Etiquette Hell Weddings From Hell Jan-Jun 2005 Archive

I have been married twice, the first time went fairly well with my mother being a mild to moderate pain in the backside... She disapproved of most of my wedding choices, colors, etc... but did realize that it was MY wedding not hers and went along with it for the most part. The 2 things I remember that went wrong on the wedding day is that my MOH and I had made all of the flowers and boutonnières, and even though 3 people had been supposed to bring pins to pin them on, all 3 forgot them! My brother ran to a nearby store and got some safety pins which worked. The other issue was a song that we wanted played had been moved off cue and there was a 5 minute wait for the song to be found again... Both fairly minor. That marriage lasted 3 years.

My wedding from hell story though concerns my second marriage. My husband and I had decided we wanted a medieval themed wedding at an SCA event as we were both very active in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group). Because we were on a very limited budget, we chose to make our clothing and our MOH and Best man's clothing. My husband is very handy with a sewing machine and I am good with handsewing.

Well, the first glitch was that our MOH and BM both backed out due to prior commitments that they couldn't get around, so we had to find another MOH and BM. We both turned to SCA friends who we knew would be at the event. My new MOH offered to help sew my dress, her dress and my mother's dress. We took her up on her offer because of the sheer amount of clothing needing to be made. I chose my material and patterns and purchased them. We played hit and miss for a little while before we finally got the material to her. We'd already cut out my dress and put the bodice and skirt together, just needed to hem everything and sew the bodice to the skirt. (both hubby and I have problems with gathering lol) This left doing the finishing stuff on my dress, and making her dress, my under dress, and my mother's dress for her to do. Her dress and my mother's were pretty basic, a simple T-tunic style dress, as was my under dress, although mine was supposed to be a bit more form fitting.

The night before we were to leave for the SCA event, 2 days before our wedding, she drops by with the material for her dress, my mother's dress, and my underdress... cut out but not sewn. She also returned my overdress in exactly the same condition it was given to her... except that she had done the gathering... just no hemming and not attached to each other. She mumbled something about not having had time to get around to it and left. Needless to say that this close to the wedding it was too late to do much about it except spend most of the night sewing. We attached my skirt and bodice to each other and hand hemmed what we could on my overdress. Since the other 3 dresses were simple, it was just a case of sewing up the sides, hemming, cutting neck holes, and hemming that. Unfortunately, when she cut out my underdress she mismeasured the sleeve length and I ended up with 3/4 length sleeves instead of the full length sleeves I had wanted.

We get to the site, get our camp set up and go back to sewing. Everything at this point had to be hand done, so we'd done everything but the hemming the night before. My MOH came by and got her dress so she could hand hem the neckline while attending to some commitments she had that day at the event. Before she left, she asked me if after the wedding she could turn the dress into a tunic because she wasn't comfortable in dresses. I told her AFTER the wedding she could do whatever she wanted to the dress, but I wanted her in a DRESS for the wedding. My parents showed up, but were unable to stay for the wedding as it had been postponed due to the minister running late. This saved me having to finish my mother's dress, so I concentrated on doing the final things for mine. My overdress was velvet, and to save time and give me a little bit of a train, we only hemmed the front of the skirt, so I could walk without tripping. (Yes we later hemmed the back of the skirt, but nowhere near the amount the front was hemmed, as I liked the train and it was the style intended for the dress.) The overdress laces up the back and we had to put the grommets in.... MOH's husband offered to do this for us while we were completing the other things, like my underdress. Guess what? He managed to put them in where not one grommet was even with another and the space between them varied quite a bit. Well, we managed to work things out... wasn't really the look I'd wanted but it would work.

Fast forward to the wedding.. which was late because of transportation issues for the minister... (also an SCAer). The minister shows up drunk, but not so drunk he couldn't perform the ceremony... just slurring a bit. No family for either of us because of the delays. And my MOH shows up with her dress converted into a TUNIC! After I told her leave it a dress until AFTER the ceremony! We weren't allowed to announce the ceremony, so we had virtually no guests other than close friends who already knew about it and were involved in preparing for it and a couple of others we'd managed to give a head's up to. The minister managed the ceremony without any major mistakes from being drunk, signed the paperwork and we were legally married, irrelevant of the fact that it was the wedding from hell!

