Wedding Horror Stories- What's the worst you've seen?

Glad this is still going, I love this thread!

At my friend's wedding a few years ago, her venue cancelled on her a few months before (this is a horror story in itself). The replacement she came up with was a friend of a friend's house in the middle of nowhere that everyone got lost trying to find. All the guests, including family, find out once we drive the 40 minutes out to this house that the reception is BYOB--the closest gas station (which we passed on the way in, I would have stopped!) is 30 minutes out and no one wants to risk getting lost again. The worst part was that we were only allowed to go in the house to use the bathrooms, everything else was outside in the cold.

I felt really bad for her since she had planned a much better reception and it wasn't really her fault that plan B was so terrible, but then as the night was winding down I got a text from the best man who had been hitting on me all night...he was married with 4 kids and I hadn't given him my number. At that point I just left, I was too sober and too cold to put up with any BS.

It was a nice ceremony and I'm still friends with the couple but dang, it was a hot mess.

I have a few and i have been to A LOT of weddings.

1) Canadian Cousin - Cocktail hour with limited seating. Not fun when you are in heels for over an hour with no were to sit to put your drink or food down. The speeches were way too long. It was like 10 pm before we actually got to the dancing, venue shut down at midnight.

2) Dry wedding - The wedding was suppose to have wine on the tables but the venue (which is well known) messed up. They also didn't serve the pasta during the meal. They eventually did do a cash bar.

3) DIY wedding - was nice and laid back but the buffet ran out of food and our table went up last. The caterer was a friend of the couple who volunteered to do the wedding. What we did get was good but how many meatballs can you eat?

4) Semi-open bar wedding - No assigned seats for a wedding with more than 100 people (please do escort cards) so finding seats was a freaking nightmare; beer and wine were free but anything else you paid for. It was in a different state and they say that is the norm for the area.

5) Restaurant Wedding - Hot, sunny August wedding held on the patio of a vineyard estate because the actual vineyard was water logged. No shade at all. We were all a sweaty and stinky afterwards.

At the reception, we got like 2 passed appetizers as we were sitting on the outside patio and the waiters barely came came out there. Food was great but small portions. My table ended up going thru 3 baskets of bread because they were still hungry. The cake wasn't cut or served. No dessert was ever served after the meal.

Everyone should get together and write a book on what NOT to do. These stories SCARE me. Yikes.

OK let me preface this by saying that NONE of this was the Bride/Groom's fault-

We went to a wedding on the beach last October in Panama City. It was beautiful, the weather was perfect, etc.

#1. There was absolutely NO signage to show people they were in the right place (maybe that was the B&G but either way). There was a sign once you FOUND the wedding about shoes, etc.

#2. We showed up maybe 20 minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to start and the DOC were still setting up the ceremony. 1/2 chairs still had no sashes, etc.

#3. The microphone didn't work so literally nobody but maybe the front row and the BP heard any of it.

#4. RED TIDE!! Everyone was coughing and sneezing and had no idea why. The bride's family flew in from Brazil and had no idea what was going on lol

#5 We get to the Reception site (again, a bit confusing but we found it) It's beautiful but, ONCE AGAIN, the DOC are still setting everything up...There are already apps being passed around but they're freaking cold. how are they cold? We are some of the first to arrive! And they're still setting up! lol

#6. Seated Serve- great- we never get our food. Everyone has basically eaten except our table. Someone finally notices and brings out the wrong food- and it's cold. WTF

Still had a great time- Bride and Groom were lovely and happy and in love. We loved dancing, drinks, cake, etc. but Jiminy Kricket.

The worst I've been to was a PPD word for word, outfit for outfit, song for song reproduction of the couples big DW in Hawaii. I know this because they played the wedding video on a loop in one corner. The bride's dress was gorgeous for sunset on a Hawaiian beach...it was a little out of place in February in New Hampshire.

Cash bar - at a freaking VINEYARD! The house wine was SUPER pricey and, being a vineyard in NEW HAMPSHIRE, not good.

