Dear Administrator,
You mentioned brides have read themselves here. How do you know this? Do they write in, or the contributor writes back? I’d love to hear those stories. I would imagine most are more upset than horrified.Please give just one example. Pretty please ? One of my fav stories is the bride that called the cops and they wanted you to surrender the name of writer. I’ve always thought it wasn’t actual police, probably a family member she had call you.
Yes, there have been a few such stories over the years. One happened on the forum when a female member’s brother showed up in the discussion and presented a completely different perspective on the problem than his sister had.
The story you are referring to happened years ago when I offered an online service selling, autographing and anonymously mailing copies of my first book, “Bridezillas – True Tales From Etiquette Hell”, to specific brides the buyer had designated. This one particular bride had created A and B guest lists, informed her guests in the invitation that there were 2 guest lists with the A guests invited to dine at the reception and the B guests were given directions to the nearest McDonald’s until they could return later for the dancing portion of the reception. The guest who bought my book and arranged to have it sent anonymously to the bride was actually an A list guest but she was appalled at the obvious distinction between the guests so blatantly stated. So, bride receives the book and all hell breaks out. I received an email from the Vermont State Police claiming that a report had been filed about a “stalker” stalking the bride and I was to contact a certain officer. I called the number given and did, in fact, get connected with the Vermont State Police. I spoke with the officer and explained the situation. He still wanted the name of the book buyer and I refused stating that he would need to get a court order compelling me to yield that information. I then contacted the buyer who was appalled that this had gotten out of control and she chose to reveal herself as the buyer to the police and the bride. I never found out the resolution of that or how the relationship between the two women fared.
Another story on the main site that was a fan favorite for several years came to the attention of the bride’s husband whose mother was not presented in a good light. The original story writer contacted me requesting that I remove the story because her husband was mucho unhappy.
But my favorite story is actor Chuck Norris’ reaction to finding out he and his new wife had been pitched into Ehell by one of his “Walker, Texas Ranger” production crew. Norris had gotten married (this was in 1999) and I’m not sure if all the production crew had been invited to attend (I think not) but Norris had put their gift registry information on the crew bulletin board. Nothing on the registry was less than $1000.00. I don’t know how Chuck Norris found out that he had been featured in the “Faux Pas of the Rich and Famous” section of the site but he was so angry that he called a meeting of all the production crew, yelled “Who is Jeanne Hamilton and how did she get this information?”, and I seem to remember he threatened to fire whoever the person was who had submitted the story when he found out. The crew person who had sent me the original story emailed me in a panic and to warn that a certain lighting engineer would be emailing me trying to weasel out of me how I got the story. And sure enough, I did receive such an email asking me how I got that kind of dirt on “Chuck”.
Man, where did you get that info from ? That is juicy!
I played dumb and wrote back,
Excuse me for being slightly confused but what precisely are you referring to? One of my web pages? Or an article I posted to UseNet? I could presume you mean the mention of Chuck Norris in Etiquette Hell, am I right?
A little bit more clarification may yield answers because I am not entirely sure which “Chuck” you are referring to.
This man responded back clarifying that he was referring to *the* Chuck Norris. I appear to have not replied to that last email since I have no record of having done so. I never reveal my sources unless compelled by legal means (and no one taken that step to make me). With all the funny Chuck Norris memes out there…..
….I am probably the only person on the planet who can claim to have intimidated Chuck Norris. I need a meme for this.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Ms. Jeanne, I hadn’t read the Chuck Norris story, but my hat is off to you with that polite, shiny spine!!!
My favorite “dueling” wedding stories are the one from the lady who didn’t approve of the couple’s wedding style (goth, married in a graveyard), and left a nasty note to the bride in the bouquet, wherein she also broke up with her boyfriend (friend of happy couple). Said goth bride came along a few years later, sharing her story of how she thought everything was great, everyone was happy (no gaps, food, seats, and drinks for all, no faux pas to be seen) only to find out afterwards about the nastiness from the girlfriend of the friend. The difference in perspectives was astounding 🙂
Oh yes, I remember that one!
