Not someone I know, but one of my brother’s work colleagues was stood up at the altar. I’ll call the groom-to-be G and the bride-to-be B.
A few days before the wedding, B received a phone call from an ex-boyfriend saying “I would like to see you” and B told him “now is not a good time, I am getting married on Saturday.”
The ex-boyfriend found out where the wedding was and was sitting in the church when B was walking down the aisle. B saw him in the church, walked up to G and told G “I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind.” Which was embarassing later since G was B’s supervisor at work. B left the company soon afterwards. I don’t know what happened to them after that.
I was the best man at a wedding where my friend get stood up at the church- the bride’s parents really disliked the groom, my friend, and presumably finally got her to cave to their will. The groom and I drove over to her house and banged on the door, still in tuxes immediately after the no-show became apparent, until her dad came out and said, “She never wants to see you again.” 5 minutes later the garage door opens and the parents and daughter in teh back seat come tearing out in their car and are lost in back streets before we can catch up.
Massive drinking at several bars begins. Around midnight, the groom and all his friends return to her house (which she and her parents don’t return to for a week or two). They begin the destruction of the yard, all of the bushes and grass (somehow one of the guys got ahold of a skid-steer loader) flower beds and any tree under 30 feet tall is ripped out and dumped into their swimming pool. Even all of their decorative fences and rocks are dumped in. Most of their lawn sprinklers even got pulled up with the lawn. After about 2 hours, there was a house with two trees on a brown patch of dirt. The backyard just had a mudpit surrounding a pile of yard debris that was overflowing their pool.
We tried to be quiet, but still not a single sign of cops or neighbors calling (which I think is a testament to how they felt about the parents and the wedding). Even after they returned from whereever they ran away to, the parents didn’t report anything to the police and seemed to just hire a landscape firm to put everything back the way it was.
Almost none of us talk anymore, we all drifted apart after that night, but it was the craziest vandalism I’ve ever heard of.
I was, kinda sorta. There was no altar and no aisle, but I was standing there in my would-be mother/father-in-law’s living room with the notary public (and his dog) and there was a white cake from Publix right there on the dining room table and all my would-be husbands friends and relatives standing around. We waited for the groom and his brother to arrive, and waited, and waited and waited. After a couple of hours I asked someone to give me a ride home.
I very unfortunately allowed myself to be talked into marrying the weinerhead anyway, later that night. He didn’t have to be talked into it as he was a RCH away from an alcoholic coma and could have been anywhere doing anything with anybody for all he knew.
The next morning I talked to a lawyer about an annulment. That was a non-starter so I ended up just divorcing him.
We all were. But I never really understood the urge to get married so young. Then again you hear those stories about high school sweethearts marrying and living happily ever after. (but you usually hear about that when you are reading obituaries)
Not quite on the altar, but I have a cousin who received a phone call from her fiance the morning of the wedding, telling her he was breaking it off. It’s never really been made clear to anyone was the exact reason was, so you can imagine there are lots of rumors flying around the family.
I only heard of one case, but they actually went through with the ceremony. A week or so later she admitted to him that she’d met someone else. The newlyweds had been dating for several years and apparently their marriage had been such a foregone conclusion for such a very long time that she couldn’t bring herself to put a stop to it! :rolleyes:
They divorced, and she married the new guy. I haven’t heard about them in years, but from what I understand they stayed married and lived happily ever after.
My sister was set to be the maid of honor for a pregnant bride she didn’t even like, as a show of support for the groom who was a close friend of hers and who was being forced into the marriage by both sets of parents. (He admitted to having had a one-night stand with the bride-to-be, but he was not the only possible father.) The night before the wedding, he ditched his bachelor party, found my sister, and asked her to run away with him.
Hell of a time to admit he was in love with HER.
My sister refused, telling him she wouldn’t consider someone who was unable to stand up to their own parents, and left him to think things over. (Admittedly, he was something like 17 years old, which could explain how he could be manipulated into believing he had to marry the girl.)
The next day my sister was maid of honor at their wedding. The bride soon suffered a mysterious miscarriage, and the pair divorced within a couple of years. And no, my sister did not end up with him. She was too pissed at him for being so guillible.
I realize it’s off-topic for the thread, but I just want to note that I married my high-school sweetheart. We’ve only been married for two years, but we had dated for eight years before that, and we’re still going strong!
