Yahoo Lifestyle 14 Extremely Tacky, Tasteless Weddings Where Guests Had To Bite Their Tongues To Keep From Saying How They Reallyyyyyyy Felt About The Whole Damn Thing
We recently shared this post highlighting some of the messiest, tackiest weddings folks from the subreddit r/weddingshaming ever attended. BuzzFeed Community members also chimed in with their own tales of tasteless weddings. The mess continues!!! Here's what they revealed:
1."I went to a wedding for a friend this past winter. Let's call her WB for 'winter bride.' WB decorated her venue (a small church) with dried flowers incorporated into Christmas trees. It actually looked very pretty. Imagine my surprise and a few other guests' surprise when we found out where they came from. In the fall, WB had been a guest at her childhood friend's wedding. We'll call that friend FB for 'fall bride.' FB has asked that her flowers be donated to a local nursing home at the end of the night. FB found out at WB's wedding that WB had collected a car full of FB's flowers, taken them home, and dried them for her own wedding. WITHOUT ASKING."
2."I attended a friend's wedding a few years ago. This was a destination wedding, which meant I had to take a red-eye flight and then take a cab (about a four-hour ride) to the hotel (which also doubled as the wedding venue). This was a two-day affair with about two events on each day. Every event started late and was delayed by at least two or three hours. We would show up for every event on time, but the bride, groom, and their respective families would still be lounging in their jeans/shorts. I remember the formal dinner/cocktail event was slated to start at 7:30 p.m., and dinner was to be served at 9:00 p.m. But the event started at 9:30 p.m., and dinner was served close to 11:00 p.m. We were starving by that point, not to mention cold and tired from all the travel."
"There was an outdoor/lawn event scheduled at 10:00 a.m. the following day, but it started at 12:30 p.m. Get this: The couple was there, but they arrived late, ignored all the guests, and spent that time until 12:30 taking pictures. The guests were again left to rot in the hot sun (around 95 degrees) without food.
Then came the wedding. It was three hours late. We were so frustrated and irritated with all the heat, bugs, and being left hungry. The venue was pretty isolated, and we had no transport of our own, so we were unfortunately stuck. Why have a big wedding if this is how you treat your guests? I felt like I was attending a social media wedding because pictures, videos, and reels were the only things given priority."
3."I was a bridesmaid in a good friend's wedding. I was really happy about it at first. I had to pay for my dress, which I never received. My friend's mom had the dresses outsourced to someplace in China; they just picked the fabric, and instead of receiving a dress in my size, 18, they sent an 8. The bride's mom tried talking to a tailor about fixing my dress, but it was impossible. Since I didn't have a dress, I couldn't be a bridesmaid, and the mom refused to refund my money (it was over $200, and I was living on a budget). My friend's sister-in-law sewed me a skirt that was too tight and didn't fit properly, and I was demoted to wedding book attendant. My friend tried convincing me multiple times to have my hair and makeup done by her artists, but I couldn't afford it. I did my own, and she was NOT happy (she was OK with how I looked, just not that I refused to pay)."
"It got so stressful that I almost didn't go, especially when I got lost trying to find the venue. Then, my ex and I weren't even seated with our group of friends. We were seated across the room at a table with people we didn't know. The rest of the night was fine, and the bride and I are still friends. Her mom is a massive bitch who was trying to control the whole thing and was putting a lot of pressure on my friend."
4."I made wedding cakes but only as a side job. My husband and I had two young children, and we both worked full-time. I am the daughter-in-law, and my husband's widowed mother was getting married. We all liked this man, so hearing they were making the leap was nice. After they announced their wedding, my MIL followed up with, 'I paid for all you kids' weddings, so now you can pay for mine.' We were the youngest couple, and there were four kids and one stepkid in this equation. Even though our wedding was in a different state, and my parents paid for it all, my MIL still claimed she had spent money on a reception for us that was held two weeks after the wedding. She paid nothing for that either!"
