What went wrong on *your* wedding day?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Our experience wasn’t too bad. The only “problem” was that we got married outside and it was like 85 degrees outside. One of our groomsmen broke his hand 5 days before the wedding so he couldn’t stick his right arm down the sleeve. Oh - and we ran 45 minutes late. That would be because my bridesmaid forgot the masking tape (to hold the plastic tablecloths on) and volunteered to go get more. It took two of them FORTY FIVE MINUTES to go to the “nearest” gas station (I have a feeling they drove like 10 miles out of the way) and get a half-dozen things. Our debacle was the flight to Florida.

We were booked on a cruise leaving Sunday, but were determined not to miss it, so we flew down Saturday night, from Indy to Tampa with a connection in Atlanta. Our flight from Indy was so late that we missed our connection and spent our wedding night in a HoJo’s in Atlanta. “Night” meaning the 3 1/2 hours of sleep we managed to get before our 6:00 AM flight to Tampa. We didn’t consummate our marriage until that afternoon on the cruise.

62

My ex-wife came from a socially prominent family in her community, so our wedding was actually a huge affair that had very little to do with us - we were just sort of the live entertainment for all my former MIL’s friends. Still, it was a very, very nice affair. Two things went wrong:

  1. I forgot the wedding license; however, given my former FIL’s pull, the Clerk of the Court opened his office on Saturday and re-did the license for me while I stood there and waited.

  2. After the wedding we proceeded to Nags Head, NC for the honeymoon. The most direct way to get to Nags Head is down 158 (IIRC), which is a four lane highway that crosses a body of water. Unfortunately, there was a horrific accident on the bridge and my new bride and I had to sit in traffic for nearly 4 hours. By the time we go to the hotel room-service was closed and we were exhausted. I went across the street to a convenience store and bought a loaf of bread, some mayo, and a can of corned beef. I didn’t have a knife so I had to make one out of a paper plat. For our dinner on our wedding night my ex-wife and I had corned beef sandwiches, potato chips, and cold beer. We actually laughed about it and it was sort of endearing in a way.

The worst thing I’ve ever seen happen at a wedding occured at the reception of one of my ex-wife’s co-workers. I didn’t attend the ceremony, but rather went straight to the reception. I was the first one there and discovered that there were two things that spelled trouble: open bar and the fact that it was being held around a swimming pool. "Someone’s going swimming tonight, " I thought. Eventually the wedding party arrives and they weren’t there 5 minutes before the bride (I guess in a complete fog given the joy of “her day”) greeted some guests and turned around and stepped right into the deep end of the pool. Her dress and train sort of float up around her, she’s thrashing and yelping, and people are trying not to laugh their guts out. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it didn’t have to wait very long.

63

We didn’t have rain on our wedding day…we had a hurricane! Hurricane Irene decided to brush the NC coast on the day of our outdoor wedding.

We had rain all day, then miraculously, it cleared up for our ceremony and pictures. The sunset was just absolutely stunning. When we all got situated under the tent for dinner, the squalls started. The generator blew because of all the water that got in it. My dad and a couple of the groomsmen were out in the wet trying to get it restarted again. One of my bridesmaids got absolutely soaked trying to get the sides of the tent down. Luckily, one of the groomsmen, who had flown in from Australia, had brought his Drizabone, which I wore over my dress for the rest of the reception. The guests started singing the theme song from Titanic.

After the wedding, my husband and I drove over to a local island, where we had rented a condo for the first couple nights of our marriage (we were heading to Boston in a few days for the real honeymoon). We got a call at 6 am that the island was being evacuated. We arrived back at my parents’ house to find everyone who had flown in - the airport had been closed down and they couldn’t leave. I spent the second night of my marriage on my parents’ living room floor with my husband and 8 other guys. Cool. The next morning, all the guys helped my dad pull up the planks on his dock so that it wouldn’t be destroyed (he had just replaced the whole thing due to it being relocated to his back yard by Hurricane Floyd the month before).

The only other thing that went wrong was that the celebrant was about 1/2 hour late - he’d forgotten the ceremony back at his hotel. Oh, and when he asked me to repeat the vows, he left out about half of them, so my husband promised me a whole bunch of stuff that I didn’t promise him! :slight_smile:

It’s funny, though…after all that, we have had several people tell us it was the best wedding they’d ever been to. My husband and I had an absolute blast - all the chaos turned it into a great party!

64

Since I shamelessly stole it from my MOH, no fovgiveness necessary - she’ll love that it’s being passed on!

