Dramatic wedding cancellation stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Got any?

My sister’s on-again off-again wedding is off again, the day after I changed my mind and decided to go and bought very expensive plane tickets, of course! (I did get a complete refund. Thank you, Orbitz!)

So, this was traumatic and frustrating enough, and I’m just on the periphery of it. Anyone have any really dramatic stories? Altar-side declarations of love for the maid of honor? The bride’s real husband standing up during the call for objections? The guests sitting for hours as they wait for a wedding party that never shows?

Or does that only happen in sitcoms?

2

Flew into Atlanta for a friend’s wedding. Checked into the hotel where all the guests were staying, then met a few friends in the bar. This was pre-cell phone days. At one point someone came in and breathlessly said that the bride and groom got into a big fight and called it off. Sure enough, there was an announcement at the front desk the next day. Everyone from out of town sat around for two days hanging out in the hotel pool and hitting bars and gossiping. It was actually quite fun - we hadn’t seen each other in a while, so it was a college reunion basically.

Finally heard from him a few days later when he called to apologize - turns out the wedding planning brought out the very worst in her, and he decided he didn’t want to be with her anymore. They never talked again. Ah.

3

Remarkably sane groom. I wish I’d had his foresight.

4

I was supposed to go to a co-worker’s wedding. She had lost her mom to cancer a few years before, and then her father (who had been remarried to a woman she hated) took a turn for the worse, health-wise, a few weeks before the wedding.

As the wedding day approached, she got more and more paranoid that her stepmother was trying to cut the family off from her father to lay her hands on his money. By the day of the wedding, I got a call that the wedding had been called off because the bride was in the inpatient psych ward. They never did end up getting married; it was really sad, because except for being psychologically unstable, she was a really sweet woman, and her fiance was crazy about her.

5

I was the bride-to-be in a shotgun wedding. I called it off 3 days before.

6

My cousin’s son was to be married. Big Catholic ceremony, family in from all over the country (I have 41 first cousins, if that gives you an idea of the size of the family). The night before the wedding, they announced that they didn’t know that they wanted to get married, and didn’t want to demean the sacrament if it was the wrong decision (cousin’s son was much more Catholic than his parents, and his fiancee had converted while they were dating). So the wedding was off. But, from everyone I heard, there were no angry guests - people were glad they didn’t marry if there was any doubt. The family still had a big party. They married more quietly about 6 months later, and now have a few kids and seem very happy.

StG

7

Care to elaborate?

8

Had an Indian classmate whose brother escaped out the window the night before the (arranged marriage) wedding and sent his parents an email the next day that he was gay and had a boyfriend. Last I heard, the parents still hadn’t accepted it and were still scouting potential wives for their now openly out son.

“It’s only a phase you know, it will pass!”

I’ve known closeted Indian people before but they usually keep the family at bay on the marriage issue (partially avoidant, refusing to commit after a couple of dates). I can’t believe my friend’s brother took it as far as he did, but they came from a really, really conservative South Indian situation. She was living with someone for 4 years and her parents didn’t know because she spent the money to keep a faux apartment that she didn’t live in, all for their mental health.

9

I flew across the country to go to a friend’s wedding. I showed up at the time and place on the invitation, and no one there knew anything about a wedding.

They changed the location after the invitations went out, and no one told me.

10

So what happened?

11

I know someone that went on deployment to Afghanistan after buying a house with his fiancee. They were making wedding plans for when he came back. He came back to an empty house.

She had met someone else but “didn’t want to tell him when he was at war”.

12

I was 18 and both he and I went to a fundamentalist Pentecostal church and had done all our lives. When I found out I was pregnant I told my parents and they instantly starting the wedding plans. My dad didn’t even try to pretend anything and told even my Nana that “we’re having a shotgun wedding”. It was all pretty mortifying. Then people in the church found out and I was a slut and he was a victim of my womanly wiles. Every time I ate he’d start telling me how fat I was going to become and then the church kicked me, not us, me, out.

There are some times and things that I’m not totally clear about during that time and it’s not something that is talked about now but to the best of my recollection what happened is this: I knew, despite the backlash that was going to happen, I just could not go through with the marriage, so three days before it was going to happen, I told my mom that I couldn’t go through with it. She said she understood and I don’t know how it all got canceled.

I then went home to my basement suit and started bleeding heavily. I crawled down the hall to the bathroom, I don’t remember really what I did there but I left a trail of blood. I don’t remember calling my mom but I know I did because she drove me to the hospital. I went to use the washroom and while I was sitting on the toilet I heard a splash, got up and looked in and the fetus had come out (I was about 3 months along). I reached in to grab it but it slipped away down the drain. When I came out of the bathroom, I don’t know why but I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. A nurse checked me out and said that it would be a while before the fetus came out and I should just lay there. A few hours later another nurse came in and checked me and said “oh you’ve miscarried” she didn’t ask if it came out or what happened to it.

