23 Guests Who Have Seen Weddings Cancelled At The Altar Are Spilling The Tea, And Some Stories Are Absolutely Scandalous
A while back, Reddit user pootywang asked if anyone had witnessed a wedding get called off at the altar, and people had some JUICY replies. Here are 27 weddings that were called off the day of the wedding (with a few examples from the night before).
1."My roommate was a bass player in a wedding band for 11 years. At one classy wedding, the groom's father caught the bride and the best man fucking before the ceremony. The two families got into a huge brawl, the police came, and the band never even got to play. After the commotion died down, the bride's father paid the band anyway."
2."A good friend of mine was getting married to a guy we all liked. He was a strict Catholic, refused to have sex before marriage, and always went to confession. I was a bridesmaid, and my husband was the Best Man. When the priest said, 'Is there anyone who objects to this wedding? Speak now,' everyone giggled because the guy's mom was giving the stink eye to the crowd, daring someone to speak up. The priest chuckled and began to talk again. 'We come together not to mark the start of a relationship, but to recognize a bond that...' 'SCREW THEIR BOND! She's pregnant with my baby!' Turns out my ex-friend was having sex with the groom's cousin. She was, in fact, pregnant by him and was hoping to trick her fiancé into thinking it was his. Her fiancé was livid. In the end, he forced her to pay his family back half the money they spent on their $75,000 wedding."
3."My own wedding got called off mid-ceremony. I had just finished saying my own vows before being arrested by local police on an assault/domestic violence charge. (I beat up my almost brother-in-law for stealing my car. FWIW, he punched me in the face first, but that doesn't matter in my state.) Police didn't care what was going on; I got carried out in handcuffs in front of ALL of my family. There are many negative consequences to having your wedding day ending like that beyond the obvious. I have never been able to repair my relationship with her family."
4."The mother of the bride walked in on the bride having sex with a groomsman in the church basement. It was very awkward when the mother ran down the aisle to explain to the people waiting for the wedding to start that there were 'complications' and the wedding was canceled."
5."My girlfriend at the time's best friend, Sara, was supposed to get married this past summer, and my girlfriend was going to the maid of honor. At 8 a.m. on the day of the wedding, my girlfriend gets a call from Sara, who is hysterical, saying that Tim, the groom, disappeared the night before, and no one can find him (it is implied that his parents know where he is, but they've always hated Sara for absolutely no reason, and so they claim ignorance). We wait around for hours just waiting to hear something, but we're getting tons of conflicting information, from 'Tim just went out for a little bachelor hell-raising' to 'literally no one knows where he is.'"
So, my girlfriend and I ended up heading to Jean's house (Jean was supposed to be the other bridesmaid) to wait around anxiously. Finally, Sara and her mother arrive, and Tim FINALLY calls Sara (after ignoring about 30 of her calls/texts). They have an obviously tense conversation outside, and Sara comes back in to announce to everyone there that Tim has decided not to go through with it (presumably because his truly evil parents have finally persuaded him not to be with her anymore). It is now 2 p.m. The ceremony was supposed to be at 3 p.m.
So we all get dressed up fancy anyway (except the 'bride' just goes in jeans, because, as she summarized so eloquently, 'fuck it') and just go to the reception, since, as the mother of the bride stated to her daughter, 'We paid for all that food and booze and it is NOT going to waste. Let's go get smashed and say good riddance, baby.' So we got fabulously drunk on the open bar, danced around with her little 3-year-old nephew, and shared everything we'd never liked about Tim.
The real kicker, though? Tim was in the army, so the two of them were already married on paper, so she could be deployed with him. The ceremony meant nothing legally — it was just the worst way he could have ended the relationship. And by the time this happened, it had been more than six months so that they couldn't do a simple annulment. She's still wading through the divorce BS, but at least her dad is a Marine, and he can get this scumbag guy in craploads of trouble for what he did. His (deadbeat groom's) CO was NOT HAPPY about having to reverse all the deployment paperwork and get the jilted bride's stuff back out of shipment to goddamn Germany. All in all, it was an epic fallout that he deserved, thankfully. It was quite the day."
6."At my friends' wedding, everyone stood as the bride started her walk down the aisle...everyone except the groom's great-grandmother, who had died suddenly and quietly just moments before. The wedding was stopped, and everyone disbanded so the families could deal with the tragedy."
"They held a (non-fatal) wedding a few months later that included many tributes to the great grandmum and, ten years later, are happily married."
7."I was at a wedding in Niagara where the groom and groomsmen showed up for the photos HAMMERED. They were so rude and horrible that the bride stormed off, saying she 'just can't do this.' Then the mother of the bride reams out the asshole groom. He flips out, tears his tuxedo off of his arms and body in a fit of rage, and runs into the woods to escape."
