Nothing - except that I got married. Oh, how we live and learn and damned near go bankrupt doing so
I was late. But it was Key West, so everyone was milling about enjoying the landscape. I had no Best Man, so was doing too many last minute things with not enough last minutes. No biggie, everyone knew I’d be there. My wife was never worried. We played the wedding music off of my laptop with little computer speakers, and needed three extension cords and a last-minute shanghai of a buddy to click the right icons at the right time.
My mom came down the day before the wedding with my dress, but forgot the veil. She called my dad several times, begging him not to forget the veil. The next morning, he duly showed up with the veil…but without any of his own dress clothes. My dad spent my wedding day in his habitual outfit–a short-sleeved white shirt, tie, and Docker-style pants. With the boutonniere cheerily stuck to his shirt-front. Oh, and the shirt was the one from the day before, since it was only supposed to be for driving purposes.
I’m not sure anyone noticed. The guys were only wearing suits anyway, not tuxedoes or anything, and it wasn’t a huge formal thing, so it wasn’t any big deal. Didn’t bother me, anyway, and we got a good laugh out of it.
1978 Las Vegas Nevada…We were getting married at the
“We have only just begun” wedding chapel. With only two weeks notice, my mom made a BEAUTIFUL wedding dress for me, sister made a lovely veil.
Growing up in Vegas, I KNEW better than to trust the strip chapels, so I called THREE times to make sure that they had us set up for the 7pm wedding…yes, yes, yes…everythings a go.
Showed up at the chapel…sorry, we dont see your name listed for a wedding, but we will “squeeze you in”. Fine, except, the minister scheduled didn’t show up…waiting…
waiting…more waiting…(hubby to be is shoved in a tiny coat closet in the back, so he wont see the bride)…
waiting…1 1/2 hours. Seems the minister scheduled was DRUNK, and the backup guy said he was just sitting down to dinner and would be there when he was darn good and ready.
Mostly, the rest of the wedding went ok…My mom was ticked at me somewhat…my future hubby and I had this horrible stuffed monkey we won at Circus Circus, and I had stayed up half the night before sewing it a suit and tie to match hubby (He was “best monkey”) and my mom said that it would NOT be part of the wedding…(I had a friend sneak him in and put it by her seat just before I walked up the aisle)
And, much to my hubby to be’s suprise, I let my sister cut my LONG brown hair in a “Dorothy Hamel” wedge (pixie) and in an attempt to lighten said hair, turned it ORANGE!!! Not reddish-orange, CARROT ORANGE!!! He didn’t see it until I walked down the aisle.
Our DJ, which we had been promised would be a high-energy (but not annoying) type of guy who would make everyone want to dance, etc.
Starting with the entrance of the wedding party, he mixed up the names of my husband’s mother and stepmother, THEN he stumbled over OUR names (our last name is not hard to pronounce at all) when we were announced “now for the first time as husband and wife blah blah blah”.
Then when it came time for the “money dance” where you pay 50 cents or a buck to dance with the bride and groom (polish tradition in my family), the guy didn’t take the time to find out what it was when we had it listed on our schedule and said “I don’t really know what this is but if you come up here someone can tell you.”
At the end of the night we had requested a certain song to be played as the “last song”. The DJ failed to make the announcement that it was the last song and when it ended everyone just kind of stood there until my husband kind of yelled out “hey thanks for coming everyone, we love you, good night”.
Watching our video is painful because all we see is that stuff. Yeah, we got our money back.
My mother-in-law was there. :rolleyes: You should see the photos. Her face: chin quivering, “he’s making a mistake” pouting in every shot. My face: Attitude like you cannot believe. In a word, smug.
My mother, who is evil, had to come up at the reception and tell me every little thing that was going wrong and what was I going to do about it. My Aunt Kat pulled mom off of me and gave her a severe scolding. I love my Aunt Kat! 
Funniest: Right before walking into the church, my dad asked if he had to wear his teeth. REALLY! (BTW Yes he wore his teeth down the aisle, then took them out immediately upon sitting).
Our marriage (done for the INS at the courthouse) was no biggy. We got stuck in traffic and ended up 1/2 an hour late for our 15-minute ceremony. The 2 couples scheduled after us had managed to get there early, so they bumped them forward, and then put us into the later slot.
Our wedding was the next year on the same day. Whoo boy. The wedding itself went very well. Good food, good music, good friends, the whole beer commercial. We eventually left, ready to show up at the in-laws the next day to open presents.
We got home, futzed around and went to bed. We [this is my wedding night, so I’m not giving you all the details] and then turned over to go to sleep.
Now, two things to know here. 1) My wife is a diabetic, and when we met, had given me a list of symptoms and possible reactions, 2) when she’s falling asleep, she twitches a lot - hands, feet, legs.
