Every little girl dreams that her wedding will be the happiest day of her life, but not everyone is so lucky.
Anyone who has been to a few weddings call tell you that disasters, mishaps and fights are more common than Hollywood romances would make you believe.
Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head and remind yourself that these memories will last for a lifetime - even if the marriage doesn't.
Brides, grooms and guests shared their hilariously bad wedding stories, and these are our favorites:
1. ... but the wine was very good!
"My mother sulked like a [baby] all day, we argued and then she called all my family and got them to cancel coming to the reception we held a month later where we live (we married out of town).
Half empty venue, food wasted and we haven't spoken since. I will have been married five years in July. I still have fond memories though, the wine was very good!"
2. All according to plan
"I went to a wedding on a beach that was severely under-planned and under-budgeted. The bride and groom had visions but forgot that that actually required planning (focused on the details, forgot about the big picture).
Rather than hiring someone to make the cake they had researched and picked out the perfect picture of off the internet [and] left an aunt to replicate [the] photo... didn't work out.
Rather than hiring a real DJ they just got a guy with a guitar to play their "first dance" song and the rest was on a USB stick...which they lost. The whole evening was a guy with a bunch of YouTube music off of a random guest's phone.
During the actual ceremony on the beach they wanted guitar guy and a woman to sing the "bride goes down the aisle" song, but neglected to realize that to amplify that song they would need amps and stuff, so at the last minute that got set up but there was a gas generator to power everything 20 feet away that was louder than a freight train.
Also the path the bride had to walk was probably 200 meters... So they had to repeat the song, over the sound of the generator, three times before she actually got to the groom.
Later on, after the crew started cleaning up the venue (hours before the party would have normally ended because they didn't hire them for long enough) everyone in the party migrated to the parking lot and started drinking out of their car trunks like a reverse tailgating party."
3. "It's always me, me, me with you!"
"My mother in law handed out [a demo CD] of my now sister-in-law to as many guests as she could and threw a fit in the middle of the dance floor later that night because I didn't let her daughter sing with the band or karaoke.
Her exact words were, "How dare you make today all about you." It was MY wedding day."
4. Your competitive side is showing
"For the bouquet toss, a middle aged guy forced his middle aged girlfriend out onto the floor, then stood by her so she couldn't leave.
The bouquet was caught by an excited little girl. The guy proceeded to yank the bouquet out of the little girl's hands, gave it to his middle aged girlfriend, then ran off the floor cheering loudly to high five one of his buddies.
The little girl ran away crying."
5. Now it's a single-tier cake
"My friend got married around age 21. Neither he nor the bride had much money, so the wedding was modest but still very nice. They did have a lovely three-tier cake though.
The ceremony goes fine and "The bride will cut the cake" music is playing. She was a dainty, tiny little thing, maybe 5'2" and 100 pounds soaking wet. If she swatted a fly it might not even notice.
She approaches the cake with the knife, barely touches it and BOOM! The whole thing immediately collapses, all three tiers somehow, all over someone's elderly grandmother who was seated right by the ill-fated cake.
That old lady, who had barely moved throughout the whole affair, shot out of her chair like she was fired from a cannon, screeching [and] sending cake shrapnel all over those nearby. Another close friend and I watched the whole thing from close range and were paralyzed and purple from hysterical breathless laughter, as were many of the other guests.
I later heard the bakery refunded them for the cake due to its not-up-to-code construction. They should have charged them double for generating memories that no one there will ever forget."
6. The clue was in the name
"We set up our entire beautiful reception and were just about to head out to get our hair done for the ceremony, when all of a sudden the ceiling gave way and the room began to flood with the steaming water.
Someone above us had fallen asleep with their bathtub running. We had to use big painters' buckets to toss the water out of the room and into the waterfall outside.
Our wedding party had to redo the setup as a result. The best part was the irony of the fact that the room was called the River Room. We can laugh at it now, but it was a disaster at the time!"
7. A chilly reception
"I got hypothermia during the outdoor photography and missed the reception because I was in the hospital"”with my brand new wife, who was still in her wedding dress."
8. Surprise! We're splitting!
This story comes courtesy of a wedding decorator:
"Two years ago we did the decor for a really pretty ceremony, and halfway through the day we found out it was a "surprise wedding."
Basically, they were not engaged, but the bride planned the whole thing and the groom showed up at the golf course thinking he was just playing a regular round of golf.
Nope. He walked into his own wedding, saw her standing at the altar, and [walked out]."
9. Oh, were you in a rush?
"The justice of the peace we hired has not shown up yet and I'm nervously waiting as the ceremony is supposed to start in a couple of minutes.
The wedding time comes and goes. Still no justice of the peace. We try to call and go straight to voicemail. Meanwhile, everyone is now just standing around looking uncomfortable.
A few jokes are cracked about it and we continue to wait. Several more attempts to call go unanswered, and now people are starting to get antsy.
30 minutes go by and now people are starting to offer to call people they know to perform the ceremony.
45 minutes after it was supposed to begin people are starting to loosen up their ties, leave the area to find a cool place to hang out while they wait, and a couple of people straight up leave.