65

I’ve mentioned the events surrounding my wedding before, but here’s the basics…

We got married on August 7, but several things happened during that summer leading up to the wedding:

  • In mid-June I went to a friend’s bachelorette party and a fight broke out at the bar we were at. One of the participants missed the guy he was swinging at and hit me instead…and broke my nose to smithereens. Went to the emergency room and ended up having to have corrective surgery. I still had black eyes and swollen face two weeks before the wedding.

  • In July, Hubby went to Nebraska for a softball tournament, during which he sprained his left ankle. He was due back on a Sunday night and when he didn’t show, I started to panic. He finally called at 11 p.m. to tell me what happened and that he had been in the e/r and was unable to drive himself home (6 hour drive) since it was his left ankle and he drove a stick shift. Was finally able to come home three days later but in excruciating pain and with an air-cast.

  • In mid-July, Hubby, tired of using crutches to get around, resorted to hopping on his right foot instead. Was on the phone with me when he went hopping to get something and in mid-conversation, stops and says in the calmest of voices, “Oh…ow. I think I have to go to the emergency room. I’ll call you back.” AND THEN HUNG UP! Turns out that there was a ball-point pen laying on the floor and in some sort of freak accident, he hopped on the end of it, popping the ball-point end up and directly into the bottom of his foot. When he tried to pull it out, the plastic barrel came out but the ball-point was lodged in the bone and he had to have it removed in the e/r and get stiches. We still have it saved in a plastic baggie because there is a big piece of mysterious body part attached to the ball. Ick.

  • At the end of July, one of my bridesmaids calls from Texas and says she can’t come becuase she had to have “emergency surgery” (Over a week away? Doesn’t sound too emergent to me…I think it’s just that she had previously slept with the best man the first time she met him and was too embarassed to see him again.) Luckily, my wonderful SIL stepped in and took her place. I’m so much happier it was her instead.

  • Wedding day finally arrives! Nothing too major happened except that hubby didn’t want to be on crutches so he wore the air cast and toughed it out the whole night on one bad ankle and one bad foot. He even danced! There was also a high-school reunion in the ballroom next door and somehow, their speaker system was also playing in our ballroom. During a sentimental slide show my cousin put together for us, someone over at the reunion started using the microphone and was saying things like, “Ok, if you came here from more than 50 miles away, stand up! How about 500? Now stand up if you came from over 1,000 miles?” etc. And the guests at my wedding were standing up in the middle of our slide show! We had people from England there who were so proud to be the only ones who came from that far away. My aunt ran next door and they fixed it but it sort of ruined the nice moment of the slide show. Then, one of my guests ran in to some people from the reunion in the corridor outside both ballrooms and it turned out she knew them…and once they heard there was an open bar at my reception, they decided to crash the reception, claiming they were guests.

THEN, on the honeymoon…Hubby, having had two injuries requiring trips to the e/r also had two pain killer prescriptions. One was your basic extra strength Tylenol or something fairly harmless, but the other was Vicodin. He brought both on the trip, unbeknownst to me. On day 1 he asked me to get him a pain pill and so I got one from the first bottle I found, not knowing there was another. Through the rest of day 1 and all of days 2 and 3, I continued giving him pills from that bottle. And for all three days, he was EXHAUSTED…just could barely keep his eyes open and spent a lot of time sleeping. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him until I happened to discover the second pain pill bottle. Turns out I had been giving him the Vicodin all along and he never thought to tell me he had brought both kinds! He perked up much more once he switched meds.

Other than that, the wedding and honeymoon were fantastic. I refused to be bridezilla and just went with the flow, and as a result, I can look back at everything that happened and laugh. Many of my friends have told me they don’t know how I was able to handle it, but I think that I was able to because I never had an image in my mind of the “perfect” wedding so there was no standard I was trying to meet. And it makes for great stories. People repeatedly ask to hear about how I tried to kill Hubby on our honeymoon. :slight_smile:

66

The plan: Elopment. Go to the Lincoln Park Conservatory 30 minutes before closing, say some vows, have the minister do her voodoo, go back across the street to our hotel for champagne. In, out, done - should be fifteen minutes tops. :cool:

Except our minister (who was very sweet but maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer) was driving in from the suburbs. On a Friday night. Into Lincoln Park, Chicago. Where there’s no parking. :eek:

