Til Death Do Us Cringe: The Most Awkward Wedding Moments

19. Eyes Feel Heavy

My cousin and his wife are SUPER religious and maybe the two most awkward people I’ve ever met. They did one of those ‘fake out’ first dances where it starts with a slow song and then transitions to a dance number with an upbeat song.

Not only is that naturally cringe-worthy, but the upbeat song also was 5 minutes long and they just kept repeating the same moves over and over for what felt like an eternity. There was no alcohol allowed at the wedding, so there was nothing to dull the pain.

20. Head in Disbelief

It happened at my wedding and I still look back and shake my head

1. The pastor who we pushed to marry us found out that we had sex before marriage. He made sure to point that out during the ceremony.

2. When saying the vows I wrote I got so emotional it all sounded like gibberish and when I turned to get the ring from my best man he was bawling his eyes out and couldn’t find it. I can’t imagine how ppl in the audience felt.

21. Over and Above

At a classmate’s wedding. They were young – maybe like 22? 23? There is apparently a caking tradition in some parts of the country, where when they cut the wedding cake, the couple feeds each other a bit and smear each other’s faces with cake as a joke. The bride had absolutely made 1000% clear to the groom she did NOT want to be caked.

He did it anyways, and not just a small smear, but full on smushed the slice in her face. She was stunned initially, then got up, face full of cake, yelled “YOU A**HOLE I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT!” and then ran to a back area in the reception. The groom tried to follow but the bridesmaids/mother of the bride stopped him. So he sat at the head table awkwardly while half the wedding party rushed off with the bride.

She stayed back there for like an hour. They eventually did let him back there to check on her. We could hear her crying and them arguing. The rest of the reception came to a screeching halt until one of the bride’s aunts emerged and directed the servers to clear the tables and put on some music.

They got divorced 2 years later.

22. THE list

The couple was very very religious/conservative. They apparently had a list of things they decided they weren’t going to do before marriage to make sure they stayed “pure”. I don’t remember the whole list, but it boiled down to basically no physical contact besides hand holding and not being alone in settings they may get tempted. As part of the ceremony, they read the entire list out loud and then burned it.

They then got pregnant on the honeymoon.

23. She’s a Pro

Many years ago my aunt was bragging to her friends about how she cooked the best Pilau. Pilau is a type of rice meal with a bunch of spices and herbs mixed in. At the time having Pilau at your wedding was seen as exotic and posh. So when her close friend was getting married they asked her to cook a massive batch of pilau for the wedding to feed 500 people. Please note, she had no clue how to cook pilau. She made the unwise decision to show up on the day of the wedding (people usually start cooking at around 5 am). Her plan was to ask for a series of outlandish ingredients to make the pilau and when these inevitably could not be obtained she would announce that the pilau could not be made. Unfortunately for her, they had literally everything she asked for, no matter how ridiculous (she asked for plums to make rice). So she gives up and tells everyone to leave the kitchen so she can work … and then she leaves through the back door and flees into a nearby forest. The bride cried.

24. Real Deal

Minion-themed wedding. No joke, the cake and decorations were all minions but they treated everything else like a typical wedding. I knew the bride only as an acquaintance and she was normal and friendly and sometimes wore a minion shirt or two from target and I didn’t think much of it at the time. Turns out she had a much greater obsession of a fad children’s movie than a couple of shirts she thought were cute or funny.

25. More Than Bacon

My aunt and uncle had decided to dedicate their wedding to the bride’s kids, everything was a little mermaid and they had a huge little mermaid bouncy house right in the middle of everything. Their wedding was on a severely crowded beach at 3 in the afternoon. The groom decided it would be a good idea to ride a paddle board into the reception and it would be an awesome idea except everyone could see him get on the board and then go out to the ocean then turn right around and come back. The couple also decided to get incredibly high and couldn’t even remember each other’s names let alone theirs. Oh and one last thing, the groom’s vows were literally “I love you more than bacon” that’s it, that’s the only thing she said.

ticotacobingbang

26. Hands-on Dad

Does the father of the bride count?

Prior to attending, the groom and bride asked for each guest’s occupation on the rsvp. Weird but whatever.