I don’t know of anyone left at the altar, but a girl I knew in high school–let’s call her Jenny–dumped two consecutive guys a couple of weeks before the wedding. I think she liked being engaged, but didn’t really want to get married. The first guy was slightly mentally off-balance and seemed to have something of a habit of proposing very fast. Jenny dumped him, and he continued to do his proposal thing until a sort-of friend of mine actually went and married him (at 17! she dropped out of HS even! That lasted about 18 months. I worked with her mom at the family’s bakery, and the mom talked like she disapproved, but in that voice that said really she was just thrilled at the romance of it all. She even asked me if I thought I would ever get married, like “you’re putting it off!”–I was barely 18 :eek: That friend is now on her 3rd husband but seems to have settled down).
Second guy was my next-door neighbor. All this is making me sound like I come from a much smaller town than I really do, but it was like that. Jenny dumped him two weeks before the wedding too. Boy was he mad, and his whole family. They’d bought the dresses and all.
Jenny finally married her high-school boyfriend (yep, I knew him too). He was driving pizza for a living. However, it’s sure a good thing those other guys hadn’t married her, 'cause Dave was in for a shock when he found out that she didn’t believe in having sex unless you were actually trying for a baby. :eek::eek: They were divorced a year or so later, and she had a baby girl.
Now she is married to yet another guy I used to know. I hope she’s loosened up by now. I also know her brother; wonder if he thought the same? He doesn’t have that many kids. I dunno, it was very weird, and her dad seemed sane enough (I had him for a teacher, hardly knew the mom). I’m inclined to think she was just crazy.
I was at a wedding where the pastor got to the “do you take this woman” part. The groom just stood there. The pause was so long it was seriously uncomfortable. The pastor repeated the question. The groom, finally, said no. Much whispering. The pastor pulled the bride and groom into the sacristy. About five minutes later, he came back and said that since the reception (at a very, very, very exclusive private club) was paid for, everyone should go eat, there would be no wedding.
Much brouhaha. The groom had decided he wanted to be a Catholic priest. The next day, they went to another pastor for counselling. He told the groom that wasn’t a problem, he could be an Episcopal priest, which is the same thing only you can be married. (Pastor number two was neither Catholic nor Episcopalian, so his authority to pronounce on this was nonexistent.) The groom said OK, and this Jackass (I have many, many stories about what an incredible stupid jerk pastor number two was/is) married them in his office with his secretary as the witness.
Her parents disowned them both. Last I heard, he wasn’t accepted at any seminary, and they have a couple of kids they can’t figure out how to afford. (Did I mention that she came from money and he had no brains? Did I need to?) The whole thing was sad, because they both just needed to grow up a little, and pastor number two made sure their lives would be much more complicated than they needed to be.
Not deliberately stood up, but my friend who is a wedding photographer was supposed to shoot a wedding that didn’t happen, on account of the car the groom was in getting T-boned on the way to the church. He was in the front passenger seat, and the impact was on that side. He lived, and they were married later, but that was one frantic bride. And no, they did not bring the minister to the hospital and have the ceremony at his bedside. For one, he was in Expensive Care, and for two, that’s a helluva lot easier said than done even in a regular hospital room.
I did give our wedding planner a scare, accidentally. My best man and I were waiting in the waitstaff’s access to the banquet room where my wedding was to be in 15 minutes, and I had to pee. So we went looking for a bathroom, but since we were in the non-public part of the hotel, they weren’t marked or anything. So it took a while. Then we went back to where we had been waiting, thinking we still had several minutes to kill, only to see our wedding planner standing there with eyes the size of dinner plates. I guess getting everything set up had taken less time than expected, so she’d come to get me, but I wasn’t there.
One friend did go to a wedding where the groom decided not to go through with it – although he showed up and told the bride before the processional started. While the guests all got drunk at the reception, he, the bride, and the minister talked it over, and they tied the knot privately that night. Lasted about 18 months.
Is “wanted to surprise her” another way of saying “I didn’t RSVP”? Because if it is, why would she have planned for you to come and have bothered to notify you about the change in venue?
Slightly off-topic, but I once traveled to attend a wedding that did not happen because the groom died late the night before. The service was turned into a sort of memorial. I was a guest of a guest, so I didn’t know anyone, but it was all kind of surreal. I have to wonder whether that poor bride was raumatized out of ever getting engaged again.