We've been married for almost 4 years and are discussing the idea of renewing our vows at another SCA event, but keeping closer track on what's going on so that it won't be a repeat.... we want something that's more appropriate to what we wanted.. No it won't be advertised as a wedding, it'll be called a renewal of vows. We've already started the planning, We know when and at what event we want to do it, and are contacting the Baron and Baroness (heads of that group) of that area requesting them to Officiate the renewal of vows. We have slightly over a year to plan things, so I sincerely hope it goes off better than the wedding.

I think I basically just need to get all this off my chest. I was recently in my college roommate X's wedding as a bridesmaid. Now, knowing her and her family for years, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what would be expected of me and what would need to get done. Her mother was always very well-organized for the holidays that I spent with them (i.e. printed menus for Thanksgiving, extra Easter baskets for me and our other roommate who often joined them for Easter dinner), so I assumed that upon arrival, I'd receive an itinerary and perhaps a small list of things that need to get done. Simple right?

I arrived in town (I drove six hours to get to the wedding) around 10pm the Thursday before the wedding. I had worked all day and then immediately driven straight down. By this time I'd been up since 4am and just wanted to be able to crawl into bed so I could get some rest for the weekend. I called the bride (who incidentally had been in town all week getting ready for the wedding) to find out where I could find her as I knew she, her brother and another BM were out having a cocktail. I met up with them at a local brewery and eventually after a little catching up, I ask X what still needs doing on Friday. She says to me "Not much, just the programs." I don't inquire much further, but J the other BM does and X tells us that the names and order are finalized but that the programs haven't been printed yet. Okay, a little weird, but I figure they just need to be taken to Kinko's.

We get home after the bar closes and X shows us the "program". It's a list of the ceremony, hand-written on loose-leaf paper, with the names of the wedding party. They haven't been typed out, the Bible readings haven't been listed in them, and I notice quite a few names are misspelled. J and I take it upon ourselves to take care of this. X is pretty much falling asleep as she's talking to us, so, at 3:30am, J and I go to Denny's with a laptop and figure this out over coffee. The nearest Kinko's doesn't open till 6 am (no 24-hour one was within 1 hour of the area), so we spend the next 2 1/2 hours typing and doing the layout for the program. Still no sleep. We drop that off at Kinko's, choose the paper for the cover and the inside, PAY for it all, and go back to the house. It's around 7:15am by this point. The bride is not even awake. X has a spa appointment at 8:30am. We will be taking her there and doing errands while she is there and then retrieving her. Not only have J and I not slept a wink all night (J also flew cross-country to be at this wedding on Thursday afternoon), but there's no time to even shower as X needs to shower before her appointment so she can be fresh for the bridesmaids' luncheon at 11am. J and I get dressed for the luncheon as there wouldn't be any time later to do so and rush X out the door for her appointment.

While we are taking her, she continually complains about how tired she is and how crazy this week has been for her. Now, I can understand the week of the wedding is always sort of crazy, but the fact that we haven't slept is totally escaping her. Never once do we get a thank you from her for making sure this is done. We pick up a few different things while she's at the spa and then pick her up to go straight to the luncheon. J and I finally meet another bridesmaid who flew in from NYC and discover that the MOH won't be there until the rehearsal tonight as she just started a new job and was afraid to ask for the day off. Okay, fine. We'll work it out.

Luncheon goes well, but directly afterwards, J, S (NYC BM), and I run to Kinko's to pick everything up, then to a drugstore to get us Red Bull and caffeine pills. By the time we get back to the house, X is napping before the rehearsal and it's about 3:30. The rehearsal begins at 5:30 and it'll take us a while to get there because of Friday rush hour, so we wake the bride and each of us hops into the shower. The rest of the night goes fairly well, until we get back to the MOB's house and realize that: 1) All the BM dresses need the skirts ironed (because the FOB left the garment bags folded over in his car after the rehearsal dinner 2) The favors, chocolate-covered strawberries would need to be tagged and ribboned in the morning after they were picked up 3) The bride is still not packed for the honeymoon