Turns out the bride’s dad likes to individually thank each attendee and he does so by saying your name, how you met the bride/groom, and your occupation. Four hundred guests and he read every single one including how certain ones were “between jobs”. It took nearly two hours.

27. Creative Mess

Extremely sheltered conservative Christian couple who hosted a multi-fandom-themed wedding. The bride took an eternity to walk up the aisle to let the entirety of the Twilight wedding song play, and then they both exchanged Tardis rings (don’t ask) and walked out to the Dr Who theme. But the worst part was the sole Alice in Wonderland-inspired element, which was small “mushroom-shaped” cakes that said “eat me”. Like literally no other AIW thing there for context, no other cake, no other food to speak of, and I’m supposed to endure them having their first-ever Christ-sanctioned hornfest on the dance floor as I’m forced to shovel down twenty bottom-energy p*n*s-shaped morsels just to avoid passing out from hunger. Bleak.

PeachJosephine

28. A Fiasco, It Was

My wife and I went to a train wreck of a wedding. There were a bunch of instances that stuck out but I think the main one was after the Best Man give his speech and called the Bride beautiful, as one does at a wedding, the Bride took the mic and all flustered said, “My my my. It seems that I may have married the wrong man.”

She also insulted the groom’s friends, a whole table of them, so badly that they just got up and left. One of them said as they were leaving, “Won’t last, b*t*h.” She yelled at the DJ during their first dance, saying the song was taking too long.

She changed her wedding dress and shoes a total of 5 times, no joke.

She stopped at our table and cried to my wife about how she realized all she wanted was to be engaged and not the bride.

For their photos, they wanted the entire attendance to surround them and have pictures taken of everybody pointing at them, everybody wearing sunglasses, everyone laughing, and everyone staring lovingly at them.

At one point the groom’s father and the bride’s father had to be pulled apart before they started punching each other.

It was a total train wreck.

reddituser

29. The One to Watch

The bride had a goat walk down the aisle? There was no seemingly real purpose for the goat.. and it cried the whole time.

I take it back, the goat was prophetic.. their whole marriage can be summed up as a screaming goat.

30. At a Loss

this happened after the wedding but I still think it fits here:

My very religious best friend married not long ago. both of them believed in being “clean” before marriage, which meant no intercourse or drinking before marriage and I am completely fine with it because it is their life and they are not harming others with their actions. Until I received a picture of my friend happily holding up a bedsheet with something that appeared to be blood, up in the air. I later heard from others that I wasn’t the only one to get this picture. Apparently, they wanted to prove to everyone that they were still virgins by showing off their “first-time blood”.

(just to clarify it isn’t a massage I got, it was a framed picture delivered to me in a package)

31. A Misfired Joke

The groom tried to ‘prank’ the bride, and when the wedding vows happened, he planned to say ‘no’ to the question: ‘Do you take this woman as your lawfully wedded wife’. For some odd reason, the way he thought it would go down was that people would realise it was a joke and start laughing. Well, the result was quite the opposite. The bride started crying and had to be escorted off the venue. Fortunately, they ended up getting married after all, but for everyone there, we had to wait for a full hour before the bride was consoled by her family and the actual wedding vows happened.

PollingMonkey

32. A True Gentleman

Oh man, storytime! I’m a photographer and I’ve worked a ton of weddings, but a garter toss from 7 years ago is forever burned into my mind.

So in some traditions, whoever catches the bouquet and garter has to interact in some way. Sometimes this is a dance or a game they have to play…and sometimes the guy that catches the garter has to put the garter on the woman that catches the bouquet while blindfolded.

Well at this one wedding, the guy was middle-aged and the girl that caught the bouquet was maybe 16. So rightfully a lot of people are visibly uncomfortable at the idea of this dude putting the garter on a minor…the dude himself is chief among them. They blindfold the guy and the girl sits in a chair in the middle of the dance floor looking like “are we really doing this?” the dude is approaching her and the DJ/MC has him wait a second. He asks the girl to get up and leave, and the DJ himself sits down in the chair. Then he instructs the guy to put the garter on, and he’s saying it all seductively and this poor guy is so nervous about it the whole time but you can see he can tell something is off. Finally, he takes off the blindfold and everybody has a good laugh.

DJ is the MVP…but for a minute there everyone was feeling really awkward.

