Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

My worst wedding memory happened the night before my older sister’s wedding. She had this chick who invited herself to be a bridesmaid (my sister was too good-hearted to say no) who hit on the father of the maid of honor the night before the wedding, pissed everyone off, took off, we had to go searching for her, I got a wicked sore throat, so my sister had me drink straight Midori - bad advice! - so I was a little out of it but slept real good. Anyway, we found the chick, worked things out - and then she proceeded to hit on every single guy at the wedding! She was a nightmare. But the wedding turned out okay itself.

My first husband had been married when he was 18 and stupid.  However, he said that it had been annulled.  Being a good Catholic girl I had wanted to get married in the church.  We did the whole counseling thing and everything.  I had him talk to the Catholic Church to find out if we could get married in the church due to his annulment and he said he called and that we didn’t.  The day before our wedding (out of state) we go and get the license and they mark a big red X about him having a divorce.  Apparently, Iowa annulments are still called divorces elsewhere.  This meant the night before the wedding we found out that we could not get married at the church.  We frantically called around for a judge and managed to find one who would come to our reception to actually marry us, which we did.  However, the kicker was, almost no one in his family knew about the fact that he was married before, and he didn’t want me to tell anyone in my family so I didn’t.  My family found out since I didn’t want to lie to them about why I wasn’t getting married at my church, but he still lied to the rest of his family (about 90 people) and told them it was a paper error.  OH and I could only have two bridgesmaids because he didn’t have enough friends to fill in the groomsmen.  Needless to say it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the marriage fell apart in about 9 months and we’ve since divorced.

Worst wedding memory…I haz one. Only one, since I generally learn from my larger mistakes and don’t repeat them. NEVER getting married again.

Met my future ex husband in Japan, while we were both active duty US Navy serving aboard an aircraft carrier. We flew to Hawaii to get married. Azzhole shows up 20 mins late, and basically grunts the “I do’s”. Later that evening, he orders me take out Mexican at the hotel. Just me, not him, since he chose that time to inform me that he hadn’t seen his friends in a few years and was going out drinking with them. On our wedding night. Despite the fact that he had spent the previous several days having a week long bachelor party. Which turned into a 4 year long bachelor party that ended abruptly when he actually took me out to dinner this time, if only to tell me that his secretary was pregnant…with his child.

Happiness is feeling more joy the day my divorce was final than I did on the wedding day.

I was married on a Tuesday in a skateboard park, but had a wee tiny church ceremony, completely DIY down to the bride’s bouquet and the boutonnières, for my Mom’s sake. We were so broke we didn’t have the wherewithal to take time off for a honeymoon, and neither of us were big on frills, so this was the plan, but I made the mistake of mentioning it to the people at work that I was having a church ceremony that weekend.  I worked at a juvenile facility, and some bright bulb thought that my wedding would be a perfect outing for the kids who had behaved well that week…

As I said, it was planned to be tiny—and here came this onslaught of kids and staff (plus the head of the facility and his wife), but the kids weren’t a problem other than being vocal and obnoxious about the fact that the music was just from a CD, and there weren’t drinks except punch (we were barely twenty-one and legal, much less the twelve-and-thirteen year old delinquents).

It was a sweet little service with church people I’d known all my life, people who went out of their way and brought finger food and made a little reception for us. And then: my boss had had a few drinks of his own—and in the midst of that cozy, churchy, pot-luck gathering banged his spoon on a table and called everyone to silence to make a toast. He bellowed something slurred and incoherent about “Here’s to long, hot nights, lots of fights, and lots of sweet, sweet love and making up.”

There was this horrified pause.

And, by tacit agreement, we all ignored his little outburst, and went on.no

An outdoor wedding.
A bride going - shall we say, al fresco? - whether for fashion or for ventilation, I still don’t know.
A venturesome bee.

A honeymoon night to remember, but very much not in the way I’m sure she had hoped.

Well, I can’t beat those worst…lol…so I am going with best.  My own.  My husband and I flew to Vegas, and got married.  No worries about offending anyone because of not picking them to be a bridesmaid, or sitting so-and-so beside the other so-and-so.  We told everyone what we were doing, we just didn’t invite anyone.  We had pizza for a wedding meal, my dress was a prom dress, I made my own bouquet (we live in Canada, and I would not have been allowed to bring back live flowers).  It was the best.

I was young and too gutless to stand up for myself.  I, along with a couple of others, had been bullied into being bridesmaids by a slightly psychotic acquaintance.  I took time off work the week leading up to the wedding, and was exhausted from being her errand girl.  I was literally at her beck and call the whole time, as she insisted I spend the week at her place.  Trapped like idiot, it was the week from hell. 

The wedding day rolled around, and we had been herded like sheep to the hairdressers.  I decided to nip out while she was getting her hair done to get some champagne for the limo.  She took such offense that she packed everyone up and left me there, no car no phone.  I managed to get a lift to her house, and discovered that she was no longer speaking to me.  It was about this time that I decided to see just how drunk I could get.  I managed to get through my reading at the church without a giggle, smirk or eyeroll, so felt I had earned a reward.  I then proceeded to the reception getting totally off my face with the cute best man, while enjoying a marathon bitch session about the bride. 

At one stage early on when I was barely tipsy, she came and told me I’d had enough to drink and that I was making a fool of myself.  For shame, we live in Australia where the national sport is getting pissed, you can get deported for saying shit like that!  Anyway, red rag to a bull and all that, I drank even more thank-you very much and had a pretty good time.  When I was saying goodbye to her family, to my horror, her goaty old granddad grabbed me and ground his mouth into mine, giving me stubble rash from hell, while her mother squawked at him to let me go. 

Oh yeah, and my dress was a hideously unflattering deep purple taffeta number.

My fondest memory was discovering that the church’s unity candle stand was way too tall in the middle of the ceremony when we tried to light the central candle.  It was a moment that would have flipped many brides out and sent them running off in tears, but I just found it hilarious at the time and still do.  It was and still is stunningly ridiculousness that the church had this stand that was so tall that even my 5’10” husband had to stand on tiptoes to actually light the candle, while I just stood there and tried to make it look like I was helping. 

I still wonder what other couples end up doing or how we were supposed to light it.  It wouldn’t work to put it on a lower step as the tripod base was too wide for a step.  Do other couples not put the candle in the stand until after lighting it?  I still can’t fathom how it was not an continuing issue for the church that nothing about it was mentioned during the rehearsal.

Spam word - times27.  27 times the overgrown candle stand foiled happy couples before the church got rid of it??

The worst thing that happened at my wedding is the bar ran out of whiskey and vodka.  Yes, my guests were lushes. 

We were at a state park in the middle of no-where.  When we polished off the booze available at the lodge, we were out of luck.  It was an open bar, so everyone went nuts.

My worst wedding memory was at a friend’s wedding.  After the ceremony, the wedding party went off in a limo and started drinking.  By the time they got to the reception, half the bridesmaids were so drunk they could barely walk.  Only the bride and groom were able to do the wedding party dance. 

I spent half the reception in the bathroom, bringing bread and water to the girls who weren’t throwing up.  Good times.

Condensed version—my car died, the veil was somehow ripped from the headpiece, my mother-in-law made a big deal about hosting the rehearsal dinner—which turned out to be brownies and a cheese log rolled in corn flakes—AND she managed to misplace the key to the hall, so we couldn’t begin decorating for the reception until midnight.

The next morning, my family somehow left for the church, never noticing I wasn’t with them. I ended up having to flag down a neighbor on her way to work and beg for a ride. With my dress, shoes, make-up case, hair kit, but not my purse. The purse with the rings and the wedding license.

While everyone was dressing, my 6yo brother realized “I’m not wearing any underwear,” my 11yo brother discovered the legs to his tuxedo pants were sewn shut, my 9yo sister found she had no shoes, and the future sister-in-law I’d been forced to include in the wedding party no longer fit in her dress.

The florists delivered the wrong bouquets, the DJ never showed, and our photographer (hired by the mother-in-law) was on his second-ever gig.

During the ceremony, 15 pagers began sounding (my now-ex and many friends were/are volunteer firefighters) and a quarter of the guests left for a 4-alarm structure fire.

The best man’s toast was, I quote, “Good luck to my best friend and his new wife. You’ll need it ... now that she’s knocked up.”

To top it all off - my new husband informed me - as we were leaving the reception - that the first day of my honeymoon would be spent driving a U-haul 500 miles in the opposite direction of our intended destination, to deliver my new sister-in-law to college and move her into her dorm. He then proceeded to fall asleep while I was in the bathroom slipping into my sexy lingerie.

And yes, that’s the condensed version. The longer one is a hellova lot funnier.

Two stories, as I’m not sure the first technically counts as a “wedding story.”

Although we lived in Georgia, my husband and I chose to be married in Florida as a friend of the family had offered us her beach house for the wedding.  Because we were out of state, the licensing process took a little bit more time than usual—there was an extra form to fill out—so we wound up sitting at the clerk’s desk for a bit while she was rummaging around for the right paperwork. 

As we were waiting, the phone rang, and we were honored to be able to overhear the clerk’s side of the following conversation:

“Why yes, ma’am, this is the right place to get a marriage license.”
“Well, you and the groom will need to come down together to apply for the lic…”
“Yes ma’am, we need the groom too.”
*pause*
“No, ma’am, you can’t come down at different times.”
“There are just a few questions that we have to ask you—if you’ve ever been married bef…”
“No, ma’am, I can’t not ask you that question.”
*pause*
“Yes ma’am, I have to ask you that in front of the groom.”
“Yes ma’am, you have to answer.”
“...yes ma’am; I believe that the man you are marrying should know if you’ve been…yes, your divorce must be final before you can say that you are divorced.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.  Good luck.”

With much giggling, we filled out the rest of our paperwork—including the statement that neither of us had been married before—and chuckled all the way home.

——

The second story is the tale of the worst decorations ever.

My best friend got married in a small wedding chapel in middle Georgia.  She warned us ahead of time that the decorations were a little “cutesy” but the place was friendly and (best of all) reasonably priced.

We arrive somewhat early, so we settle down and start taking a good long look at the chapel.  Cutesy does not begin to cover these decorations.  There were cherubs hung at every possibly opportunity—and not just cherubs: spray-painted gold, cheaply made, plastic cherubs nestled into sprays of artificial ivy and baby’s breath.  There were the occasional strand of gold mardi-gras beads draped around the room, and then there was the cross.

It was large. It was gold. It was the bright gold that you can only get from a spray can. It was also very curiously textured.  It was so curiously textured that I spent more of the wedding staring at the cross and thinking “Just what the heck is that made from?” than I did paying attention to the perfectly lovely ceremony.  It was hypnotic. 

After the ceremony was over, I ducked back into the chapel and got close enough to see what the cross was made from.  Macaroni.  Elbow macaroni noodled glued to a foam background and then spray-painted gold.  It was an Arts&Crafts;project from summer camp gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Naturally, I came back, told my date and we both vowed to never breathe a word of it to the bride.  It really was a nice ceremony, and who actually wants to know that they were married in front of a giant, gold, macaroni cross?

1983 I was MOH for a gal because she didn’t want her future SIL to take that spot, and no one else would/could do it. We’d been friends on and off since elementary school, but after I moved away at age 14 the friendship wasn’t as close. Anyhoo, I said yes because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

Her mom made godawfulugly bridesmaids dresses. My mom made mine. Green. Mine was seafoam green with satiny ribbons shot through the filmy fabric. Peasant style top with the shoulder ruffle, full skirt. I still have it and my girls wear it for dressup. The bridesmaids dresses were green with brownish flowers - ugly - in the same pattern.

Parents on both sides were first gen immigrants from Scotland. So was the minister. We could barely understand a word spoken. No rehearsal, no rehearsal dinner. Did it rain? I don’t remember. I do know that the bride lost her engagement ring somewhere in her bedroom the morning of, and I was on hands and knees methodically looking for it. She wouldn’t marry without it… it was under the bed.

The reception was at some Army/Navy club, in the cave-like basement, smoke thick as fog. Food was horrid. I didn’t eat it. There was no head table, but I liked being in the back of the room observing. The band was also Scottish - and I love Celtic music - but was too loud for the cave and my ears were bleeding from the noise. And you couldn’t dance to any of it. The happy couple cut and run as soon as they could - most of the guests were by then half bagged, and most were friends of her parents, so they didn’t care. I, however, was stuck.

I drank a bit, but not much, flirted with the rather gawky younger brother of the groom - including making sure he was a few steps behind me whenever I walked: the better for him to see my butt-wiggle. I tried my best to understand the 90 year old relatives who’d flown in from the motherland for the occasion. Accent and band combined to make me smile and nod a lot.

At some point, I went to the bathroom only to discover that my period had started a good half hour earlier in the evening. When? Who knows. But it was before I’d sat on my duff chatting because my dress was stained. A nice round six inch across bloody stain, brownish around the edges. I tried sponging it with toilet water and tp, but to no avail. I had to find the sister of the bride (who had the sense to stay out of the wedding party), back edging the wall so no one would see my blood-stained back of dress.  She told her mom (the MOB), and SHE told the FOB to drive me to the house and let me pick out a dress from her closet, grudgingly, since all I had of my own were tshirts and jeans.

The woman had horrible taste, and I ended up with a brownish jobby in the same peasant style. I should have known, since she did pick out the fabric for the bridesmaid dresses. I didn’t want to go back, but they insisted.