So we rally together and start getting the things done that can be and finally get to bed around 2:30am. We had to wake up at 7, because we had nail appointments starting at 8:30am (Mind you, the wedding is at 6 pm). After my nail appointment, I am expected to take the bride to her salon which is 45 mins away and sit with her while she gets her hair done. She claims to want someone to chat with. Even though there are a ton of things to do, I agree so I can spend some extra time with her. Fine. Except her photographer and hairdresser are basically ignoring me and she follows suit. So I sit reading a magazine for two hours at this salon to "keep her company". Then she doesn't have cash to tip her hairdresser because the salon only accepts cash tips. Guess who did? Then we drive all the way back to her mother's house for a luncheon- which was nice, but a huge waste of gas-, only to turn around and drive 45 mins to the bridal suite at the hotel....which was 10 mins from the salon where the bride got her hair done. Sigh. Mind you, the groomsmen have not done a damn thing all day. They went on a brewery tour from 2-4 pm and then came straight to the church.

The wedding went fine- nothing major went wrong. It was just one of the most stressful experiences of my entire life and it totally made me never want to be a part of a wedding ever again. I actually booked a flight home a day early and asked one of my friends to drive my car home for me (we had all driven down together) because I just couldn't take being "on" anymore. Just a bit of advice for future brides: your bridal party are not your minions, planning is a beautiful thing, and the phrase "thank you" should always be on your tongue.

This is my story. I'm an older bride and this is my second marriage. I told my sister that she would be my MOH. She never did answer me, but when I had asked her to join me to look at some dresses, her reply was, "I thought your wedding wasn't going to be big?" With that comment I knew then that she wasn't interested in being my MOH. By the way, I would have bought her the dress she had chosen for herself. I would have paid for her hair and perhaps a facial. Instead my then fiancé's sister was invited to play the role. She is a homemaker and has no money coming in. I didn't expect her to do anything more than stand up for me at my wedding, and she did. I bought her dress. My sister came to my wedding in regular work clothes and nothing special was done with her hair. I was a tad bit embarrassed but I dealt with it. Two of her children came to my wedding in casual clothes as well.

My ex brother in law is a minister who was asked to perform my wedding ceremony. He also never responded so I got a JP to perform the ceremony. Initially the JP was not going to stay for dinner but changed his mind and became an extra mouth to feed, both he and his wife. He arrived late to the ceremony and asked if it was OK? My new brother-in-law knows someone who makes wedding cakes. This person was asked if she would make ours. She gave us her number but it turned out to be a bogus number. Seeing that she is related to my brother in law, she was inadvertently invited to our wedding. After adding her to our guest list, she never showed up, and so she screwed us over again because her plate had already been paid for. The DJ we hired sucked!! I gave him a list of songs I wanted to hear at my wedding, and he played maybe 5 of them. But he was inexpensive so I got what I paid for. The good news is that the food and ambiance of the reception hall had exceeded my expectations.

Last month, D (dh's friend from his old job) called and in a very plain voice said, "I need your address; I'm getting married." So a couple weeks later we got the invitation, and tucked inside were two small cards. On the front, was the name and address of the church and directions to get there. On the back, it said RSVP and D's cell phone number, and then the name, address and directions to the reception hall... then it said "Gifts - Registered at this-and-that store under K and D; Monetary gifts are also welcome." Then, at the very bottom, it says in bold letters "ADMITS ONE TO RECEPTION". It was a ticket to get in!! So we had a little laugh over that.

Fast forward to wedding day. Every time the minister said it was time to pray, the organist would start playing, so no one could hear the prayers. It ended at 4:00 pm. Since there was nothing in the invitation to specify any differently, everyone headed straight to the reception, assuming it was starting immediately. We got to the reception hall at 4:30 pm. The reception hall was in a shopping center. On either side of the hall was a nail salon and a dry cleaner, and if you walked down a bit, a pizza place and a supermarket. Just inside the door was a small lobby, with four chairs, a table with some magazines and a fountain. There were at least 100 people at the ceremony, and they were arriving quickly, but no cocktail hour, no appetizers, and only four people could sit. Turns out, the reception wasn't supposed to start until 6:00 pm, because while we waited, the food and the flowers were being delivered, and the band was just showing up!