But hands down the most side-eye-able thing? The couple though getting legally married in Hawaii would be just too hard. So went to a JoP the day before they flew to Hawaii. So they had not one, but TWO poorly hosted PPDs.

Normally, I get people a really pricey gift for weddings. They got something from the clearance shelf of Marshalls. Sadly, it wasn't shaped like a dick.

Two not so wonderful weddings:

#1 My cousins: got married at a random location along a river/falls area, I had no idea how to find her and neither did my family! Eventually, we did find her as we knew the general vicinity. Stood for the ceremony, because you know, it was just some random grassy area! And couldn't hear a word they were saying! The reception was average at best, I didn't stay very long.

#2 A camo wedding! Freezing cold out, I drove 6 hrs to get there, it's at a rinky dink VFW hall that was dirty-cringe. AND it was BYOB, self-catered and had some horrible music-oh I almost forgot we had to wear Halloween costumes! lol, They also had a honeymoon fund jar!

General wedding "horrors":

-Bad food. Dry, buffet that doesn't have enough for everyone, bland, etc.

-Bad DJ's. Static-y quality and/or played very bad music. I heard Adele and Taylor Swift breakup songs being played at a reception. Needless to say, nobody danced until the songs were changed.

-Lack of organization. I was a BM for a wedding where the wp had no idea where to go or what to do after the ceremony and pictures. Ended up getting yelled at for going to cocktail hour before the bride and groom made their entrance only to be told later that we were supposed to go to cocktail hour. It was a very confusing day.

-Bridal shower (not wedding day related per se, I know, but this was...bad.) Outside shower during one of the coldest, windiest days of the season. However, it was all set up at the very last minute: Plastic tablecloths duct taped down to picnic tables. Only cookies, soda, and pretzel sticks to eat and not enough trays to hold it all. Everything kept blowing away, and sadly, a present fell off the gift table and shattered in a particularly huge gust of wind. I only stayed an hour or so before calling it a day and going home to a fire and something hot to eat. Now in defense of the MoH, nobody was expecting such terrible weather, and the bride was still happy, so that's what matters.

These are great. Weird thing is, I've been at plenty of weddings--dozens--with friendors where it's gone fine. But don't hire me to be the officiant. I would totally mess it up.

When I was a freshmen in college I attended my best friends wedding. At the time, we were in a bit of a falling out (not as close, but still talking). Anyway, her and her husband were 20, about to be 21. So it was a dry wedding. She had no seating arrangement, so finding a table was an awkward rush. Food was ok. They ate and did their first dance, to a very....adult themed song. It was so uncomfortable. Then the bride danced with her bridal party, as her husband went around and thanked people, to more adult themed songs.

I attended a wedding last summer for my boyfriends step sister (he just calls her his sister but I have to tell you the back story for it to make sense) his mother also the girls technical step mother paid and set up the whole wedding. It was super budget friendly rented out an area in a park that would usually be used for a kids b-day party, the whole day I saw my now FMIL frantically running around setting things up (she cooked everything for the wedding too) she asked anyone around her for help in small tasks like can you set out napkins, hang this here, go get ice. It was simple easy stuff and she only asked the brides 3 adult daughters and the grooms family as well as the brides biological mother. What I saw that was awful is no one helped her they would say no to her face and than walk away and call her a control freak and a b***** for asking for help....when I heard the grooms family talking about how stuck up she was for showing off how much money she spent on the wedding (the budget was $1500 for everything) I knew they were just grumpy. Than they proceeded to start the ceremony before everything was still set up so my poor FMIL was still working and didn't even get to see the ceremony!!! I felt so bad for her but she still smiled and acted like she had the best time, when she was actually devastated

1. FH, my Mom, and I attended a wedding of one of my Mom's acquaintances. Everything starts out okay, ceremony was really nice. We get to the reception venue and the decor is extremely lacking, I wasn't judging just noticing, but nothing stuck out as "in poor taste" just yet. Then I started getting hungry. The only thing there were a bunch of small finger food type fruit (strawberries, grapes, etc) for what felt like hours. I think it was actually 2 hours before food was brought out, and it was more finger food. At least it was warm I figured, but it was at this point I started realizing this was going downhill fast. There was nothing to drink at this point, not even water. Finally the "caterers" (or so I thought) bring out 2 one gallon bottles of soda per table. It takes another hour or two before dinner is served.