I can laugh now, and my mom managed to soak the stain out (which is why I still have the dress in the dressup trunk for my girls). And when I think of that gangly brother of the groom seeing that stain on my butt… ugh. I saw the bride only once after the wedding. Her hub was in the military, and they were stationed just outside the town where I was going to university. I’ve never heard from her again and google has let me down, alas.

But… once, fifteen years ago, while living three Provinces from our hometown I thought I shared a bus ride with her. She was pregnant (something my ‘friend’ said she’d never do), and when the bus slowed for a turn in a subdivision, someone outside called to her - by my friend’s name! - and she waved. I was only three rows back, so I got a good look at her as she sat sidewase on the ‘pregnant/old folks’ seat. The engagement ring wasn’t the same, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her, but I’ve always wondered.

The altar candles set the artificial altar flowers on fire at my brother’s wedding. A huuuuuuge blaze resulted, crawling up the wall toward the big cross. I was a bridesmaid and noticed it when it was still a relatively small blaze, so I darted away to find a fire extinguisher. At first, more people noticed me leaving (Is she throwing up? Does she have to go to the bathroom? Is she objecting to the wedding?) more than the fire itself.

I found a fire extinguisher, and the pastor put it out, resulting in billows of smoke and white extinguisher powder. In the confusion, the bride’s mother fell against a pew back and broke a rib. (She’s OK now, and she did eventually make it to the reception.)

In the end, a firetruck, an ambulance, and two police cars showed up to the church. We’ve got cute pictures of the couple in the firetruck, with my sister-in-law wearing a fireman’s hat.

I was always told that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but I’ll never know if mine was or not.  I remember getting dressed.  I remember putting on my makeup.  I remember standing in the doorway of the sanctuary, praying, “Please don’t let me step on my dress, please don’t let me step on my dress,” and then, nothing.

Just nothing.

I have no memory of my wedding after that point - not the ceremony, not the receiving line, not even the reception.  And this is not a recent phenomenon.  I wish I could blame it on aging, but even the very next day, it all was a blank. 

So, not a best or worst memory, but a non-memory.  Does that count?

I can’t compare to any of this, but in the video made of my wedding (which was in a chapel in Vegas), during the vows you can see a man’s hand reaching onto the screen and repeatedly grabbing the butt of another guy standing in the audience.  We had about 17 guests present and on the way there, some of his friends had airline issues that resulted in them being bumped to first class, with free liquor. 

That was a great wedding!

I don’t have worst wedding memories yet, but I’ll be a bridesmaid in two weddings two months apart next year, so I’m sure I’ll make some! At least in the first one I get to pick my own dress…I just have to stick to the interesting shade of green the bride picked for us.

My best friend just got married in June. It started out with her three-year-old son not wanting to be the ringbearer and hiding under the cake table. It only got worse when he saw the cake after he came out from under the table. DURING the ceremony (It was a very small venue, all in one room. Second marriage so they just wanted really simple). He started crying about how he didn’t want “to turn into a blueberry like Chocolate Factory”, since the cake was blue. So as I’m standing up there next to my best friend and her daughter, my fiance, who was the best man, was holding said little boy and trying to get him to stop crying about becoming a blueberry so that people could hear the bride and groom saying their vows. It was memorable to say the least. =) My own wedding is in two months and I have the same ringbearer. I’ve vowed to make sure there is no blue around him before the ceremony!

Best wedding memory ever—my sister’s. After oh, a decade of living together my sister and her boyfriend decided to tie the knot. They choose to embrace the idea of a Vegas wedding…historic wedding chapel with the Elvis impersonator and everything. She had a wonderful dress (1950’s cocktail dress from one of the reissued Vogue patterns) and lovely flowers. The minister had more jewelry than any other person present plus a bright purple shirt. Elvis performed after the ceremony. Only family attended—but since the groom has 5 siblings who are married with kids it was a full house. It was just sooooo ‘them’ that it couldn’t be topped! But the part that still cracks us up 7 years later is the fact that the new groom was drinking gin and tonics before the post-ceremony dinner and the more he had to drink the more he showed us his ‘pin up tie’ (one of the ones from the 1940’s which look like a normal tie but when you flip it over there is a spectacular pin-up in the style of a Varga girl on the lining!) This from a usually very restrained man—as only those of Scandanavian descent can be. To this day we all remember and think, “Awwwww.” No drama, relatively little unexpected craziness. How it can and should be done. Sigh.

Well, hell, I have two sets of ugly memories to choose from . . . lucky me.

The second wedding, done on the cheap, took place on the shore of a big, cold lake.  Dog as best man; dude of dubious credentials, known only as “the Rev,” as the officiating agent (paid with a case of beer).

We put a bottle of champagne in the lake to cool it. Waves started carrying it to the east. None of the four other people present wanted to go grab it—the wusses—and the dog/best man was no retriever.  So I, in my red silk dress, waded into Lake Michigan . . . which, in early May, is none too warm. The bottle kept drifting toward Petoskey; I kept sloshing in deeper. Just before I had to go horizontal and start swimming, I managed to lock my hand around the bottle’s neck.

That champagne was so utterly craptastic it wasn’t worth the effort.  In fact, the whole incident ended up being a metaphor for the marriage.

Unless I find a sugar daddy, or Nathan Kamp tells me he can’t live without me, I’m staying single.

JennK, you win. There is nothing in my memories can top that.

I must mention 21 years ago I got married to Mr. Perfect. If you doubt that, just ask him. We’ve had the inevitable speed bumps and very few sorrows, and we’re still happy with the decision to go ahead & take vows.

My memory is a good one. Yeah, my wedding had glitches but I cannot remember them now. For the reception, since neither of us has been able to dance since the Twist fell out of style, we had a non-dance event. At the local Renaissance Faire, we found a group that played medieval & renaissance music on flutes, recorders, viols, etc., and we hired them to play at our reception instead of the DJ or the band. May not work for everyone, but it worked for us! Many people have mentioned since, that ours was one of the more fun & relaxing weddings they’ve attended.

antispam: bed57. Oh yes, and still counting.

My last attempt at this got eaten, so I’m going for the condensed version now (probably a good thing!).

My mom remarried when I was 17, and I was Best Woman.  I got lost driving myself to the church, and showed up 30 minutes after the ceremony was to start.  Even better, the minister made repeated references to my lateness during the ceremony.

When I was 12, my mom’s best friend got married.  The couple was on a tight budget, and chose to cut corners in all the wrong places.  They married in a country club, and had some very nice champagne during the reception.  Unfortunately, the wedding was in the evening, right around dinner time.  The ceremony started late, and there were a lot of photos afterward, so the guests were starving by the time the buffet opened.  Those cut corners I mentioned?  They were all missing at the buffet table - the bride spent $200 on food for 50 guests, and there was just enough for everyone to have 1 chicken wing, and 1 meatball, and 1 roll, and 1 cheese stick.  And that was it.  I’m not kidding when I say there was a stampede once the cake was cut.

Oh, and did I mention that the bride and her husband were New Agers who wanted all of their attendants to wear costumes during the ceremony?  (The B and G wore standard wedding attire).  There was no central theme, so as the flower girl I was dressed as a jester, and my mom, the Best Woman, wore a black-and-white striped prison jumpsuit from a costume shop.

Well, my bridesmaid/sister got a horrible sunburn trying to tan to best show off her yellow bridesmaid dress and looked horrible.  They mixed up the flowers and drove a pin into the white leather cover of my prayerbook with my new name.  I sat on my wedding cake in the car. The organist didn’t show.  My father wasn’t at the wedding.  The priest got our names wrong and forgot it was a double-ring ceremony.  My bouquet got caught on the ceiling fan when I threw it and flew back to me.  The photographer never returned our pictures so I don’t have any.  Our honeymoon consisted of driving a UHaul with all our worldly goods halfway across the country to live with his parents for 3 months. BUT, we’ve stayed married for 41 years so a bad wedding doesn’t mean a bad marriage necessarily since we all kept our sense of humor and didn’t let it bother us.  Adversity like that shows your true colors pretty quickly.

I’d love to play, but I’ve never been married myself, the one wedding I was a part of was my brother’s (and I had no idea that the wedding party was supposed to sit at the head table—since no one ever told me I was supposed to sit there; I was 18 and had never been in a wedding before and didn’t really pay any attention at the ones I’d been forced to attend; and no one came to drag me up there, and it’s not like I was hiding in the pepto-pink dress or anything so they couldn’t find me to tell me—so when I found out three years later that my sister in law had been furious with me that day, it was news to me) and the only wedding any of my friends has had happened a full three days before I, or anyone else, for that matter, found out.

They just went on their lunch hour and got married, went back to work, and forgot to tell anyone. I always thought that was the most romantic thing, ever. As if their bond was so much more important than the ugly dresses, bad food and the chicken dance, and it was completely natural and right and organic to just…make it legal and go on with things without any special fanfare because it was such an obvious thing to them.

I doubt their mothers were as happy and enchanted as I was. They didn’t find out until a week after I did!

Before my wedding, my bridesmaids and I had gone to get our hair done. We all rode in the same car to the church. As I got out of the front passenger side of the car, I shut the door at the top corner and left my hand resting on the car. That was a bad idea. My bridesmaid Jenn then got out of the back passenger side door and shut it, crushing my thumb between the two doors. To top it off, the driver had already gotten out and LOCKED THE CAR. She fumbled around in her purse for about a minute before she found the keys, while my sister was freaking out and I was trying not to scream and have all the guests in the church hear me! They finally got the car unlocked and got me inside the bride’s room. My mom takes a look at it, pronounces it broken, and has me run it under some cold water. A splint was fashioned from a penny and some scotch tape, and I hid the thumb behind my bouquet!

Bad weddings are in the eye of the beholder . All my relatives were horrified at my wedding plans, but I stuck to my guns and got the wedding I wanted.
At the time I was 6 months pregnant with my first child, and though my boyfriend and I had been together 8 years, we never felt the need to tie the knot. Until my 6th month, when suddenly I realized I needed to be married. You just dont fight those emotional things that happen to you when you are with child. So we made plans to go to Las Vegas to get married. I told all my relatives to stay home and just invited my sister and best friend. He invited his Best friend.  I bought the only dress that fit me in my enormous state, a sleeveless black dress. My mother was horrified, she couldn’t believe that i would wear black. I informed her that everyone could see I was preggers, so I was no virgin, and white would seem kinda wrong anyway.
But the thing that everyone was hung up on was the fact that we were going to be married by Elvis. The fat one. In a sparkly white jumpsuit.
Oh how we basked in the awesomeness!
He lip-synced elvis toons from a boom-box behind him, in the most gaudy of chapels known to man. We got a free cake and a ride in a pink caddy. It was all caught on video for everyone back home to see. Everyone in our family thought it was the most unromantic wedding ever, but we wouldn’t have changed a thing. We’ll be going back every 10 years to get re-married.

We had a fairly normal wedding on a tight budget. However….

I nagged my husband-to-be mercilessly at the courthouse to put the wedding license in my possession because I was absolutely positive he’d forget to bring it with him.  He finally gave in, gave it to me, and I shoved it in my backpack (I was an undergrad at the time).

Guess who forgot to bring the license to the ceremony?

Luckily, we live in a small college town and our Best Man was the hero of the day.  He rushed over to the house, dumped my backpack on the floor, snatched the license and brought it back within 30 minutes without anyone the wiser.

My husband insisted that it was a subconscious message from me that I didn’t want to get married to him.  But 30+ years later we’re still together, so all’s well that ends well.

I am occasionally “hired” (read that “volunteered by cheap relatives”) to play piano at the weddings of family members. I really don’t mind so much, but I do appreciate it when a paying gig comes along. That brings me to my first paying gig/ wedding nightmare story. A man I worked closely with approched me about playing the piano at his brother’s wedding.  (I’ll call him Dan.) The pianist originally hired was in the throws of her first trimester, and she didn’t think she could make it trough the entire ceremony without getting up at least once. Since it was the last minute, I didn’t get a chance to meet the couple or any of the other family before the night of the rehearsal. I had only been given the music selections and order of the ceremony and told it would all be worked during the run throughs. I rode to the church with Dan, and on the way he filled me in on the couple’s story…dated two years, first marriage for both, family on both sides including Dan were really happy with the match, etc. Sounds great right? Rehearsal starts normally. Everyone seems happy. When just as the bride-to-be gets about half-way down the aisle as I run through the wedding march, her mother turns to the mother of the groom and says, “This is going to be so much nicer than her last wedding.” It was said loud enough that even I heard it over the piano, and even louder was the intake of breath by the MotG. Everything froze. The bride and her father froze, the groom froze in his practiced position standing next to the minister, the mothers just stared at each other. I didn’t know whether to keep playing or stop, so I just ended in mid-measure. The silence really did seem to go on forever. It was Dan, practicing his best man position, who broke the silence with the ever eloquent statement, “Oh sh*t.” With that, everyone started yelling at everyone else. The minister tried to make peace as I just sat watching a future episode of redneck weddings unfold before my eyes.  It finally ended when the groom yelled for everyone to “SHUT the F**K UP!” He grabbed the arm of the bride and led her outside, announcing, “We need to talk.”
It turns out the bride had been married twice before and also had a child in the custody of her ex-husband. Her family, thinking that Dan’s brother was a great catch, had never brought it up in case he should decide to change his mind. She had covered it up to the groom, his family, the minister during their pre-marital counseling, and had even lied on their marriage license by checking the “never married” box. I wish I could end this by saying that at least he found out about her lying ways before he married her. Except, the next day, he MARRIED HER ANYWAY! It was the most tense wedding I’ve ever been too. The bride and groom weren’t speaking, barely mumbling their vows. The minister refused to marry them, so they quickly found a justice of the peace to marry then at the reception site. The families weren’t speaking to each other. The bridesmaids and groomsmen were taking sides. The shoving the cake in the face scenario took on a whole new meaning. The marriage ended 18 months and 1 child later….big surprise. It made me appreciate playing for my family’s weddings in a whole new way.