Anyway, so dh and I, along with our friends M, L and J stood there for a while. We were all starving, as we hadn't had a crumb since breakfast, so we walked down to the supermarket and bought snacks. We managed to wander the store long enough that by the time we got back to the hall, they were letting people in... that was at 5:30 pm. There were no place cards or assigned tables, you just picked a table and sat there. Upon entering, we were handed a booklet called "The Wedding Workbook". It had little games and stuff to play with the people at your table, and another page called "Awards". Apparently all the guests were supposed to write in the names of people they thought deserved an award. The awards were for such things as "The Driving Miss Daisy" award... who do you know who is always shuttling people around? Or, the "Nextel Direct Connect" award... who is always on their cell phone? etc... This was hard to fill out as I only knew the people at my table. The rest of the workbook was questions about how well you knew the bride and groom, etc... So L and I looked through that for a while, and then we sat there... no appetizers were served... no drinks... nothing.

Finally they set up a small table behind us and put a single chafing dish of meatballs, and two small platters of fruit. Well, as soon as people saw that, the line to wait for the food became so long it wrapped around half the room. Dh got in line and brought us back some meatballs and fruit, and we inhaled that. Then, we saw one single waitress with a big tray, bringing around little plates of salad. It took this one poor waitress a while to get all the salads out, but they finally came... but no forks. So we waited a few more minutes until a guy came around with a big box of plastic forks and put one down at each place... but no dressing. So we waited a few more minutes until a woman came around with two small bowls of dressing for each table; one ranch and one Italian, and a spoon in each. FINALLY!

After the salads, dh and J went to get a beer from the bar, but the kid (and I mean kid... I think he was 18, maybe) didn't know how to attach the tap to the keg, so J had to go back and do that for him. There was a small fountain with fruit punch, so dh got me a cup of punch, but it tasted like water and it was warm. So I asked him to get me a Coke instead. He comes back and hands me the cup and says, "Here's your spits' worth of Coke." The cup wasn't even filled to the halfway mark. I guess they were trying to conserve the soda... who knows. M asked for water, and they told her they didn't have any... but she could see an entire case of bottled water sitting on the floor.

So, the happy couple finally arrived -at 7:00 pm- and things got under way. They had a first dance, and then sat down at the head table, and they announced the food was being served, and that someone would come and tell your table when it was your turn. Well half the room ignored that because within five minutes there was a mob up at the food. Someone had to get up to the mic and say, "Unless your table has been called, please do not get in line!"

Anyway, about the time the food was being served was when the speeches started. Every single drunken family member felt it was their duty to get up and either tell a story or sing a very bad, very off-key song. In addition to the speeches, they also gave out the 'awards' and went over the answers in the workbook... all in all, the talking went on for TWO HOURS. No dancing, no bouquet toss or garter retrieval... nothing. Just talking. We were trying to hold out for the cake but they just went on and on. I would say 75% of the guests gave up on the cake and left during this time... by the time they did get to cut the cake (at 9:00 pm) most people were gone. Not only that, but no one even knew they were cutting the cake because the band started playing again and no one made an announcement.

Before we left, L, M and I needed to visit the restroom. We went back and the first thing I noticed upon entering was the overwhelming stench of vomit. I figured I could hold my breath, so I went into the stall and the seat was covered with urine and red spots. So I told L that I couldn't stay in there and I went out in the hall. M came up and I told her the state of the bathroom, so she barged into the men's room (luckily it was empty) and watched the door for me. We finally got out of there at 9:45 pm, and that's when they started the garter/bouquet business and the dancing. I wonder when it finally ended!

My wedding last year was lovely and sweet. The church and hall were decorated perfectly, the food was awesome, the potted orchids on the tables were gorgeous, and I'm proud that my bridesmaids didn't have to pay for their outfits and they each got different, personal gifts. When I look back at the pictures, I'll be reminded of all the beautiful moments.

That being said, there were more mishaps surrounding my wedding than I care to remember.

