It’s no secret that weddings are notorious for taking one hell of a toll on nerves, bank balance, rational thinking, relationships, friendships, and sometimes… even marriage itself. And although Hollywood has continually tried to convince us that virtually every “I Do” ends happily ever after, this is rarely the case.
But what if the bride and groom don’t make it to the aisle? What happens when it ends before it even starts? Well, we’re about to find out, and no, this is not an episode of 90-Day Fiance, although it may as well have been a great inspiration for my beloved show.
Today, we are diving into the real-life stories shared by people in this Ask Reddit thread who witnessed a wedding where nobody married. And to survive this level of drama, you’ll need bowls of popcorn, like three or five.
#1
Yes... it was my own wedding. I was there waiting and my bride to be texted me letting me know that she wasn't feeling well and that she needed to go to the hospital. I got suspicious when I noticed that no one from her side of the family had shown up. Turns out they never sent out their half of the invitations and never bothered to tell me that there was no wedding. So there I was with my friends and family at a wedding that didn't actually exist.
Report
248points
#2
This happened around 20 years ago. I am Indian and was supposed to get married to a guy who was a close family friend. That guy was nice and all, but on the wedding day, he ran with my sister. Yes you guys read it right, he ran away with my younger sister. So my entire family was very upset and claimed his younger brother as "compensation". I got married to his younger brother.
Marriage has turned out superb, like one of those dream marriages you see on TV. But yes the marriage was a accident
Report
235points
#3
Yeah one of my distant relatives. The groom got really drunk and hit his fiance in the face in front of everyone. I was young and didn't really get what was going on, I just remember my uncle laying the groom out with one punch.
207points
Marriage is one hell of a crazy ride that starts with the very first test of surviving the wedding itself. No wonder, with so much stress, uncertainty about the future, and family drama some people back out at the last moment. After all, this is a life-changing decision that takes a good amount of daily mutual work to make sure it goes smoothly (and even then, it doesn't necessarily do so!).
So in order to find out more about navigating the complex terrain of getting married and the art of living happily in it, we spoke with Susan Pease Gadoua. Susan is a therapist, best-selling author and the founder and executive director of the Transition Institute of Marin in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, an agency that provides coaching, therapy, and workshops to people who are at some stage of marital dissolution.
#4
I was talking with a DJ who told me of a wedding he did. Gets all the way into the reception and it's time to cut the cake. The groom mashes the cake into the bride's face, and she is LIVID. She turns red, screams at him, and SLAPS him across the face so hard it sounds like a gunshot and it echoes across the reception hall. Everyone gasps and gets quiet. She storms off.
A little while later, the father of the bride comes up to the DJ and hands him $500. He says, "Listen, this marriage... is over. She's actually left the building. But I've paid for this party and all my family and friends are here. I want you to finish out the night and finish it strong, keep the music playing and don't mention the two of them again for the rest of the night." He agrees and everyone has a grand ol' time.
Report
202points
#5
A friend of mine asked me to go to her cousin's wedding as her date, her cousin was the bride to be. The ceremony seemed to go well, except the groom fidgeting, looking about, and wearing an almost hostile expression on his face. Seemed odd, but I assumed it was nerves.
He and the bride said their vows, standard protestant Christian stuff, but they added a stomping of a glass, at the end, for some reason.
Once the priest got to the "I pronounce you..." the groom didn't wait for the "kiss the bride" part, grabbed the bride and rather abruptly turned her and himself around the face the audience. He then started yelling at the people on her side of the aisle, that she was his now and they should give up any thought of ever seeing her again.
The bride attempted to protest, or calm him down, not certain which, but when she tried to say something, he backhanded her hard enough to knock her off of the dais. This all happened in a few seconds and everyone in the audience was stunned.
Just as we started to react, the priest proceeded to land a solid punch on the groom's face, flattening his nose with a notable crunch.
The groom kinda crumpled, people in the audience were yelling at each other, trying to push, shove, help one person or another up, but in all of this the priest calmly reached over to the podium, took what I assume to be their marriage certificate, and tore it into tiny pieces.