Okay, now for a good memory to counteract all the bad.  My niece and her fiance became engaged a year and a half ago and last summer began actively looking for a reasonably priced place to hold the wedding.  Since my Signifigant Other and I live in a farmhouse with a two-acre front lawn, I suggested our yard as a viable alternative if nothing else presented itself, and the couple who help us cook at our annual family picnics said they would be happy to cater if the wedding was held here.

To make a long story short, the couple settled on our yard some months later and decided on an early June wedding date.  The preparations started in early April, and I really feel as though I made out like a bandit on the deal, since my sister (the MOTB), my niece, her fiance, my mother, and assorted friends all pitched in to do the landscaping, which included weeding and mulching roughly 600 feet of gardens, mowing, weedwhacking, AND planting annuals in the bride’s colors!  Thank God we have a backhoe!  My sister even paid to have a cleaning service come in and do the house from top to bottom.

It was a lovely, simple ceremony.  The bride wore white silk crepe and flip-flops; her bridesmaids and MOH all wore matching (but not identical) short cocktail dresses that they LIKED and could easily wear again for other events.

The roses were in bloom.  Everyone raved about the food; nobody got too tipsy and made an idiot of him/herself; the yard didn’t get trashed.  The rental company guys, the photographers, and the caterers all commented about how nice, laid-back, helpful, and stress-free everyone was—a pretty unusual state of affairs, apparently, for a wedding.

The only negative was 90 degree heat and humidity, but since the day before the ceremony was freezing and the day after poured rain, we felt we got off lucky.

How boring was this?!  :)

Deb: I’d say you and everyone else who’s still happily married wins.

I hope it doesn’t sound like complaints, because I truly view the whole thing in an hysterical light. The ex and I, and our families, have a wonderful time recalling “When Murphy’s Law Attacks!” (It’s better when I tell it in person—I have voice, gestures, and more.)

The best thing is, as you said, to do what works for you. You also need to approach the entire event with a sense of humor. Something is going to go wrong, maybe even several (dozen) somethings, but if you can laugh, it will turn out perfectly.

Cannot compare to any of these, but my worst wedding memory was of one I went to when I was about 11, so late-80’s.  I have no idea who thought this was a bright thing to do, but remember those wee-folk mascot costumes with the flapping mouths that are popular in parades and such?  Yeah, there was a bride and groom of those at the reception.

I was at my friend Nicole’s brothers wedding. My friend was a bridesmaid. When their
father gave the toast he said congratulations to Lauren and Nicole, may they
have a happy life together! He should have said Eric and Lauren. It was very funny

There were a couple of years in the late 90s when it seems everyone in our circle, including us, was tying the knot.  Not so many bad memories, lots of fuzzy memories from too much of the vino at times.  I did manage to bring home a lovely champagne flute from the top country club in town without even realizing it.  The ever-present disposable table cameras gave us the best memories.  We felt it was our place to take the pictures the bride and groom really want to see - and the MOB will be appalled by.  Shots of putting on the golf course behind the country club, playing the drums with the band, using flower arrangements and centerpieces as hats, laying on pianos like Michelle Pfeiffer, you get the idea.

My own wedding went off without any dire happenings.  Coming thisclose to getting laid off three weeks before the day that was going to clear my savings account, well, that made any little problem that cropped up seem rather minor in comparison.

The players are:
husband’s buddy Nick: Groomsman extraordinaire.  Enormous guy (over 6’, quite possible 260 lbs.), huge fro, mountain man beard. 
Grandmama: petite, at possibly 5’3”, 100lbs, classy rose colored suit, white kitten heels, 90 years of age.
The scene:
Reception hall, dance floor.  A rumpus raged to the tune of “The Seven Deadly Sins” as sung by Flogging Molly.  We were all doing some fantastic combination of wild Irish dancing and the sort of jump-mosh madness that occurs at a Flogging Molly show. 
I had my arm hooked through Grandmama’s, twirling in a circle.  (This woman dances like nobody’s business; not out of the ordinary for her at all. )
As I broke away from my grandmother, Nick dove in and picked me up, bouncing me around for a few beats, setting me down near Grandmama again. 
Grandmama said: “Oh that looked like fun!”
Nick overheard this and swooped in, picking up my grandmother and giving her the same treatment for quite a bit longer. 
When he set her down, I asked: “Do you feel suitably 25 again?”
Grandmama giggled and said: “I feel 15!”
It remains one of my favorite memories of the whole day. 

I am told later that my uncle looked like he wanted to kill Nick. (pissing off my uncle has absolutely nothing to do with my love of this moment…nope. Not at all.)
...I’m not sure it appeased him at all that Nick ripped the seat out of his pants gettin’ down to “Black Betty” later in the evening either.

People still talk about our reception as one of the best parties they’ve ever been to.  This is good, since the party was 75% of the reason we decided to have a wedding in the first place.

I haven’t been to too many weddings, but my family still talks about my older sister’s. (Part of me feels bad putting this out on the interwebs, because my sister still cannot see the humor in this story—so read with sympathy, y’all.)

My sister and husband-to-be didn’t want to get married in church, not being members of one, so they just rented a hall for the reception and decided that my uncle, who is a minister, could marry them informally, and then people could share stories, make toasts, etc. before eating and dancing. Really nice, really cozy, full of love and good wishes.

It was decided that this shindig would be dry—and the invitations said so—specifically because of some family members. A couple of weeks before the wedding, MIL calls my sister and asks that even though booze won’t be provided, people can still bring it, right? My sister says no, but they do anyway—they just tailgate it out in the parking lot between courses.

The runup is a constant stress for my sister (ex. MIL has been inviting people who are not on the guest list—folks from my BIL’s past that he doesn’t know or care about and who have not received invites. My sister must tell her to dis-invite them, which upsets her). My mom is doing a lot (sewing my sister’s dress, organizing food, etc), so to make MIL feel included, MIL gets assigned flowers. My sister specifies FRESH. She replies no problem, yes, of course. The day of the wedding, we all arrive at the hall to find mounds of plastic flowers and plants (including two fake trees) being parceled out as decorations and centerpieces. My mom and sister take a deep breath, and say, okay, that’s okay, not what we wanted, but not the end of the world. The vows/marrying go off without a hitch, and lots of lovely, heartfelt speeches are made to the couple. Food is put out, people eat, music is played, and people start dancing (although some folks are still eating). This is about 6pm. We have the hall until midnight. After eating, MIL and her friend start to . . . TAKE DOWN THEIR DECORATIONS. WHILE THE RECEPTION IS GOING ON AROUND THEM. Centerpieces get whisked away, wall hangings are stripped, and a side door near the dance floor is propped open so they can load all this into their truck trailer. When my dad asks, politely, what she is doing, she says something vague about getting things in the truck before dark.

So picture this: the DJ calls the new couple up to the dance floor to dance together—a soft, romantic song comes on and they hold each other, swaying and turning with the music on the empty dance floor. All around them, their friends and family gaze at them with love, smiling through happy tears . . . until the Mother of the Bride’s friend walks past them, right through the dance floor on her way out the door, carrying a plastic potted tree.

My dad and I looked at each other in disbelief—and started cracking up. It was just too surreal at that point.

Best Wedding Memory - The expression on my husband-to-be’s face when my dad walked me down the aisle.

Worst Wedding Memory - My future sister-in-law wearing white to my wedding. (hey, if that’s my worst…can’t complain I guess)

Best:  When the doors to the sanctuary opened, I stood by my father and gazed down the aisle to see the man I was about to marry standing rod-straight, a single tear on his cheek.  He caught my eye and never broke off as my father and I walked slooooowly toward him.  At our approach, a second tear appeared.  He took my arm, shook my father’s hand and leaned in to whisper to me, “I am going to make sure that you are as happy forever as I am right at this minute.  Always.”

I swear, if I had read that scene in a book I’d never have believed it.  That it happened to me I count as one of the many, many blessings of my life.  He’s made good on his promise, too.

Let’s see, other than his grandma asking both of us about 100 times on the wedding day if we had condoms for the honeymoon…... her cake she made would have to be the worst thing about the wedding, she decided she’d bake our cake , which pissed me off because being a country gal I was looking forward to store bought cake..
Anyway, she made one cake, it fell apart. So she made a second cake, it fell apart. She was so irritated that the third attempt she put in double the eggs. It held together and it was pretty but you couldn’t cut it with a knife and we ended up throwing it to the chickens. I’m pretty sure we severely injured a few chickens when it hit LOL.
Now maybe if she made condoms….........

We got married outdoors. In August. In southern Oklahoma (where the humidity gets as high as the temperature). We’d already had to spray the white chairs set up to keep the ants off. The wonderful friend who officiated was Australian and he had never performed a wedding ceremony, even though he was a licensed minister. (This had to do with being a psychologist serving at a leper colony in his youth.) He was nervous.  He had the book open and was reading the ceremony. A little bug popped in and started crawling up the page. Bruce turned the page and the bug happily flipped over and started crawling across the new page. My hubby-to-be and I bit the insides of our cheeks until we bled. Then we gave in to the giggles. Bruce was laughing. Greg was laughing. I laughed so hard my hat almost fell off. My pregnant-due-to-pop-any-moment matron of honor laughed. The best man laughed… When we tried to explain, no one else thought it was funny, least of all the parents - on either side.

Something must have taken, though. We celebrate our 25th Anniversary next week.

This is one of my best memories of my wedding day, but I suppose other people might put it down as a worst.

Right in the middle of the ceremony, when the entire church was listening to me and my other half exchange vows, my niece, who was about five at the time, asked in a very serious, very thoughtful and very penetrating voice, “Mummy, why do little girls need daddies?”  Unsurprisingly, the church wasn’t so quiet after that.

I eloped with my first husband when I was a senior in college. He was Muslim and we drove to Indianapolis one Friday to get married at a masjid there.  I wore a long black skirt, a cream colored blouse and a green hijab.  We didn’t tell anybody.  I sat in the car in what was, really, a crummy downtown neighborhood on East St. for about an hour while he went to Friday prayers and made the arrangements.  He told me to tell people I was from Lafayette, because otherwise they would wonder why we didn’t get married in the masjid in our town.  The ceremony was attended by probably a dozen men I didn’t know,and during which young boys kept peeking in the room to see what was going on.  Afterwards, the imam, who seemed very nice, filled out the certificate and asked for the marriage license.  I had never been married before, but I knew that somehow, a license was involved.  Nadir had been married before, but hadn’t said anything about the paperwork. He feigned ignorance.  The imam told us we could just walk down to the courthouse and get the license, bring it back, and he’d sign it.  Made sense to me.  But instead we drove home.I wondered about this, but Nadir said he had to get to work, and that we’d get married again a few months later, have our families there, do the license then, all that stuff.  I believed him.  Then, he got a doctoral fellowship in Ohio and moved there—I stayed in Muncie, waiting for him to ask me to join him.  Two yrs later, 3 days after our 2nd “anniversary,” I got a call from his wife—you know, the one he told me he had divorced for cheating—asking me what I was doing with her husband.  Every mystery from the last 4 years became stunningly clear.  She was a nice woman—she ended up staying with him for a few more years, but I think they are actually divorced now. 

Ten years later, I got married “again,” for the first time, to the first guy I dated in high school—ok, to the first guy who didn’t later decide that he was gay.  We had a great wedding with the usual glitches—my family and I were almost late because my family was enthralled with the Colts on TV; my brothers took so long in the bathroom that I didn’t have time to adequately dry my hair or my nails.  My mom refused to walk down the center aisle—steering the usher to the side.  Early in the ceremony (which was held in a museum), the phone began ringing, and continued to beep thru the whole thing (someone could have just hung it up).  Our preacher referred to the wedding as “a double funeral”—referring of course to a death to self, and a commitment to the other, but still something of a downer.  At the time, my inlaws were going through a bitter divorce, so my FIL was not there, but we were kind of worried about him becoming a problem.  I later found out that my SIL’s dad, a bail bondsman, had been packing heat.  We chose the Sat of Labor Day weekend for the ceremony, thinking it would be good because people would have the day off, but we didn’t know that White River Gardens has this big concert/fireworks show that wkend.  Traffic was horrendous. Some guests couldn’t get through, and it took forever for us to get out of there later.  We ran out of punch very early on.  Ileft my veil hanging in the bathroom, I think (it kept trying to fall off during the ceremony and I ended up ripping it off as we walked back down the aisle) and I haven’t seen it since.  It was a great wedding—I often wish I could go back and relive it every once in awhile.  We’re still married today, with 3 kids.

When my (ex) husband and I got married we rented a larger car so we could get my dress transported and our presents home from the reception.  The morning of our wedding, upon arriving at the rental car place, we were informed that the car we had reserved was late being returned so it was not available.  HOWEVER, the did have another vehicle available….imagine my joy at arriving at my wedding (and leaving after the reception) in a 15-passenger van!!  I kept joking with my fiance on the way over that we should have picked up some folks at the “share-a-ride” parking lot.
And the fun didn’t end there… AFTER the wedding, we had a small reception for close friends & family.  Then later that night we had an “open reception” at a local country bar.  Halfway through the night, while making a stop in the restroom, I discovered that I had started my period.  Yes, this was on my wedding night.
Good times….

