At my brother’s wedding I thought I was eating sauerkraut but it was horseradish. I felt like my head was going to explode. After that I always make sure I know what I am eating.
Me first wedding: In a Greenwich Village Methodist church at night, a sandaled pastor, his wife witnessing, and we two, nobody else. The tragicomedy came later.
Me final wedding: Self-catered, friends helping, the entire event in our rural rental’s front yard next to a sheep pasture. Little nephew briefly lost the rings he was bearing. Just as the Unitarian officiator declared us wed, me mum passed out, shocked that I was doing something right. After the proclamation, to the horseshoe pits! One co-worker tried to drink all the (cheap) champagne, of course.
Me sister’s final wedding: As told upthread, the judge forgot which day and had to be retrieved for the backyard event. Then a police chopper buzzed the crowd. Silks flew.
Me kid’s wedding to an ex-celeb chef: In a gothic hall on Hallowe’en, a formal masque, eerie processional music, and a fine feast prepared by my now-SIL’s chef buddies, best in the SF Bay Area.
Me cousin’s wedding: Huge church affair bought by her deluded father. Her ex-BF hung around outside distributing copies of a famous magazine photo of her topless, riding on somebody’s shoulders. Cops finally removed him.
A friend and I were in the rectory of the country church where my sister and brother-in-law were getting married. We were getting the flowers ready when suddenly the priest stormed in shouting, “Where is everybody? Why aren’t they at Mass?”
Turned out he had driven eighty-some miles and took a long ferry ride, having had waited in an even longer line, only to find sis and bro-in-law had not only completely forgotten about the Mass, but had neglected to mention it to anyone else. Yeah, the priest was understandably angry.
The friend rushed down to the hotel, where everyone was still lounging around the pool and got them heading to church as quick as possible. I didn’t attend Mass, opting to finish up with the flowers, so I can’t tell you whether the priest’s mood improved once everyone arrived but by the time of the wedding, he seemed to in a better state.
Also, my bro-in-law is the sort of guy who takes people at their word, so when someone told him, “I’m a violinist. I can play at your wedding,” he said something along the lines of, “Cool! Go for it.” Without, you know, actually hearing this person play.
We suffered good-naturedly through many squeaks, squokes (Yes, I said squokes.) and squawks as he sawed away on the poor instrument. Fortunately, no one burst out laughing on first hearing him and since he was in the choir loft, I don’t think he saw the strange looks that came across some some faces as they worked to hold it in. At least, when I looked up there, I didn’t see him, so he couldn’t have seen us, right?
Ours was on the top of Keystone Ski resort. Had to take a gondola to get up there.
As is tradition, I did not see my wife, and I ended up taking up my tux and a couple of quickly thrown together tables for flower arrangements on the gondola. We are talking aspen tree legs and plywood and zip ties to put it together. Tripod tables with a circular top (Actually worked well)
I got married at a winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. NotL is about 15 minutes from Niagara Falls and is one of the two major wine regions in Canada. The wedding was Sunday evening and the last bus load of Japanese tourists were heading out just as my wife walked down the stairs with the procession.
I figure there are thousands of pictures of her in vacation pictures from Okinawa to Tokyo.
I’ve told this story before.
I used to have a cousin who was short and morbidly obese. I was one of the ushers in her wedding. We were all standing, waiting for her to come down the aisle. Suddenly she appeared, completely covered in veils. I said to the guy next to me, “She looks just like Cousin Itt from the Adams Family.” I had underestimated how my voice would carry in that venue, plus there was a momentary lull in the music. So the entire congregation heard me. There was some laughter, and some shocked silence. But really, she DID look like Cousin Itt. But fatter.
A friend of the family got married. It was the second marriage for both of them. The groom’s son was the ringbearer, the bride’s daughter was the flowergirl.
The bride’s brother got up to read a passage from the Bible. For some reason, he chose Paul’s admonition for women to obey their husbands. And then he went on to expound on how good that passage was. At great length.
Most of the men in the church were squirming. Most of the women in the church were steaming. Except for one elderly woman, who was a bit hard of hearing. She kept asking “What did he say?”
The woman next to her leaned over and said, “I think he’s trying to say she’s a virgin.”
A friend of mine got married. He was the head chef at a sports bar, which sounds a little weird (a sports bar has a head chef?) but this one did. And the food he and his staff–under his supervision–could turn out was incredible. Much better than regular sports bar fare.
He was getting married, and the ceremony was to take place at the sports bar. The sports bar was closed to all but invited guests, and I was one. So I was admitted, and found my place among the other regulars–uh, I mean guests. We regulars knew him, and he knew us, and he invited all of us, and we were pleased to be invited to share his happy day.
Anyway, the ceremony was short, and he and his bride had a dance; and then there was the dance with the new in-laws, and so on and so on. We happily enjoyed cocktails during these dances, but at some point, our friend disappeared. Even his bride was wondering where he was. Where did he go?
Turned out that he was in the kitchen. He didn’t trust his staff to prepare the meal correctly, and had to get back there to supervise and make sure that it was just as he wanted. With a flourish, he emerged from the kitchen along with the meal, and got a huge round of applause.
And the meal was oh-so tasty. We may have missed him for a bit, but that meal, prepared under his supervision, was worth it.