I mentioned those stories, too – although I had forgotten about the note in the bouquet! Ms. Jeanne, is there any chance you could link to these two entries so everyone can see the two perspectives?
I remember this one! Now I’ll have to find and re-read it again. I thought the goth wedding was really cool; admittedly, not my thing, but I would have enjoyed it.
Ms. Jeanne is my new hero. This is the first I’m hearing of the Chuck Norris story and I’m pretty impressed.
I did find and re-read the story. My new favorite detail, that I had not noticed before, was that, as of the goth bride’s update (six years after the first story), the broken-up-with boyfriend was happily married to a friend of the bride and groom! What a happy ending!
Wha year was the story posted?
It was on the Wedding Hell’s Bells on February 1, 2012.
Dueling wedding stories of goth bride and “offended” guest:
http://weddinghellsbells.com/?p=5814
It’s also here.
http://www.etiquettehell.com/smf/index.php?topic=1352.0
Also here: http://www.etiquettehell.com/content/eh_wedding/weddingsfhell/weddingfromhell2003-1arc.shtml halfway down the page
and here: http://www.etiquettehell.com/content/eh_wedding/guests/eguest2005-2arc.shtml about a third of the way down.
Just search the page for “cemetery” and you’ll find them.
So…did you remove the story about the groom’s mother?
Oh, yes. Promptly.
Oh yes, I remember that one well.
Yay! I made the front page 🙂
Thanks for answering. Excellent, all.
Chuck Norris, psht. Doesn’t know who he’s messing with.
Admin, I am curious. Has there ever been a case where a bride recognized herself here, and was appropriately apologetic for her behavior? I’ve never known a bridezilla to express any regret, and would love to know otherwise.
Not that I recall.
I thought not. Even the ones who might grudgingly admit they were out of line seem to feel all should be forgiven because it was “their day”.
On average on any given day, 7000 couples get married. It may be ‘your day’ but it’s also other’s ‘day’ too. Plus all of us who aren’t getting married, it’s a day in our life too….
I had first-hand experience with this, Nostalgic Gal. On my wedding day, my hair and makeup appointment was delayed due to another bride ahead of me — or more specifically, her tween daughter. The girl had apparently told the stylists, her mom, and the rest of the salon that her goal was to mess her hair up before she left, and the stylists kept bringing her back for touch-ups. One of the salon employees eventually came up to apologize for the delay, adding “You understand, it’s her (the mom’s) wedding day.”
Which was a pretty good opening for me to respond “Actually, it’s my wedding day, too, and I really need to get back to the church soon…”
I got to see a really funny example of this. Probably the most popular day in the US for getting married in the year 2007 was July 7 (7/7/7). My BIL got married to his wife that day, in a chapel on the campus of Case Western University. There was a gap between the wedding and reception, so DH, DS, and I walked over to the reflecting pool in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art. A very popular place to take wedding pictures – at that time, you didn’t have to reserve anything or get a permit (don’t know if they’ve changed it since then.) The looks that some brides were giving all the other brides were hysterical. How dare they! This is my day! I picked this place out especially for me! No one else is supposed to be here! How am I going to get my priceless photos if there are other bridal parties in the background!
We counted about 15 or so wedding parties there at various times. Some brides were very chill and very amused at the scene, but the majority had that “if looks could kill” on their faces.
Come on CPete, you can’t leave us hanging like that! Did you get your hair done and make up done on time? What was the employees reaction?
If it was anything like “Well she’s really excited for her wedding…”/something along the lines of her being more important I would have left and not paid.
@CPete, if I was the salon I would have either given the girl a lacquer job (lots of hairspray) or cut the hair short enough she couldn’t mess it. Sigh.