8."My brother was one of the groomsmen at a friend's wedding. It was a typical college sweetheart story — the bride and groom had dated all through college, and he had proposed on their graduation day. Everything was all set for a beautiful summer wedding. However, the bride-to-be was having doubts. She had only ever had sex with one man, her fiancé, and knew that the groom-to-be was in the same situation."
"Apparently, she had been reading a lot of 'Sex and your Marriage' self-help books, and she had come to the conclusion that lack of sexual experience was the number one destroyer of marriages.
So she came to my brother's friend (the groom-to-be) with the idea that they participate in a foursome, or a partner swap, with the best man and maid of honor, their two best friends, the night before the wedding.
Brilliant, right? I swear you can't make this shit up. The groom-to-be fights the idea for a while, but his fiancé threatens to call off the wedding if he doesn't go through with it. He talks with his best friend, and he reluctantly agrees. She talks with her best friend, and she reluctantly agrees. Everybody's in (no pun intended).
So the night before the wedding comes, and the four are getting plastered at the happy couple-to-be's apartment. Here's where shit goes down. Apparently, the groom drinks too much and can't get it up (at least that's what he says happened), and what essentially occurs that night is a threesome between the maid of honor, the bride-to-be, and the best man.
The groom-to-be, humiliated and distraught, leaves the apartment in the middle of the trio's lovemaking and drunk drives his car straight into a freeway median.
The wedding's called off due to the accident, and the groom ends up paralyzed from the waist down.
Great guy, the paralyzed would-be groom. My brother and I play pick-up with him once or twice a month at the local rec center. (My brother was not the best man, FYI.) The groom doesn't like to talk about anything that happened, and I'm pretty sure he and his would-be best man don't talk anymore. I saw the bride at an X-mas party my parents threw a few years ago; her parents are family friends. I think she's married and has shat out a kid or two."
9."Not me, but my grandfather. When my grandfather was a teenager, he was with his family at a friend of his parent's wedding. When the preacher said the whole 'if there's anyone present who has a reason this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace' bit, the father of the bride stood up and said, 'I do,' at which point he, the bride and groom, and the preacher left to have a private discussion. They came back about ten minutes later and called the wedding off. My grandfather and I used to enjoy hypothesizing about what the bride's father could have said."
10."I was to be married on March 4, 2003. At my fiancé's bachelorette, she ended up cheating on me with a guy from out of state — someone she had never even laid eyes on before in her life. We had everything paid for already. The night before the wedding, I received a call from our good friend (also the person who was going to marry us) who told me everything that had gone down at her party. I guess to make a long story short, I went with her dad to the venue to let them know that there would be no wedding shortly after I broke the news to her. ... We shot the cake that night."
11."I was a bridesmaid. All of the bride's friends (including myself), her parents, and anyone else with half a brain had been telling her to get rid of him all along and to definitely not marry him (he had no job and was physically and verbally abusive). We'd given up by the time of her wedding, and I was trying to be happy for her. Instead of saying, 'I do,' she just looked around the room and then ran back down the aisle. We were all dumbfounded, except for her father, who yelled a variation of what we were all thinking: 'Thank you, Jesus Christ.'"
12."A few years ago, a friend of ours was working as a waiter at a big venue where they host receptions for huge weddings. There was a huge crowd in attendance — then the groom had a heart attack and died right in the middle of the reception. They gave him CPR in front of everyone, but he died right there. It was hugely traumatic (obviously) — a lot of the waiting staff had to have trauma counseling. We all learned to appreciate life better after that night."
13."I was not in attendance because I was like two at the time, but a cousin of my Dad was at the altar, ready to go. Then the groomsmen showed up with the groom, who was still fucked up from the night before. The groom threw up on the altar when he got up there. The wedding was called off, and the two never married. My great-grandfather prevented everyone from eating all the food at the reception, and everyone just kinda went home."
14."I've been to one wedding where the bride bolted about 20 min before the ceremony. She asked everyone to leave the room she was getting ready in, saying she needed a minute. So, the family thought she was being super spiritual and talking to god, but in fact, decided to do some blow and decided 'fuck this marriage shit' and left."
"And another one where in the middle of the vows, the guy stopped the priest and said 'I can't do this' and literally ran out of the place. From what I found out later, he hid on the resort's property in some bushes until his mother (who hated the almost-bride) happened to walk by. He had her retrieve his cellphone and keys from his room. The groom also went on the honeymoon trip with his mom.. sooooo...yeah."
15."My best friend was getting married to his high school sweetheart. They show up together a couple of hours before the ceremony. People shuffle in, my friend and the rest of the party are at the front of the chapel, music starts playing... and the officiant comes out and tells my friend, 'Son, I've got bad news. You're not getting married today.' The bride totally left everyone, and she didn't tell even her bridesmaids — she just got up and left. She called him two weeks later, apologizing. That was eight years ago, and he's still screwed up over it."
