It’s often said that a wedding is the most important day of our lives. And while we don’t want to downplay that significance—it’s a hell of a legal contract, to say the least—it also feels like, well, a lot of pressure. Mistakes are inevitable even during the most impeccably planned nuptials, they just rarely make it into the Instagram photo carousel.
So this October (spooky season!) Vogue asked brides, bridesmaids, and guests if they’d be a little bit more, shall we say, honest about what really happened on the wedding day. From fashion mishaps to beauty blunders, here are their anonymous horror stories. And as the saying goes: “The worse the wedding, the better the marriage.” (Except for the bride who found out her groom was still on Bumble two weeks before they were supposed to walk down the aisle.)
“I wore a 1950s vintage dress to my City Hall civil ceremony. It had lovely princess seams down the front and back that hugged my body—unfortunately, a bit too tight. Stepping out of the car and into Manhattan’s City Hall a seam fully ripped wide open and I had my stomach on show as I said ‘I do!’ Thank god for Photoshop.”
“I hired a string quartet for my ceremony and an entirely different band showed up. I have no idea who they were to this day.”
“I had a clear dress code of ‘all black’ black tie that I mercilessly worked on and explained for an entire year and a half. I even made a mood board explaining what it meant. Bows, taffeta, fringe, kaftans, silk, capes, gowns, sequins—all welcome! It just had to be black. On the day of the wedding, I was pleased. I saw black only from the tables to the bar until… a guest showed up in a neon green denim jumpsuit. Not only was the outfit insanely odd and casual, but the neon was so obvious that when she walked into the reception, several people turned and stared at her.”
“A freak hail storm struck suddenly during my outdoor mountain wedding right as I began to walk down the aisle. My guests sat and witnessed a wedding I never saw.”
“One of our tables caught on fire. Oof.”
“My friends found my fiancé on Bumble two weeks before our wedding date—he had even used our engagement pictures for his Bumble profile. Good riddance, and fuck him!”
“Our priest got lost on the way to our wedding. Thankfully, one of our friends had already been certified as an officiant and stepped in to marry us.”
“Before the wedding, I was on a strict diet and working out multiple times a day—my outfit was sheer and sequined, so I wanted to be in the best shape ever. (Full disclosure: I wanted my ass to look great.) Well, I worked my body so much my butt did look amazing… but also bigger. As I walked down the staircase and turned my train to walk down the aisle, my pants split in two. My butt had literally busted my pants open.”
“The courthouse forgot to file our wedding license so we didn’t know we weren’t married for almost a full year.”
“My wedding dress was lost until the last second—somehow, the hotel had accidentally put it in the closet of my male cousin.”
“While my husband was getting ready, a nearby fire pit had a freak surge while the venue turned it on. It scared him while he was using his razor—and he accidentally shaved a chunk out of his hair. So he walked down the aisle with a surprise buzzcut.”
“My hair and makeup artist was hired to do my glam before the ceremony and to remain on the grounds till dinner for a retouch. She also took the cash and disappeared as soon as the ceremony started.”
“Our friend accidentally broke the bride’s tooth at my birthday party two weeks prior.”
“At my sister’s wedding, the rabbi said my name instead of hers—twice. One of those times? During the vows.”
“I was once asked to plan a bachelor party for a friend and following the inevitable Venmo kerfuffle after the fact, two party guests, including the groom, refused to pay their share because they didn’t feel the experience was ‘worth it.’ The takeaway: Get the money upfront!”
“At my sibling’s wedding, my parents (who have been divorced for years and have both remarried) hooked up—love was in the air?”
“On a bachelorette trip, the bride really wanted to smoke pot, but no one had brought ‘accouterments’ because we had traveled internationally. Our bridesmaids duties were to source weed and fashion a bong out of an apple that was in our welcome basket at the hotel. Thank god for YouTube tutorials!”
“The father of the bride got so drunk at the welcome party and an ambulance had to be called. To his credit, he held his own on the dance floor the next night.”
“I was invited to a wedding on a private island that required wedding guests to send the bride-to-be a deposit for our hotel room. Guests found out that the wedding had been canceled via a Venmo return of funds.”
“I went to this blowout wedding where the diamond flew out of the engagement setting on the dance floor. The band-leader stopped the dancing, and 600 people were crawling on their hands and knees looking for the nine-carat stone (which was never found), and the bride was bawling, saying the marriage was cursed and it kinda was—they divorced a few years later.”
“I attended a wedding in South America that seemed to go off without a hitch until the next several days when it became clear to many guests that they were serving unfiltered tap water.
“I was at a wedding where a guest left their underwear in the bathroom. Honestly? I don’t wanna know.”
