Lock the doors! Strap on the protective gear! Alert the authorities! The terrible Bridezilla is on a rampage, but will there be any survivors? These wedding shop employees worked with some of the most atrocious brides known to mankind. It seemed like these brides were out to make the entire wedding a nightmare from start to finish. At least these shop workers didn't have to marry these monsters! This wild content has been edited for clarity.
“Mt. St. Helens Of Entitlement”
“My mom and I saw a great bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years back. We were in a local shop, when another mother-daughter duo came in. The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they were here to pick up her daughter’s dress, so the attendant looks her name up on the computer, frowns, and says, ‘Ma’am, you never bought the dress.’
‘What are you talking about?’
The attendant shows the lady the notes on her computer screen. ‘You said you wanted to think about it, and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn’t hear back from you, we assumed you didn’t want it.’
‘Well, we want it now.’
“It’s been over eight months,’ the attendant explained. ‘We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order you another one, and have it expedited here in a few weeks.’
And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. ‘This is unacceptable!’ the mother shrieked. ‘We have her alterations scheduled in two hours! The wedding is a week away! I can’t believe you sold her dress!’ The bride, meanwhile, is slumped against the desk and sobbing like someone killed her dog.
My mom and I are just open-mouthed staring at this point. The attendant was trying to be diplomatic, but she is clearly as baffled as we are. ‘Ma’am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn’t yours until you pay for it.’
After some more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant came back over to us and I asked her, ‘Does that kind of thing happen a lot?’
The poor lady just deflated. ‘All the time.'”
“My Boss Had A Bone-Deep Loathing For Brides”
“We had a bride and her mother show up at 9 am. They wanted to order a bridal bouquet, a mother of the bride corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen. The wedding was scheduled for noon. Yep, three hours from then, and they wanted them ready by the time they were done with their makeup appointment at the beauty parlor a few doors down. The bride was flipping through the sample book and pointing out the style and flowers she wanted, all of which would require at least a week’s advanced order with our suppliers. She was absolutely gobsmacked that we didn’t carry extremely expensive and highly perishable flowers at all times. My boss told them that since they didn’t place an order beforehand, they would be limited to what we had in stock, with simple styles that could be assembled quickly. The bride and her mom kept pointing at the book and arguing that we should have those specific flowers in stock. My boss eventually took the book off the desk and tossed it behind the counter.
The bride vacillated between tears and petulant whining that we were going to ruin her big day. My boss, who had a bone-deep loathing for brides in general, told her she had ruined her own day by not ordering her flowers before her actual wedding day. The mom tried chewing out my boss for her lack of customer service skills. My boss told her that she was welcome to go down the street and ask another flower department to make their order with whatever they had in stock. The mom said she’d do just that, and she reassured the bride that she’d have her flowers done by the time her appointment was over. Both women stormed out.
I figured that was that, but my boss told me and the other girl to start on six simple arrangements. Meanwhile, she threw together a ribbon wrapped bridal bouquet with some white roses that were nearly past their prime. Sure enough, twenty minutes later the mother of the bride slunk back in and meekly asked if we were still able to assemble what they needed. We did. We also charged her a very large tax for rudeness- ahem, rush fee.”
Wedding Shoppers Gone Wild
“My most memorable appointment was a party that showed up completely HAMMERED. It wasn’t unusual for bridal parties to have a little ‘tailgate’ style party in our parking lot before coming into our store. Often they’d have mimosas or a shot or two to loosen up before the scary gown search. This party must have finished a strong bottle between the five of them. They didn’t appear too sloppy when we first got started, but about half an hour into the appointment, it was pretty obvious that they were way too wasted to be in the setting they were in.
I had to prop the bride up with her nose in the corner of her fitting room to lace her corsets because she couldn’t stand, and each time we stepped out onto the stage the bridesmaids would scream, Beatlemania style, until they were red in the face. Eventually my manager came to me and said, very sternly, ‘Sell this girl and get them out of here.’
The appointment ended when she fell for a gown $700 over budget, her most wasted bridesmaid swiped her own credit card to cover it, and then one of them (not sure which) sprayed a brown bodily fluid of some kind over our ENTIRE toilet.”
All Of That For A Small Bargain?
“I worked as a wedding planner, one bride stands out to me because she was so inconsistent with all the vendors. She was a complete sweetheart to me during the planning phase and I never saw any of the crazy until the day of the wedding. It was honestly like a Jekyll/Hyde moment.