First, I wanted a small, informal wedding with an even smaller reception (30 people tops). My mom lives in another country and my dad in another state, so I figured I would plan and pay for it myself. My dad ended up giving me more than enough for what I want (a few thousand). When I tell soon-to-be MIL, she says something along the lines of "that won't even pay for a good photographer" and insists on paying for the wedding, whatever "we" want. After all, it's her last child to be married. Translation: she wants a huge affair and wants to invite all her friends. Which she puts on the guest list are people neither my husband nor I had ever heard of.

My MOH is a complete wreck and pretty much the most selfish person I know. Her mother throws me a bridal shower (since MOH couldn't plan her way out of a wet paper bag). Having known them both for over a decade, I offer to bring food because I know what they'll have (store-bought cookies and punch for a noon bridal shower). My mom and I stop at the restaurant to pick up the platters. Unfortunately, our order from a week earlier had been forgotten and so we had to wait a half hour while they made our platters. After arriving a half hour late to my bridal shower, I open presents and my MOH's mom starts to cry because she's so happy. At that point, my soon-to-be MIL says, "Well, if I can't remember your name at the wedding, I'll just call you Cry Baby." Nice. My MOH pulls me into the next room and tells me that, respectfully, if MIL says anything like that again, she'll hit her. Like I need to hear that. And that was it—there were no games or shower gifts.

I order the lace skirts for the bridesmaids from a seamstress once all the bridesmaids had sent me their measurements. I asked them to measure so that the skirts would be at the knee. They get the skirts a month before the wedding so they can be altered. On the wedding day, I see that the MOH had decided to measure from the mid-thigh, so her skirt is very short and looks completely out of place in the bridal party. She also decided not to wear a camisole under the sheer cotton top that all the attendants wore, so her white bra is showing through her shirt. Classy.

At our joint bachelor/bachelorette party in Atlantic City, a groomsman gets drunk at dinner and proclaims loudly, "Enjoy the huge mistake of marriage—it will suck the life out of you." (he was going through a divorce). When the check arrives, a verbal fight breaks out because some people didn't pay. Then the drunk groomsman disappears for most of the night and we spend hours looking for him.

I planned to wear my grandmother's wedding dress, which would have been very meaningful. I took it to several shops only to find out that I couldn't alter it because the fabric was so old. With only a month to spare, I buy a dress and take it to get altered. The place charges me $900 to make a few changes and add a sash. When I pick it up, it's an inch shorter on the bottom (I was wearing flats and it didn't touch the ground) and there's a yellow spot that I don't notice until the night before the wedding.

The day of the wedding, my stylist arrives to do my hair. She arrives with a single curling iron (we had agreed on different size curls, which would take two different sized irons, curlers, and rollers). She spends 20 minutes on my hair, and I give her $200 for something I could have done myself. My curls were gone by the end of the ceremony.

At the church, I find out that a BM will not be there. She called that morning to explain that she was too tired (she was the soon-to-be ex-wife of the drunk groomsman). Our wedding party is then uneven, and we send one BM down the aisle with two groomsmen.

I later find out that one of the groomsmen (who I'd known since I was 10) was still asleep at his apartment a half hour before the wedding started. He arrived to the church minutes before I did, wrinkled and unshaven.

The flowers arrive. My bouquet is not what I asked for. It didn't even have the right colors or flowers in it. The lilies of the valley are plastic. A boutonniere and a corsage are missing. Fantastic.

The tables had to be rearranged (I still have no idea why the original lay-out was scrapped) and so my divorced parents were sitting together, close relatives were in the back, and an aunt and her child were at different tables. The place cards (which I painstakingly handwrote in calligraphy) each had a name and table number, which ended up being crossed out in pen to reflect the changes. Of the about 80 guests who responded that they would be there, 20 never showed up. At one table supposed to seat 8, only two people were there. Super.

During a dance with my SIL's husband, MIL comes over, drunk, and paws at my dress and removes my veil, which takes a solid ten minutes to reposition and re-pin.

I see the wedding pictures a few weeks after the wedding. In two of the family photos, with hubby and me in the middle and his family on either side, MIL is holding hubby's hand. WOW.

This story isn't too bad, aside from the appalling lack of foresight and organization. While in college, I was asked to be a bridesmaid for a friend I'll call Ditzy. I was excited. For one thing, she was my first friend to get married. For another, it was the first wedding where I would be in the party.