So we’re lying there spooning when her hand starts twitching. Then her feet. Then her legs. And she keeps twitching. Arms go as well, legs start scissoring. I thought this was getting silly, and tried to wake her up to get her to calm down. Roll her over and see that her eyes are open, staring sightlessly. I yelled at her to get her attention, the seizure’s getting worse, and all she can do is “Ag ag ag ag!” Eep. This was comletely unexpected and not one reaction in the “reaction list” she’d given me some time before.
Her arms, legs, neck are all seizing violently, and all she can do is moan incoherently. So I run to the next room to grab the phone and dial 911. While I’m away from her, her exclamations grow louder and more desperate, which scares the hell out of me. After I hang up, there’s not much else I could do except lie there and hold her and tell her how much I love her. I was scared shitless, I’ll tell you what.
So the ambulance staff arrives, we’ve got 4 EMTs clomping through our tiny apartment and into our tinier bedroom. They inject her (Glucophage I think it’s called - breaks down a tiny bit of your liver for a fast glucose spike), load her into the ambulance, and drive off down the road for the hospital, which was 1 1/2 blocks from our place. As there was no room for me, I ran down the street to the emergency room.
And beat the ambulance.
Turns out, these types of seizures aren’t unknown when a diabetic’s blood sugar is super low, which neither of us knew. As well, high-stress situations (like planning a wedding) can easily contribute to uncontrollable blood sugar. They wanted to keep her there until 8 the next morning until they were sure her blood sugar had stabilized. So I spent my wedding night sleeping on a gurney in the emergency room. We got to the in-laws at 11:30 the next day.
My wife doesn’t remember anything from when we started to go to sleep until about 5:00 the next morning, so I have no idea what she was feeling at the time, but I was scared silly.
Oh - and the wedding photographer screwed up. All the pictures of the ceremony were underexposed.
Nothing!
Uh, well, one little thing…
Repeatedly, my wife/fiancee had asked her mom (my MIL) if she wanted to have her hair done special for the ceremony. Over and over again, “No.” Then, the morning of the ceremony, after the salon run was over, she changed her mind, so they had to find someone who’d do her hair at the last minute.
Other than that minor thing, no problem. (Although I will admit to lying to my Best Man & Groomsman about the start time to insure they actually arrived on time 
)
Almost everything was perfect. The one LITTLE problem was that the priest my wife and her family insisted on having officiate is stationed in Israel, and could only arrange to be in Austin the weekend of the Texas-Nebraska football game. And the church they wanted the wedding at is in downtown Austin, near campus.
Now, there are NO more fanatical college football fans than the good folks of Nebraska (I’m being sincere when I say “good folks,” by the way- you’ll never encounter 50,000 nicer, more polite maniacs in your life!). Nebraska football fans travel in MASSIVE numbers to support their team, and they usually outnumber home-team fans for every away game.
So, traffic was an absolute nightmare all around the church, and every street around the church was filled with out-of-towners dressed in red.
Other than that, however, the wedding was perfect… and we even got to our hotel in time to watch Major Applewhite lead the Longhorns to victory, on TV.
Well, my grandmother was on her death bed, so attendance was extremely low, and several that did show sobbed through the ceremony.
Turek’s (my best man) last words to me as we entered the chapel, “Hey man, I’m your friend, if you want to run, I’m with you.”
Speaking with 20/20 hindsight, I have never received better advice. It, like all good advice, was ignored at the time, only to be appreciated later. 
My first wedding, while in the military, had a slight problem. The entire grooms party, best man and every groomsman, was in jail!
The nite before, they were all picked up in an area wide drug bust! The replacement best man was the ministers 12 year old son, and the groomsmen were all kids from the church.
My SIL decided at the last minute (without telling anyone) that she was going to be my bridesmaid. We had decided not to have attendants because the altar area was so small (actually a former livingroom turned into a wedding chapel). Imagine my suprise when I came down the aisle and there she was!
My husband’s cousin gave us a small reception at their house. Then my MIL told us they were giving us a “surprise” dinner at a local restaurant, just for the imediate family. I told her to invite my sister and her family. She didn’t. But how nice of my SIL’s very drunk and dirty brother and his GF to show up at the restaurant, especially since they weren’t at the wedding.
The wedding was on August 10th. In Texas. The cake was delivered in the afternoon. The frosting melted and the cake shifted and my grandmother (the junior league, garden club one) thought it was ugly. (It was but it was one of those situations where a friend wanted to make it as a wedding present and I would have seemed like a jerk if I declined.) Grandmother wanted to go to the nearest flagship super grocery and have a new cake made and delivered immediately. My mother managed to smooth her ruffled feathers and explain that we all agreed the cake was sad looking but friends feelings were more important to me than the cake.