(my spam word is without25…and yes, I was without any “feminine product”—who thinks to take them to your wedding reception?—so I had to borrow 25 cents to get a tampon out of the machine in the bathroom.)

We’d been trying to set a date to get married, but it was getting so complicated—family members scattered across 6 states, DH’s father with arthritis & Alzheimers’, and so on and on…
and we had less than a week left on the license.

So when DH had a job interview out of town, I went along and we decided to get married in City Hall. Him in his interview suit, me in t-shirt and jeans, clutching a $5 bouquet. The judge’s name was Madonna, our only witness was the court clerk, we had no rings to exchange, and my sweetie was so nervous he called me his ‘awfully wedded wife’ instead of ‘lawfully’.

That evening, we stopped at a jeweler to pick out wedding bands. The clerk asked,  “When are you getting married?”
“Oh, six hours ago.”

Lots of laughs, some happy tears, and for a honeymoon we went hiking.
18 years ago.

entry word: peace65.
It hasn’t all been peaceful, but over 65% has been good.

I’m not sure if I can top any of these, but I’ll try:

Snapshots from my wedding:

A drunken lesbian hitting on my virtually catatonic mother in law…
Two of my bridesmaids looking like something out of a horror film because the hairdresser got creative.
My father whispering “Thar she blows” in my ear as we walk down the aisle.
Practically being scalped by some yahoo stepping on my veil halfway down the aisle.
The videographer showing up at the reception where I proceed to make a pretentious ass out of myself while toasting my husband.
Getting practically kicked out of the posh hotel we were staying at because the after party got too loud.

The funniest part is that my husband watches our wedding video and gets misty eyed and sentimental while I just feel mental.



Two “giving away the bride” stories, can’t decide which one is best for sheer amusement value, while still being sweet.

My grandmother was widowed when my dad was 3; she raised six children on her own. When I was about 13, she met a widower about her own age and decided to remarry. He seemed like a sweet man, who was willing to accept 6 stepchildren and somewhere around 16 step-grandchildren, so we were happy for her. Since her father was dead, her oldest son, my uncle, gave her away.

All was going well, it was a small, sweet ceremony, and then, the minister asked the “Who gives this woman” question.

My uncle whips out a scroll, unrolls it (it reaches to the floor) and starts reading the names of all her children, then grandchildren.

The second one is many years later, one of my friends went through a rocky engagement only to have it broken off. He finally found a good woman, and their wedding was almost completely conventional, except….

When her father gave her away he said: “Her mother and I do, and may the Force be with them.”

My brother has this huge social wedding in a NJ country club which he didn’t want but his wife and her family insisted on.
During the reception BOTH of his lungs collapsed and he spent their two week honeymoon in the hospital hooked up to all sorts of machinery. We all saw it for the sign it was. They divorced some 15 years later.

Bride- 16yr old and 5 months preggo in a white Hoop dress
Groom- 21 yr old scared stupid, half drunk in too small a tux, white socks
4 bridesmaids - in pastel ‘rainbow’ dresses from JCPenney’s
Ring bearer- (bride’s little brother)5 yrs old with way way too little supervision

Ring bearer refuses to walk down the aisle until threatened with a spanking proceeds to scream “I’ll call the cops!” and ran full tilt down to the rainbow girls, real rings tied on the pillow held like a football.

Halfway through the ceremony, bride/groom kneel for prayer, Ring bearer marches to bride’s back, lifts up hoop skirt and crawls under it like a tent, does not leave even when she stands up. Ceremony finished with kid under her skirt, peeking out occasionally yelling “Peek-a-Boo”.

Best man fishes pillow with rings from under skirt, gets bit by kid, calls him ‘little bastard’.

Kid removed forcibly, and loudly, by maid of honor so Bride can exit church

Kid released to exit, turns to minister and announces loudly. “Your zipper’s down and I can see your willie” before running down aisle pretending to fire a machine gun at guests.

Bridesmaids and groomsman all ingest massive amounts of spiked punch at the FireHall reception, complete with soggy ham salad sandwiches. Kid has behind spanked in full view of guests and sent to the car with red faced grandmother hiking at her girdle.

Preggo Bride and Groom disappear for the honeymoon on a 4Wheeler with ribbons and cans attached to sign reading “Got Caught”. Condoms (kinda too late, huh?) were thrown at the couple in place of rice.

Couple still married and are now very young grandparents.

Best: Walking down the aisle to that Hawaiian version of Over the Rainbow and then John Hiatt’s Have a Little Faith in Me to my husband, who looked like Jesus with piercings at the time, and his groomsmen who had giant mohawks.

Best: Dancing to Floggy Molly in my wedding dress and off-brand Chuck Taylors.

Best: Airbanding to Hooked on a Feeling with the wedding party. We have great pictures of everyone jamming out in their dresses and tuxes!!

Best: Having pictures of our baby (about 2 months old at the time) in a tuxedo onesy at the wedding with his cute little mohawk.

Best: Sitting on my mom’s wheelchair while we danced. She tried to kidnap me in that thing and wheel off the dance floor! Those Rascals can move, too.

Hmm…I don’t think I have a worst from that marriage, not my first one is a whole ‘nother story.

I got a wicked sore throat, so my sister had me drink straight Midori

I’m laughing at all the awful stories and suddenly remembering a few of my own.  A peach bridesmaid dress with puff shoulders that made me look as if I had jaundice.  A party crasher who’d heard the reception and put on his wife’s long blond wig and come down for free drinks.  Oh, and my best friend’s wedding that I wasn’t a part of because of squabbling!  The looks of sheer horror on my sister-in-law’s sister’s face when she caught the bouquet—as if it was an omen of doom.

Hubby and I got married in a civil ceremony. Just immediate family. The day of the ceremony I went to the beach for a swim and relaxation with my friend Laurie. On the way home to get ready to get married, I realized I didn’t have any flowers. So we stopped in the local florists. I strolled into the shop wearing a bikini top and shorts, and told the woman I needed to order flowers for my wedding. When she asked when the wedding was taking place, I told her in 3 hours. You should have seen the look on her face. Everyone in the flower shop turned to look at me like I had lost my mind. I ended up getting a bouquet of roses that matched my fuschia colored silk dress (no joke here) and one fuschia colored rose for Hubby’s suit.
To top this all off, I had wanted to elope, but compromised so that family could be at the civil ceremony. Hubby thought it would be nice to do something different and suprised me. When we came out of the town hall, there was a limo waiting, which whisked us off to the High Lawn Pavilion where he had set up a small dinner with about 10 of our friends and I HAD NO IDEA this was being arranged. I think I have to be the only bride that was surprised by her own reception! And we are still married and he still likes to bring surprises into our lives.

My church burnt to the ground.  That’s right nothing but ashes, cinders and the front step was left – and it was the only space in Red Feather Lakes Colorado, except for the high school gym, that could hold 350 people.  Now before you all start shaking your heads and muttering “divine intervention” – Like my in-laws did… Let me just state my husband and I have now been married for 9 very happy years.  We did get married on the planned day, but outside in a mountain meadow flanked by wild flowers, aspens, souring snow capped peaks and the lingering smell of charcoal.

My biggest regret regarding my wedding is I was on drugs at the time. One of the most special times in a woman’s life and I ruined it. I’m clean now, so it’s all good. But looking at the pictures makes us both sad, so that sucks. And plus my bridesmaides put my veil on backwards.
Oh geeze, my security word is police58! I’m a good girl now I swear.

My (now) husband and I decided to get married by a Justice of the Peace; his family’s catholic and mine’s jewish, but neither of us are very religious, so it seemed like the most neutral way to go.  We specifically said to the JP that we wanted a “simple, non-religious ceremony”, but we never went over with her exactly what the wording of the ceremony would be.  Big mistake!

The day of the ceremony, everything is going fine (at least, it did once the JP turned up 15 minutes late), we’re gazing into each other’s eyes…all of a sudden the JP starts talking about how Jesus loves us both very much, and God ordained marriage for the creation of children, etc etc.  Needless to say this didn’t go down well with either family; I just remember staring speechless at my husband, hoping the photographer didn’t capture the looks of pure horror on our faces.

I guess in the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t so much of a disaster (certainly not on the scale of the Titanic Dress!), but it seemed pretty awful at the time.

It was my cousin’s wedding. Found the dress, couldn’t find shoes and thought I’d make do with old ones. Black with two-inch heels. I wasn’t crazy about them but I’d bought them at the last minute for something else -and they’d been cheap- and I figured I should get some use out of them since I owned them. Of course, they’d given me blisters on the heels the two times I’d worn them but Dad sanded the problem part until they were smooth and I thought I could make do with them at least through the ceremony and meal. There was no way I was going to dance in them (not that I know how to dance or anything) but I brought along a pair of black walking shoes -snazzy ones, I thought- to wear when I actually had to use my feet. Planning ahead, avoiding blisters, right?

I didn’t take into account a few things.

One, it was summer and really hot. Feet swell in the heat.

Two, the wedding was in the afternoon. Feet swell in the afternoon.

Three, my summer job had me on my feet, all day, six days a week. Feet swell when you stand/walk/whatever on them all day. Especially when the shoes you wear are just a tad too small. Not in the morning mind you, but in the evening when I took off my work shoes I had strap marks. Or grooves. So I’d actually been abusing my poor feet for a few weeks.

It might have been alright -maybe- but the bride and groom had opted for the short ceremony. So instead of sitting down in the pew for half an hour or so there was a church full (actually half full, it was a large church) of relatives and friends standing for fifteen minutes. (Short ceremony MY ASS! Not when you’re standing! (How do the Orthodox do it?) I swore then and there that if I ever get married, we’ll use the long ceremony so people can sit in relative (ha!) comfort and even catch a nap if they choose to. :)

I missed the ceremony. Couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was that my feet hurt and I needed to sit down pronto. I couldn’t though, the only person sitting was my great-aunt who was over 80 years old. And even she only sat down when she couldn’t stand any longer.

Then there was the never-ending receiving line, the line to the buffet, the line in the ladies’ room…

Seriously, I don’t remember when I changed shoes, straight after church or some time later. Doesn’t matter. Because. It. Made. No. Difference. By the time I changed shoes, the snazzy walking shoes felt too small. Crocs would have been uncomfortable. My toes were like sausages. My feet felt like lead. I could have cried at my stupidity! The only things that would have helped were a long soak in warm water and lifting my feet up for a few days. I didn’t have that option.

For me, the wedding consisted of sitting down as much as I could, preferably next to a table so I could kick off the shoes under the tablecloth and let my feet ‘breathe’. I have no memories of that wedding, other than my poor feet hurting.

Didn’t get blisters, though. I think I would have preferred blisters. Maybe. Couldn’t have been any worse.

I did learn my lesson. I have never again bought cheap shoes. (Unless knockoff crocs count?) In footwear, I invest in quality and I BUY THE RIGHT SIZE.

Thanks for letting me share my trauma. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to go soak my feet, then maybe give myself a pedicure.

It may not seem like too much of a bad wedding moment, but it happened at our reception.  As some background, my husband hates pop music, especially Cher.  He’s from the old school of rock and roll and loves all things classic as well as a lot of the indie and alternative rock.  With that said, we requested the song Someone Like You by Brian VanderArk (the Verve Pipe) to be played as one of our songs.  Instead, the DJ comes out with Someone Like You by Cher.  The look of horror on my husband’s face was priceless.  I don’t know what it was about that DJ, but even though I emailed him a list of songs I wanted, he completely ignored it. 

This happened on top of finding out that the caterers never brought any glasses to the reception.  So all we had were a few dozen coffee cups for the guests to drink out of.  Thankfully, they fixed that awfully quick.

The only thing I really regret about my wedding day is I didn’t get any pictures taken outside.  My husband and I were married in October on one of the most beautiful days we’ve seen in Michigan in an October and their were these woods behind the church that had already started to turn.  It would have been a spectacular backdrop, but we never went out there.

When my dad walked me down the aisle, the entire time, he was telling me that it wasn’t too late to run… he was saying things like “I’ll carry your dress, I know its heavy, so you give me the sign and I’ll grab it” and other similar things.  When he handed me off to my husband he said “too late now!” and kissed me.  The pictures of us walking down the aisle are really great - we’re both laughing uproariously and look really happy.  And, I wasn’t nervous through the walk down the aisle, which is what he was going for.

I have 2 stories, a wedding and an almost-wedding.

I had a friend in high school who was dating an older guy in the Navy. Her family disapproved so naturally, they decided to get married. He was stationed in Italy and for some reason they couldn’t wait longer than they had to. She turned 18 the summer after we graduated high school so he decided they should get married a week later while he was on leave. The idiot thought it would be a good idea to surprise her with a wedding! He planned on getting a few friends to bring some sodas and punch and Popeyes fried chicken, having a Justice of the Peace show up, and surprise her. Naturally, when he told her best friend, the BF said, “Oh hell no!” and proceeded to tell the bride. She panicked, and a group of 5 teenagers just out of high school threw together a wedding in a week. The food was good and the location was good (food cooked by a friend’s mom and the reception held in that same mom’s yard) but there was pretty much no budget because there was no money set aside. The bride found a hideous dress in a vintage store, we “bridesmaids” bought matching rose colored shirts and black skirts, approximately 5 people showed up (and no family members of either bride or groom), and it was the crappiest wedding I’ve ever attended. The couple are still married (6 years later) and are still doing stupid shit, including having kids and not being able to take care of them.