I later found out that the bride had a friend prepare all the food. The food had been prepared the night before, but there was some issue in the kitchen, like it was taking longer to heat up than it should have or something.

I also had to hunt for water and eventually one of the "caterers" gave me a bottle from their stash.

2. One of my best friends was getting married and I was so excited for her and her husband. At first. She calls me 3 months out to ask me to be a BM, not because she was replacing anyone she just decided 3 months out to have a wedding with others invited instead of the courthouse wedding she planned. This was stressful because I didn't have the budget for $100 dress, the bride gave us guidelines and had us choose our own and also told me to go casual, so I found something off of Amazon for $25 and called it a day.

One of her BMs makes a group chat to put together a Bachelorette party for the bride. This BM and I have a history of...issues, but I was willing to try and work with her for my friend. She immediately made me regret this decision:

-In the group she mentions that the reason she is taking over is because the bride's twin sister, who falls on the Autism spectrum, can't. I'm close friends with both sisters, I found this comment to be unneeded and in poor taste.

-She was planning the Bachelorette for a location in Orlando, FL (I was in Ocala, FL at my parents house while on break from college at the time), and the plan was to take a hotel room for the night (night before the wedding) and cover the bride's meal at a restaurant. All fine, except being that I was only working during the semester as a work-study for $8/hr part time and had my own bills, I expressed this was not affordable for me. Never mind the restaurant cost, I'd have to find transportation (didn't have a car because I didn't really need one at the time, I went to school in a very small "city"), pay for said transportation, and then cover a hotel room. FH would also have to cover his own room, because at the time we weren't sexually intimate. When I tried to tell this BM "I can't afford it" she completely blasted me in the group. She said I could stay with her and her bf in their room and sleep on the floor, I said I wasn't comfortable with that. According to her this made me the shittiest friend on the planet.

-After the ceremony, we were moving chairs from the ceremony spot to the reception spot (just a few feet). The original idea was to have a head table. FH didn't know a single person invited to that wedding except the bride, bride's sister, and the groom. Not only that but ALL of the guests except WP and family left immediately following the ceremony. FH was sitting at a table alone when the MOG said he could sit at the table with everyone else. Well, this BM immediately jumped down my throat about it. She snapped at me, said that just because we were engaged and her and her bf weren't didn't mean our relationship was more special (I honestly felt the MOG intended for her bf to sit with us as well), and stormed off. I found out later that before she left she made it a point to complain to the BRIDE about the "issues" she had with me. That made me livid.

Other than that, the food took a while because it was self catered and the brother of the groom was grilling burgers. They forgot to pick up the cake, so before the ceremony the bride's sister rushed to get it (which worked out okay because the groom was 30 mins late). There was alcohol, but it was a homemade drink that was waaaaaaay too strong for me so I only had a little bit. Most of the bad I experienced with this wedding was not at the fault of the bride/groom, so I don't really consider the wedding itself to be "bad". I was mostly peeved having to wait for my food so long when I was already so hungry, and the BM going and complaining to the bride about such petty things on her wedding day. That BM is now engaged, so at least now she can feel more secure (I found out from the bride that she jumped down my throat like that because she wanted to get married and at the time her bf didn't).

My big brother got married last summer to the girl of his dreams. Luckily, he and his lovely wife were wrapped up in bliss and didn't notice anything going wrong, but over the course of the evening:

-Her very religious family staunchly refused to mingle with anyone not related to them, and glared down their noses at all of us as we drank the Devils water and laughed and danced and sinned

-His best man almost punched our dad in the face for being annoying

-Drunk guests felt me up and shouted homophobic slurs at me while trying to decide if I'm his brother or his sister (surprise surprise, I'm neither!)

-I had to talk a cop out of arresting our father after he got absolutely wasted and peed on the outside of the courthouse on our way home

All in all, it was a mess.