napkins the wedding party had finished the night before the wedding.
They gave her explicit instructions as to where these napkins were. The coordinator forgot them, and when she realized she didn't have them, she told the bride she couldn't find them.
This caused the bride to cry. She later told our coordinator that she had seen them but that couple "hadn't paid her enough" to set out napkins.
She went on to refuse to carrying and fixing a number of decorations, leaving our crew to scramble to do it. Wedding did go off without a hitch but only because our coordinator went above and beyond to make sure it did.
The other fun wedding horror story was when the wedding party showed up smashed, went through two and a half kegs within the first hour of the reception, accused random people of stealing bridesmaids purses only to later realize they had put them upstairs instead of downstairs like they thought, and then smashing $500 worth of glassware on the dance floor.
Sounds fishy...
GiphyCatering for a wedding, bride's mother brought in shrimp and ate that, she was allergic to it and had to have an ambulance take her to the hospital.
Turns out, the mother didn't want a white Australian for a son-in-law and tried to kill herself in protest.
Should we snorkel?
Bridal room flooded with the bathroom's septic water while the party was out getting hair and make up done. The dress was ruined.
She's a Daytime Villain!
My wife and I asked our wedding coordinator what horror stories she has and she said ask me again after the wedding she didn't want to scare us.
Sure enough after the wedding when I went by a week later with a last payment she told me the most horrific story involving a jealous bridesmaid who tried to sabotage the wedding multiple times.
It started with her going around to multiple guests as they're sitting down in church and saying if you feel faint please leave and go outside as the family couldn't afford to bring in additional AC when the climate was OK.
I mean how do they have Sunday service every week? Then she pretended to faint when the vows were being exchanged after bragging earlier to someone that she was going to do just that and cause a scene.
She also did another fake faint as the bride was leaving the church and caused a domino effect of falling bridesmaid luckily the bride and groom got away OK.
The mother in law who was in tears for all the wrong reasons asked her if she is feeling ill perhaps go to the hospital in an attempt to get rid of her. She said that she is feeling better and that she can't abandon the bride.
Things got super f*cked at the reception when she was seen by the coordinator taking a dead rat out of a plastic bag and attempting to place it by the food.
Luckily she caught her and confronted her about this and told her to leave or she will call the police. She told the bride and groom a week after the wedding.
Turns out she was the bride's best friend and jealous that she didn't marry her brother as they previously had a thing.
Cindy... YOU'RE FIRED!!
GiphyI was a part of my sister's (Meg) wedding when I was a sophomore in high school. That thing was a disaster from start to finish. That was mostly because we wanted to save money and decided that a wedding planner was unneeded. My stepmom (Cindy) could just do it.
They wanted me to handwrite all the invitations, as well as the addresses on the invitation envelopes. Having pretty handwriting does not translate to legible-address-writing all that well, so half the addresses had to be rewritten before they could be mailed.
All the bridesmaids (including myself) made Meg cry by missing her dress appointment. She had informed us in a group text weeks in advance, and I forgot to actually plan for it. It was kind of weird, though, because Cindy would have had to get me there anyways, and she wound up going without me. Not to say that it was her job, but still. The person who originally helped Meg do her dress fitting was a straight up fool over Meg deciding to wear barefoot sandals, so that really didn't help matters.
There was some debate over what dresses the bridesmaids should wear, since a lot of us didn't have a lot of money. Embedded somewhere in there was an argument over whether or not I could wear a suit, which I actually had no idea about.
They also wanted me to download the music, which I did as well as I was able. The problem with that is I can't download songs I haven't been told to download yet, and Meg just would not get around to finishing the music list, so the playlist was only half complete.
An outdoor wedding in the Texas summer sounded like a good idea (to someone, but that someone didn't reckon that it was hot as balls), so we had to rent and set up all these tables and chairs and decorations on the back lawn of Cindy's friend's ranch while Cindy's dad dealt with the actual wasps and one wasp nest on the porch. In the heat. With the wind blowing too hard to keep the table cloths on the tables, but too softly to be any real relief.
I was evidently not in the group text about the bachelorette party, because the first I heard of it was in the evening after we had finished setting up all the wedding stuff when we were out in the middle of nowhere, half an hour from the house. After a mad dash to get my @ss a change of clothes and a toothbrush and what not, I actually did get to go to that. It was held at my other stepsister's house (Lily).
That was the last time I had a chance to try and get the music list out of Meg, but Lily's boyfriend wouldn't give me the wifi password to download songs, and Meg wasn't all that concerned about getting me the list, anyways.