"After our reception, she presented us with the bills. We also supplied all the alcohol and beverages! She did have our reception in the basement of her house, and I brought all the salvaged decorations from the wedding my parents gave us. My MIL and the other kids decided that her wedding costs would be split five ways. We were actually in the process of remodeling our house and didn't have big bucks. So, I agreed to do the wedding cake for our share of the cost.
Well, the cost was hundreds and hundreds of dollars for each of us. The cake I made was to feed 150-200 people. Had it been purchased from a bakery, it would have cost at least $1,000. I thought that covered our part. Nope, yet credit was given by my SIL for $50 for going to the local grocery and pricing a few boxes of cake mix, powdered sugar, and a can of Crisco. At my MIL's reception, my hubby (not me) was given a bill and asked for a check right then. It took us a year to recover financially from this and finish the remodel. Little did I know then that this fiasco was only the tip of the iceberg."
—Anonymous
5."A young country couple got married, and the centerpiece of the reception was two pickup trucks side by side. One was full of beer and ice, and the other was for the empties. It was a fun time!"
—Anonymous
6."My husband's friend had a 'shower,' but it was a fundraiser for her wedding. We had to pay to enter (cover charge), pay for food and drink (which was donated), and pay for raffle prizes. My husband was in the wedding, and I was told what color to wear as his guest. It was a super tacky wedding, to boot. The entitlement of this girl still blows my mind to this day. She wonders why I hate her."
—Anonymous
7."A college friend who had been a wild child discovered Jesus in her mid-30s. She went to many Christian conferences and met her now-husband at one. She invited my parents and me to her wedding, but my dad bowed out because she had preached at me about how I was damned for having had premarital sex. Let's just say there were numerous notches in her bedpost before her conversion, so that was amusing. She also preached about how my friends, who were primarily in the LGBTQIA+ community, were condemning me. Her wedding was at a cute little church well over 100 years old. In the middle of summer. With no air conditioning. With 100 people in there. And it was stifling. Her pastor had the five-piece electric Christian rock band serenade us for the first 10 minutes, then he said a prayer, and there were more weird Christian hymns with an electric guitar. Then, he started a sermon where he said no one was leaving until he converted one of us to his flavor of Christianity."
"Half an hour later, the bride and groom walked down the aisle for a five-minute ceremony, then sat down for 30 more minutes while the pastor kept trying to convert us all. The bride's family was deeply Catholic. The pastor was basically trying to convert them, plus the 15 of us who weren't their flavor of Christianity.
After an hour and a half, we could hear a crowd making noise outside. The actual members of this church were supposed to be having a service while we were being exhorted to give ourselves to Jesus. Finally, a camera person volunteered to convert so we could all go to the reception.
The bride was very upset that her family refused to donate money to the wedding festivities. But the bride decided to buy a very expensive wedding dress instead of something more practical because it was her wedding. Which would've been fine, but the reception was at a Ramada Inn three miles from the church. Catering was from IHOP. My mom and I watched servers hustling from the in-house restaurant to the tiny reception room with platters of interesting hors d'oeuvres, fighting through the sweaty, thirsty, and hungry group of guests. Oh, and only water was served.
My mom and I bailed after 15 minutes. I don't think the bride ever noticed we left. My mom and I met up with a male couple I was close to for a lovely dinner about 20 minutes away. When I told them about the 'Elmer Gantry' level of preaching that my mom and I had survived, plus the IHOP reception, they wanted to go gawk. I had to stop them. Friends, if you can't afford a fancy reception, that's fine, but please, no IHOP after an hour and a half of being harangued."
—Anonymous
8."A friend of a friend, in her late 50s and divorced for many years, married a widower also in his 50s. She belongs to a megachurch and is very active in it. Her church friends hosted two bridal showers and planned bride and friend activities, mani-pedis, etc. All the friends were pitching in and covering the bride's expenses. She had an entourage accompany her for gown selections and anything wedding-related. All congregants who wished to attend were invited to the wedding ceremony, and the church was packed. There was absolutely no reception afterward. Not a glass of water nor a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was provided for anyone. The groom's family was upset because they wouldn't postpone the ceremony until a stepdaughter was released from jail."
