What Wedding Hiccups Have You Experienced?

I was a Bridesmaid in my sister's wedding and we were almost 30 minutes late for the ceremony because one of our stylists backed out 10 minutes before our appointment.

I was the MOH for a wedding that did not have DOC. I literally was running around trying to gather everyone to the right spots. The photographer even went missing for like an hour. She also had no assigned tables so many people held their plates and stood while eating cause they didn't want to sit without their date. So please Brides have a DOC and a seating chart if you don't want your wedding to be complete chaos.

This hiccup has a happy ending. I attended a friend's wedding that was outdoor and the reception was under a tent. It had started raining shortly before the ceremony was supposed to start, so heavily that the uncovered ceremony space was practically flooded.

They made a last minute decision to have the ceremony take place under the tent with all the guests in a big circle around the couple and the officiant. It was beautiful and fit their personality even better than the traditional seated ceremony. And of course the rain stopped as soon as the ceremony started, lol.

@travelers I have been in multiple weddings without DOC and none have been chaos. I think as long as you are organized, have everything very well planned out, you dont necessarily need one.

I was in a wedding where the brdies wedding dress got caught in the elevator doors. She didn't notice until the elevator started moving and part of her dress ripped pretty badly. Luckily the ceremony was over and we were going to help her change into a simpler dress for the reception.

My brother got married a few years ago - it was a beautiful day, lots of sunshine, and a soft breeze floating in the air. In the middle of their vows, a slightly stronger gust of wind came along . . . and it rained baby caterpillars on the bride and groom.

To her credit, my SIL grinned, chuckled, removed one from the front of her dress, and kept right on with the ceremony!

ETA: On a side note - @OG Matt! Welcome back!!

@Brooke OMG!!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS AWFUL!!!!!!!!!! Thank goodness she had a second dress.

I think DOCs are incredibly helpful and take a lot of the stress off the day, but I have also been to a couple without one that went off smoothly (as far as I could tell--I was a reader at both). At my cousin's wedding the time where they REALLY needed direction was at the rehearsal. The officiant was a friend/non-professional, and no one was really stepping up to lead everything... so I just did.

Table numbers...my venue provided me with the layout and the numbering of each table so I could use that to complete my seating chart. I handed over my box of table numbers to the coordinator with a copy of their map sitting on top of the numbers inside the box so there should have been no confusion. Well, somehow someone numbered a bunch of tables wrong (so like table 11 was where table 15 should have been, etc). How they got some right and some wrong I'll never understand, but I wish someone would have double checked this. Unfortunately it involved the table my mom was at and instead of being at the table closest to me, she was all the way across the ballroom. It wasn't noticed until people had already started finding their tables and being seated (because my mom knew where her table should have been according to the map, I let her choose), so there was nothing to be done about it at that point. I could have let it roll off had it not involved a VIP table...really bummed me out to have my mom so far away...and I felt bad for her being embarrassed at the thought of other people wondering why I would have given my mom such a crummy table placement.

I went to a wedding and all of the twenty something cousins (me included) were seated at the edge of a tent, and it rained. On our table, and on us... I guess there were too many people to all totally fit under the tent, so we were the ones who got drenched during dinner... where we were also fed last... and they ran out of food. It was a served buffet, and I got 1 slice of green squash, 1 teaspoon serving of mashed potatoes, and as they were serving they were cutting chicken breast servings in half for each of us. My parents were fed first and they were giving out huge mountains of food to people early on.

Also, when my sister got married - I was MOH and I didn't realize I would need to know how to bustle her dress - and neither did she. I was on the parking lot, laying down in my BM dress, trying to figure out how to make her look good... FYI - learn to bustle the dress before you need to bustle the dress.

DH never tried on his button up shirt & it was too little. Ceremony was postponed 45 minutes so he could go buy one. It's now something we laugh about.

I went to a wedding where they didn't have enough seats for all the guests - they were doing a buffet meal and got talked into the whole "people will be eating and sitting at different times thing". Nope! Thankfully two close family friends gave me and FH their seats for a few minutes so we could sit down and quickly shove some food in our faces

My friend wedding, she decided not to do a seating charge but just reserved two tables for VIP.

Guess what! Everyone thought they are the VIP!

Her poor grandmother ended up all the way at the back of the room.

I was in a wedding where the groomsmen were taking out their phones during the 15 minute ceremony to check baseball scores (COME ON!). The bride requested that we wear heels while standing in grass/mud (the hilarity of my sinking kept the MOG from crying). No one (including the BP) could hear the actual ceremony due to there being no speaker system at the outdoor venue and a large number of semis going past. But it was beautiful and the reception went very well after we finally found the groomsmen (they found a tv in a random room, only delayed the dinner by 30ish minutes).

And I'm seconding the bustle! Don't just have one person learn to do it, have two or three. My BMs sister had an issue with her bustle and they couldn't find the only person who knew how to do it.

In a wedding in April, bride's mother got lost and stuck in traffic and was 2 hours late for hair and makeup. We started first look pictures pretty late, but ceremony still started on time! At another wedding where I was a guest, bridal party was stuck in traffic on the way to the ceremony and the ceremony was delayed 45 mins. A July wedding. In a church with no AC. I'm sure she was freaking out but it was pretty miserable being a guest at that wedding haha

At my friend's wedding, their daughter knocked the backdrop into the wedding cake....splat. Her DJ also didn't show up when he was supposed to, played music at the wrong time, skipped all the announcements, and didn't play a single slow song during dancing (so nobody but the kids and the bride/groom danced).

At another wedding, I went to the reception but not the ceremony (I can't remember why now). It said the ceremony was at 5:30 and the reception at 6. I showed up at 6:15 and they were already cleaning up the reception to go home. Like---ripping linens down and the food was already boxed up. So weird.

I attended a wedding where dinner took forever to be served. Turns out, they ran out of food! At least 4 tables or so were not fed, mine included!!

This is all the same wedding:

Wedding was 3 hours away from where everyone lives, but the closest hotel was 45 minutes from the venue and they had school buses for transportation. So we had to sit through a long, hot, bumpy ride.

The bathrooms were two porta-potties for 200 people--one of which had a hornet nest in it. Everything was outside, so by the end of the night most of the women had twisted their ankles trying to find the bathrooms in the dark (wearing heels) because they were so far from the tent.

At dinner, they stopped serving alcohol and it was buffet-style. We were the last table to get food and watching all of the delicious, heaping plates go by. By the time we got up there, all of the food was gone.

Then they had the buses leave at the same time, so everyone had to stay until then. I was pretty hungry and pretty drunk by that time...

My friends officiant texted about an hour before the ceremony that she couldn't make it. The back up wasn't familiar with their ceremony so it sounded pretty awkward during. I'm hoping this doesn't happen BUT if it does I'd like our replacement to at least have looked at the ceremony beforehand.

My sister forgot their rings. They borrowed other people's to do the ring exchange. They had to take their actual rings back to be blessed on another date. Moral of the story - check and double check all needed items!

At my BM's wedding, her MOH forgot the vows. She checked her pockets, checked her clutch...nothing. It was painful to watch. She didn't get to read her vows until the reception when she found them in the parking lot. Yikes!