Month: July 2009

You think you have it all planned out – the perfect cake, the perfect florist, the perfect dress. But all it takes is one little off-kilter detail in the carefully planned orchestra that is your wedding to make it all go downhill in a heartbeat. No matter how strong a vision a bride may have about the way her big day is going to go, sometimes things just don’t work out. Ask these brides – they can tell you firsthand about the disastrous circumstances that caused their wedding plans to do a 180.

1. The Grillos: When The Grillos were planning their wedding, the pair thought they had taken care of everything. Florist? Check. Limo Service? Check. Best man? Check. Well, actually, they had to uncheck all of these items on the list last minute, because each of the above mentioned parties bailed out on the couple just days before the wedding. If you’ve seen the “Sex in the City” episode where Burger breaks up with Carrie on a Post It note, then you may be able to imagine the groom’s horror when his best friend emailed him the day before the wedding to tell him he wouldn’t be attending. (They had recently had a small tiff.) This on top of the fact that just days before both the limo driver and florist cancelled. While the bride was able to find last minute replacements for both, the new limo driver was apparently operating with a busted GPS system, as he wasn’t able to find her house to pick her up. Instead of calling her cell phone to ask for directions, the driver called the church, where the poor groom was waiting at the altar, thinking he was getting stood up not only by his best friend, but by his bride as well. Thankfully, the priest passed him a note explaining the situation and the bride arrived on time. Today the couple is happily married and the groom has even reconnected with his friend.
2. Disaster Dress : When your seamstress mother-in-law offers to make your bridesmaids dresses for free, your reaction would likely be one of joy. One less expense to thrust upon your bridesmaids and yourself and one less headache to worry about, you might think. Well, this bride found out that it wasn’t quite the lucky situation after all. True, she did ask her mother-in-law to craft an ambitious get-up for her wedding party—an exact replica of the navy, beaded dress Kate Winslet wore in “The Titanic” during the dinner scene. But instead of an imitation dress, the bride’s mother-in-law turned in a product that would make a vaudeville-era prostitute shudder – a sloppy, ill-fitting garment with droopy beads hanging off the front as if she had sewn on a handful of Mardi Gras necklaces. With this revelation coming just 4 hours before the start of the wedding, the bride, her mother, who is disabled and uses a scooter, her father, sister and two aunts headed for the mall. Luckily, they found 18 dresses that would work for the wedding party and scrambled back to get ready. The clueless mother-in-law never even brought up the fact that the bridesmaids weren’t wearing her designs.
3. Earthquake Wedding : Picture this: You are walking down the aisle in your church, about to become a Mrs., when you feel the ground start to shake under your feet. “It’s just nerves,” you tell yourself. But even though people told you it would be nerve-wracking, this moment when you are about to commit to another person for the rest of your life, you really thought it was more of a figure of speech. You had no idea it would be this bad! You are literally shaking and your knees are buckling beneath you! But wait – was that a piece of the church wall that just fell? And is the ceiling cracking? Oh no! Is your Maid of Honor bleeding? If you were this bride, who was married on May 12, 2008 in a church in Sichuan Province, China, then these would have been the very thoughts going through your head as an earthquake struck, destroying the church and halting the ceremony. The wedding party made it out physically unscathed, though mentally traumatized.
4. Heidi Shaw: This Australian woman was featured on a local morning news show in Perth for having one of the worst weddings ever. She and her now-husband had only 3 months to plan their wedding and at the last minute they were booted from their chosen venue. Well, damn it, the invitations had already gone out, so they scrambled to first find a new location for the wedding and second construct and send out new invites. This was the first hurdle. Then the day before the outdoor wedding there were crazy thunderstorms and the groom’s father fell and broke his leg so severely that he needed to have surgery to correct the bones. The groom wanted to cancel the wedding; the bride did not. Stressed, she walked herself down to the local pub and got sloshed. Waking up the next morning with a hangover, she decided the show must go on. But lo and behold the wedding photographer never showed up. And on second thought, neither did most of the guests, who had gone to the venue listed on the first invite. The bride salvaged the photo situation, by asking the guests that did show to use their digital cameras. Bent on having a good time, the bride turned her attention to the wedding recenption, but before she and her husband could have their first dance, her mother-in-law had an epileptic seizure, scaring over half of the guests who did show up away. After her mother-in-law settled down, the couple decided to just perform a few rounds of karaoke in lieu of their dance and call it a night. But things didn’t end before the groom managed to lose his wedding ring in the nearby lake! To end the night, the bride strapped on some diving gear and went to find it. Catastrophe, indeed.