I'm getting ready to call it when I see the justice of the peace strolling across the park towards us.
She is in no hurry at all. When she arrives she loudly proclaims that she had bowel problems and couldn't get out of the bathroom. When asked why she didn't call and let us know she just shrugged and said, "Well, I'm here now."
An hour late, but at least she showed."
10. The toxic bride
Christine Miller from Nebraska was trying to save a few bucks by making her own wedding decorations.
She had built arches, corsages and table ornaments from the flowers on her property before discovering they were Lily of the Valley - which is highly poisonous.
The brave bride made it through her ceremony before detouring to the E.R. for an adrenaline shot. Even with her swollen face, she enjoyed her first dance and smiled for photos.
Thankfully, Steve Harvey heard her story and arranged for the unlucky couple to re-do their "I dos."
11. Bride wars
"The sister of the bride who wasn't invited showed up drunk and got in a fight with the bride until the father of the bride broke it up by putting the sister in a choke hold and dragging her out of the venue.
The bride was surprisingly fine afterwards."
12. Mmm, delicious confetti
"There was like an 8 year old boy who had loads of confetti in his hand so I didn't think much of it, turns out he thought it was sugar paper and ate all of it.
He then proceeded to projectile vomit everywhere through the middle of the ceremony. Was one of the funniest and most disgusting moments of my life."
13. A night to remember
"The groom got so drunk that he straight disappeared from the reception. [Things became] real awkward when it was time for the wedding to be OVER.
The venue was kicking us out and the bride and groom were supposed to take off in their vintage car and drive off to their honeymoon suite. The music went off, lights went on, and it turned into the guests searching for the damn groom.
My husband finally found him in the parking lot basically face down on his lips. He helped him back into the wedding which was basically the most awkward walk of shame past the bride's glaring dad and grandfather.
The groom was too drunk to drive [so the] bride's grandfather drove them to the hotel suite (which was a 30 minute drive).
My friend (the bride) later told me that when they got in the room, her new husband passed out cold on the bed and she had to wander the halls in her wedding dress looking for someone to unhook her dress for her so she could get out of it."
14. The first dance shuffle
"We weren't going to spring for a DJ, so I spent a day making an iTunes playlist for the event. I painstakingly planned it out so I when it was time for our first dance I would give a nod to a guest who would hit "play," and the music would be covered for the rest of the event.
We had our first dance, and it was then supposed to flow into the father-daughter dance. My new father-in-law would dance with my wife, and I would dance with my daughter from my first marriage.
It was supposed to be "Father And Daughter" by Paul Simon. It was not supposed to be "Hey-Ya!" by Outkast.
But somewhere along the line, someone hit "shuffle," and all musical hell broke loose.
Fortunately I had renamed all the files to begin with a number, so it was one click to get them back in order and everything on track again. And fortunately, we got a great pic of the moment I expected Paul Simon and instead heard Outkast.
15. Ants in your... dress
"While my husband and I were taking family photos, I apparently stepped on an ant hill.
Thousands of ants crawled into all 10 layers of the bottom of my dress. My parents and bridesmaids tried to pick out all the ants - we even tried to get a hair dryer to blow them out - but when I finally took the dress off at the end of the night, hundreds of ants fell out in the shower."
16. She's not exactly made of honor
"My mom's best friend (and maid of honor) showed up the day of my mom's first wedding with her head shaved.
Apparently she was in love with the groom and this was her silent protest. The marriage only lasted 2 years and the groom eventually married the maid of honor."
17. The mother of all wedding disasters
50% of the people who RSVPed didn't come.
My brother-in-law who volunteered to DJ didn't actually bring any DJ equipment, so our reception was powered by Pandora.
He also said he would video the ceremony and highlights of the reception but didn't bring his video camera.
The florist forgot to deliver about 50% of the flowers. The reception venue took everything we discussed and then decided to do the opposite (Not enough tables, big weird glass centerpieces, no dance floor...) and when we tried to get it fixed, the man who was sent to change out the tables stood outside the window of the reception hall angrily smoking cigarettes.
I later spoke with a friend who has worked with that man who explained that that sort of behavior happens pretty much any time he is asked to do anything, so...
We made a CD of music for my brother-in-law to play before the ceremony began. He insisted that he had something better. It was two songs played on repeat for about an hour.
My immediate family was late to the wedding, including my sister who was a bridesmaid, and my mother and father. They had originally offered to help set up everything that morning, but I guess they just got a late start.
My veil got lost the night before the wedding. It still has not resurfaced. After everyone was done eating and the cake had been cut, I dimmed the lights in the reception hall to change the atmosphere to a more fun, party vibe and get people dancing.
Everyone got up and left.
It didn't go great, but my husband and I ended up married and we're still very happy together, and that's the most important thing. Still, I wish I'd saved the money from the whole thing and gotten married at the county clerk instead."
Was your wedding this bad? If so, we're very sorry, but we would love to hear about it!
As these outrageous wedding pictures show, "disaster" is actually par for the course.
Meanwhile, these brides pulled of their bizarre wedding dresses without a hitch.