He then tried to calm things down, but the scene was chaos, and looked to be turning into a brawl. My friend and some others helped the bride to get out of there, I simply tried to keep anyone from running up on them, not knowing who was on which side, and cover their exit.
Once outside, we got the bride into a car with her mum and my friend, so they could leave, and I made haste to my car.
I learned, a few days later that the groom was arrested breaking into the bride's house, using a shotgun as a lock-pick, and trashing her house looking for her.
The marriage was not recorded by the official/priest, so at least the bride didn't have to go through the trouble of getting a divorce. I declined wedding invites for some time after that.
Report
200points
#6
I have a perfect example. I used to work with a girl named Ashley. She worked in my office a couple desks down. She was engaged to some guy I never met. He used to travel a lot for work or so I was told. We became pretty close friends and a couple of us were invited to the wedding.
Ashely's coworkers threw her a party for her wedding the weekend before. I went and had a great time. I had no idea the following would happen..
A couple days before the wedding, while at work I heard some coworkers talking loudly that there had been something terrible. I went over to hear what was going on and I found out Ashley had called off the wedding. Family and friends from Utah had already flown in to see the wedding.
Come to find out, the fiancé was actually a piece of sh*t low life. He had no job and was stealing from her. She decided not to go through with it.
So three months after the canceled wedding, Ashley and I started dating. She told me later she had doubts about the marriage and had feelings for me. Which I didn't know I had them as well until after the ordeal.
We have been married for five years now and have a son together.
When people ask how we met, we leave that story out.
175points
“Perhaps the biggest way marriage changes a relationship is that it's a legally binding contract and the expectation of a ‘successful marriage’ is that the relationship will continue until one of them dies. That's a lot of pressure!” Susan explained.
The therapist argues that people often don't realize the legal aspects until they go to split up: “they have to get lawyers and go through the court system to split assets/debts and time with the kids.” Susan added that “when I got married, I signed two pieces of paper; when I bought my first property, I signed a stack of papers. Guess which one I gave more pause to?”
#7
My brother had a very close call. During the "do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband..." part, my SIL just stood there, wordless, for like three minutes. Total deer-in-the-headlights stare. The minister put his hand on her shoulder and whispered something into her ear. Then she left and went into the "worry room" for a while. The minister asked her mom to go join her and told everyone to please be patient, just a case of the jitters, etc.
My brother looked like he had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. He sat down in the choir, put his head between his knees, and tried not to pass out.
Nearly half an hour later (many "I'll just go check on how things are going" announcements from the minister), the mom and my SIL came back out. The ceremony started over from the beginning, with the bride reprising her walk down the aisle and everything. She sobbed hysterically through almost the ENTIRE ceremony, but they got through it.
We found out later that a close family friend's husband had passed away after a long bout with cancer that morning, leaving behind a widow in her early 40's. It hit my SIL really hard because the neighbor had been nearly a second mother to her, and between her grief at the husband passing away and the realization that marriage is a guarantee that someone will lose the love of his/her life, my SIL pretty much lost it.
They're still married, three kids, dog, house in the 'burbs- the works. But it was touch-and-go there for half an hour or so.
My brother looked like he had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. He sat down in the choir, put his head between his knees, and tried not to pass out.
Nearly half an hour later (many "I'll just go check on how things are going" announcements from the minister), the mom and my SIL came back out. The ceremony started over from the beginning, with the bride reprising her walk down the aisle and everything. She sobbed hysterically through almost the ENTIRE ceremony, but they got through it.
We found out later that a close family friend's husband had passed away after a long bout with cancer that morning, leaving behind a widow in her early 40's. It hit my SIL really hard because the neighbor had been nearly a second mother to her, and between her grief at the husband passing away and the realization that marriage is a guarantee that someone will lose the love of his/her life, my SIL pretty much lost it.
They're still married, three kids, dog, house in the 'burbs- the works. But it was touch-and-go there for half an hour or so.
Report
167points
#8
I've got one war-time story. The groom didn't appear, or change his mind (I am not sure) and the best man stepped in saying he's always been in love with the woman and wants to marry her instead. Apparently, giving the war time, the priest approved of that, and they were a very good couple.