I got a call from an old friend to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. We were friends in middle school and part of high school but hadn’t really spoken after she switched schools. I figured she couldn’t find anyone else since her bridesmaids were her sister and other friends who hadn’t seen her in years. So I said yes. I tried to be nice and offer to help with stuff but she said she could handle it. We went dress shopping and we asked her what color we were getting. She described it as an orangy-pink color, something that matches her favorite rose. So of course we asked if she had the rose, or a scrap of fabric that matched the rose. Nope. We were going to buy dresses in colors that clash easily based on a flower we didn’t have in our possession and she was the only one who knew what it looked like. We went to David’s Bridal because we were all completely different sizes and we wanted to try on our dresses. Didn’t find anything. So we found this tiny little shop that only had 1 size 8 dress in each style (and only one color of that style). The size 6 friend tried it on. The dress was too small in her bust (we were all busty girls) and too big everywhere else. The friend saw that on the color palette for that dress (a little 1 inch by 1 inch spot of color on a laminated card) that it was the PERFECT color and insisted we all order our dresses. After the $90 deposit, we were unhappy but resigned. A few weeks later, another bridesmaid called me and told me the bride had broken up with the groom. In a later conversation with the bride, I subtly hinted about paying for some of that deposit we’d paid. She got angry and yelled at me. She and the groom got back together but don’t have any plans to get married. I won’t be in the wedding if she asks me.

I haven’t been to many weddings in my life, and have never been married myself, but I guess the strangest thing was one of my cousins weddings.

We got invited to the christening of my cousins son. We arrive at the church, the christening goes as planned, and then we are asked to stay in our seats. Surprise! My cousin and his fiancé got married. We asked around later, and absolutely no one had guessed that would happen.

The worst wedding I’ve been involved in was my grad school roommate’s wedding.  Most of it was beautiful, but I hope that someday she looks at the pictures of her bridesmaids and wonders what the hell she was thinking. 

For some reason, she got it in her head that she had to have bridesmaid dresses out of a certain brocade fabric, only it turned out that the fabric was discontinued and she had about 4 yards and couldn’t find any more.  Then, she happened on a dress made out of the fabric at David’s Bridal.  She snatched it up (never mind that it cost way more than just the fabric would have.) 

Two bridesmaids got to make the bodice of their dresses out of that nice, whole, uncut piece of fabric that came from the fabric store.  Myself and one other girl got the dress.  She got the bodice and just had to have a skirt made to match the other skirts.  She looked cute enough.

I got the skirt of the dress, only I was 5 months pregnant with twins and had to use it to make a maternity top.  My poor grandmother had to cut and paste the pattern for that dress to try and make it fit, and it has seems in places it shouldn’t because of the seams in the skirt we were cutting up.  It really and truly looks horrible and I still can’t believe I wore the thing.

Last year my brother got married to a woman I politely refer to as “The Succubus.”  She filled the wedding party with her friends, her relatives, her friend’s boyfriends, her friend’s siblings, her friend’s children, her casual aquaintences, you get the idea.  As sister of the groom, I was originally asked to be….the guestbook attendant!  Such an honor!  I flatly turned it down.  When my brother was reminded of my singing voice, I did get bumped up to vocalist.  Still, you know you have a bridezilla when the maid of honor drops out three weeks before the wedding.

I think the “highlight” of the whole affair, though, had to be her brother’s best man toast.  In it, he told the whole assembled party, God, and all my relatives that he knew my brother loved his sister “when he said he loved her more than porn.”  What a classy guy!

A few years ago, I attended the wedding of a girl I’d gone to high school with. My mother and her mother worked in the same ER, so my mother and stepfather went too. This girl was always a little weird, so we didn’t blink when she decided to have a Halloween wedding. The invites were orange and black, and suggested that we wear costumes to the ceremony. As the date approached, I went back and forth on whether to wear a costume, but my parents got really excited about the idea. I decided not to wear one, but my mom dressed up as a man, with a tux and a little John Waters eyeliner mustache, and my stepdad (size 3X) dressed up as a woman, in an enormous ruffly dress, and padded the chest with a dozen pairs of socks. They looked totally hilarious! When we got to the wedding, though, it turns out that NO ONE else had worn a costume - the church was full of a hundred tastefully, formally dressed wedding guests, and then my parents, looking straight out of drag hell. Their embarrassment was so thick and heavy I had trouble paying attention at the wedding - my mom later told me it was the single most humiliating thing she’d ever done. No surprise that they snuck out before the photos were taken!

I don’t have a personal best or worst wedding story, but I’m getting married in October in Antigua. Everything’s going swimmingly so far. Does that count?

My favorite someone-else’s-wedding story was the time I went with my best gay (male) friend. Not as a beard, just as someone to dance with and talk to. Well, it was his cousin’s wedding; both of his parents were there, and they got divorced acrimoniously some years before. So, upon finding out I could dance, his genial-drunk father (perpetually both) proceeded to dance with me in the showiest fashion he could manage, just to piss his ex-wife off. :)

Captcha: young53 . . . well, yes, I think his dad was about a young 53 at the time . . .

Our wedding was crazy. The woman doing our dresses promised they would be ready a week before the wedding. I couldn’t get a hold of her for a week. The day before the wedding, she calls me to pick up the dresses. She didn’t do a final fitting, in fact, she wouldn’t let us try them on at her house! So when we try them on after getting back home, it was horrible. My dress was too long. I ended up stepping on the hem going up to the alter and almost falling. She had hot glued all the beads on the fabric, so everytime I moved, beads fell off. I left a trail in the church. One bridesmaid’s dress was so tight in the bust that she looked like Mae West. One of the others dress was too short. All we could do was laugh at that point. Picking up the flowers, we found they had screwed up and put all of them in these awful weathered wood baskets. At that point, I was figuring nothing else could go wrong. WRONG! The next day, we went to get ready and the AC had broken in the church. It was over 100 degrees inside in Feb! We were sweating and makeup was running. During the ceremony, the ring bearer passed out and one groomsman did TWICE. All Dh and I could do was laugh while we were running out of the church. Then our families got into it at the reception.  We’re been married for 11 years and still laugh about it.

Does your dad having a stroke on your wedding day, sitting for three hours with him at the hospital until he was admitted, rushing home, grabbing what I needed and hightailing it to the ceremony (which I was 45 minutes late for) having not run a comb through my hair, only one eye with eye makeup of any kind on it, rushing through the reception afterward to get back to the hospital (still in dress and tux) and then, after not remembering what my cake even looked like (which I never got to eat) my DH managed to toss our wedding pictures in our last move.

*sigh*

The good thing? My mother managed to keep herself together long enough to walk me down the aisle. Later, after the service, she fell apart.

I don’t know if it counts as best or worst but it is absolutely my favorite (other than my own super low-key wedding - me, the hub, and a clerk of the court).

A friend of mine was getting married and asked me and another plus-sized friend of hers to be bridesmaids. We both said yes. And then we found out we were going to be wearing blue and white satin Civil War recreation gowns. Then we found out the wedding was going to be in a 150 year old pine church. They rearranged the pews to create a center aisle for the bride, then had to do it again to make room for our skirts.

We carried candles and there were candles EVERYWHERE. Pine is so all kinds of flammable that we were both terrified we’d set the church on fire.

The morning of the wedding, everyone got ready in several different houses all over town. The other bridesmaid and I - in my teeny little Toyota Tercel in our ENORMOUS hoop skirts - were a few minutes late. But so was the othe bride. The other bride was 6 months pregnant and her existing children were her attendants. Once everyone was there, we carefully carried our candles down the aisle and saw our friend hitched.

At which point we had to drive to the OTHER side of town to the reception, about an hour and a half, once again in my tiny car with our giant skirts. We stopped at a convenience store to get beverages for the road and everyone in the store just kind of stopped and stared while we were there.

At the reception, there were candles lining the walkways. Only the walkways were narrower than our skirts. Our fear of being set on fire ratcheted up a notch.

By the end of the night, the priest was doing jello shots and we were all having a good time. But it was definitely a rollercoaster getting to that point.

I had to dress in a “woodlands” camo dress for my sister’s hunting themed wedding…too bad she couldn’t have just let us wear fatigues, they couldn’t have been any less flattering than the cut of the dresses, and we would have been more comfortable! LOL

After 4 years of living together, my (now) husband and I decided to get married and prepared everything within a week.  We were pretty cool about everything, except…. I started suffering from what I call a “nervous stomach” the night before the wedding (2nd marriage cold feet), and it went on throughout the night.  So, by morning, I decided “Nope, nope, can’t do it, I’m too sick.”  However, that’s what Pepto Bismol’s for, right? Right…..  Soooo, we go on to the chapel, and we’re gonna get married—buuutttt, future hubby had been dieting, and fasting so he could fit into his suit, which he did, yeap! Except—- after the wedding?  He decided he was going to have those drinks, and that food that he had not had during the last week (Mexican food, tequila and margaritas).... yeap, yeap, by the time we starting driving home, the man was heaving, alllll that mexican food, margaritas and tequila.

Soooo, we finished the day the way we started it, with Pepto Bismol—only this time for him!  That was our wedding day AND our wedding night!  It was NOT funny then, but we now refer to it, as “OUR PINK WEDDING.”  A disastrous start to 23 great years of marriage.

I worked over 100 weddings as a server at a catering company, so I’ve got a ton of awful wedding stories. Most of them involve hundreds of Indian people, unhappy brides and grooms in arranged marriages, and goat curry served with something that looks suspiciously like tomato soup and ramen. Not to mention the caterers brought in to cook the food who couldn’t speak English trying to yell at a bunch of white-as-mayo servers in a variety of languages.

However, my favorite wedding did better than that! First of all, the wedding planner couldn’t count, so the number of guests was SORELY underestimated and the entire catering staff was frantically trying to whip-up an extra 45 servings of food two hours before the wedding. I was a buffet server, and had to continuously make sure people didn’t take too much food/combine pans of food/generally panic as I was berated by every elderly relative in the party.

The cakes were an hour late for setup, and while the wedding cake looked wonderful, it ended up tasting like chille (it was claimed to be strawberry), and the groom’s cake was supposed to have the Chicago Bulls logo on it. It didn’t look like a bull, it looked like the female reproductive system, and every woman in the room giggled insanely every time they walked past it. It actually tasted like chocolate, however.

The bridesmaids all wore dresses that can only be compared to wilted water lilies, and the bride’s dress, when they got it on her (she’d apparently put on around 30 lbs due to stress, according to an overheard mom-o’-the-bride conversation) was your full-on cupcake dress out of the 80’s and fit her like sausage casing. Then they made the mistake of having an outdoor ceremony in Denver in the middle of July. 90 degree weather, scorching sun, men in tuxes, and a very old justice of the peace do NOT mix well. The Justice passed out from heatstroke right after the I Do’s.

In the back, an idiot server and recent hire shot the dishwasher (and party manager’s son) in the mouth with the high-powered hose used for scraping off fondant and cheesy mashed potatoes from plates. This resulted in a trip to the emergency room and a lot of bruising for the poor kid. The server was fired.

It was probably one of the biggest train wrecks I ever had the displeasure of working at, and after working this job I absolutely refuse to do a traditional ceremony and reception. I quit not long afterwards and vowed never to work in the service industry again, despite pleading from the company to get me back.

My favorite wedding memory - going to a wedding of one of my father’s work friends.  I met there a tall handsome man who danced with me several times.  I caught the bouquet.  I felt absolutely like a princess.

I was about 6 years old…had to dance standing on the handsome man’s toes…and absolutely mortified my father by catching the bouquet when there were actual adult women who were also there.

I still felt like a princess and I think the bouquet may still be the bedroom I used in my parents’ house.

My husband was checking us into the very nice hotel for our wedding night, both of us still in our weddding finery.  (I wore my mothers fabulous cream satin dress with cathedral length train.)  I heard someone yell “Hey Mrs.!!”  I looked around and above us in a baloncy were a bunch of clowns, there for a huge clown convention.  They waved me over and as I stood under them they dropped beautiful balloon flowers and animals and wished me luck.

Twenty years later I’m still married to my hero.  Four brides have worn the lucky dress and are still blissfully happy!

My little sister got married less than a month before I took the CA BAR exam.  I had to lug all of my study materials from San Diego to San Francisco, on the plane with me.  I went to the reception with flashcards in my purse.
My husband’s sister was also married the same summer, but a few weeks after the BAR exam was over.  She’s a lawyer.  She specifically scheduled her wedding around my BAR-taking schedule. Best sister-in-law ever!

It was Sarah’s genius idea to have a contest based on the best and worst wedding stories.  The “best” are nice, but the worst are priceless!  I’m laughing out loud about the Halloween wedding.

Best Wedding Memory:
When my husband and I got married in Las Vegas, we had ‘bachelor/ette’ parties; the guys went to the Dreamworks arcade, and the girls were going to Coyote Ugly and planned to hit Cheetah’s after (I love ‘Showgirls’, so needed to see where Nomi started out). 

We didn’t end up going to the strip club, primarily because Coyote Ugly has a massive bar that they encourage women to dance on with the Coyotes, for fun and for shots of gin and barlime poured straight from the bottle into thirsty throats.