Since I didn't know much about wedding etiquette then, I was not aware that even the bridesmaids are suppose to receive invitations. I had at the time brushed off my lack of invitation as being because I was in the wedding party. Later, however, I found that no one had received an invitation. On the wedding day, Ditzy kept commenting on people whom she was surprised hadn't come. Two of those people were my parents. My eyebrows raised, and I stated that I hadn't known that they were invited. She frowned, and said she assumed that all of her bridesmaids somehow magically knew that their families were invited! She honestly expected me to have invited my parents myself! Later, when talking to my now fiancé about it, he states that at one time the groom, Brute, verbally invited him to the wedding, but never told him the time and location. My fiancé wanted to go, but he didn't even realize when the wedding was until after the wedding was over!

The couple did not have much money. They were young, and dirt poor. They also didn't have much in the way of organization skills, as evidenced by the lack of invitations. They waited too long to reserve the church they wanted, and had to use a family member's house, which was fine. However, there was no rehearsal at all, and Ditzy had never gotten around to figuring out how she wanted us bridesmaids to proceed down the aisle, where the groomsmen would be placed, etc. My female roommate was their best man, or woman in this case, which was fine. And while Ditzy was very considerate at helping her bridesmaids decide on which dress to wear, when my roomie consulted her on what to wear Ditzy could never make up her mind if her dress should match what the bridesmaids wore or be a different color completely. It got to the point where my roomie just went with a dress that she already had. Of course, Ditzy didn't like the dress that she chose, but she had plenty of time to give my roomie an opinion which she never did.

The day of the wedding arrives. All of the female guests are in the bedroom where Ditzy is getting ready. OK, if that is what Ditzy wants. Meanwhile, I later heard from roomie that when the minister arrived, no one had been at the door to greet him and tell him where to go. When roomie arrived, she did her best to get the info. Minister was starting to get annoyed. When he found out that none of the bridesmaids or groomsmen knew where their positions should be, he became even more annoyed, and brusquely determined our order and where we should stand and who, when we left, we would walk out with.

The ceremony commences. The reception starts. The food was good. There were two cakes. A store bought one that looked more like birthday cake and a red velvet one. The store bought one tasted horrible. We weren't allowed to have the red velvet one, though. That one was for Ditzy and Ditzy alone. I thought it was rather selfish of her, but it was her day, so whatever.

Now my friends and I knew that Ditzy and Brute would not be able to afford a honeymoon. We also knew that they really wanted a PS2. So we pooled our money together, and we asked them which they would prefer, money for a hotel room or a PS2, and got a definite vote for the PS2. So we got the very excited couple a PS2. The only reason I bring this up is because despite getting them exactly what they wanted, none of us ever received a thank you note, which, naturally, wasn't too surprising since they couldn't even manage invitations. They are now divorced.

A few months ago I was asked by my friend to assist him at a local wedding he had been hired to DJ for. He lived 3 hours away from the city where the wedding was to take place and so drove up to the city with his equipment, stayed at my house etc. Why the wedding organizers decided they needed to hire a DJ company based in a city three hours away, I'll never know. Usually this company will send the DJ plus one other to help set up the sound system, run errands etc, but since it was so far away they only sent him (thus he required my help.)

Well, we were told to dress formally but in a subdued manner, so that we would neither stick out or outshine the guests. I wore a simple skirt which I could still move in (since I needed to carry heavy DJ equipment), and a nice top; he wore a black suit and white shirt. We arrived to the reception hall (the local racecourse events center) and set up fine, began to play background music as the guests arrived.
It began to get a bit odd when we saw that the bride's side of the family were completely segregated from the groom's side and neither faction of the guests made any effort to talk to each other. It got worse when speeches began, as it quickly became apparent that both sets of parents were already rather inebriated (as were the groomsmen, who made numerous vulgar references which clearly mortified the bride.)

After the speeches, we began to play music - first the first dance, then the bride's dance with her father. We then started playing music from the requested songs list, which had obviously been compiled painstakingly by the bride - it was rather generic, but contained the usual love-themed ballads and pop songs you'd expect at a wedding. The bride and her attendants and friends began to dance, but the bridegroom and his friends were far more interested in the open bar. We made many attempts to get more guests than just the bride and her girlfriends onto the floor, but half the guests were too busy getting raucously drunk, and the other half were rather elderly and obviously not interested in dancing to modern pop.