—Anonymous
9."The tackiest wedding I ever attended was my own first wedding. I wanted a simple outdoor service with a few friends and close family, but my mother saw this as an opportunity to turn it into a huge production, hoping to impress her other social climbing friends. There were 300 people in my grandparents' front yard, and a display of wedding gifts in their dining room. The worst part was her hiring the city's biggest name in catering but refusing to budget more than 50% of what it should have cost to feed that many hungry guests at a 2:00 p.m. wedding. The food ran out before our photos were taken, and my mother forced us to leave before we had spoken to any guests. We left, and my sister ordered dozens of pizzas. Thanks, Mother (I wasn't allowed to call her 'Mom')."
—Anonymous
10."People asked us to add extra guests at the last minute for our own wedding (we complied for some reason), but those guests didn't even show up and never reached out to us after. Don't be these people. A bridesmaid and groomsman in our party were married but divorced shortly before our wedding due to an affair. It was weird. People asked if they could bring their kids, and we said no because we had no room. They brought the kids anyway. One had the stomach flu. Our cake came crooked and fell over (I still left a great review at the bakery; it did taste good). My aunt snorted lines in the bathroom. This was meant to be a very classy wedding. Someone's plus-one, who we did not know, ended up vomiting on a bridesmaid's dress after drinking too much. And did I mention the power went out in the venue during dinner time?"
11."I used to play in a really good, high-end band. We did a lot of weddings. Once, there was an argument between the bride's family and the groom's. The argument got physical, and somebody got pushed into the table with the wedding cake. It hit the floor, and the bride was in tears. I'm sure they remember it to this day."
—Anonymous
12."My wife and I were attending a wedding of one of her favorite cousin's daughters. It was scheduled away from where most family members and guests lived. We came from a couple of states away. So, obviously, we had to make hotel reservations. The wedding was held in a beautiful area known to draw in tourists. Unfortunately, the wedding was in a rural setting outside of town, maybe five miles away. When we attempted to go to this site, GPS coordinates didn't work, and most everyone (not including the wedding party and the parents who had visited this site previously) had difficulty getting there. No directions were given prior."
"Then we were given our chairs, which we had to keep with us (and move) as the various activities occurred. With the heat and outside activity so strung out, the real kicker was they only had a pizza truck for food at the wedding. With older folks, some having disabilities, this was difficult. Classless and clearly a wedding that we wished we hadn't attended, BUT it was nice to experience the little nearby village the next day."
—Anonymous
13."At my cousin's wedding, the minister made a big deal of welcoming my cousin's 2-year-old son to the groom's family. Except the couple had been together for five years. The boy was his kid — he had his last name and was named after his dad. This wasn't a disputed fact in any way. I also went to a wedding where the reception was outside on an uncovered deck. Despite the forecast for days leading up to the wedding predicting that it would rain during the ceremony and reception, they apparently had no rain plan, and we never got any food. Everyone was crammed into a small indoor space drinking."
14.And: "I went to my college roommate's wedding and was asked to be in the wedding party. She was a sweetheart, but her controlling, conservative, racist groom and I hated each other. Everyone had a plus-one invite but me. I found out the groom nixed my plus-one invite because my then-boyfriend was Hispanic. The groom thought I might try to talk his bride-to-be out of marrying him and was very rude to me during their engagement, but I did not because she was happy. He told me that since I was a 'hippie type,' I'd end up in the gutter, and he would spit on me if he ever saw me. I never told her what he said and attended the wedding solo. Needless to say, I never saw them again, but I ended up being a college professor."
—Anonymous
Have you ever attended a wedding that felt tacky or classless to you? How come? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