I love to dance.  I was encouraged to get up there.  I was told I didn’t leave for about two hours.  At one point, it was just me and the Coyotes dancing to Metallica, and I didn’t really care.  I was having an amazing night - I drank, I danced, I complimented Coyotes.  My maid of honour had two sprained ankles and still got down to ‘Sex Machine’, then was pointed out for getting out of her freakin’ wheelchair to dance.  The people in the bar were good-natured and happy, and it wasn’t even a problem to get the lot of us out of a packed bar at 1 AM, even with the wheelchair - patrons just cleared a path.

The next day was the wedding.  When I got to the wedding chapel, there were a few different wedding parties there, as is the case in Vegas on a weekend.  As I was waiting in the bride’s room for my cue from Elvis (Can’t Help Falling In Love With You), the door was open, so a few people from the next wedding up peeked in and smiled, one joking “You still got time to run.”

I laughed and grinned, telling them that I thought I’d probably stick it out.

After a slightly awkward pause, one of the group just out and asked, “Were you at Coyote Ugly last night?”

Hee!  Busted!  “Yeah, that was me, dancing on the bar.”

The lot of them broke out into ‘I KNEW it!’ and ‘That was fun!’ - and before the conversation could continue, I heard Elvis, told them I was up, and they all wished good luck.

The best part of the story, I think, is in that moment, I realized that my husband was not marrying me in spite of my tendency to be a fool and dance on bars, but because of my tendency to be a fool and dance on bars.  My maid of honour said in her toast that I take my husband out, and he takes me home.  Ten years later, five of them married, that’s still what we do.

My worst wedding memory is actually hands-down one of my worst memories, period but after the above, I think I’ll keep it to this:  I went with an ex to his cousin’s wedding while I was first dating my husband, and the ex proceeded to get drunk and and make a scene of proclaiming his undying love and regret at dumping me.  I started crying, so went outside, only to be comforted by the mother of the bride, then the bride herself.  Horrifying.  And an awkward ride home.

I live in Florida where notaries can marry people. I was asked to officiate at a wedding. Beautiful setting, in the park, by a lake, alligator looking on. We take our places, everyone smiling, happy.
I get to the do you takes, and the bride looks me in the eye and says “OH HELL NO”. She turned tail and ran. Now you have to understand, I didn’t know these people well, he was a guy that I worked with. I started laughing, which apparently, was not appropriate. Everyone started buzzing around and I quietly took my leave. One of the worst weddings I can recall.

My mom got lost on the way to our elopement - we invited our mothers to it as witnesses.

We left a map on the door to our apartment - but she didn’t get out of the car to see that it was there!

:(

So many wild stories! My wedding was small and happy and everyone had fun. The funny thing I remember of the day is when my Mom got dressed, she’d chosen a long lacy dark green dress with matching green tights and shoes which had my brother and I singing “Ho ho ho Green Giant!” all afternoon. She spent most of the afternoon hitting us with her matching clutch purse. On my wedding day! White dress and everything - hair done and she was beaning me in the head with her bag.

It was great!

My worst wedding memory was my best friends wedding.  I was a bridesmaid in a peach colored gown /shudder.  One of the gromsmen had been standing at the alter during the ceremony with his knees locked.  He fainted!! LOL right into the communion glasses which poured all over the brides white dress.  Nothing like purple grape juice on a wedding dress!!  The video of that ceremony is just hilarious as his father was the one taping it.  All you could hear was his dad laughing so hard and the camera shaking.  Jen :)

Mine’s a worst memory, alas. The first time I was a bridesmaid, I happened to be the only attendant thebride was having. Two weeks before the wedding, we had our one and only make up trial - and not only did I look like Bozo the clown after it had been slathered on with a trowel, but I ended up being allergic to the make up used and suffered burns to my face. Suffice it to say, they didn’t get to do my make up on the day - I could barely wear any. I managed some mascara and lipstick, but couldn’t wear any foundation or blush as my skin was too raw. Turned out okay in the photos, but was quite a painful experience.

I haven’t been to many weddings, but the one that sticks out in my mind is my father’s.
At the time, I lived mostly with my mother, so my now step-mother had to prepare my little flower-girl dress and shoes and socks almost completely without me there. I came over and tried on my dress a couple of times to make sure it fit, but that’s about all of the planning/rehearsals I was in prior to the wedding.
We all drove up the mountain to where the wedding was supposed to take place and began changing into our outfits. My hair was done, my dress was on, my socks were on, and I was holding my basket of flowers, but as soon as I saw my shoes, I knew something was wrong. Now, I was really young at this time probably 6 or 7, but I knew the difference between my right and left foot, and in that shoebox there were two left-foot shoes.
I brought this to the attention of the bride, but all she could do was help me into them, and so I hobbled down the aisle throwing flowers with two left feet.
On the whole, it wasn’t too bad of a wedding memory, but my step-mom and I now have something to look back on and laugh at.

Karen: I’m so glad you mentioned the SIL wearing white being annoying because MY sister wore white to MY wedding and I still think - What the Hell were you thinking, you psycho?! So I’m glad to not be the only one who finds that offensive. I’m the *cough* Virginal one on my wedding day. Me! I wanted my Mom - The Jolly Green Giant - to tell her to go change. The real real reeeeeal reason this bothered me is that I was no virgin on my wedding day and so I chose an ivory wedding dress. I wore Ivory. My sister wore white.

The cow.

My best wedding memory was my own wedding almost two years ago—both sides of the family got along great and everything was beautiful, despite a few hiccups (my new husband abandoned me for the first part of the reception because he was annoyed at the dj for not being a super computer hacker).  I still get teary-eyed when I think of my sweetie getting teary eyed when we were exchanging vows :) 

But one of my favorite memories is probably one of the worst for my parents.  We asked my uncle to read a poem during the ceremony.  My uncle is my father’s youngest brother and is the crazy one (but in a good way) of the family—tattoos, punk rock attitude, etc., and my dad is a straight-laced CPA.  So a few months before the wedding my grandma informed me that she was making my uncle a renaissance outfit, feathered hat and all, and he was planning on wearing it to the wedding.  I didn’t think it was a big deal, it suited his personality perfectly, but I “forgot” to mention it to my parents.  So they saw the outfit for the first time right before the ceremony!  Apparently the expressions on their faces were so horrified that the people they were with both immediately offered to take my uncle out back and kill him then and there!  I would still pay a lot of money for pictures of their faces as I wasn’t there at the time!  But everything went smoothly despite the outfit, and when my uncle was finished with his poem the minister said, “i don’t know about you, but I really wanted to hear what he was going to say!”  It still brings a smile to my face, but I never told my parents that I knew ahead of time what he was going to be wearing!

I have managed to avoid being in a wedding - mine or anyone elses.  Of the weddings I’ve been to - I have almost NO memories.

I do remember something from a wedding in the mid to late sixties (I was 3 or 4):  the bride and groom first kiss lasted for EVER and seemed quite passionate.  Now this was in a very conservative church with mostly OLDER members.  I remember everyone looking around at each other and starting to whisper. 

That makes me smile

I don’t have any bad wedding memories. Mostly I remember having a good time.  I think the worst thing was that a couple of friends of mine and I were supposed to help hand out programs at a wedding, and no one told us we had to come in early to do so. We got there before most guests, but the bride was a bit angry that we were “late”. I felt really bad and guilty, but I honestly didn’t know. This was a minor issue though. The wedding was beautiful and the bride forgave us. I think she was more stressed than really annoyed. She still speaks to us!
This is funny that there is a wedding themed giveaway today though - I’m getting married next week. And I am even giving away stuff at my blog for it! cool coincidence.. I feel like I’m seeing “wedding” everywhere today!

It wasn’t the worst wedding, but I did attend one wedding in NYC where, because of the size of the space rented (it is NYC, after all), there weren’t enough chairs for everyone to sit and eat the lovely catered dinner. Elderly relatives were standing around leaning on walkers! When I asked the caterer what was going on, she said that they had thought some people could eat while others danced, and then vice versa. The only problem was that once people claimed seats, they weren’t giving them up. My friends and I ate on china plates, standing up. Jeez louise, book a bigger venue or cut down your guest list!

Also, the stories above about fainting reminded me of this, one of my favorite ever internet vids: The Best of Wedding Faints (http://www.spike.com/video/best-of-wedding/2684868). I almost fall off my chair with laughter every time I watch it.

My son from my first marriage was getting married and his sister (19 yrs age diff)  from my second marriage was to be a flower girl.
During rehersal I was so proud and she walked dow the aisle and hit all her cues.  The day of the wedding as she walked down the aisle she saw various friends and family and kept stopping to say hello.  Everyone took it all in stride but my face was so red!!!

My favorite wedding story is one that makes the still makes my cousins groan and shake their head in disbelief. My dear (ahem) cousin Ann decided to have a small, tasteful affair (only inviting every Italian cousin on the business side of the Atlantic-plus a few straight from the village) with 10 bridesmaids. Unfortunately Ann didn’t have 10 friends she wanted to torture with her bubblegum pink prom dress nightmares. So she convinced my underage sisters and I to join in on the “fun”. She must not have been thinking too clearly at the time because my eldest sister Danielle hates weddings, hates dresses, hates anything formal, and is so ill-mannered that after 4 years of cotillion failure the headmistress closed-up shop and moved far, far way.

So Danielle did what any person forced into an uncomfortable situation with an open bar handy would do…she got knees over elbows drunk (we’re Italian…its what we do). Then she decided we needed to go on a walkabout through the club golf course so that she could “get some air”. Upon realizing Dani was in no state to make good judgement calls, one of my michevious cousins decided to dare her to walk out 5 feet over a waterhazard on nothing but a thin rickety board. Dani has never turned down a dare in her life…especially when she is drunk and invincible (in her own mind). So she wobbled out on the board, threw us a smile and tried wobbling back. But the board wasn’t quite up to her weight class and decided to break when she was about a foot away from victory.

Her shriek of surprise brought not only several golfers, but also our parents, several other guests, and of course the bride to witness her slogging out of 2 feet of brackish pond-scummy water. By the time she got back on shore she was dissolving into giggles while my cousin fumed and my parents scolded. The dress was ruined as were her dyed-to-match shoes, but she certainly made the wedding photographer happy by adding a certain creature of the black lagoon atmosphere to the whole event.

Needless to say Dani hasn’t been a bridesmaid since….

My worst wedding memory is from my own wedding.  We got married in a small chapel on a university campus.  This beautiful, darling little chapel was located on the edge of the Graduate School of Business quad.  Normally, not a problem on a weekend—the b-school jerks were typically absent.  Not so this day.  On this day, they were having some sort of competition which included tricycle races.  For which they had blocked off the quad.  The quad where I, as bride, was going to park. 

I drove up with my father and mother and the quad was barricaded off.  My father got out and removed the barricade and we drove through, pulling up on the sidewalk to park as we’d been instructed.  The head B-School bastard (no, I’m not bitter) charged over with his clipboard (seriously, he had a clipboard) and started, in his oh so condescending voice, to explain to us that we couldn’t park here.  Um, bride?  In a wedding dress?  We first attempted to explain to him that I was getting married and had been told that not only was it allowed, but expected that we would park there.  He was having none of it.  The conversation escalated in both volume and violence, culminating in me advancing on him while shaking my bouquet and screaming, “I’m the fucking bride asshole.  I’ll park wherever the fuck I want.”  Ah, the dulcet tones of the bride.

It’s funny as hell now but then?  Not so much.  At least not after about a bottle and a half of champagne at the reception.  It got a lot funnier then.

Ok really my wedding was lovely but there were a couple of things that went wrong.

The wedding was set to start at 4 pm, so I asked family and the wedding party to be at the church at 2 pm so we could take some photos.  Well everyone was there at 2 pm except for me and my father who had left the key to the church on the kitchen counter.  We had to drive back and get it.  Meanwhile, it’s 95 degrees outside and everyone is hot and thirsty.  My mother in law (a German - in fact all family from the groom’s side lives in Germany) said she’d go get drinks.  So she comes back with 4 six packs of beer (and nothing else) that she wants to pass out in front of this Baptist church in rural Kansas (I had signed a contract that no one would drink alcohol on church property!).

By the time we got there with the key, several family members were pretty tipsy and everyone was sweaty.  Made for some interesting wedding photos at least.

No horror stories from me, although I do have a slightly ironic tale.

We planned pretty much all of our wedding ourselves and went into it with the mindset that so long as we were married at the end of the day, it was a success.  After all, that was what it was all about.

Since it started pouring with rain very early in the morning and never let up, it seemed a good mindset to have.

Despite the rain, everything went very well and we headed off to the reception happily, safe in the knowledge we’d been right.  We were married and therefore the day was a success.

Ooops.  As the reception progressed the church clerk (also a family friend and wedding guest) came up and asked for our copy of the wedding certificate back.  It turned out the priest had forgotten to sign it.  He’d arrange to get it done first thing in the morning and then return the certificate to us.

So according to our preset condition for success, despite everything going beautifully, our wedding was a failure.  We weren’t legally married by the end of the day and had to wait until the next morning for everything to be complete and legal.

Who cares.  It was a wonderful day.

I had a friend in my wedding who was not only a few years older than me, but also thinner and more “urbane” than me.  And of course, she never let me forget it.  When I chose my bridesmaids’ dresses of course she had something to say.  And I completely ignored her (take that Olive Oyl!).