Eventually, the bridegroom made his way onto the dance floor (now so drunk he was weaving) and swore at us to "turn that f*cking pop bullsh*t off... you're a f*cking lousy DJ. Play some hard rock, you f*cker!" My friend stated that he was playing what had been requested, but it was too late - the bride had heard her new husband and was now in the corner of the room in tears, being consoled by her bridesmaids. The groom didn't seem to notice or care, and instead broke it down on the dance floor with his groomsmen, several of whom tried to cop a feel as I ran errands for my friend. It was more like the stag night than the actual wedding night, and it was pretty sad just seeing how upset the bride was.

They then tried to refuse to pay us, but the bride's father slipped us the cheque as we left. He looked rather angry, and I'm wondering how long the wedding will last. In my opinion a wedding should be a celebration of the love between a couple, but there didn't seem to be much like, let alone love going on here.

It's my dad's second wedding, I'm Swiss and the wedding was taking place in Switzerland only since it's where we all live. I'm the exception, I moved to India just a couple of month before the big day. Second marriages in Switzerland are not done in church, the couple just go through the court marriage thing and have a nice reception afterward. So nothing big and expensive.

I got an email from my dad in March telling me he would get married in May (I don't even remember the date now), And since my visa was supposed to expire in April he was wishing I would attend (I got the visa extended and was happy not to have to go back to Switzerland). I told him I would not attend and left it at that.

My sister was going with her then boyfriend, so where my two stepbrothers. My stepmom wanting me to feel "part of it" sent me a e-version of the program. Apparently it involved taking the train to her native town because she wanted the civil ceremony to take place there only, my dad rented the train dinning car so they could have a brunch while going there, they would then go back to Geneva to have the reception with more guests in the Yacht club to which my dad belonged. Reading this I said : "Great, it's a simple and inexpensive day, yet very classy and romantic"

After the wedding I asked my sister how things went, and she spilled it out. First my Stepmom wanted my sis to buy a nice dress, very classy and smart looking, which ruled out any of the stores my sister was planning to get her outfit at. My sister was a student with a very limited budget, but she shelled out money for a nice luncheon pink dress and nice white shoes to go with, thinking it will be ok. It was but then my stepmom said she had to wear a hat! Because she wanted to give the "old bourgeoisie" look, so my sister shelled extra money for a classy white hat (in the style you would see on the Queen of England" white in color so it would match the shoes. Then my stepmom lent her a pashmina shawl in a white matching color (thanks god my sister didn't had to spend money on this). My sister is broke but anyway she will have other occasion to wear that dress so she doesn't mind.

Comes the wedding day, everybody is at the station ready to board the train, the guys are in tasty classy suits, and my dad start being angry and make a HUGE fuss because two persons ar having coffee in the dinning car he had booked for the entire party, yelling and shouting "Scandal" instead of calmly asking the staff to empty the place. My sis smelling disaster ask him to calm down ans stop yelling on his wedding day, and go ask the waiter who ask the person to leave. The whole trip goes ok, so does the ceremony, which was very simple. Everybody hop back in the train to arrive on time for the reception in Geneva.

There my dad tell my sister, her boyfriend and my stepbrothers that they didn't hire staff members to do the service and wash the dishes to save money, and that they thought they could do it. Yeah right! they asked immediate family members to spend time in the kitchen arranging food on plate, and serve 70 guests and do the dishes afterward, my sister was still in her expensive dress! My Sister didn't even get to enjoy the party or eating the food at the same time as the other guest, she was relegated as a waitress (unpaid) on her dad's wedding day! While he was showing up with all the snobbish member of the yacht club. As the party ended my stepmom went in the kitchen and apologized saying she never imagined serving 70 guest was that much work! Now cutting costs on service is idiotic, clearly it's not 4 waiters at 10$ an hour for 3 hours that would have make them broke.

Would I have been in Switzerland I would have stormed out of this party from hell, how tacky is it to ask your family member to do this on your wedding?