33. Help Her

OMG.

So my sister’s wedding was very last minute.

Our mom had just passed away and her fiancee was getting stationed in North Dakota so I wanted to make her day as memorable as possible.

She was trying to pay for everything herself so she rented a venue for a Thursday.!.?.!. Which was ok. Everyone still showed up.

Also, she’s not very good a public speaking (not that she freaks out and stutters, but she just seriously copies everything she sees on TV) so during the dinner, she grabs a mic and tries thanking everyone who helped to make her day perfect, but it was like a combination of Prison Mike and Julia Roberts from My Best Friend’s Wedding. I finally got her to fade out by “accidentally” bringing out the wedding cakes early. (I forgot them in the kitchen fridge. She said just bring them out after the speech).

And then the floor was open for dancing but my dad’s family is very prude so I put on cupid shuffle to try and get people up. It turned into just me, the other bridesmaids and the groomsmen. And everyone in the audience was clapping as though this was supposed to be some kind of prepared dance just for the bridal party

reddituser

34. As A Parent

At my sister’s wedding, the groom’s mother and father (divorced) both gave a looong speech about how they’re responsible for their son’s happiness, how they loved my sister before she was even a part of their family (grossly untrue) and how they started from nothing and yet became the sole champion that inspired their child to do great things.

In the end, it was a huge ‘I was a better parent than you’ contest, and it went on for, and I’m not kidding here TWO HOURS. And they were COMPLETELY unaware that everyone in the room was cringing hard.

35. Please Take A Seat

Groom had been drinking way before the wedding even started, so he was totally out of it by reception time. He grabbed the mic from the DJ and proceeded to rant mostly incoherently for about 20 minutes on the dancefloor. He would occasionally shout “It’s my wedding I can make a speech if I want!” every few minutes in between berating his wife and saying what a downer marriage was. It got so cringy that the DJ finally had to wrestle the mic away from him and make him sit down at the table with his new wife.

The_Atlas_Moth

36. Furious to The Max

My cousin converted to Mormonism, so he could marry his girlfriend who was hardcore Mormon in the Mesa, AZ Temple. Apparently, you have to schedule an appointment month in advance to get a spot in the temple wedding schedule so their wedding ended up being in the middle of June when it was like 115 degrees outside. Non-Mormons are forbidden from entering the temple so they have to wait outside on the lawn for the bride and groom to emerge. Our family of 50-plus showed up to see them “emerge married” and ended up waiting 2 hours because the temple was running behind schedule. A few people left, and the rest of us were dying of heat exhaustion. We had to meet them on the lawn because they said they weren’t having a reception, just the temple ceremony. Afterwards, we found out that they did indeed have a reception and lied about it because the bride’s mother didn’t want us dirty non-Mormons there. My aunt was heartbroken, and the rest of us were pretty pissed. My cousin and his wife are a**hol*s.

reddituser

37. Unexpected Treat!

Ok, my turn. My cousin’s wedding. I was an 11 years old boy. I always knew of the throwing of the bouquet (even tho I didn’t know what was it for) and only girls could take it, so I just sat there. Then I found out there was a male version of it, and young me, playing basketball, could not miss the chance to grab something thrown in the air, even tho I didn’t know what it was. And boy did I catch it. My hands were now holding my cousin’s wife’s undies. I still have Vietnam-style flashbacks to this day.

38. Marathon of Discomfort

I went to the wedding for a college friend and ended up experiencing the worst wedding/best wedding story I could fear/hope for.

Let’s start with the location. For some, unknown reason, they had decided to hold the ceremony at the funeral chapel in a local cemetery. The setting could be charitably described as baroque, it felt more like they were being married in a tomb. Wrought iron floor candelabras lined the walls, and the alter featured a graphic relief carving of the Crucifixion. What little natural light there was filtered in through small, stained glass windows high on the walls, similarly ordained with scenes of death. I was not entirely sure that we wouldn’t be sacrificed to the old gods and new as part of the ceremony (the bride had a penchant for the macabre and was somewhat unpredictable).

The ceremony itself had cringe-worthy elements. At one point, the bride turned to the audience and sang a rendition of “Tonight” from West Side Story. She considers herself a talented singer. Her ability does not match her confidence. Later, the maid of honor read a poem, written by the bride, about how lucky the groom was to have her. Her poetry was on par with her singing. I spent the 45 minutes of the ceremony squeezing my wife’s hand in mental agony.