5. Hava Nagila Gone Wild : At a Jewish wedding ceremony, dancing the Hava Nagila is one of the highlights of the reception, and this guest was ready to, as she says, “get her Hava Nagila on.” But when the song started, guests were horrified to hear a techno version of the classic hymn being pumped through the speakers. Though the bride and groom are supposed to be lifted into the air at the same time, the “lifters” at this wedding could only manage to lift the couple separately – completely breaking tradition! Worst part? The bride was dropped by her handlers on the way down, and she would have landed on her face if nearby observers hadn’t stuck out their limbs to break her fall.
6. Drunk and Abandoned Groom : This German groom got so drunk at his wedding that his own wife ended up leaving him before they even had time to consecrate the marriage. Though the groom was intoxicated at the wedding, his wife managed to at least get him in the car to take him home, but when he started feeling sick in the car, she pulled over and decided to leave his sorry self on the side of the road, passed out in a corn field. An ambulance found the man the next day and took him to the hospital for treatment. While this is certainly an undesirable turn of events, the angry bride did show up to pick him up from the emergency room and the two left together. No word on whether the marriage was annulled.
7. Arrested Groom : Another tale of drunk husbands, this one is so disastrous you wish you could have been a fly on the couple’s bedroom wall the next morning. This Wisconsin man got so wasted at his reception that he began to fight the guests. When the cops showed up to arrest him, he was seen literally trying to pin down several of his own guests in the lobby area. But best of all, before the cops showed up, the groom was allegedly chucking garbage cans at innocent bystanders and being belligerent all over the neighborhood. He even went next door to someone else’s wedding reception at the Radisson to make a little noise and start a few fights. When the cops did show up and try to cuff him, he resisted by striking out at an officer. Miraculously, he was let out of jail on a bond of just $150.
8. Car Towed: This is a story of one thing going wrong after the other. Well, actually, the wedding is about the only thing that went right on the wedding day. So, after this bride and groom get hitched in their small country town’s courthouse, they left the ceremony blissful to find that their car had been towed. They caught a cab to the tow lot, but while they were in the taxi, someone sideswiped it, leaving them on the side of the road to wait an hour while the accident was sorted out. (They were still asked to pay the cab fare.) After that, they finally made it to the car lot to get their vehicle, which costs so much they are forced to write a check they can’t cash. This, understandably, makes them nervous. They don’t want to get in trouble for bounced checks, after all, so they decide to quickly run into the small restaurant where they both work to pick up their checks so they’ll have money in the bank. But when they get there, the place is swamped with every townsperson and their mother clamoring for the blue plate special. Their boss sees them and frantically tells them to clock in and help out, which they, for some reason, do. Dog tired and defeated after their shift, they drive home. But on the way there, the car breaks down. The hubby fixes it up in a couple of hours while the bride waits once again on the roadside. Home, sweet, home, finally. Well, actually not any more. When the couple finally arrives back at their house, they find an eviction notice on their door. But they did at least live happily ever after.
9. Cheating Groom (click link for video): This bride looks so happy on her wedding day, standing at the altar, gazing lovingly into her husband’s eyes. Everything is going smoothly, and now her good friend Shirley is going to give a nice little reading. It’s 1 Corinthians – a popular reading for weddings, centered on the theme of deep love. But Shirley can only get so far before she has to stop. It’s just wrong to go on. She must tell the bride, here, now, and in front of everyone she knows, that last night she slept with the groom. He got her drunk and some things just happened. Hardly the time or place for this revelation, but we’re just wishing this clip was a little longer, because the cat fight was just heating up.
10. Busted Dress: This bride was getting dressed in her ever-so-expensive strapless wedding gown when the unthinkable happened — her zipper broke. Moments before the wedding was set to begin, the zipper got stuck and the bride, chest exposed, could not even escape from the garment to assess the damage. Her bridesmaids busted out an emergency kit from the wedding planner and got to work with some pliers. No cigar. Then they decided they would just sew the dress up around the zipper, so they sent a bridesmaid to the store for a sewing kit while the bride tried to keep herself covered. Luckily, her step-grandmother happened to be a seamstress and she was able to stitch up over where the zipper had been. But at the end of the night, the bride had to literally rip the dress off her body.