We didn’t notice until after the florist delivered the flowers and left that they had not left corsage pins for the corsages and boutonnieres. We used a couple of ladies purse size sewing kits and sewed the bout’s to the lapels and then used the sewing needles to pin the corsages to the ladies dresses.
A girl who was to be a future sister-in-law tried to bully the friends I’d asked to be at the brides table by saying that I had told her she could be at the bride’s table. This of course was BS as she was hubbys’, brother’s gf at the time. Groom’s table cupcake and get over it. I ignored her temper tantrum and then told m-i-l that I had no idea why she was behaving that way as obviously since her son was the groom and not the bride that it would stand to reason the young women from that side of the family, if they wanted to be in the wedding party, would be at the groom’s table.
During the photographs prior to the wedding ceremony, someone stepped on the front overlay and pulled the little flounce that made the slippers peek out come down. My mom pinned it up and said it looked fine. I didn’t know until after we were previewing the wedding photos weeks after the wedding that it had been pinned up crooked and it showed in all the pictures.
During the wedding the minister paused and hubby said “I will” too soon. The minister said, “not yet son” so hubby said "I will and a few minutes later “I will”. He was embarrassed at the time, but all these years later it is a fun memory and I get to pretend that he was just really excited and anxious to marry me!
After the wedding just as we were going into the reception, my mother decided she wanted no part of a receiving line. Which mortified the junior league/garden club grandmother and the m-i-l. But what was I going to to? Pick a fight and try to force her hand? Why bother? So the grandmother and m-i-l remained “Elizabeth Post” appalled and I did not argue with my mother on my wedding day over a receiving line. We tried to go around to all the tables and great everyone. Frankly, by then so many little things had piled up, I just wanted out of there.
Oh and I forgot to eat that day, so the first thing we did when we arrived at the hotel, was order room service. Burgers, fries and chocolate shakes, triple thick, in the middle of the fancy hotel room bed at 1am in the morning. How’s that for romantic?
Ours went surprisingly smoothly. Our photographer didn’t show up because she had food poisoning, but she found someone else to replace her in time for the ceremony. That caused a moment of panic since we only found out she was sick hours before the ceremony, but it worked out fine. Also, we learned the night before that we needed a speaker system for our outdoor wedding or no one would be able to hear anything – luckily, my amazing brother-in-law came to the rescue and took care of the whole thing. He rules.
I was a groomsman in a friend’s wedding when the trolley they’d hired to drive us around Chicago to take pictures before the ceremony caught on fire and broke down, stranding us by the side of the road 30 minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start. The bride and groom actually hitchhiked to the wedding (lots of people stopped and offered rides when they saw us all standing there).
It took over a year for the photographer to get our pictures to us. And he’d chopped off the top of someone’s head in almost every shot. And he tried to get by with giving us the proofs which is bad enough but my mom had already paid to keep the proofs as well. He also took so damned long taking our pictures that half the guests had left the reception before we even got there.
We got married at a resort hotel sort of dealie in the foothills of Tucson, AZ. We chose it because it had lush green grass, trees, water, etc… in short, it didn’t look like the piece of shit desert that it was in the middle of. So the guys that were hired to videotape the wedding went across the street and filmed the piece of shit ugly ass desert bullshit to use as the intro footage. Fucking morons. They also did this interview thing where they got each guest to say something… except they missed a few crucial people like…oh… THE MAID OF HONOR and members of my immediate family, one of whom died not much later and I really would have liked to have seen on that tape.
Pa forgot the shotgun.
Maybe I’m crazy, maybe y’all will think I’m nuts, but on my wedding day, I married my best friend. Yup, there were family health issues, yes, there was family money issues, yes there were issues PERIOD - we’re a FAMILY! What family DOESN’T have issues? But you know what? It was ALL good. Really, it was ALL good.
And it still is. It wasn’t a flashy marriage; it was at the courthouse, with “Trackside” at Arlington for a reception lunch, then we spent Thanksgiving, the next day, with us as a newly married couple hosting it for the ENTIRE family, including those who came in from out of town. I couldn’t find a thing wrong wtih marrying my best friend, my biggest supporter, my most ardent cheerleader - and then having 30 people for dinner.
It rocked. Really. And we’re redoing it again this summer. The big family huge blowout invite everyone with DNA that could be related to you dinner thing. Not a renewal of vows or anything, but just getting us all together now that we’re all family. For better or for worse.
GAWD, a renewal of vows?? I won’t dress up THAT dressy twice in a decade!! What would people THINK?
featherlouI apologize for hijacking, but Mr2U and I just had a conversation about ten minutes ago about our next party, so I’m kinda on cloud nine. I know, I know, a 37 year old woman with a teenage kid who is “giddy” ain’t a pretty sight. 