16."I went to a wedding in Tuscany. The couple was from San Francisco, but both had family from around Europe and the East Coast, so Italy was a good central location. They rented a villa to have the wedding at. There were around 100 guests in a gorgeous, impeccably catered setting, but the bride got cold feet and disappeared about an hour before the ceremony. The groom gave a very eloquent speech, thanked everyone for coming, explained what had happened, and really put everyone at ease, and we had a great party. He got pretty smashed afterward, but the social grace with which he handled it was remarkable."
17."One of my good friends was dumped through a text message three hours before the wedding; some Pentecostal Prophets had told that girl they weren't right for each other a couple of months before the wedding."
"Imagine waking up for your big day at 9 a.m. and your iPhone screen says, 'I don't think we are made for each other; I don't have divine guidance.' After 13 months of dating. Now she had divine guidance for dating his friends."
18."My mom was engaged to a guy before my Dad and stood him up at the altar. About a week before the wedding, the guy she was engaged to started to grow a beard, with plans to shave it off before the wedding. Apparently, it had a very red tint to it, and she refused to possibly have kids with red hair. She left the man at the alter day of the wedding, never walked down the aisle and just walked out. Mom left a guy heartbroken because she wouldn't have a ginger kid. Then I married a ginger."
19."While I was working a wedding, a friend of a friend's fiancé got all butt hurt about her hanging out with a guy friend and basically made an ultimatum that she refused to keep in contact with any guy friends and basically let him rule her life. Yeah, that didn't happen. So her side went to the reception, ate all the food, drank all the booze, and celebrated her dodging a bullet. Then they sued his ass for breaking off the engagement with less than a day left and got all of her money back for the wedding that didn't happen. So yeah, receptions often still happen because sometimes it's too late to cancel everything, and it's best not to let it go to waste."
20."Two friends of mine were getting married. They planned to tie the knot in Edinburgh and booked a church, hotel, reception, etc. About 70 people flew over to be there, most from Dublin, but some from as far away as Tokyo, New York, and Dubai. On the morning of the wedding, the groom said he didn't want to be married, and he did a runner after the bride (understandably) got a bit angry and batshit with rage. Basically, he liked being single. He would get home, play his computer games, and go and watch some GAA games at the weekend. He was happy doing his own thing and didn't want that to change. He disappeared the morning of the wedding and hasn't been seen since — that was two years ago. We know from speaking to mutual friends that he is okay; he's just living the life he wanted to. He has never apologized for what he did."
"What made the bride so angry is not being jilted; it was the fact that he waited until the morning of the wedding to pull out. He admitted he had felt that way for several months but didn't have the guts to tell her. A lot of money had been spent by a lot of people to get to the wedding, and she had to do all the apologizing. Still, it turned out okay. The bride calmed down after a few hours, realizing she dodged a bullet, and we all had quite a bender in Edinburgh that Saturday night."
21."A friend of my family had been together with his lady for seven years and decided to have a lavish destination wedding. We're from Australia, and they wanted to have a wedding in Las Vegas. If you wanted to attend, you had to pay a ridiculous amount to fly over to America, and for most of the family, it took a lot of savings. Apparently, for months before the wedding, the bride's sister had been telling the bride spiteful things about marriage and about not going through with the wedding. The big day came; everyone had spent a lot of money getting to their dream destination, and the ceremony was beautiful; however, when it came to signing the documents and making it legal, the spiteful sister decided to have one last 'joke' about marriage being forever."
"The bride then proceeded to freak out and didn't sign the paper. She just said, 'I can't do this,' and ran out. The sister and the bride ended up taking the honeymoon, and the groom just wandered around the hotel for hours in a daze. Needless to say, everyone was pissseeddd that the bride insisted on a lavish overseas wedding that most family members couldn't afford and didn't end up going through with it."
22."My dad stood my mom up at the altar. I had already been born (I was about two years old). The wedding was in mid-swing at my godparents' home. The guests were in their seats and all, but my dad just never showed up. My parents stayed together for another six years; they separated when I was eight."
23.And finally..."A friend of mine rapidly developed a relationship with a girl. She was ok — but proposing and marrying two months after the first meeting seemed way too quick for me. The guy's main reasoning was, 'Everyone should marry...why not right now?' I was invited but didn't go to the wedding — I didn't like the whole (dumb) idea. My friend was way too nervous, so I expected some minor f*k-ups. And right when I thought, 'They must be standing in front of the altar now,' I heard my friend calling me outside my house (I live not far from the church). He escaped the ceremony right in front of everyone — somehow, he realized he shouldn't get married. So we went to a bar and got drunk, and I feel like the guy was genuinely happy — for the first time in a month."
Have you ever witnessed a wedding called off on the day of? Maybe it was even YOUR wedding. If so, let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