The festivities continued at the reception. The bridal party elected to do their photos between the ceremony and reception. While typically less favorable than doing the photos before the ceremony (possibly a topic of contention, fight me), doing so is generally acceptable as long as arrangements are made for the guests not involved. In this case, there were no such arrangements. We sat in an empty room, with no music, food, or beverages for an hour and a half (!) waiting for things to start. In the meantime, we admired the decor. The reception theme was “a midnight in Paris”, though they inadvertently arrived at a “sh**ty prom”. The tables were adorned with stars made from sticks poked into styrofoam balls, spray-painted gold and covered in glitter. The centrepiece was a large foam moon with a starry sky backdrop, against which guests could stage awkward prom photo shoots. The entire affair had a solid “Nailed it! ” vibe.

Things did not significantly improve once the bridal party arrived. The family was conservative Christian, so there was no alcohol. In retrospect, I’m glad I wasn’t able to dull the memory of this illustrious event. Music was provided by the bride’s cousin, whose duties were to press play on a windows media player playlist, a task that took far more effort than I would have expected. The emotional climax of the reception was when the bride’s father serenaded her with an old country-western standard. I could immediately see where she had gotten her musical ability.

It was the most cringeworthy 5 hours of my life, I would not trade the memory for anything.

39. Her Own Initiative

Attended a wedding of a family friend who I grew up with.

Everything was planned with no passion and every wedding event or game or tradition was just put into the wedding just because “every wedding has that”.

So we had a rather heartless photoshoot with the couple (i was her makeup artist simultaneously because I do makeup for a living), a boring bouquet toss and at one point the couple (or rather the bride[zilla]) announced that her maid of honor (the groom’s sister) would hold a speech (which felt really boring).

Then she announced that the best man (the groom’s best friend) would hold a speech as well to which the best man just looked speechless because… he hadn’t prepared a speech and it wasn’t communicated to him that he would have to. (Again everything felt like it was only happening because “at every wedding that needs to happen”.)

Then out of nowhere the maid of honor, who had planned the whole wedding, whips out a speech on a piece of paper that she herself had written for him in case he hadn’t prepared a speech himself. In this speech, it was written that “the groom can be so lucky/happy that he has the bride in his life because back in the day he didn’t use to shower that frequently and now she is having an eye on that” (again… supposedly written by his own sister! When I think about it now, I have the feeling the bride wrote it.)

Everyone just looked so uncomfortable after this speech it was so bad. This wedding may have been planned like the perfect one but it just felt like they put every wedding activity into it just so they could experience it.

40. Choose The Diamonds

Ack, here late so this will probably get buried, but I am still not over this one:

The bride and groom had their ceremony outside where there were no space restrictions, and they said that anyone who wanted to come to the ceremony could. But, for the reception, they said they had to limit the guest list to 100. So what was their solution to get the numbers down? They posted on their wedding website and shared on Facebook that if you wanted to come to the reception, they wanted you to submit an essay saying why you wanted to come, and what their friendship meant to you— basically justifying why you should be invited. Deadline of X date to submit your entry. Bride and Groom said they would then read through all of the submissions together and pick who would get invited to the reception. Seriously one of the most ass-backwards, egotistical things I have ever seen anyone do.

41. Finance Jar

My sister wanted to do the “dollar dance” at her wedding. For those who don’t know, it’s a Midwest tradition where male guests pay a few dollars for a dance with the bride (which is cringey in itself). I guess bringing wedding gifts isn’t enough or whatever. I was maid of honor and was supposed to collect the cash from the guys in line before what was supposed to be a 5-second “dance” with the bride. I had my “cash collection bucket” and the first guy in line looked at me deadpan and says “I’m giving this to her myself” (like I’m going to steal it, wtf?). So he hands a few dollars to my sister (the bride) and she has to awkwardly hold it while dancing with all the other guys in line who were then really confused, so some gave money to me and some gave it directly to the bride. Plus it went on like 20 agonizing minutes because some people didn’t know how long they were supposed to “dance” for. Super cringey all around.

