She arrives and is extremely rude to the staff, while the groom is apologetic and super nice.
The ceremony starts, and she fast walks down the aisle and doesn’t wait for the groom. The groom sheepishly catches up at the altar.
When it’s her time to say, “I do,” she says, “Yeah, whatever,” in an annoyed tone. The groom says, “I do.” You could cut the tension in the room with a knife.
The minister keeps things on track and finishes the ceremony, and we get to the kiss.
Instead of kissing the groom, she turns her face and gives him her cheek. She then fast-walks back down the aisle, signs the paperwork, and leaves. The groom was in tears.
I never saw them again, and I’m sure it didn’t last.
Here’s another: I would guess the bride was in her seventies, and the groom was in his early twenties.
One side of the chapel was all walkers and oxygen tanks, while the other was intoxicated people in their twenties. I’m pretty sure it was a money grab, but it was notable because, usually, the genders are reversed in these kinds of weddings.
Another fun one: The wedding was at the top of the stratosphere tower. The couple shows up, and the bride is a new-age crystal type, very, let’s say, spiritual, and the groom looks like an 1849 gold miner—rope belt, floppy hat, three teeth, the whole thing.
The bride tells me there would be spirits and angels in the photos, and the reason they got married at the stratosphere is because it’s the closest place to heaven where they could get married.
They were so weird about it and said so many times that they wanted to be with God and go to heaven that the hotel had the dog sniff them before getting on the elevator to go to the top.
We lie and tell them it’s standard practice to have the dogs sniff everyone.
The wedding happens, and they start chanting nonsense words, then proceed to have the grossest kiss I’ve ever seen. It turns out they met that week in AA.
u/Greylings: My mother was a wedding photographer till I was about 18-19, and I helped out on many of them. The one that stands out the most was at a campsite where the wedding and reception were being held.
About halfway through the reception, I hear the groom start laughing maniacally.
I peeked over his way and saw two groomsmen hauling the screaming bride toward the lake.
They threw her into the cold water with her veil and dress still on. When she got out of the water, I genuinely thought she might get furious. Her hair, makeup, and probably the dress were ruined beyond repair.
The fact that the groom laughed and didn’t do anything stuck with me as being a terrible move, even as a teen.
Apparently, she thought so, too, because they didn’t even make it six months.
u/EndlessOcean: The bride was so terrible her mom gave me a $500 tip for not walking out on the event when she was treating everyone (even her now husband) like a bad employee.
She did the whole clicking fingers thing when wanting someone to do something for her, and she berated the DJ for grabbing a sandwich when he’d been there for about 8 hours.
He was told that he should’ve brought his lunch, and she would be taking the cost of the food (like an open buffet style) out of his paycheck. The bride was divorced within three years, but not before having three kids that have stupid names.
u/Past-Independent2575: Wedding photographer from India here. The bride’s mom dissed non-stop about the groom to a couple of our photographers.
She believed that her daughter was too beautiful for the guy they promised her hand to and that she’d rather have him die sooner than see him with her daughter after the wedding.
The bride and the groom had the first dinner separately because the bride wasn’t in the mood to have their reception dinner together.
This one is the final nail in the coffin: post the wedding, when we were about to photograph portraits of the couple, the groom walked up to us saying that he was too tired from the wedding, so it’d be better if we could use the photos from the previous weddings we shot and morph his face on to those and walked away.
They divorced three months later.
u/samprimary: Her three kids from a previous marriage (8, 9, and 12) were screaming, covering themselves in soda, and overturning tables while making extremely hostile, profanity-laden demands for a drivable Hot Wheels car, and escalated to just randomly hitting people with baseball bats.
The entire time, the mom was going, “Haha, aren’t they so crazy? Oh, it’s okay. They just get to express themselves.” The marriage lasted somewhere between four and five months.
u/Portly_pug: When cutting the cake, the bride playfully got some on the groom’s face.
He proceeded to grab a giant chunk and PUNCH her in the face with it, several times hard. She was digging it out from underneath her eyelids, bawling, and her Dad needed to be held back.
EDIT: Many people have been asking, so here is a bit more backstory. My guess as to why people were holding the Dad back was that the groom was in full Marine dress uniform, and they used his sword to cut the cake.
That sword was very much in arms reach of the groom after this happened, so everyone was probably worried something terrible could happen if those two got near each other.
After the incident, it was awkwardly silent as the groom apologized to the family.
If I remember correctly, the groom and the Dad went outside for around 20 minutes, then came back in. The rest of the reception went as planned after that.
u/Pancakes_Whisperer: The wedding was on a golf course. The bride had a vision of her husband driving up on a golf cart to see her for a first look.
He got one look at her from the top of the hill and vaulted the cart, ran down the hill, picked her up, and twirled her around to tell her how gorgeous she was.
We caught it all. It was the best first look ever.
Once he set her down, she straightened herself, looked back at us, and said, “Okay, I don’t want that. Let’s do the golf cart now.” And she sent him back up.
u/Aeri73: The couple had practiced their opening dance, a tango, in a large room, but the wedding venue was a long and narrow, tiny room.
So, one step forward in tango style, three steps ahead, but trampling in place due to guests sitting in their way.
Three steps backward, trampling in place again, to take two steps back to reach the other side guest and start trampling in the area again.
Right in the middle of all this, the kitchen starts bringing out food (they hadn’t served any food before, so this was after complaints from most guests about being hungry).
I have videos and photos of the couple trampling, with no guests watching them. Not even the bride’s mother because she was busy destroying a pack of fries with her back turned to the couple’s opening dance.
u/cheese_shenanigans: There’s the time I went to a destination wedding of a friend. The day before my flight, somebody broke into my hotel room and stole all of my equipment, including two cameras and all of my lenses, everything.
The bride and groom were super chill and still wanted me to photograph the only way I could—with my phone.
It was embarrassing, but luckily, my phone had a decent camera.
But then, while I was trying to take group photos, the bride’s aunt kept stepping in and rearranging people after I had just got them into positions, etc., just trying to take over my shoot so she could get her own photos.
u/lulu125: My first wedding was a small ceremony with a small reception at the couple’s house. We almost finished with posed photos, and the couple went in to grab their dogs for photos (these dogs were their babies). They had closed the dogs in the basement so they wouldn’t get out during the setup.
One of the dogs had fallen through the steps and was severely hurt.
The bride grabbed the bloody, crying dog, and they left in their tux and gown to the vet.
I was stuck at their house with their guests for three hours as we waited for the newlyweds to return. When they did, it was with the news that the dog didn’t make it. The bride’s gown was dirty.
Most guests left, and we called it