I use that stat if I’m doing counseling to try to head off Bridezilla-itis. And some times of the year it’s a lot more depending on where you are, on how many couples share ‘that day’.
The ones that get me are those that rent venues and expect them to remain unused and idle from the time they reserve to the day or days they actually are paying for. Some might bring someone by to show them the place and flip their widget because another event is going on there.
It’s a Russian tradition to take photos at all the famous landmarks in a city… so during “wedding season” there are usually quite a few white dresses milling around a given place at any given time.
I observed this as a visitor living there for several years, and felt like it added to the sense of festivities to see multiple couples celebrating marriage… but then, Russian culture is more communal than our American one.
This is an interesting question so it begs the related question: do you know if any forum member has ever mentioned that an apology was offered from the bridezilla in her/his original story posted here? Follow-ups are often reported but I am wondering if any were wedding related.
There may be but I don’t recall at the moment. Unless a story is really outrageous, I tend to forget the details.
One of my favorite archive stories involved a woman who complained about how horrible a wedding was that she went to with her boyfriend. It was apparently a very goth style wedding and she was horrified by most of it. As it happens, the bride ALSO sent in a submission with her side of the story.
Thank you for sharing these behind the scenes with us. They were very entertaining!
I love your Chuck Norris story!
Not long before he became known as an entertainer I worked with a young woman whose husband was a great friend of his. She had only great things to say about him. I’ve always wondered what she has thought about all the funny Chuck Norris stuff that is out there and whether the couple has remained friends after all these years.
People who commit etiquette violations so egregious as to land on the pages of Etiquette Hell aren’t going to be nice people who are merely clueless. Decent people who commit etiquette faux pas out of ignorance will be open to correction, and will be properly contrite at having upset other people. People who use the gold standard of treating other people the way they themselves would like to be treated may make mistakes, but they never deliberately act with malice, they do not demean or belittle other people, and they are aghast when their actions unwittingly cause pain or inconvenience to other people.
The E-hell criminals are people who seem pathologically narcissistic, or who are devoid of empathy, or who are so riddled with hate that to them, their actions seem not only reasonable, but actually the only action possible in the circumstances.
What’s sad to me is that so many, many people who ARE nice seem willing to give these E-hell demons the benefit of the doubt and forgive them, or excuse their behavior, time after time. And for whatever reason, decent people continue to keep these E-hell demons in their lives!
Bottom line: some people are just not decent, caring people. These are the people who end up on E-hell. When they find themselves featured on E-hell, they will react with self-righteous anger, not shame, and certainly not contrition, because if they were capable of feeling shame, they’d be decent people and not E-hell demons.
You know, that’s really harsh. Yes, a lot of the stories on this site involve people acting extremely badly, but I’ve also seen people freak out because they got a verbal thank-you instead of a card, were invited to a potluck, or someone uses facebook different than they do. Not everyone prioritizes perfect etiquette the same way and not everyone agrees on what perfect etiquette is.
Sometimes the E-hell demon is the subject of the story. Sometimes the E-hell demon is the person posting the story.
Oh very much so- often the “sticklers” are the worst…
I tend to agree with Celestia. If you haven’t read through the archives, there’s a wedding story in there that is absolutely ghastly in terms of etiquette violations and treatment of others….and then you arrive at the punch line, where it turns out it is the BRIDE who told on herself, and years later changed herself and was utterly mortified as to her poor behavior and rude treatment of guests, family, and friends in the run up to and post wedding.
While there are surely many individuals who have been featured on Ehell who won’t change their behaviors or see something wrong with what they’ve done, we can still hold out hope that they might find their ways to this wonderful site, read the archives, and join the community in an effort to improve.
Decent people who make mistakes that cause problems for other people will usually own their mistake and try to make amends. Decent people, when in a quandary about what is the right thing to do, fall back on the gold standard of asking themselves how they would want to be treated, if the tables were turned, and may get small details wrong, but you don’t find them intentionally doing things that cause genuine damage to other people.