Well, other than my father’s tux pants being about two inches too short, the wedding was lovely. The real fun was at the restaurant where we all went afterwards. You see, I was fairly pregnant at the time, and had been having some pre-term labor issues for a couple of weeks. As soon as they set the steak down in front of Bluesman, I grabbed his arm and told him we really needed to go to the hospital. He gave a last, wistful look at his steak, and off we went, to spend our wedding night in the L&D floor at our local hospital.
Fortunately, Blueskid#1 delayed his entrance for six more weeks, but Bluesman never did get his steak. I think my dad ate it.
We scheduled our ceremony (outdoor, tables under tents) for 2:00. The intent was to save a little money; 2:00 means it’s after lunch, and before dinner, so we wouldn’t be responsible for serving a big meal. We called it “afternoon tea.”
First we had to argue with my mother about the food. We wanted to hire a caterer, but my mother, taking after the family, is kind of a cheapskate (lots of stories about this) and wouldn’t hear of it. She didn’t want anyone paying for a caterer, even though it was our money; she wanted to make everything herself. She actually wanted to serve those little cocktail weenies on toothpicks. Eventually we compromised, and we got some pastries pre-made, while family members sat around and made cucumber sandwiches and stuff, since that goes well with the afternoon-tea concept.
Two hours before the ceremony, as we were surveying the arrangements, it suddenly occurred to us: We have no tea.
Frantically we discussed gathering as many teapots from the neighbors as we could (we were getting married in the acre-sized back yard of my parents’ house), and I jumped in the car and ran into town to see if any of the event shops would rent us a giant convention tureen, but no go. We had our afternoon tea without tea. I don’t think anybody noticed.
By comparison, the fact that the judge at the ceremony repeatedly mispronounced my first name, despite my careful instructions beforehand, was kind of minor.
But then, as the reception was winding down, we caught one of our relatives stealing. We had put little bubble-blowing bottles on all the tables for the kids, along with disposable cameras. We had also made sure to buy more champagne than necessary, because you’d rather have too much than not enough.
Well, we caught this one woman — part of a weirdly religious (like, cult-y) offshoot of the family that nobody ever heard from except when they randomly showed up at family functions — looking at the cameras on the tables to see which ones hadn’t been used much, and taking those, along with as many bubble bottles would fit in her purse. My stepfather also saw her carrying a box of champagne (six bottles) out from the garage to her car. Didn’t say anything to her; just stared in disbelief as she ignored him and loaded up.
Other than that, it was just fine. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect.
I’ve mentioned these in a couple of different threads already, but I’m too lazy to go find them. I’ll just sum them up quick.
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My MIL got in a fist fight with her SIL in the middle of my living room a couple of hours before the ceremony.
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MIL chose our reception to fall of the wagon after 20 years of sobriety.
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MIL got into a yelling match with one of her friends in the restroom right before the ceremony.
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MIL screeching at the top of her lungs during the toasts about wanting 10 grandchilden as soon as I could ‘pop’ them out. (which was hysterically funny since she and everyone else in the family knows DH and I had been going to fertility specialists for a coule of years by then.)
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The florists messed up the date and as didn’t get the corsages and boutiniers delivered until 15 minutes before the ceremony. They were put together hastily and so shoddily that when my mother pinned my brothers on, the rose bud fell off.
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The local pop distributor was a no show. I had an open bar, but no pop for mixed drinks. I even called them at noon to verify the delivery too. Thank goodness my little brother works for a distributor in Idaho, and had brought up 13 cases to have around the house while all the relatives were around.
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The heel fell off my husband brand new boots right before the dancing was supposed to start, and we had to send a friend of ours into town to get his others from the house.
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Every photographer in town was booked for 6 months in advance, so I assigned a couple of relatives with decent cameras to take some quality shots and I put disposable cameras on the tables for candids. Got every single one of them back except the one my MIL took and refused to give back it or the negatives. Go figure. No, I don’t know why.
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I let the inlaws have my house while I stayed in a motel. I figured it would be more peaceful that way. When I got home, the counters were covered in dishes, the lamp in the bedroom was smashed, the carpet had a stain of unknown origins, and the patio had been hit with a McDonalds hurricane. Smooshed ketchup packets on the concrete, fries in the birdbath, and the picnic table had never been cleared off from the meal. Oh yeah, and chocolate milkshake on the vinyl siding. Someone went through my flower beds and picked a bouquet by ripping up the entire plant and then ripping the roots off and tossing them on the lawn.
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My relatives now hate my inlaws, and vice versa.
Any soon-to-be brides out there? GO TO LAS VEGAS!!!