So a few months later when it came time for me to return the favor, I KNOW she chose her bridesmaids’ dresses with revenge in mind.  How else would you explain PeptoBismal pink polyester suits with HUGE 1984 powerbitch shoulder pads and a large silver button at the waist the size of a grapefruit?  I mean really.  And of course I had gained about 10 pounds by the time the wedding rolled around so the overall effect was just plain ghastly.  But she still (13 years later) refuses to let me forget that the dresses she chose cost less than the ones I chose.  If you ask me she should have paid me to wear that damn thing.

Okay—I’m a big woman.  BIG woman.  And there I was, 5’10”, size humongulous, among all of these 5’1”, 95 lb. bridesmaids.  My dress had to have special panels put in on the side because it only went to a size 12.  (BLARG!!!)  My shoes didn’t fit—I’m a size 12 in women’s shoes—they only made a size 9 1/2.  And I’d been in a car accident the week before so I had a big green/yellow bruise down the side of my neck. 

So the bride ignored me and my family when we got there, expected me to shove my feet into those shoes at the last minute, and begged my 2 1/2 year old, CH son to be the ring bearer.  I was sitting in the pews during a ceremony-laden Catholic service, literally busting out of my dress, and hoping my kid didn’t throw a core-meltdown on the floor, when I realized that the four gallons of apple juice we’d given him to keep him happy had sopped right through his diaper and his new suit pants—and he was literally shining the stone floor of the church.  I hadn’t been to the rehearsal (car accident, remember?) so I figured, okay, everyone is standing up and sitting down—they all stand up again, I’ll grab the kid, take him back to his father, and then go back to my pew. 

I got the kid to his father, turned around, and realized, OMG, all of the bridesmaids had stood up to LINE UP BEHIND THE BRIDE.  HOLY SHIT!  I go running behind all of them, get down to the pulpit, and feel my foot slip a little on the stone.  It’s slipping a little on the stone because I’VE FORGOTTEN MY SHOES.  And there I am, at the end of the line.  Taller than everybody else—including the short groomsmen.  Fatter than everyone else—yes, even than the groomsmen.  And shoeless. 

The bride blamed me.  She said I’d done it on purpose.  We haven’t spoken in fifteen years. 

Me?  I had a kegger in the park, screaming kids welcome.  I don’t regret it for a moment—I’m still talking to everyone who attended.

(uhm, except for the bride of the bad wedding—don’t talk to her anymore:-)

Um, screwing up the speech at my sister’s wedding when I was maid of honor, and ending up giving something more depressing than touching, heartwarming, or serious. We don’t talk about it.

Oh, Leah, I LOVE that you were almost late because your family was enthralled with the Colts! Shouldn’t have planned your wedding on a game day :)

My wedding was mostly o.k.  I did throw a fit near the end of the reception.  I had mentioned repeatedly and threatened physical harm to anyone that decorated our get away car.  I know it is silly, but I just hate that tradition.  I stormed around, asked for keys to ANYONE’S car and yelled, snarled whatever at those that did the decorating.

We ended up driving off in the decorated one, but I made my DH stop at the nearest gas station to clean it off.  I think it lasted 3 miles. 

Then we went to a bar, I had a drink and the rest of the night was just fine:)

Sam

It’s been over six years and the husband and I still cringe when we talk about our wedding.  As a favor to the hubby-to-be, I agreed to let my future-mother-in-law make my wedding dress.  She likes to sew and asked to do it so that we could “bond” or something equally silly.  I bought a pattern that had the size I was currently wearing, and went up to two sizes bigger than I’d ever been even at my biggest weight gain.  She kept putting off the shopping trip for fabric, but in the end I sent her off with everything she would need six months before the ceremony. 

Four months before - she makes a practice sheath under dress (It was a Renaissance wedding, so there were a lot of heavy fabrics she didn’t want to ruin) out of some cheap fabric and I try it on.  She walks around me, tutting the entire time, and tells me that it’s too small and I must be bigger than I told her I was, and she didn’t think the pattern would be big enough.  Rather than realizing she was out of her mind, I started crying.

Three months before - she makes a second sheath under dress.  It falls off of me.  I can’t keep it on, the neck hole is big enough that it slides off my shoulders.  She tells me I must have lost some weight.  By now, I realize something is up, and tell her that no, I was the same size I was the month before.

Two months before - using the pinned up second test dress as a guide, she’s made the first part of the real dress.  Once again, it falls off of me.  Again, she tells me to stop losing weight.  There has been no weight change.  Period.

One month before - the entire dress is finished and hangs off of me like an elephant skin.  My hands are encased in cuff, my hemline is a good six inches longer than my legs, the neckline is barely hanging on to my shoulders.  And the fitted over dress?  Doesn’t.

The week before - my future SIL shows up with the dress and it is a mess.  MIL has decided to just pleat the back of the fitted dress, rather than cut the fabric, has covered other alterations with random rick-rack in random colors and designs, and it still DOESN’T FIT.  I take off work and drive an hour and a half to her house and refuse to leave until she has pinned the thing to me, with the promise that it will be ready by the day before the ceremony.

It isn’t.  I walk down the clearing steps, at noon, on the hottest day of the year, in velvet and satin, holding the front of my dress up to keep from flashing my undergarments at all the guests.

Don’t even get me started on how the In-Laws (who were in the wedding) didn’t bother to show up for the rehearsal and were late the day of the wedding and have still never actually met my parents to this day, the MIL came to the ceremony in a pinned together dress that started to fall apart when she stepped forward to do her part, how the person video taping the wedding realized she was running out of batteries on the camcorder and just stopped filming half of the ceremony because “it was boring”, or how I spent my wedding night in a driveway with a drunken wedding guest as he decided to finally come out to the world and by the time I got him settled in on the couch for the night my husband was out cold.

When my cousin got married, he invited the entire giant extended clan.  And of course the wedding just had to be held in his fiancee’s church, which was far too small for all the guests.  We were jammed cheek-to-jowl in the pews and on folding chairs at the ends of the aisles, with people standing in the back and in the foyer.  The groom’s attire involved black jeans, a bullriding belt buckle, and a Stetson, the bridesmaids changed out of their dresses into cutoffs and tank tops before the reception (which would have been more or less fine if anyone else had been given notice, but no, the rest of us were stuck in our dressy clothes) and again, the crowd was so large they would not fit in the church reception hall.  So they’d set up tables outside.

In August.

In Alabama.

It was over a hundred degrees.  Plus humidity.  Plus mosquitoes.

Note that the wedding party, including the girls who’d changed for the heat, had a table inside the nice air conditioned building.

I got nothing on these, but I’m still pissed about this. 

My father left my mother for his junior engineer just before I get engaged.  They get engaged after I do, married before I do.  I’m forced to go to their wedding by my father threatening me with not going to mine, and I burst into tears when she starts walking down the aisle.  The minister tells me that my father is marrying into a wonderful family.  I don’t say, “Yeah, he left one, too,” but I wanted to.  My father then yells at me about my behavior next time he sees me and is yelled at in turn by my fabulous husband-to-be about his unrealistic expectations for me.

Anyway, the only thing I’d had in common with the step-monster was weddings, so we’d talked about that.  I had told her that my bridesmaids would be wearing hunter green, that my dress was velvet (December in NJ) and had an empire waist.  Then she shows up at my wedding in a, you guessed it, velvet, empire waist, hunter green dress.  I was SOOO pissed.  I realize now (for the first time! OMG!) that it was probably revenge, but it still pissed me off.  When I tell this story, men don’t get it and women are outraged for me.

::shrug::  We get along okay now.  I even mostly get along with my father.

Mine is a memory-by-proxy, because it happened when I was young enough that I don’t remember any of it.  I’ve been told about it by my mom and her younger sister.

My dad’s youngest sister was getting married for the second time (total has been four; none of them have worked out).  She asked my parents to allow me to be the flower girl.  I think I would have been three, based on the dates on the pictures my mom has.

During the rehearsal, my mom had to tell me about half a dozen times that it was okay to throw the little pieces of paper towel on the aisle, as she’d always told me not to do that.  (She says she regrets letting me do this, as this was the start of a downward slide in getting me to not drop stuff on the floor.) 

The next day, I managed to do my duties as flower girl, then was standing next to the matron of honor.  At one point, the entire wedding party turned,  and I got nudged under the altar rail.  I raised my head up, and I apparently cracked my head hard enough the entire church heard it.  Everything went dead silent while they waited for me to let out a scream.  But, I took a deep breath and held it in.  The best guess was that I knew that screaming, however justified, would have spoiled the wedding.

My mom slipped out to the back of the church and waited for me to toddle back.  Once there, she picked me up and carried me into the bathroom just outside, where I let out a blood-curdling yell, followed by about about 5 minutes of crying and sniffling.  She washed my face then gave me the doll that was my gift for being part of the wedding party, and we went to the reception, where much was made over my being such a sweet little girl who didn’t spoil the wedding.

Best wedding memory:

On my mom’s side of the family during the reception it’s a tradition to annoy and/or embarrass the hell out of whichever relative tied the knot.

My second cousin Daniel absolutely hates the song YMCA, whenever it plays he refuses to dance or sing, he just sits there with his arms crossed and glowers- since he’s a big sports fan, he does this quite a bit. Anyways, his cousins (my mom included) got together during the reception and prodded the DJ into playing the hated song- hauled Daniel out onto the dance floor and made him dance to it while they “serenaded” him while dressed in full Village People regalia.

My wedding was absolutely awesome and NOTHING went wrong, except that my husband broke the solemn pact we made not to smash cake in each others’ faces (the real problem is that he broke the pact before I did… I should have been faster with my cake smashing hand).

However, I was the MOH of a wedding that had MANY MANY MANY issues.  Like dominoes falling.

1. We showed up at the church only to find that it was not air conditioned, as they had assured the bride it was.  The wedding was on July 15th, and it turned out to be the hottest day of the year… imagine a windowless sanctuary in 102-degrees during a humid Michigan summer.

2. The photographer showed up in a holey t-shirt and cut-off sweat pants.  Stay classy, guy.

3. The music is playing, the bridesmaids are walking down.  I see the groom standing, a tear in his eye, waiting for the love of his life to walk down the aisle.  And she turns to me with eyes the size of frightened tennis balls and says, “I can’t do this.  I just can’t do this.”

Her mother talked her into doing it.  Turned out to be a disastrous mistake, but for that moment, the wedding was saved.

On to the reception, and the absolute best part.  Nikki, a friend of the groom who was not in the wedding party was charged with decorating the reception venue.  And she didn’t show up to the wedding.  We kept waiting for her and waiting for her to show up, and she doesn’t show to the ceremony.  We sent my husband, who was not in the wedding party, out to the craft store for some stuff we could McGuyver into cheap decorations, just in case.

Now, Nikki, this friend who was supposed to decorate… I’d been saying for months that I thought she had a thing for the groom, and they had been physically involved in the past, so I thought I was making a reasonable assumption, right?  “No,” everyone tells me, “you’re being paranoid, Jen.  You’re a nut bar.”

We get to the reception hall, and it’s decorated, so Nikki did her job.  Great!  But there is no sign of Nikki.  The wedding party is introduced, the bride and groom are introduced… and just SECONDS after they walk through the hall doors, in comes Nikki, behind them.

Dressed in a black sheath dress and a black funerary hat complete with veil and black sunglasses.

She was in mourning.

This is actually a family memory as it is a yarn that we LOVE telling over and over again, especially on the eve of another wedding. My Aunt E is notorious for being a Diva. This woman can make a wake all about her, who needs to hire professional mourners when you’ve got Auntie E? She nearly fell into a grave once with her histrionics. You get the idea. So Auntie’s eldest son is getting married. She loves him, he is the apple of her eye, and is far more adored by her than her other children or her husband. It’s very oedipal. Auntie hates her daughter in law to be. She’s too fat. Her hair is too short. She’s too dark. Auntie tries to talk her son out of marrying his fiance. She sullies the girl’s name to all and sundry. Her son is steadfast, he is going to marry his fiance and that is that. We all breathe a sigh of relief. Far, far too soon.

On the day of the wedding, Auntie shows up in a long, white dress. Not a motherly white dress, a wedding dress.

When I got married, a woman I worked with at the time asked if she could come to the wedding.  She said I gave her hope: if I could get married, anyone could!

Best memory:  Not yet married myself, but I’ve attended my fair share.  When my closest friend from high school got married a couple of years ago, I wasn’t a bridesmaid but I was singing in the ceremony and so I was considered part of the wedding party - which means I was there early the day of the ceremony and got in on all the pre-wedding drama.  But, no matter what went wrong - the straps on the bridesmaids’ dresses unraveling, or losing the “something old” (a brooch that was a family heirloom) for the bride to wear, and the bride’s mother completely freaking out over every little thing - my friend looked like she was on cloud nine.  She had the biggest, goofiest grin on her face for about 12 hours straight.  Her fiance looked so nervous as she walked towards him down the aisle, and although she was trying desperately to look more serious as she obviously thought she should, she could not keep that ridiculously happy smile off her face.  If there are images from our life that we will always associate with certain emotions, when I think of joy, I think of my friend’s face on her wedding day.

Not so much worst as funny - my younger brother was the first one in our generation of the family and first one of his friends to get married, at 24, meaning that most of the guests were young professionals or university students. All the unmarried women were herded onto the back lawn for the bouquet throwing. The bride threw the bouquet - and every single woman, including me, stepped backwards with her hands at her sides so as not to catch it! Fortunately, there was a romantic 12-year-old who grabbed it as the rest of us burst out laughing.