So we made it to the Conservatory five minutes before closing with no idea where we wanted to have our ceremony. Run through, find a place, situate everyone, get started…here’s the security guard trying to kick us out. Stop the ceremony. Explain we’re trying to get fer-christ’s-sake-MARRIED here. Are graciously (snort) granted five more minutes. Get started again. Have tourist walk through ceremony. Stop ceremony again. Start ceremony again. Have security guard come through to ask if we’re done. Stop ceremony. Shoo away security guard. Start ceremony again. Have another tourist walk through WITH CAMERA. Laugh hysterically and finish ceremony. Get well wishes from both tourists and security guard. :dubious:

For some reason our minister (I call her “ours” when we just picked her off the internet) decided to bring her daughter to the ceremony. She looked nice in the wedding pictures. :confused:

Which didn’t really matter in the long run, as we had a friend that snapped pictures for us and put together a cute little wedding album. The day we received the album we left it in the car to take with us to work the next day. That night our car was stolen. No pics, no negs, no nothing. :smack:

My mother-in-law wouldn’t speak to us for three months, including uninviting us to her birthday party. :rolleyes:

It was the best wedding ever. It is not possible for us to be any happier. :slight_smile:

67

Our wedding was a relatively small one, family and a few best friends. Also, it was the sort where everyone contributes something. MrsDog sewed her own wedding dress, and Mom sewed up a ring pillow with a couple ribbons on it to keep the rings in place. Who to be the ring bearer, though?

It fell upon my older nephew, five at the time. He was quite willing, and looked cute in the gray suit my brother and SIL got for him. Then, on the day of the wedding, he met MrsDog’s daughter, thirteen at the time. He was absolutely smitten with her and told his mother, in strictest confidence, that some day, he was going to marry her.

Mom, of course, told everyone, and the kid, terribly embarrassed, refused to participate in the wedding. I got him into a corner, away from everyone else, showed him the pillow and mentioned how pleased we’d be if he would be our ring bearer. Absolutely not (Couldn’t blame the kid, actually) so the best man and matron of honor got them instead.

All in all, not nearly as bad as some of the stories here. Oh, MrsDog was eight years older than I. When I pointed out to DesertLass that was the same difference as between her and nephew, I don’t think she appreciated it.

DD

68

Me and hubby got married in Vegas, just the two of us, at the Little Chapel of the Flowers. The service went fine, other than the fact that the minister had wonky eyes, so I was never quite sure who he was talking to.

Afterwards, hubby had arranged for us to fly over the Grand Canyon by helicopter, which sounded great, but in actual fact turned out to be a bit embarrassing. I hadn’t realised that we were landing for a picnic in the Canyon - when we landed everyone else immediately started hiking around in their practical footwear, while I just fell over repeatedly, as 4" heels and an ankle length wedding gown aren’t really the thing to wear for wandering around the Grand Canyon! I was covered in bruises and grazes by the time we got back to the hotel, but at least we saw the funny side of it.

69

We held our wedding out of town, so most of our arrangements were done by phone and with my mom’s help. For the most part it worked fine, but we did get a couple of surprises. The biggest one was finding out , at the rehearsal, that the “nondemoninational” outdoor chapel had a big ol’ wooden cross at the front and one carved on the dais. Since the huz and I aren’t X’ians, we opted to cover them up. No biggie, as it turned out, but it was a bit of a shock.

The wedding day problem was my maid of honor–she got lost and showed up more than an hour late. We delayed as long as we could, then found a substitute for her. It worked OK, and she did show up in time to see the big moment.

But, the whole day was so wonderful for both of us, that we were largely unfazed by most of it. There are small things I would change, but overall it was exactly the way I wanted our wedding to go.

70

Mr. Rilch and I had a courthouse ceremony. We were really squeezing this in to a harried work-week, but I managed to cobble together old-new-borrowed-and-blue. Finally, the couple ahead of us was called in, and for the first time that day, I fully took in Mr. Rilch’s appearance. Plaid shorts with striped shirt! Argh! Well, I figured that proved it was time he got married!

At the wedding of one of my cousins, his brother was the best man. When the ring was called for, the best man did a dramatic, pocket-slapping routine, pretending he’d forgotten it, but finally produced it just as panic was setting in. The matron of honor pulled a sprig from the bride’s bouquet and threw it at him.

Opal, I remember you telling that story before. But I thought the problem was that you wanted the photogs to capture the stark beauty of the desert, while instead they went for what you saw as the fakey romanticism of the chapel. :confused:

plnnr, I remember you telling that story (bride in pool) as well. I also remember referencing it in a thread I started to ask why so many people laugh at the humiliation of others. Several posters shrugged off my concern, insisting that this wasn’t a life-ruining event. So was it? What happened next? Did she go get changed and come back, or was that the end of the reception? You said she was “yelping”; does that mean she couldn’t swim, and if so, did anyone stop snickering long enough to help her? Gimme some closure here!