Somewhere during the night, My youngest step sister (Bobi) and her stepsister from her dad's remarriage (Noel) decided they wanted to leave. There was some kind of argument between them and Meg because if they had left when they wanted to, the drivers on the road were most likely to be drunk. The reason they wanted to leave in the first place is because Bobi developed a sudden dislike for the fact that everyone was drinking (though not excessively). This, by the way, was some hours after we had all gone over to Lily's house in the first place, and was honestly just straight up drama.
Cut to the next morning, and my stepmom was not keen on my doing anything about my overgrown hair (were talking about an undercut afro, here), but after arguing with her and jumping through hoops all night, I finally managed to convince her to let me cut it way down. That's honestly the only good part about the wedding, except that it actually happened.
I was also not in the group text that said "bridesmaids show up early," so I showed up about the same time as the rest of my family. Meg was pissed that I was late.
She was upset because the family friend (Jean) was pitching a fit about people being in the house, despite the fact that we needed a place for meg and the bridesmaids to be before the ceremony, as well as a place to store all the food.
This is also the first time I'm hearing that we're using Spotify for the wedding music. When I asked why, Meg started yelling about how I didn't download the music and what not. Weirdly enough, it was Cindy who checked her on that, even though me and Cindy just did not like each other at all by this point in our relationship. I honestly all but cried over the whole thing.
So finally the wedding gets underway and the bridesmaids, two of which were stupid tall (myself and Meg's stepsister from her dad's remarriage) and wound up getting paired with two stupid short groomsmen, so it looked pretty damn awkward. Couple that with the fact that no one but myself remembered to keep their damn head up while walking, and it just… we really should have practiced for more than the few run throughs we had.
At some point during the ceremony, Jean decided that the appropriate response to all the people in her house was to… lock the doors… while the food is still in the kitchen on the counters. So this ceremony is drawing to a close and Cindy cannot get the food out to eat and it takes for f---ing ever to get back into the house.
The moral of the story is: hire a wedding planner. You probably don't think you need one, but if your family doesn't work well together, you definitely do.
Please don't procreate!
Not sure how horrific this is. but. as a coordinator, you inevitably see interesting couples and wonder how their relationship works.
Dialogue while doing photos:
Bride (super bubbly and nasally voice): Oh my, i almost lost my shoe!! i would be like ciiiinderllllla and groom would be my prince!!
Groom: ...sorry what?
Bride: like CINDERELLLLA!!
Groom: wait who?
repeats several times
Bride: oh gawsh...he's sooo cute and smart. just focusing on so many things at the same time!!
*Hides under the table*
Not a wedding planner, but I catered weddings for a long time.
That doesn't pertain to the story, I just want to set the tone that the room was uncomfortable to begin with.So the couple apparently decided to have a fun routine as their first dance.
Neither of them were very coordinated and the fact that they were both horribly overweight did not help their cause. They looked like a couple that met on reddit.
The two of them go up to the front of the room and tried to do a dance that - even if performed well - would have been the cringiest thing I have ever seen. It was not performed well.
It was a compilation of a bunch of songs that I'm assuming they got online from a cheer groups routine because you could hear clapping in the background but it was certainly not from the guests.
The bride kind of knew what moves and what song was next, but the groom had absolutely no idea. He would just start doing whatever she was doing .5 seconds after she did it.
It was the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life. Afterward, no one clapped. They all just looked around as if they were unsure if they all saw the same thing.
Thankfully, the bride and groom did not seem to care. They instead began inviting people up to the stage so they could teach them the dance that they themselves did not know and do it again.
I have not catered since. That's unrelated, I just like to tell people I went out on a high note.
TL;DR Two cringy people did the cringiest first dance ever in an already uncomfortable room only to think it went well enough to do it again, but with crowd participation.
Wedding dictator.
GiphyI'm not a wedding planner, but my horror story is about our wedding planner. When we went to get married at our church, the church provided a wedding planner.
She was retired and had pushed to be the church's on-site wedding planner so she had something to do. She was a complete pain. She tried to tell us that our florist friend couldn't do the flowers and that we had to use the florist she wanted us to use.
We went to the church and they told her to back off. It was the same deal with every little detail. Everything we had already planned. We already had 90% of the wedding planned and on a strict budget. Lots of our friends had volunteered their services as their gift.
This wasn't us asking Uncle Bob to take some photos with his newfangled camera and Aunt Margie to pick some flowers from her garden to decorate the church. These people did this stuff professionally. Yet every time we told her we already had that taken care of, she tried insisting that we do something more expensive that suited her personal taste.