Report
145points
#9
Not exactly, but I did know a couple who, the night before their city hall wedding, both had separate big parties and got so wasted they both slept through the wedding. They didn't realize it until city hall called asking where they were, and they decided f*ck it we'll do it later. They did eventually get married, and still are as far as I know, over 20 years later.
Report
129points
“Because marriage is harder to get out of than living together or simply being partnered, it requires more of a commitment. This can be positive because a healthy relationship calls on both people to be more giving, to communicate well, to seek compromise on issues, and to be a more mature adult,” the therapist told Bored Panda.
“That said, there's a small portion of spouses who feel that, once they're married, they don't have to work on the relationship any longer. Unfortunately, I've heard many stories of men or women who change for the worse as soon as they are on their honeymoon. Maybe a ‘I've got you now, so I don't have to work on things’ mindset,” Susan wondered.
#10
A friend of a friend's wedding ceremony about 10 years ago. We were waiting at the chapel, and it is kind of a tradition that the bride lets the groom wait a bit in front of the altar.
A couple of minutes and people start making jokes like "I guess she decided to dump you before it's too late, haha", or "maybe she's practicing the wedding kiss with the driver, haha". Not exactly classy, but all in good fun. Nobody really thought one of them would get cold feet.
Another couple of minutes and people get nervous, try to reach the bride and the guy who was driving her to the chapel on their cell phones - no answer at first, then after a while a man answers the bride's cell phone, identifies himself as police officer.
The driver had lost control of the car, gone off the road and down a slope. Bride and driver were seriously injured (car was a cabriolet with the top down, and apparently it rolled over 2 or 3 times as it went down the slope), but alive, now being flown to a hospital.
As far as I was told the marriage was officiated later that day in the hospital with only the immediate family present, another religious wedding ceremony would follow a couple of months later.
Report
115points
#11
Here's another story from India:
My family friend's daughter (Muslim) was in love with a Hindu guy. They were dating for a while, her family found out and arranged her wedding with some dude. On the day of the wedding, she runs off with her boyfriend. Her dad was the mayor that time, and they had the cops looking all over for her. Last time I heard she's still with the Hindu guy.
The funny thing is, a few years before that, her brother got married to a Christian chick and no one batted an eyelid.
Report
113points
#12
They managed to get married but then she hopped in a car with some random dude. I was confused, asked my buddy what was going on. He explained that dude was driving her down to the honeymoon spot because she didn't like the way he (her husband of 3 minutes) drove.
Two days later I found out that once my friend made it to the cabin for their honeymoon he walked in on them in the shower together. She then revealed that she only married him so her parents would get off her back, that she hated him and was shacking up with this guy the whole week instead, they'd tell everyone it wasn't working out once they got back in town and annul. My friend was obviously devastated by this and has never recovered.
Report
112points
What’s important to realize is that getting married does little if anything to guarantee that the relationship will last, despite the best intentions the couple has on their wedding day, the therapist argues. “We live in a time of choice. We can decide where we want to live, what livelihood we will pursue and what the configuration of the family will be, for example. We are also living longer than ever before so staying married to one person is getting less reachable for the average person,” Susan explained.
#13
While I haven't been an official guest at a dramatic wedding, I did have the chance to witness one. I've told the story before... but given that it's the only such wedding I've ever seen, I'll offer it again.
At the time, I was selling my services as a videographer, and I had been booked to shoot a choral performance at a local church. Although I had an assistant to help me with my second camera, I always made a point of setting things up on my own, and so I did my best to arrive at least an hour and a half before I was scheduled to start filming. On the day in question, I discovered that the church had been previously reserved for a wedding party, and so I had little choice but to wait for the service to finish.
It seemed like a fairly generic ceremony. Awkwardly played organ music signaled the entrance of the procession, and as everyone took their places near the altar, things appeared to be going according to plan. Then, the time came for the bride to make her appearance. The doors opened, and there she was, smiling radiantly as she shuffled up the aisle. She was a large (in both the tall and broad senses) woman who could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five, and I found myself wondering why she wasn't being accompanied by anyone. Perhaps, I reasoned, she simply didn't have a father, or maybe she had decided to do away with that particular tradition.