71

We eloped and we didn’t know exactly what we were supposed to do when we stopped at the courthouse to get our license. I thought that’s where the marriages were done. The clerk directed us to a local bookkeeping firm where the notary did weddings. We went in, gave her $10, said our vows, and had some strangers sign our certificate (supposedly as witnesses, but they were in another room, doing their accounting work at the time.) Guess we could have planned a little better, but it’s lasted almost 20 years, so I guess we did OK.

My sister wasn’t as lucky. One of their groomsmen decided to have elective surgery two days before the wedding. On his nose. He showed up in his formal wear with 2 black eyes and a big white bandage on his schnozz. Made for very attractive photos. :rolleyes: My mother was furious - there really was no reason he had to have his nose worked on right then. We later found out he was typically an ass.

72

Wow. I have to say, I’m feelin’ pretty lucky right now. Overall, my wedding day went off without a hitch (except for an attitudinal limo driver, who cut my hair preparation time by about 10 minutes)–I even managed to sneak in an hour poolside at the Bellagio before the big event, so that I had a lovely bronze glow for the blessed affair.

So yeah . . . the wedding itself was quite happy.

It was the wedding brunch, hosted two days days later by our witnesses (basically to function as the backdrop for the presentation by another friend of a surprise wedding cake), that was the nightmare.

Technically, it was only a nightmare for about 20 minutes, but UGH. My heart starts pounding and my eyes go all googly in my head whenever I think about it.

Long story short, Host/Hostess Friends have two three-year-old daughters, and Cake-Making Friend has one three-year-old daughter. That’s a lotta 3-year-olds, but the ratio of kids to adults at the affair was still quite manageable.

. . . or so we thought until Cake Maker’s daughter (CMD)disappeared.

SkipMagic and I were relaxing in our guest room downstairs, having been shoo’d from the lunch prep going on in the kitchen, when we heard people walking around calling CMD.

Being no stranger to the sudden disappearance of a muthaf*cka, (heh), I stepped out into the hallway to see if help was needed (Skip was right behind me). At that point, nobody sounded too panicked, but when the child hadn’t been found several minutes later, eyes got wider and breathing grew heavy.

Then the hunt was on.

As the adult guests trolled the (extensive and rather well-foliated) grounds of my friends’ home, the air rang with cries of “CMD, CMD . . . !”

Having exhausted pretty much all other possibilities (including the–blessedly unoccupied–outdoor hot tub), I began walking up and down the street in front of the house, carrying one of the remaining 3-year-old girls (formerly of Auntie EM’s Big Vagina fame), who had asked to come with me, and who kept positing rather alarming theories about the missing child:

“She went home.”

“She went away.”

“She went under a car.” :eek:

We continued up and down the street, asking passersby (each of whom gave me the consummate “You’re a Bad Mother (and not in the Shaft way)” look) if they’d seen the girl . . .

. . . no luck.

Just as I was about to collapse with worry, exhaustion, and the cumbersome weight of a toddler, I heard theeeeee most bloodcurdling scream coming from the house.

At that point, I of course thought the worst, but was forced to hide my panic, because I could already tell that I was upsetting my wee search partner. So I bade her (as cheerfully as I could) to hang on, and started sprinting back towards the house, trying to remain calm.

Turned out that nothing had changed; CMD was still missing, and the scream had come from Hostess Friend, who was just really starting to freak out all of a sudden. I left the child I’d been carrying with her, and returned to the street to search (first dropping to my knees to check underneath the cars parked in the driveway and on the street near the house).

Several minutes later, I returned to the house dejected and on the verge of tears. I walked, panting, into the back door of the house and there before me sat a tear-stained Cake Making Friend, with CMD alive and well in her lap.

She’d been hiding in a bedroom, apparently, and was found grinning from ear to ear, quite pleased with her little Hide and Seek stunt.

:dubious:

You know that feeling when the butt-load of adrenaline that’s been coursing through your system suddenly stops and everything starts to look funny? And you feel like passing out?

That was pretty much how everyone felt for the rest of the day.

Of course, that might have been because we all made a beeline for the Host’s Extremely Well-Stocked Bar immediately following the relocation of the child, and started drinking like fish, but at any rate, our celebratory wedding brunch turned out more like a gathering of the Coma Club.