She wanted a big wedding, around 300 people, and spent a lot of money on the venue and food and wanted the best for everything. No complaints about paying for it either, never asked for discounts or anything like that. And since she wanted the best and seemed to have a really large budget, I referred her to a popular baker for the cake. I let her handle the logistics for the cake, since I’ve worked with this baker before and never had any problems. I figured they would do the standard cake tasting, pick a design with the baker, and I would see a gorgeous masterpiece on the day of the wedding.
Well, that didn’t really work out. For some reason, she didn’t want to tell the baker that it was for a wedding. I’m guessing she read that you can save money by ordering a regular cake because some vendors will automatically add an extra charge if it’s for a wedding. She decided she didn’t want to pay for a wedding cake, so she told the baker it was for a birthday party. The baker asked how many people the cake would need to serve, and she said ‘around 50.’ She also didn’t want to pay the delivery fee, so she had her sister pick up the cake on the morning of the wedding and bring it to the event.
At this point it’s important to mention that we live in Texas and this is a summer wedding. By the time the cake got to the venue (about 6 hours after it was picked up from the bakery), it didn’t look all that great anymore. Some decorations had melted, the cake got a little banged up in the car ride, there was icing on the inside of the box, the entire cake was sagging on one side. It was also way too small for a wedding of her size. I saw it and it looked like a complete disaster. But at this point we’re about an hour away from the start of the wedding and there’s no possible way to fix this. The bride comes into the reception room with her makeup all done and sees the cake and completely flips out. Screaming, crying, throwing things, collapsing on the floor. Complete meltdown. Threatens to cancel the whole wedding if we can’t fix it. We try to calm her down as much as we can and grab the makeup artist before she leaves and ask if she can help fix the bride’s makeup, which is a mess now. The bride sees herself in the mirror and has another meltdown because she ruined her hair and makeup and now wants to have the whole thing re-done. After she gets everything done to perfection again, we’re about an hour behind schedule. I let the guests come inside the reception room to wait because it seemed cruel to force everyone to sit outside in 100 degree heat, but when she saw that everyone was inside she had another meltdown. She spent the entire wedding sulking with a scowl on her face, and refused to take any pictures with people. Her new husband kept coming over to hug her and try to cheer her up, and she would either yell at him or give him the silent treatment. Most of the guests left very early because the atmosphere felt so uncomfortable. So pretty much a waste of the $200,000 budget for a lavish wedding, all because she wanted to save a couple hundred bucks on the cake.”
Ghost Town Wedding
“I work at a hotel that does a decent amount of wedding business, and we had an engagement shower with the plan being that the couple would be having the wedding with us as well. This involved the bride-to-be and to an extent, her mother.
We knew there were going to be issues because neither the bride nor groom ever smiled. She was always complaining about how he was ‘wishy-washy’ with picking a date, and he was always silent. Well, the engagement party starts, and everyone, except for the couple, seem to be having a great time. Then, halfway through the party, we suddenly heard the girl scream at her fiancé, ‘WE WILL NEVER HAVE A CHRISTMAS TREE IN MY HOUSE, SO YOU CAN GET OVER IT!’
And from there it devolved into a shouting match between the couple, who moved from the banquet room to the lobby so their ‘guests’ couldn’t hear the argument. (Didn’t work. They heard everything).
Apparently she was Jewish, and he was Protestant, and not once in their relationship had they discussed religion. They went at it on and off for two hours. She was screaming at the top of her lungs about how their (non-existent) children would be raised Jewish, and how his traditions didn’t matter. Her mother standing at her side and nodding in agreement and interjecting occasionally with, ‘That’s right,’ or, ‘You tell him.’
He was pleading (in a frustrated attempt to be quiet) for her to at least compromise, to let him at least invite his pastor from his home town for the wedding, and that their (non-existent) children could possibly do things with his parents for Christmas, even if they didn’t celebrate. The guests just kept partying, pretending nothing was happening, but you could see on all of their faces that they wanted to leave, but couldn’t since they would have to pass by the couple to get to the only exit.
Only after two hours and the argument eventually devolving in to her INSISTING her children would never see a Christmas tree in their whole lives, so they wouldn’t be confused (good luck with that one in this country, lady) the groom finally, dejectedly said, ‘Well then maybe this isn’t going to work.’
She threw her ring at him and said, ‘THEN WHY DID YOU LET ME MAKE YOU PROPOSE?!’
She then changed her mind, picked up the ring and said, ‘Whatever. I’m keeping this,’ and stormed off. Her mother looked at her ex-potential-son-in-law, told him he was an idiot for letting her baby go, and went after her. I’ve NEVER seen a banquet room clear of people so fast. Within fifteen minutes, everyone was gone, and it was a ghost town, and from the looks of it, everyone took their ‘gifts’ with them.