The truth, as it turned out, was a little bit less benign.
As the priest began his speech - that same "Dearly Beloved" bit that you see in the movies - a man stood up in the audience. "You still have time!" he shouted, and although he was quickly shushed by the woman next to him, his words seemed to have an effect.
The groom - a small, frail-looking man with a ponytail - meekly held up a hand. The priest stopped talking, and though I couldn't see the bride's face, I could hear her angrily hissing something to her husband-to-be. "Excuse me," the man said. "I..." he paused, growing bright red. After a moment, he continued. "I'm sorry," he said. He murmured something to the woman in white, offered a few words to the best man, and then promptly fainted.
Now, at first, I figured that the groom had suffered some sort of medical event, and that the wedding would continue. My assumption was quickly proven false as the best man literally picked up his friend and strutted down the aisle, saying not a word to anybody. Throughout the entire scene, everyone was completely silent, until at last the bride found her voice.
"I hate you all!" she shrieked. She stormed away from the altar, and nobody followed her; not even a bridesmaid. For a few seconds, everyone sat in shock, until the man from before stood up again.
"I'm sorry for wasting everyone's time," he said. "You're all still welcome to come to the reception."
The crowd started to clear out after that, with everyone whispering to each other. From what I was able to figure out, it seemed like the bride had more or less bullied the groom into the idea of marriage as a means of curing his homosexuality. The man who had spoken up was actually the bride's father, which didn't bode well for their next family gathering. I even overheard a few attendees claim that the groom wasn't actually gay, but that he had claimed to be when he had tried to break up with his domineering girlfriend. All in all, it was rather like being caught in the middle of a soap opera's finale.
You can imagine how hard I mentally kicked myself when I realized that I could have filmed it.
TL;DR: The bride is a lout. The groom passes out. The bride hates everyone, which nobody doubts.
Report
100points
#14
My rednecky sister in law decided to marry her even worse boyfriend. Even though he had a history of physically and verbally abusing her.
So, the day comes, and they're getting married in this dingy little park. But they never officially reserved it, or anything... They had tried, and were denied... So, they defiantly decided to do it there anyway. Turns out, they were denied because the park was scheduled for some serious construction, and was all torn up.
It rained that morning. Poured. They had no backup location. The few of us there watched the ceremony from our cars, while they huddled under a park gazebo.
The groom showed up late, stone drunk.
There was a car parked off to the side. The girl that the groom was having an affair with watched him get married.
The couple never bothered to get a marriage license, as the JP had instructed. So, she winged it, but told them they were not officially married until they filed for one, on Monday.
At the reception (held in my in law's driveway, buffet lunch with a DJ) the groom flipped out, angered by the DJs selection of music. The DJ he had not paid a dime for. He stormed out, yelling "f*ck this, f*ck that, f*ck her." No, seriously... Yelling EXACTLY that, it was surreal. Along the way, he rubbed the affair in the would-be-bride's face, and threatened to harm everyone present. Peeled out in his pickup truck, getting stuck briefly in the mud.
When my sister in law went to try to make amends with him in the morning, she found him in bed with the mistress.
How did people react? They were honestly glad to see him leave. The general tenor was that the whole thing was a mistake. The party continued after he stormed out.
Report
99points
#15
My friend was getting married, and the man she was marrying had a heart attack literally right before the ceremony, after everyone had arrived. Of course everyone was shocked, but they got married shortly after at the registry office, so it was still a happy ending, I guess
91points
88% of people polled in the U.S. in 2013 list love as the number one reason that they got married (Pew Research Center 2013). Susan explained that for most of those tying the knot, marriage is the primary way to show their love for their partner.
“The main connection between love and marriage is that love tends to get you into marriage; loss of love causes people to end a marriage. Yet, love is an emotion—a fragile one at that—and using it as the foundation to build a legally binding relationship, a family and a home may be the reason divorce rates are as high as they are,” Susan Gadoua concluded.
