Worst wedding you’ve ever been to...

View Quoted Comment This is making me laugh so hard! I cannot even imagine!

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Everything about your post made me feel secondhand embarrassment for the couple

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Oh yes, I definitely laugh about it now

Ok not necessarily bad wedding but...
They paid a fortune, like 100k wedding. The ceremony was beautiful. The reception space was the same place with little seating to eat. About 8 tables that sat 5 people and 5 couches for 200 guests. It was a full buffet meal with tons of different foods including soup. We ended up finding room to eat our dinner an hour later in the office where all the strollers and diaper bags were stored. Food awesome. There were two single toilet bathrooms or you could walk 2 flights of stairs to use one of 4 single toilet bathrooms. The person cutting the cake BUTCHERED the cake which I knew they spend well over a thousand dollars on. I was horrified. I walked 3 flights of stairs to get a soda because the bar in the reception area was packed. And the favors were a few candy coated almonds in a tiny jar. Super janky for a 100k wedding.

The rehearsal dinner was way better.

I didn't go to this, but my parents went to my cousin's wedding.

Where every speech ended with the speaker reminding the bride and groom that "YOU LOVE EACH OTHER, RIGHT????"

My father is the only paternal relative for my cousin, besides me... and he and my stepmother were put by the speakers, far, far away from the family.

My other cousin, a bridesmaid, was seen at the bar, drinking with her parents, 30 minutes before the ceremony. (Who was with the bride???)

...This is the cousin that actually lives maybe 30 minutes from me, but I never see her.

Edited to add:

I completely forgot my ex's cousin's wedding.

Wherein the bride's family didn't want to pay for the whole thing, the couple couldn't, and the bride's family demanded the groom's family pay for catering. (The groom's father had just lost his job.)

They persevered (WHY?) and had a kosher wedding at the synagogue.

Great, right?

Wrong.

The family didn't want to pay for a meat kosher or a dairy kosher meal, so we got neither. No dairy, no meat, just breakfast... at 1PM... WITH NO PROTEIN SOURCES.

View Quoted Comment What did they serve for food? Bread, no cheeses?

View Quoted Comment Fake butter for non dairy waffles, fruit, bagels with fake cream cheese... I think.

We all immediately went out to eat after.

Bonus for the 45 minute long hora before the food was even put out...

Outside in the late summer heat, dirt floors where we are, port-a-potties, no alcohol just some wine punch, pot luck dinner, no dancing, no DJ just some back ground music playing from an iPod. I left after “dinner” to go to the bathroom and eat. This was after an hr+ drive to get there, getting lost, and missing the cardboard wedding sign they had by the road.
The vows were beautiful, the venue wasn’t horrible (Besides the dirt floors) and you could tell they really love each other.

I went to a wedding at a gorgeous vineyard where the ceremony was "in the wine cellar". That sounded really cool, and I can imagine getting married among all the wine barrels would be gorgeous, but they actually got married in a small wing of the cellar that apparently a coyote had run through when the cement was still wet and left footprints, and had these big double doors that could be opened to overlook the vineyard and grape fields. Still sounds great. The problems: that's a pretty tiny area of the cellar so we were packed in almost uncomfortably tightly, it was so narrow that the wedding party couldn't fit standing side by side so they were all basically vertically spooning in a line behind the bride and groom, the officiant showed up a little late and realized the bride and groom had forgotten the marriage certificate (this is after everyone was seated) so someone had to drive back to their house to get it forcing the ceremony to start about an hour late, and they never opened the doors for the great view.

On the plus side, it's made me be super conscious about space and not forgetting anything for our wedding.

One where the bride was an hour and a half late. We were sitting on the beach with gnats constantly biting us and the kids screaming until she finally came out. I even had bite marks on my scalp. She was having her makeup redone - I couldn’t even tell they had done anything except put red lipstick on her so why 90 minutes?

Several weddings where they refused to give up the outdoor space even though it was pouring down rain - you couldn’t hear anything plus we were all soaked - absolutely miserable.

My fiance’s sister’s wedding. I don’t have a relationship with any of his family for reasons I will not get into here. I can’t stand them and they tolerate me because they have to. But anyways, it was not enjoyable for many reasons. 1) It was an hour away so a big inconvenience for everyone to drive to 2) It was outside on a hot day 3) My fiancé was in the wedding party and so while he was off doing GM duties I had to be alone 4) I said hello to Future MIL when I saw her and complimented her on how nice she looked only to be completely ignored 5) I was stuck having to help set up the venue bc we had to be there super early for FH to get ready 6) most of the songs played were country 7) at one point in the night the bride shoves me into the middle of a giant circle of people dancing and I wanted to die because of my anxiety levels.

Horrible night

I haven't been to a really bad wedding. All of the weddings i've been to have had good parts and bad parts.