She then started asking me some other questions like when did I last see my doctor and I couldn’t remember the exact date, I was crying and said " I just had a miscarriage ok, I don’t remember the exact date" she replied “well I don’t see how having a miscarriage could cause amnesia”.

So they cleaned me up and I went home. Everything was over, no marriage, no pregnancy.

I’ve always regretted telling my parents I was pregnant. I wish I had kept quiet longer and just had the miscarriage without them knowing. I think the whole thing would have been much easier to deal with.

13

Ugh. I hate hearing stories like that. Something like that happened to my little brother.

I hope she gets hit with a car.

14

Wow, FloatyGimpy. What a terrible thing to happen to you, and what a terrible way for you to have been treated, from all parties involved.

I’m glad you made it through with your wits intact.

15

Have you posted about this before or are there actually two Dopers with this similar weird story?

16

Mr. GilaB’s former fiancee left him the night before their planned wedding. I realize that I’ve only heard one side of it, but my understanding of it is this: In a community where people date for about 4-8 months and are engaged for another 3-5, they had been together for three years altogether while she told him she loved him but was not ready to marry him yet. When he said that it was time to get engaged or move on, they got engaged, but the wedding planning (complete with lots of pressure from her parents as to how things ought to be) was extremely stressful for both of them. (For what it’s worth, in my experience, my in-laws were incredibly easy to plan a wedding with, and I can believe that they were not a source of strain on that front.) The afternoon before the wedding, when he, his family, and some friends had already flown out to her hometown, a few of her friends came to find him and said that he really needed to come over, as she was quite upset. They spent the afternoon and evening talking, with her insisting that while she loved him, she wasn’t ready to marry him, and wanting to postpone the wedding, and him insisting that it was now or never. She was still not ready, and called it off. His parents and a few friends spent that night calling everybody telling them not to come out, and his cousin and a couple of friends took him to an amusement park to ride roller coasters during the actual time of the wedding.

I’m grateful to her, in that she didn’t marry him, but I wish she’d made up her mind earlier. It made him a bit gun-shy while we were dating, understandably so, since on some level he believed that as soon as he proposed, I would turn into a raving lunatic who would destroy his life and stomp on his heart. She married someone else about 22 months afterward, while he and I were married about two months later. We all still live in the same community and go to the same synagogue, which is incredibly awkward, but we mostly manage to avoid one another.

17

This happened at the church I attended at the time. I wasn’t invited to the wedding, but knew a lot of people who were there.

Young couple, both of them pretty much gormless. Her family was wealthy, of the type where she was only vaguely aware of how things happened, because they had a staff. He was not wealthy, and her parents hated him. She insisted, much money was spent on a very elaborate ceremony and reception. Family and friends flew in from everywhere.

At the altar, the pastor said “Do you take this woman?” and the groom just stood there. The pastor repeated the question, and the groom said, “No.” Much consternation. The pastor took the couple back into the sacristy. The groom explained that he had come to the conclusion that he was called to the Catholic priesthood, so marriage was out of the question. (Everyone involved here was Lutheran, so this isn’t a typical career choice.)

Pastor came out and explained to everyone, leaves to go talk to the couple. Groom leaves, bride has a complete breakdown. Her family is loudly angry at the groom. Guests leave, after which it occurs to the bride’s family that they should have told everyone just to go to the reception. Much frantic phoning around, to try to salvage whatever possible of the very expensive feast. Groom’s family is angry at her family, who obviously care more about money than people. Words Are Exchanged. The pastor, hearing the commotion, comes back out and tells everyone to leave. He sends bride to a local counselor for support.

Counselor, who is, IMNSHO, an idiot (and has since been arrested for inappropriate sexual contact with minors, but that’s another story) calls the groom in to achieve closure. He explains to the groom that being an Episcopal priest is just like being a Catholic priest, except you can be married. (Remember that all these people are Lutheran, including the counselor, who is also ordained clergy.) This makes sense to the couple (remember, gormless), so he marries them right there, with a couple of random strangers as witnesses.

Both families disowned both of them, and the last I heard, they were struggling to make a go of it.

18

I traveled cross-country to visit my girlfriend, and we were going to attend a wedding of one of her friends while I was there. It didn’t happen, because the groom died the night before. The reception turned into a funeral service.

19

I thought we did a similar thread several months ago, IIRC (which I sometimes don’t).

20

Why?

Should she have married him, just to divorce him in two years? Or broken things off while he was deployed?* … shudder … *

I just hope he didn’t lose the house …