reddituser

42. Everything is sparkling

Partner and I went to the wedding of some of her friends and it was at a nice venue outdoors. Good weather and clear skies, but it was a bit windy. The bride and groom did this little bit in the middle of the ceremony where they poured different colored sands into a little glass container to show the mixing of their lives? Except since it was windy the sand was blowing everywhere. And it was glittery, so people were blowing it out of their faces but still getting covered in this fine dusting. Also instead of each of them having a big jar each of their color of sand, they each had a BUNCH of teeny vials, so the little ceremony took way longer than it should have. Super awkward, and once they had emptied all these little vials you still could hardly see the sand in the glass container. Really weird.

43. Defies All Logic

My wife was roped into being a bridesmaid for an old friend that was getting married. She didn’t want to be at the wedding but felt obligated and knew the bride wouldn’t have any other friends to ask if my wife declined. The wedding was out of town so I was with her during the pre-wedding festivities and getting everything ready the day of. Since I was there I offered to help with what I could. That was taken full advantage of. I’ve never done so much in so little time in my life. Nothing was planned out. The bride was literally bridezilla and complained about different things all day. The groom was a goofy redneck dude that was useless when it came to helping. I honestly barely saw him all day. Several hours before the wedding the bride realized no one had gotten lunch so the groom came up to me and asked if I could go get everyone Chick-fil-A. Sure, I can do that. Not sure why a groomsman can’t go but whatever, it’ll give me an excuse to leave. I came back with what they asked for and didn’t get a “thank you” (which I didn’t expect) and didn’t get reimbursed. Whatever. The bride had several meltdowns throughout the day and even said she didn’t want to go through with it but changed her mind minutes before the ceremony. The refreshments at the reception were literally popcorn balls, skittles, and punch. I wish I was joking. Once everything wrapped up we were roped into completely cleaning up the church it was held at. Vacuuming, mopping, cleaning bathrooms, etc. We were preparing to leave when the groom asked me to take all of the audio equipment back to the person he had borrowed it from since I didn’t live too far from him. Ok sure. It barely fit in my car. Keep in mind I barely knew these people. We had never hung out with them and even though my wife had known the bride since college, they weren’t close. It was just an odd day.

44. “Brautverzug”

In Germany, there is a tradition that is called “Brautverzug” which loosely translates to kidnapping the bride. What usually happens is that the best man takes the bride to another room with some close friends of the bride, later the groom has to “search” for them and then to some kind of challenge to get her back, for example drinking some liquor. The most important thing about this is that it has to be entirely planned because you need to prepare the room and the challenge and the bride has to be fine with missing an hour of her wedding.

At the wedding of a friend of mine a super drunk guy, who wasn’t invited but still attended the wedding because he knew both bride and groom walked in during dinner in sweatpants and a stained shirt. At first, everyone was obviously confused, the wedding couple talked to him and he was allowed to stay but he wasn’t allowed to drink any alcohol because he already was drunk.

The evening progresses and suddenly someone asks into the room where the bride is, followed by some jokes about the bride already leaving after just a couple of hours. With some shy laughter, the groom asks the mother of the bride where the bride is, she doesn’t know, so he starts asking around but no one knows it.

Queue 2 hours later, everyone is searching the place for the bride, some people are thinking about calling the police when her mother’s phone rings. It’s the bride calling from a pub in another part of the city, where she semi-violently was taken to by the drunk guy, who thought it was funny to do a “Brautverzug” but didnt think about telling anyone.

And that’s how you do not make friends at a wedding that you’re not supposed to be at in the first place.

Midnightos

45. A Total Game-Changer

I am a musician and about 3 years ago I was part of a wedding band. As the wedding band, we would often have to learn the couple’s first dance. It’s no big deal, part of the job. So this one wedding we had the Mission Impossible theme song as the first dance. I emailed the couple to double-check that this was in fact the song they wanted to have as their first dance as husband and wife and they confirmed.

Who am I to judge? So we go ahead and learn it. Day of the wedding, the bride tells me “At 9.30 pm you guys start playing our first dance, we won’t be on the floor but go ahead and keep playing” ….. Rather unorthodox but hey, it’s her day.

So 9.30 pm comes, we kick off and begin playing the song. We’re about 30 seconds in, and a lot of guests are standing around the dance floor looking rather confused.