I felt bad for her. As embarrassing as it was for me, she was clearly mortified. I was relieved, though, when she took off running.
The bride invited two of her cousins who hated each other to her wedding. She thought that they would be on their best behavior because it’s a wedding and surely they wouldn’t argue at a wedding. No such luck. As we were enjoying cocktails in the function hall, one of the cousins dove over a table to tackle the other. They were separated after further struggle (with some of the bride’s and groom’s friends getting a few licks in) and the police were called to take them away. It took about an hour to get the bride to return to the hall. She can almost laugh about it now, over 20 years later.
A cousin’s son was getting married. People had come in for the wedding from all over the country. (large family - I have 42 first cousins) The night before the wedding the couple came down and said they weren’t ready to get married. They considered the sacrament holy and only had one go, and wanted to be more sure. So the family had a big party sans wedding, and 6 months later they quietly married. As far as I know, it stuck - still married after almost 20 years. No one in the family held it against them.
StG
StG
I hope you sat down in the chair and put the garter on yourself.
Before we got married, my wife was maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding. The time came for the bouquet toss. My then-girlfriend got out there with all the other single ladies. The bouquet went into the air.
And every other woman stepped back, just as they’d secretly planned before.
She caught it, standing alone on the dance floor, and held it up excitedly before looking around and realizing what they’d done.
We got married the next year.
My cousin’s wedding was on a very hot summer day, temps were in the mid 90’s. The church pews were upholstered in vinyl and made noises that resembled passing gas if someone moved while sitting in the pews. During the ceremony the minister asked for a moment of silence for an uncle of the groom, he had passed a few week before the wedding. During the moment of silence someone shifted while sitting and of course it made the sound of a fart. I was looking at my brother at the time and made the face of someone silently laughing. He snorted trying to hold back a laugh and this started the ball rolling. Others were trying to contain their laughter but were not having much success. It took about 30 seconds for the couple hundred folks in the church to start laughing. A few minutes later the merriment subsided and the ceremony was ready to continue. The groom looked at the audience with a smile and said that that was the perfect send off for his uncle, he would have enjoyed that kind of humor very much.
That would’ve been funny. I wasn’t enough of an extrovert to pull that off, though. I just made a silent vow never to try to catch another garter again.
At my sister’s wedding, she had one of her friends read a passage from Scripture. At the rehearsal the day before, her friend stumbled while coming down from the pulpit, nearly falling into the choir loft.
The next morning, she said she had a dream she’d actually fallen into the choir loft.
At the wedding, she tripped and fell into the choir loft. (She was all right.)
At my wedding, as I was coming down the aisle everyone (as is customary) stood up. My husband’s brother/best man said, “I told you you wouldn’t be able to see her!”
Around 1980, my cousin was at a wedding reception at the same hotel where Henny Youngman happened to be staying. Henny saw the wedding as he was walking through the lobby. Henny approached the father of the bride and offered to do a 15-minute stand-up routine for $500. When the FOTB gave Henny a check, Henny reportedly said, “I love this job”.
My first wife and I got married at a fairly remote military base. Her parents were able to get there, but anybody in the wedding party were either her school teacher colleagues or my military buddies. One of the military guys was an usher, and for some reason was really nervous about it.
My ex’s family was catholic, so when this young guy escorted her mother to the pew and she genuflected, he thought she was falling down, and started grabbing at her and going “Oh! Oh! Oh!” while she tried to fight him off. Funny stuff.
Mid 1950s, I was actually at my aunt and uncle’s wedding, but not yet born. It was at some hotel in NYC, during the reception my aunt’s mother spotted the singer Eddie Fisher (Carrie Fisher’s dad) in the hotel and asked him to come sing. He did, never heard about him charging for it though.
When my nephew got married, it took a big production to get everyone to the church. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law (parents of the groom) had five kids. I think there were charts made as to who would ride together, who was the last to leave the house (don’t forget to lock the door!).
As various people arrived, we all congregated at the back of the church to visit, until the wedding started. The church was beautiful and immaculate. There was even a church employee in a suit and tie, running a carpet sweeper everywhere.
Then we noticed the carpet sweeper guy seemed to be following my brother-in-law.
When you have five kids, you “make do” with what you have as long as possible.
My brother-in-law’s shoes were disintegrating. The stitching had unraveled, and the soles were crumbling. With every step he took, there were little bits and pieces on the carpet.
The carpet sweeping man said nothing, just pushed the sweeper over every step left behind.
My brother-in-law practically ran out the door to the parking lot to call the one kid at home to tell him to bring another pair of shoes IMMEDIATELY.
And the carpet sweeper man swept away all the little pieces of shoes.
The rest of us giggled and snorted all through the ceremony!
~VOW
In the “funny now, not so funny at the time” category… the wedding of a college buddy. The morning of the wedding, the bride and two bridesmaids take off with a bottle of something to go get shit-faced. Nobody knows where they are. They are an hour and a half late to the wedding. The bride can barely walk (kind of like the scene from Sixteen Candles) and the two bridesmaids somehow managed to wind up wearing each other’s dresses. The bride’s father told my buddy while we were all waiting, “If you want to back out now, I’d understand.”
(My buddy should have taken him up on the offer. The marriage was short-lived anyway, ending soon after what he once described to me as “the bikini/Coke glass debacle”.)