Here are some of the bad parts i've experienced:

My cousin had no receiving line and didn't greet guests at all. She also had no speeches which confused a lot of people.

No dance music. I was at a wedding years ago that had a 4 hour dinner reception with just a violinist as entertainment. I left after dinner out of boredom.

Really hot tent with bright sun. Beautiful wedding but the reception was in a large tent on a hot summer day. I basically couldn't see anyone at my table until the sun went down because it was so bright.

Really bad food. All I ask after this one was that even though the venue is gorgeous (and this particular venue was beautiful) it was clear that the bride and groom didn't taste the food or didn't prioritize the food over the look of the reception because I was so hungry and I thought the food was putrid and i'm pretty easy to please.

Open seating. Probably the worst experience of them all...Ended up sitting by myself with my Mom because everyone had moved their chairs to other tables. Again we left after dinner.

Mine was a friend's wedding several years ago. I was so excited for her wedding (she and the groom were two of the first friends I made in college), but it was clear they had cut a lot of corners. The wedding was at a winery (managed by a relative of the groom) but the bar was a cash bar; and instead of a DJ, a relative played music from a laptop. Neither of those things bothered me much, but what really bothered me was that during dinner, the wedding party / family were in one room, and everyone else was in another room (and all open seating), so we didn't get to see any of the toasts ... except if we stood at the back of the room and tried to listen in. It felt like the venue wasn't big enough for the number of people they had invited. I wouldn't have been offended at all if they'd kept the wedding family-only and I hadn't been invited, in order to keep their guest count manageable for the venue.

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You will probably end up with the same situation as the poster you replied to then. Open seating usually ends with with families being separated because seating is first come first serve so they aren't guaranteed to sit with their families.

I haven’t been to many weddings as an adult but I remember a few incidents from weddings I attended as a child.

Both were weddings of great uncles. One suddenly left his long time girlfriend and mother of his child to marry someone else that no one had even met. Our family was against how he went about things but we show up at the church anyway to be supportive of his decision. We never did make it inside the church though because his “baby mama” jumped out of the bushes and attacked the bride. So my mom, aunts and grandma sat outside of the church consoling the “baby mama”. After the ceremony the bride and groom exit the church and the bride had two black eyes. It turned out to be a lasting marriage though.

The other great uncle got married by the judge in the big court room at the police station and then the reception was in a bar. The bar was full of kids and many of the adults got wasted and there was no food. After a few hours my mom scooped us up and we went to eat at McDonalds down the street and went home.

I have not had any super horrid ones but I can share some cringy moments, including my own first wedding!!!

My former SIL refused to stand in pictures because "I don't feel like having my photo taken today." Then her and her hubby (my ex's oldest brother) proceeded to sit in another area of the VFW and drink alone. My former SIL was told to NOT TOUCH THE VIDEO CAMERA. Guess what? She did and turned it off when it was supposed to be on as she was "just trying to help."

We attended a wedding outdoors, on July 4th, in the middle of farm country in Wisconsin. It was hard to feel the love when you could smell what the cows left behind. Strong winds that day did not help. Cash bar, not enough food and no one thanked us for coming (we drove 90 minutes to get there.) Yeah.....no. No thank you note from them either.

Another wedding where the Best Man was hammered and got a little off color during the toast was kinda awesome and cringy at the same time.

At my (now former) nephew's wedding they had a video of them that played that went on and on and ON.....it finally stopped and I thought oh good!! But no, it was broken, it was supposed to last another 20 minutes. They also had, like three references to dead people: A song, a dove release and a poetry reading. I leaned over to my ex hubby and asked, "Are we at a wedding or a funeral?"

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I went to a wedding similar to this and I just can't bring myself to say it was a "horrible" wedding because of that same sentiment, they really love eachother! They are still happily married today with a new baby and they are living a wonderful life!

But....the wedding was on a Wednesday at the rodeo grounds. They served KFC that a guest picked up for them (no warmers, just laid out on a buffet line). Family members were working their tails off the entire time pouring drinks and cleaning tables. The best man was one of the worst public speakers I've ever heard in my life (I had never met the couple and I wanted to desperately get up there and give a proper speech, it was THAT bad). But, at the end of it, they were married and SO happy!

I've never left a wedding early, but a few we haven't stuck around after dinner & speeches & all that. Typically the ones we have left early are either dry weddings or full cash bar, a bad DJ, or a more quiet crowd with no dancing.

I admit that I have never even thought about doing assigned seating but it didn’t really occur to me that open seating may actually be worse. Especially with us having almost 200 guests. Thanks for the insight, y’all!

View Quoted Comment It was moreso the idea that she split up everyone into tables where they didn't know anyone just because she wanted them to be in their age range thinking it would be good for guests to mingle aha but it's kind of like if I came here with my family and don't know anyone else, I'd prefer to stick to my family since I came with them.