Then all of a sudden the husband bursts onto the dance floor wearing a Donald Trump Mask, one of those rubber proper pro type ones, and he has a pistol in his hand. He’s creeping around the floor as if he’s looking for someone.

Then his wife comes running onto the floor wearing a Kim Jong Il mask, of the same professional quality, she also has a pistol. Unable to comprehend what is going on, I spend the next 3 and a half minutes watching them circle the floor playing cops and robbers or some sh*t. In the end, they run into each other’s arms and start kissing each other (with the masks still on).

Then they took off the masks and everyone went about the rest of the night.

Weirdest wedding moment of my musical career

reddituser

46. Until The Very End

For some reason, my cousin begged this religious nut from his and his fiancée’s college to officiate the wedding. He agreed only on the condition that he could include a lecture on the “sanctity of marriage.” Yeah, the man lectured the captive audience for more than thirty minutes on how gay people were threatening the straight way of life, how gay marriage is an insult to God and Christians everywhere, and how this straight marriage reflected the values that straights must fight to protect.

I still can’t believe I stayed for the whole thing.

47. A Shocker

There was this wedding that went great, until the kiss. So a little backstory – the groom had been sick the week before the wedding, fever and pretty out of it. He and his fiancée were trying to decide how physical they should be, as to avoid her coming down with the same. They had decided not to kiss at the wedding and would figure out the rest later. The bride really wanted to kiss and wasn’t worried about getting sick herself, but wanted to defer to her fiancé’s concerns. So the wedding day comes, and the groom’s recovered a lot, and is driving to the wedding and says, “screw it” and tells someone to tell the bride that he’s okay with kissing if she is. Turns out that message didn’t get passed, because at the end of the wedding, he leans in for a kiss, and she’s so surprised she just freezes. There was an awkward silence until his groomsmen let him have it, the laughter and jeers were grand, and he deserved them. The couple laughed it off, although the groom practically turned into a beet. A side note, this was my wedding and I still feel like an idiot. I doubt anyone there will ever let me live it down. Cheers to good friends!

48. So Out of Place

I went to a super conservative wedding with my fiancé. My fiancé had grown up with the bride and were childhood friends, but grew apart. Regardless, she was invited to the wedding and some of her other friends she still kept in touch with were going, so we all went. We were sitting out in the sweltering Virginia humidity in mid-August on cut tree logs, which were laying horizontally across the ground. We got to the end of the vows and they told us that the bride and groom had never kissed, so they wanted to share the moment in private. They went behind a curtain at the altar and then we sat through a painful acoustic set of songs for 15 minutes! The songs ended and we still sat there awkwardly for another 3 minutes the Pastor (who was the groom’s father) tried opening the curtain. He couldn’t open it though because the groom was holding them shut with one hand. Then a minute later they came back out. It was painfully uncomfortable as we all sat there in silence while those two figured out how to play t*ns*l h*ck*y.

49. Goat Spit Roast

Wait wait, I got this.

Aladdin-themed wedding.

The wedding took place in a Shriner temple. Everyone dressed in vaguely Hollywood Arabesque outfits. Groomsmen looked like organ grinder monkeys. The (very white, very Jewish) bride was referred to in the ceremony as ‘the desert princess’ and the (also very white) groom as ‘the wazier of the caliphate’. Between the wedding and reception, we were ‘entertained’ by a (again with the very white) belly dancer – on the same stage as the wedding had taken place. It wasn’t a religious altar, but it felt weird. The reception had as its main course an entire roast goat, head and all. It was presented on a giant platter of rice, all curled up as if it were asleep.. then, you know.. roasted.

We went because I’d gone to high school and played D&D with the groom and my husband worked with the bride. My achievement unlocks for the day was not bursting into laughter once.

50. Wealthier or Wealthier

Bride, at the altar, refused to say “For richer or poorer” in her vows.

She literally said, “For richer or richer,” beaming this huge defiant smile. People chuckled, then waited, and she just stood there smiling. Refused to correct herself.

People fell silent as they realized she was essentially saying, “I’ll only stay with you for as long as you have money. Any hardship and I’m out.”

The groom should’ve run then, but didn’t.

Iscariot-