#16
I worked a wedding where the couple broke up during the reception. The party was on the roof of the building, and there was a small pool. The groom got drunk and thought it would be funny to push the bride, in her full wedding gown, into the water. It was still pretty early in the reception. She stormed out and was taken home by a friend.
Report
90points
#17
My best friend was getting married to this c*nt. I told him not to, and his family did, but after I moved away I think he just wanted something. Anyways, she shows up absolutely annihilated.. to a 1pm wedding. Her "family" tries to sober her up when the groom isn't looking by having her smoke a bunch of weed and eat pills. I managed to stop the latter. Keep in mind my buddy is a pretty straight laced guy..very rarely even drinks. Throughout the lead up to the ceremony I had to stop her three different "mothers" (no lesbians and it'd take too long to explain) from sneaking her whole bottles of whisky.
She managed to somehow keep it together enough so that maybe some of the people in the back couldn't tell she was massively drunk, but I'm pretty sure most people knew. They got through the wedding even though my buddy didn't seem to thrilled about it (yea I don't know why). In all of their wedding photos her eyes are half close or almost crosseyed.
Fast forward, she is unsurprisingly a major alcoholic, tried breast feeding their kid while blotto, hid sh*t in the house, etc. She's spending so much on booze that he takes away her credit card, which leads to her going into stores, grabbing booze, and running (he found out about this later). He sends her to rehab where she meets a meth head who gets her back into meth (I guess she did it for a very short time with an ex bf a decade earlier..baby daddy of the kid she brought into the relationship). She also starts f*cking him. They leave and go on a crime spree of theft, crazy antics like going 100 then pulling the e-brake, living in a car, trading her car for meth, and sh*t even crazier than all that.
He now has custody of their kid AND her kid from the previous relationship. He is a really good dude, and very smart. This just goes to show how blinded you can be in certain situations. This wedding shouldn't have happened and I like to think it didn't in an alternate timeline. Does that sort of count?
Report
90points
#18
My older brother got married to his girlfriend of 10 years. At the end of the party when I and most of my brother's family had left it all kicked off. Turns out she and my brother's best friend planned (for 3 years) for the marriage to happen so she could divorce him and take the house and live in it with the guy she'd been banging behind my brother's back.
Little did she know that the house was in my dad's name and not my brothers (they have the exact same name). She was entitled to nothing. Last I heard her family abandoned her and so did her boyfriend after she put on lots of weight.
Report
87points
#19
Family friends: The groom left the bride at the altar. He just didn't show up! He said he had cold feet. The couple stayed together, and then planned another wedding. He stood her up AGAIN!
Somehow, they stayed together, and she agreed (?!) to attempt to marry him a third time. He showed up, they wed, and have been together 45+ years.
Report
77points
#20
I had a buddy of mine who I don't really talk to anymore, but we aren't on bad terms (just kinda drifted apart due to life). I was deployed at the time to Afghanistan, so I obviously wasn't able to make his wedding. I seriously wish I did though, because what happened is f*cking nuts.
So him and his girlfriend were dating for like 5 years, and were going to get married. Everyone approved of this woman too, educated, smart and good looking. Seemed like a catch.
Day of his wedding I guess he left his cell phone in his jacket in some room where the wedding was going to happen. Normally for an event like this he'd be the first to turn it off and leave it somewhere, but I guess he needed to call his cousin who was late and in the wedding.
Turns out he found the bride to be blowing some friend of a bridesmaid in that room, they probably assumed it wouldn't be in use. He isn't the type to confront someone, usually just turn red about to erupt and leave. Poor guy just left with his blood boiling.
We have mutual friends who told the story but I believe it. I guess my buddy (the groom) put all her sh*t in boxes inside the garage and forbid her from coming in the home or ever going back there again. They lived together but everything was in his name, so while he'd probably still get in legal trouble she was decent enough to drop it all and take her sh*t and leave. She apparently tried to explain it and apologize but obviously he doesn't forgive nor forget. He was really destroyed by that.
Report
73points