My WORST wedding memory has to be the best man who, in his toast to the happy couple, told an anecdote about a pregnancy scare the bride had (with another man).  Not so funny, especially since it was a story the groom hadn’t heard before.  When I left, the bride was locked in the bathroom crying, the groom was drinking himself into oblivion, and the best man was in the car park with some of the groom’s fraternity brothers, getting the shit kicked out of him.

Oh, and I should say that today COULD have been the source of some worst memories.  My son got married today, with the following possible contenders:

1.  The bride was in a car accident on her way to the hairstylist.  (She’s okay, the car is a write-off.)

2.  The groom fell getting out of the shower and injured his back.

3.  The MOB fell too (not the same shower) and cut her face, right beside her eye.  The MOG (me) thought it needed stitches, but she wouldn’t go—just kept dabbing it with petroleum jelly to keep it from dripping blood.

4.  The photographer FORGOT HIS CAMERA and had to take all the pics with my little digital Fuji.

5.  Parents of the happy couple included four fathers and three mothers, most of whom don’t get along very well (or had never before met, in a couple of cases).  Way too many in-laws!

6.  My former MIL, SIL and BIL were there.  Haven’t seen them in more than eight years. 

7.  The bride’s brother, on leave from the military for the wedding, kept drinking shots of tequila and getting others to join him.  At one point the bride’s entire family, supposed to be having a picture taken, was found in the bar doing shots instead.

8.  One of the bridesmaids upset her notoriously jealous BF by dancing and flirting with all the groomsmen; he broke up with her later in the evening.

With those highlights, the potential for disaster was strong.  And yet it was a beautiful wedding, and that potential wasn’t reached.

Best moment for me?  My son couldn’t say his vows without crying, because he loves this woman so much.  And she does him—by the time they finished “I do” there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

My worst wedding moment/memory is when my uncle got drunk. He was of course the groom and his bride didn’t notice he was a bit tipsy because she herself had over indulged but my uncle was the worst. He had to be stopped from hitting on women at the party after the ceremony.

My wedding was interesting, to say the least. From the get go, it was all pretty much shaping up to go smoothly, or so I thought. Seriously, I had no problems getting things lined up, I was going for simple, inexpensive, and not too much muss and fuss. Seemed like a good idea, and I had a friend offer to do my flowers, another friend who was going to do the ceremony, my boss was going to let me use his place of business for the ceremony and the reception, it had a built in sound system, etc. All on target, right?

One would think so, anyway. Now, on to the story itself. My husband is a Marine. Has been for some time now, and was at the time of our wedding. Now, it’s not exactly the easiest just to take time off whenever one needs to when one is in the military. Not without taking leave time, etc, which he didn’t really want to do. So, some things were left til the last minute, but they were things that normally don’t take that long to do anyway. So, it was on the Friday before our Saturday ceremony that his command decides he can take half the day off to go and get our marriage license. There are a couple of things we need to pick up along the way, and to prevent doubling back and such, we map out our plan to go do the stuff from the nearest to the house to the farthest away. Which starts with going to the uniform shop to get some things for his Dress Blues, grabbing a bite to eat,  and then to the cleaners to pick up his Dress Blues. We get to the cleaners and…they lost his Dress Blues trousers!!! Seriously, they could not find them /anywhere/. Now, this is not good, because you can’t just go buy a pair off the rack. They have to be tailored specifically to the Marine. So, they are going through literally every single piece of clothing they have, and they are not a small cleaners. I happened to be 4 months pregnant, and at one point, I am a hair’s breadth away from having a serious breakdown, right there in the Exchange, because they have lost and can’t find his pants, and our wedding is the next day. We are there for a couple of hours, going through log books, finding his entry, they are looking for his pants, everything. I am not dealing well, but finally they found them! And, so we are off to the courthouse to get our marriage license. And…we get there five minutes too late. Five minutes. We can’t get our license. And the ceremony is the next day. On a Saturday, when the courthouse is closed. After the fiasco at the cleaners, combined with my pregnancy hormones, I was done. I did lose it. Complete, just shy of hysterics, meltdown.

But, the officiator of our ceremony happened to be a friend of ours, who also happened to be a Staff Sergeant in the USMC. I figured if I explained the situation to him, he’d do the ceremony, and we could do a simple, legal deal on Monday with the paperwork. Thankfully, he agreed to do that. There was no way I was going to reschedule all I had done. Nope, wasn’t going to happen. We were going to do the ceremony one way or another, with or without official paperwork.

Oh, if that had been all. But, it wasn’t. I had gone twice before to get my husband’s ring, but no matter where I got it, or what size I got, it wouldn’t fit. Finally, on the morning of the ceremony, I had one last chance, and had to go all the way across town to get another ring, and hope it fit. It did, but I had to deal with a rude and inconsiderate salesperson and customer who decided to cut ahead of me in the process. By the time I got his ring, I had spent over an hour in that store. I came out, got in the car, started to back up, and had to pull back into the parking space and open the door and lean out where I proceeded to throw up for several minutes due to nerves and frustration.

I get home, go to get my hair done, get to the venue, make sure things are in order, etc, check on various people, and start to get ready. Things are starting to go well, I thought. It’s about time for the ceremony to start, and I realize that my MOH isn’t there yet. Well, the MOH and the Best Man happen to be married to each other, so they both have to be there. They get there, finally. 45 minutes late!

But, finally, everyone is there. Oh, and this was a military wedding, complete with the Arch of Swords, and all. I mentioned that the wedding was held at the place I worked at, but did I mention that it was a bar? yeah, it was the bar I met my husband at, actually. And I think I am the only person who has ever managed to get 20 Marines in full Dress Blues in that bar at the same time. There was also one lone Navy Corpsman in his Crackerjacks, too. And, the Command Master Chief gave me away. My husband’s Best Man was a Chief Warrant Officer 3. The only military member that was a part of the ceremony that wasn’t in uniform was the officiator, and you should have seen the looks on the faces of all the people who hadn’t known that he was an ordained minister when they saw his collar! It was priceless!

So, my almost 2 year old daughter was the ‘flower girl/ring bearer’ and I figured if she were placed in the middle of a large room full of strangers, with her Daddy smack dab in the front of the room, she’d go straight to him, right? Ideally, yes. But, I neglected to take into account the fact that to a 2 year old, everyone that wears the same uniform as Daddy looks just like ‘Daddy’. So, she walks down through the Arch of Swords, pausing between each pair, looking at the one on her right up and down before she realizes that ain’t Daddy, and then to her left. Nope, not him, either. She repeats this process through all five pairs of Marines in the Arch. I tell you what, the Beefeaters at the Tower of London ain’t got nothing on those Marines. I give them massive props for maintaining their military bearing and staying serious through the scrutiny of that little 2 year old. The entire time, my MOH and husband, and everyone at the front calling to her, trying to get her to look up and realize Daddy was up there. Finally, she reaches the end of the Arch, looks down the aisle, and sees her Daddy up there, and you could hear it throughout the entire bar as she screamed “DADDY!” and took off running to be up there with him.

So, now it’s my turn. The music starts, and here I go, on the arm of the CMC, on my way to be (sorta, unofficially) married. I get up there, standing there, and the minister is doing his thing, and my daughter is getting a little bit restless now, but she’s behaving, for the most part, but starting to wander around us a little bit, but staying right there by us. She walks around behind me, and suddenly, I feel this hard tug on the back of my dress. She has found my train, and had decided to sit on it! Right at the base of the dress, so that it pulls me backwards just a little bit. I get this shocked look on my face as I reach around to make sure the detachable train is still attached. The minister gets this puzzled expression on his face, looks around behind me, sees her there on my dress, and almost cracks up. He’s visibly amused, and actually had to struggle a bit before being able to continue with a straight face.

The ceremony part is almost over, and here we go, down the Arch as a couple. And, as is tradition, I get whapped on the rear by the last one in the Arch with his saber, as a ‘Welcome to the Corps’ salute. I almost whapped him with my bouquet. There is picture of me with the flowers raised to return the favor, actually.

The reception went well, we cut the cake with a USMC NCO’s sword, and I then threatened my husband with the same sword with the promise to use it on him if he smashed that cake into my face. He didn’t, so I guess it worked. We stayed on at the bar after the reception for a bit, as did many of our guests, because it was a regular night for live entertainment, and after a while, I had to go and change out my wedding shoes for my good old, broken in, Justin ropers. Man, did that feel more comfortable. No one could tell, though, because I still had on my wedding dress.

Early the next day, I was giving my daughter a bath, and realized she had broken out in spots all over at some point in the night/early morning. I really didn’t like having to call everyone who had brought children to my wedding that my daughter had apparently been contagious with the chicken pox, but I hadn’t known it, so, sorry, but they needed to keep an eye on their’s, for the breakout. Sure enough, several of them did, indeed, come down with it, about two weeks later.

The most interesting part of this all? Today is our anniversary! Well, the anniversary of the ceremony. Monday is the anniversary of the legalities and paperwork. :) I keep saying we should just split the difference and celebrate it on Aug 3rd.

LOL! the security question is group24. I had a group of 24 active duty military members from two different services in the bar, at one time, all in their dress uniforms!  That is priceless!

My worst wedding memory comes from my brother’s wedding. His (now ex) wife picked out “Victorian” wedding colors (or what she thought was Victorian), yet decided that all of the bridesmaids should wear pale champagne dresses. I am very pale, and have a problem tanning due to a) the fact that I burn, peel, then go back to blinding white, and 2) my doctor states that I am never to go out in the sun for an extended period of time without sunblock of at least spf 50, so I tend to remain pale through out the year.

Well, said shade of said dress matched my skin tone EXACTLY. Seriously, you could not tell where I ended and the dress began. (Now ex) Sister-in-law demanded that I had to go get in a tanning bed (this was in the days before self-tanning was practical), because all of the rest of her bridesmaids were tan, so why couldn’t I be. This demanding went on for two months, until she finally backed off when I threatened to have my doctor write her a note explaining why it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to try to tan.

I’ve been to two weddings that could be said to be signs of things to come. The first, I was a grooms(wo)man. They were both still in high school and the parents were pretty clearly unhappy about there being a pregnant teenage bride. There were many little things that went wrong but what I remember best was the candles.

The church had candles that were very soft wax that was spring-loaded into metal casings so that they never appeared to get any shorter. This, while a nifty idea, was not so great in practice. One candle kept oozing out of the top of the metal casing. When they twisted the two individual candles loose to light the unity candle, the bride’s exploded.  I bit my lip hard enough I tasted blood to keep from laughing. That was one marriage that did NOT work out.

The second was my best friend’s wedding. The lead up to the event was full of the usual little burps. They’d wanted it outside but it was all blustery like it would rain. Luckily, being intelligent mammals, they had a church ready to go just in case and we used that. The ceremony itself went along just fine and it meant that we were right beside where the reception was to take place. So then it’s all over and the guests lined up outside. The wind is picking up and I’m afraid it’s going to pour rain any second. Instead of tossing rice, we all had cute little bottles of bubbles…  And when the bride and groom proceeded to the horse drawn carriage that was waiting for them, the wind that had picked up blew this huge mass of bubbles all around them both and the carriage. It was probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen and fairy-tale perfect. They rain held off right until they were out of sight. :)

I’ve been lucky with dresses. As a grooms(wo)man, I got to choose my own dress. For another friend’s wedding, since it was Halloween themed, the bridesmaid dresses were very simple black velvet sheaths that could be worn to other things (and have been!). My best-friend’s bridesmaid dresses were something of a miracle, managing to flatter all kinds of body shapes and skin tones. They’re a peachy pink, which I was horrified to hear till I saw them. I’ve been able to wear it to other things since.

Mine’s not an epic tale of love, loss and drama. Just short and simple.

My cousin’s wedding reception gave 80% of the guests dire food poisoning. One wedding we all remember, if only for the abdominal cramps. (Thanks to the joys of being vegetarianism I got to watch my parents and brother being violently unwell and playing Florence Nightingale to them.)

Oh, and of course it’s pretty much a family ‘secret’ that cousin Edward bats for the other team, so to speak. We think his wife told him he was marrying her and he was too frightened of her to object. She’s an indomitable lady.

Here’s hoping the wedding I’m off to in October ends less memorably.

I *am* vegetarianism? Oh dear, if I carry on at this rate I’ll be disqualified from speaking my native language. Dear readers, please try and ignore the stupid.

While trying to say my vows, instead of “lawful wedded husband”, I kept saying “I take you as my awful wedded husband”.  Took 3 tries before I could say it correctly.  I should have recognized the sign and backed out then.

My wedding went well, seeing as how I expected something to go wrong.  The wedding night, however, landed us all in the hospital while my husband watched his grandmother pass away. And yes, she did pass away on our honeymoon night. At one point, sitting in the hospital room, I looked up to see a man stretching his arms over his head, his shirt riding up to expose his somewhat ample gut. Thinking it was my new hubby’s gut, and wanting to cheer him up (not to mention the fact that I have this horrible habit of performing the most god-awful acts at the most imappropriate moments), I reached over, and with a “boop!” sound, poked him in the gut. Boy was I surprised when my new uncle-in-law dropped his arms and looked at me like I was insane. ‘Why, hello, you’re not my husband.’

Luckily, his wife got a chuckle at it and he gave me a smile (one he surely needed at the time). No harm, no foul. And they’ve been my favorite in-laws since. :D But damn, was I embarrassed.