Then when it was clear that we weren't going to play her silly games, she stopped returning our calls and even answering her door when we knew she was inside (We lived in the same apartment complex).
Another friend who was an actual wedding planner helped us sort out a few logistic details with the ceremony.
For a few weeks before the big day, we got nothing but radio silence from her, which was fine by us. Then, she shows up at the rehearsal and starts trying to run the show according to her plan. No, no, no, f*ck no.
We had a little chat outside with her, letting her know that in no way was she a part of our wedding, that her plan, whatever it might be, was NOT our plan and that as far as we were concerned she could f--- right off. She tried the same kind of crap the next day when my fiance was getting dressed, but the bridesmaids intervened and shut her down.
We had been communicating with the church secretary and the minister all along, so they knew what was up. Evidently, we weren't the only couple who had problems with her, so the church "fired" her.
Wedding-sitting.
Not a planner but I felt like I was merely invited to play peace keeper. My sister has always favored her dad as he spoilt her rotten, running off to another city soon as she was able to wring everything she could from mother.
I've had pretty much zero contact with her for years, mother would hear from her one in a blue moon, so imagine my surprise when me and my partner are invited to her wedding.
Long story short, I was basically there to wrangle our mother because: her dad's family took up the first three rows, her friends the next two then there's us in a crowd of strangers.
Then at dinner we're on a table with a handful of her friends from our city which is tucked away in a corner while about half of the head table is her dad's family, dinner sucks, deserts are barely a mouthful, music was terrible meme stuff.
My sister came and saw us for about ten mins tops, was incredibly dismissive when she asked what my job was and I replied I was site manager for a cleaning company & also worked as team leader in a cinema, kept her now husband far from us (I later went over to meet him, decent fella but has an air of being so whipped he might as well been meringue).
By this point mother was quietly fuming and decides it's time to go which causes my sister to pout and start being passive aggressive when word reaches her, as we was gonna leave before their first dance, but I managed to smooth things over, gave them their gifts, exchanged contact info and invited the new fella to play some games online sometime before we left.
Took three days for my mother to unwind enough to discuss the day, any attempt before that would get an icy stare and completely killed any interest my partner had in a proper wedding.
Not weird at all, no sir.
So many, but here's one that stands out. Bride and Groom were both very young, and groom's father was the owner of a local (run down) strip joint.
Had their reception in an old recording studio space with the strippers as the bartenders. They wore their working uniforms.
The bride's baby's father showed up to drop off the baby the morning of and confessed his love to her and begged her not to go through with the wedding.
They had a screaming match with each other before he was asked to leave. The mom's friend had said she would do the flowers as a gift, but wouldn't answer anyone's calls the day of the wedding.
Finally got a hold of her and she said she was told the wrong dates by the MOB, and didn't have anything ready. We called a florist we worked with regularly and got 12 bouquets, 12 boutonnieres and three flower crowns made within the hour (made sure they paid the florist before anything happened).
The friend florist showed up with some sloppily made things, and we had to kick her out of the venue because the MOB and Bride were so pissed and didn't want her anywhere near them.
Many more things happened that night, but man was that one for the books. Also, we were all paid in cash...I can only imagine where it had been.
Worst man?
GiphyNAWP and didn't even go to this wedding, but the best man and his gf got into a fight over transportation from the ceremony to the reception venue (he could get into the car w/ rest of wedding party, she had to commute w/ all the rest of the commoners and couldn't take a joke apparently), and they both just went home.
Groom was understandably wtf at the reception b/c 'best' man wasn't that great at doing his job after all.
Treat yo self.
Not a planner, nor did I attend this wedding or know anyone that did but I'll just leave this here in case anyone hasn't seen this yet -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKDDZHCaopI
FWIW - Got married in Jamaica 2 months ago. We paid for all the wedding festivities so no one could say a thing and whoever wanted a fun vacation was free to come party with us.
27/80 responded yes and it was the greatest f*cking vacation I'd ever had.
The only down side was being the center of attention and doing wedding-y stuff. I would have loved to have been just a guest instead!
Finally. someone who gets it.
I think I shocked our day-of coordinator when I told her the only thing I was worried about was making sure everyone got enough to eat and drink and was having a good time.
Like, seriously--no one is going to remember all the cutesy sh!t in the decorations but they'll damn well remember the tacos.
When the groom nopes out.
GiphyI'm a wedding planner and I had a runaway groom one time :(
He didn't show up the the rehearsal , and then he bailed. They canceled the whole wedding. It was so heartbreaking ...