IMO, decent people don’t get their knickers in a knot over a small “technical” breach of etiquette, like getting a thank-you note via email rather than post. Decent people don’t nit-pick the efforts of others, they don’t look for small errors or try to find a thimbleful of fault in a mountain of goodness.
Most of the stories I’ve read on this website involve at least one party to the situation who behaves without regard to the feelings of others. In some stories the E-demon is the subject of the story; in some cases, the E-demon is the person complaining about someone else.
My view of etiquette is that it isn’t about technical rules and doesn’t involve judging people against an Emily Post check-list of do’s and don’t’s. Etiquette is about finding ways to function with respect and consideration in complex situations involving complicated people while maintaining your own boundaries of self-respect.
This is fantastic! I love the Chuck Norris story!
With all the new misogyny headlines today, about one of our Presidential candidates, I’m glad to see a positive story about one of the ladies taking on one of the most “macho” male subjects and coming out on top.
Kudos to you!!!
That first one sort of sounds like a win-win for the A guest. She probably wouldn’t have ever had to have contact with bridezilla again (I doubt she would have been arrested, but restraining orders are a possibility) and other people got to see how crazy bride was.
My all time favorite, and I have read every single one, several times over (I have no life, lol) Is the story where a woman wrote in about her soon to be sister in law, normal troubles, but the way she wrote….
‘heady days of…’
Something about following the age old poem ‘ first comes love, then marriage, etc’
One of my favorites is when a man and his new girlfriend ended up at the same party as the man’s ex-wife. One of the man/ex-wife’s children got hurt and the second child ran to the mom (ex-wife) for help. Girlfriend started lecturing Second Child about how this weekend was “Dad-and-Girlfriend time”, not “Mommy time”. Both the Girlfriend and the Ex-Wife wrote stories which were presented together. It was amazing. Link: http://www.etiquettehell.com/?p=3586
I remember that story well. No one came out looking good.
Love this! I had never heard the Chuck Norris story!
Other people seemed to have already mentioned it but my favorite was the woman who was a guest at a rather goth wedding, and she complained about every detail as if it was the worst wedding ever, but the bride also happened to submit her side and it painted a completely different picture of the whole situation.
I was always on the bride’s side even before her story got submitted. The things the guest was complaining about were all down to her personal taste, and not any actual faux pas.
Just before Cubic Zirconia came out, I had a half carat solitare for engagement ring and a wedding band soldered to it. I worked at a restaurant and there was one gal that was working there to pay for her wedding, which was to be the event of the century (her groom was the owner’s brother, who also worked there). She instantly hated me because she only had a third of a carat. She had been a year planning this wedding already and had another year and a half to go. She was totally aghast when I told her about my almost-non-wedding, that I didn’t go the whole ten yards. By return I also didn’t have myself, spouse, or my parents in deep debt either. The capper was a friend who was in a reenactment group and wanted a theme wedding, and I was helping her with design and sew her dress (lovely in green velvet and gold brocade) and other details (like roasting a whole hog for the wedding feast, not reception). She was just so HORRIFIED and SHOCKED that the bride to be didn’t want a BWD wedding with doves and monogrammed rice bags. At 4 one morning, it’d been a bad night and she pulled a bunch of snippiness and other stupid mean stuff, and had three of us offer to quit, so the night manager canned her. And stayed to when the owner came in a few hours later to explain why her future sister-in-law got canned and how the manager was going to join the pool of those that offered to quit if she didn’t stay fired. The gal’s parting shot? Nose up and ‘now she has the time to finish her planning and organizing’ …. two and a half years? That is your whole life? End note, the marriage lasted less than a year and she took the baby girl and left.
Well, obviously she wasn’t that into the guy if getting her ‘perfect day’ was worth a 2.5 year delay in actually getting married.