The cake was really good, though.

73

After the wedding was over, I loaded up the presents on a cart, and we shlepped the presents and luggage to our room. We walked into the room, and it was undergoing renovation and was a mess. In the meantime, a waiter brought up our dinner. We ended up eating in the room, and then I went down and got another room. So, we left the original room with our stuff (and we left the dirty dishes there as well). There was still a line of confetti down the middle of the hall from when we first walked to the room, and we left another line of confetti as we left.

74

I had, at some point, decided we’d have the wedding at 6:30 instead of 6 pm. However, I guess I failed to tell my wedding planner, so she didn’t know until the day before. She blanched because the harpist had told her she had a tight schedule.

I fretted and fretted and finally told her to cancel the harpist; we’d still pay for her since it was our goof and we’d just use the wedding planner’s CD music. No no, she reassured us, we’ll go ahead with the harpist, all would be fine. Well, the harpist was livid when she got there; she had a concert to go to in another town. So I made a quick list of our 29 guests and took attendance and as soon as the last one arrived, we started, even though it was ahead of schedule. All for her. It wasn’t until the next day that I learned that she flew into a rage as soon as the service was over, screaming at my planner that she’d “ruined her whole night” in front of my family. My dad, aghast, helped her get her harp back to her car and ended up missing the toast.

I was horrified to hear about this the next day, and when my in-laws made a little joke about it I completely freaked out and cried for an hour. Boy howdy, and I thought planning a small wedding would prevent me from losing my perspective and being a basketcase.

75

I read this line a bit quickly and my gray matter processed it as: “At the wedding my cousin, his brother, was the best man.” I thought WOW what a tight, close-knit family!

76

Spidyreb and I decided to have a small wedding chapel ceremony with some family and close friends. He and his parents had gone the day before the wedding to the city where the wedding would take place. My Spidyreb called me that night and had gotten quite ill after eating. He said that he would be at the ceremony even if he had to be propped up. He spent the whole night throwing up. Meanwhile…
One of the groomsmen was trying to find a way to get to the city where our wedding was to be held. He lived at least four hours away. His car had been wrecked and was undrivable. He couldn’t find anyone to drive him. His only hope was to try to rent a car the morning of the wedding and be able to barely make it there. The car rental place didn’t open until later in the morning so there was no way he could make it to the early afternoon ceremony. In the end…
Spidyreb managed to recover enough to make it to the ceremony without having to be propped up…he was a bit sickly looking poor thing. :wink: My brother ended up filling in for the missing groomsman. We didn’t have a tux for him though. He had fortunately agreed to wear his mililtary uniform before he even knew about his special place in our wedding.
Other than a little rain, our wedding was absolutely perfect!

77

Spidyreb and I decided to have a small wedding chapel ceremony with some family and close friends. He and his parents had gone the day before the wedding to the city where the wedding would take place. My Spidyreb called me that night and had gotten quite ill after eating. He said that he would be at the ceremony even if he had to be propped up. He spent the whole night throwing up. Meanwhile…
One of the groomsmen was trying to find a way to get to the city where our wedding was to be held. He lived at least four hours away. His car had been wrecked and was undrivable. He couldn’t find anyone to drive him. His only hope was to try to rent a car the morning of the wedding and be able to barely make it there. The car rental place didn’t open until later in the morning so there was no way he could make it to the early afternoon ceremony. In the end…
Spidyreb managed to recover enough to make it to the ceremony without having to be propped up…he was a bit sickly looking poor thing. My brother ended up filling in for the missing groomsman. We didn’t have a tux for him though. He had fortunately agreed to wear his mililtary uniform before he even knew about his special place in our wedding.
Other than a little rain, our wedding was absolutely perfect!

78

After the rehearsal dinner, we went home and found out the dj had been arrested.

Wedding day, it rained. I got my hair done before it started to rain. I realized I forgot my umbrella at home.
As my dad is walking me down the aisle, my husbands ex-wife and her boyfriend open the door and come into the church. The preacher, not knowing who they are, ask them to have a seat. They did, in the very first pew.

We left the church after the ceremony was over, we had my step daughters coats in our car. The poor girls had no coats to wear, some one gave them a sweater to wear.

The ex-wife and her boyfriend came to the reception. The only reason they weren’t asked to leave is because we didn’t want to cause a scene in front of my step daughters who were only 3 and 5 years old at the time.

And I forgot to pack shoes when I packed my clothes for the honeymoon. I had to go buy some and wear the white heels in the mean time.