Nothing against those who choose a long engagement. Heaven knows there’s a lot to sort (not married so mostly assuming) outside of the wedding day itself. And props to anyone who wants to be sensible and get past some milestone before tying the knot. But getting a ring and going “Oh yes, I will marry you! With X dress, at X venue, and my flowers must be … well I don’t care how long that’ll take to get! I’d prefer to not marry you than to just go ahead without all that!”?
By same token one of my nieces met someone at college, and wanted a BWD blowout, she’d dreamed of it her whole life. She went to work (pharmacist) for three years to pay for it. They were engaged about four years… and she had everything. She was also very beautiful to begin with and looked like a Bride Magazine cover. Her father had to suffer through being in the wedding and everyone congratulating him for the gorgeous wedding/reception and he was NOT the one that paid for it. He was good, said thank you politely, and kept it shut. She got what she wanted, and worked to make it happen but it wasn’t her whole life, unlike the former coworker that the wedding was everything and nothing else mattered.
I do think it’s weird how people congratulate the bride’s father on the wedding, even in 2016. Even if the bride’s parents did pay for the wedding, the mother of the bride probably works too, so she paid for the wedding just as much as her husband did.
I also recall a woman who claimed to be the minister’s wife complaining about a bride who had too many moles for her taste and that the bride did not choose her wedding flowers as she was supposed to do.
That struck me as an odd post from the wife of a clergyman. I would have expected a little more kindness and a lot less mocking of the young woman.
Wonder what the faith involved was.
I’m used to doing the unusual. It’s up to the HC and the menagerie (friends, family, foes, BFF’s, frenemies, drama llama’s, priss-es, drunks, exes, and real true God’s Creatures that mean something) on what they have.
Is that the one where the bride and groom met in a sort of penpal situation? I don’t remember any details other than someone complaining that the bride was too ugly for the groom. Etiquette!
I remember that one.
I believe the minister’s wife hit the trifecta of calling this girl fat, ugly, and stupid. Repeatedly. Nothing else objectionable about her. Except I think she wasn’t obsessive about the wedding details.
The writer acted as if it was the direst of horrors and that the MOG needed all the support and sympathy she could get for not having some kind of stepford future-DIL.
I’d love to know how that wedding panned out! Are the couple still married? Do the have children?
I am reminded of my all time favourites that I had unearthed quite a while ago while surfing through EH and while it’s not about a bride finding herself, it is a bit similar.
The general gist of it is a bit fuzzy since it WAS a long time ago but basically the bridezilla had sent in a story condemning her sister who was chosen as the MOH but wasn’t ecstatic or bending over to bridezilla’s every wish. The entire story I was completely on the side of the MOH however, as the bride belittled her sister by saying that she was unemployed and thus, should have been grateful to have the chance to cater to her every whim even though she lived far away. Frankly, it made my blood boil. The only part of the original story I agreed with the bride on was the fact that the sister chosen a black dress instead of a purple dress but that completely turned around with the sister’s response.
While looking through he comments, I saw the indignant and hurt reply of the MOH who said that she had no idea that bridezilla felt that way in the first place, was busy making ends meet with her boyfriend and thought that was understood, and was specifically told that she could buy a black dress because no matter how far she looked she couldn’t find a purple one. I had already sided with the girl but after her reply I just felt pure sympathy. I hope she’s doing well, and I wish I could’ve seen the bride’s reaction. It’s obvious they both frequent the site but don’t communicate much regarding it as MOH didn’t know it was her until reading the full circumstances.
I also dearly wish that everyone who had commented had seen the MOH’s reply though, as it was fairly late and some earlier comments were showing support for the bridezilla 🙁
Any chance you have a link for that one? I don’t think I saw it. It must have been while I was on my internet hiatus.
Sorry for the late reply! The story was called maid of horror #3: http://www.etiquettehell.com/?p=272
And all of the sudden my respect for Chuck Norris just tanked. Instead of yelling at his staff, he should have apologized for his tackiness and been thankful that it wasn’t worse than it turned out!