Worse still, it was the former-bride’s family who had hosted and were staying at the hotel, so we spend the next two days ‘commiserating’ with them about how awful the groom was as they moved their daughter out of his apartment. That dude dodged a bullet.”
Talk About A Bridal Shower!
“The couple opted for an outdoor wedding with no weather backup option and, low and behold, it started pouring literally five minutes before the ceremony. The guests and groom ran for cover under the reception tent.
After it didn’t let up, the groom made a mad dash to the door of the RV the bride was getting ready in, because she nor any of the bridesmaids were answering their phones.
She made the poor guy stand outside in the pouring rain while she screamed and cussed that she was NOT getting married under the tent, and everyone would just have to wait until it stopped raining. This was the middle of July, so even the rain was hot and sticky, and there were a lot of elderly family members with health issues in attendance sitting in 80 degree heat for over an hour. The cake had also started melting.
I honestly wasn’t sure if the wedding was going to happen at one point, but it eventually stopped raining and the bride married her soaked groom and ate wedding cake soup.”
Cops Shut Down The Wedding Early
“I work in a relatively high-end country club in the American South. It was not only the bride who was crazy, but the whole wedding party. The ‘Happy Couple’ were not members of the club, but they had convinced our coordinator to sign off on it. She quit shortly after booking, leaving the new coordinator to deal with the fallout.
First off, they had been extremely rude to our new coordinator and managers through the whole planning process. They had a private coordinator as well, but she was pretty much useless. The bride demanded all kinds of free stuff during the planning. Now, I have no problem doing a drink tasting to go with the food tasting. However, if you come back three times to try the same HOUSE WINES, after two original food tastings, I’m not playing ball anymore. You’re paying for it at that point. You and the 5 people with you.
The day of the wedding, the groom and groomsmen are getting positively sloshed in the men’s locker room, which our members are still using as well. Bridesmaids have moved out of the ladies’ locker room and are rampaging through the members’ bar. Ceremony goes well enough, considering basically everyone standing up front could barely stand. You may be asking how we let it get to that point. They had snuck in a lot of drinks. I mean, a lot. They were only having what was served at the reception, so everybody and their grandmother had flasks and airline bottles and whatever they thought they could hide. Spoiler: they couldn’t.
Bride is cursing. A lot. During hors d’oeuvres, Maid of honor comes out of the locker room and informs me that it ‘needs attention’. You know, the room where only they had been for the last 3 hours because they had scared off all the members already. It was, quite simply, disgusting. Small wastebasket overflowing because they had put a bunch of stuff on top of the nice big covered one and then forgot about it. Part of the overflow was a used tampon. There are separate baskets in the stalls for those. Dirty panties, about 10 large empty bottles, everything was put just wherever it had fallen. I removed the trash (with gloves on) and didn’t touch one thing that was personal. I should have thrown out a lot more.
Time for cake! Wifey smears cake on the lower half of Hubby’s face. Haha! So cute! Hubby puts tiny dollop of icing on end of Wifey’s nose. ‘OH MY GAWD! HOW DARE YOU DO THAT?! YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING!!’ She proceeds to go literally running through the entire clubhouse and most of the surrounding grounds screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs.
Party was shut down two hours early. Cops were informed of potential drivers under the influence leaving the property. The bridal party was staying in rental houses on club grounds, so our security took them away.
You’d think that would be the end. But, alas, no. I did not witness the next day’s meeting, but I gather it involved a lot of apologies from the groom, and a lot more angry words for everyone from the bride. Plus debates about the bar bill from dear old dad, because they could not possibly have used up three kegs in that short of a time. He was right, we should have charged for the fourth keg.
About a week later, we were informed of an investigation claiming one of our staff had stolen the bride’s laptop. For maybe two weeks, we were randomly called by the local cops with updates on the case. Then she found it in the trunk of her car, where it had been the entire time, because they used a club-owned laptop to play their slideshow. Which she had tried to walk out with.
We think the original coordinator did this to us on purpose. She didn’t leave under the best terms, and confirming the booking was one of the last things she did.”
Bridezilla Went On A Rampage
“As someone who has done a fair amount of wedding photography, one particular bridezilla in particular stands out. She abhorred the engagement photos and insisted that I must have used a warped lens or something that made her look fat. She readily admitted that her fiancé, who was standing right next to her in the photos, looked fine and normal, but there absolutely had to be lens distortion or something else that made her look significantly heavier than she really was.
I waived the fee for the engagement shoot and scheduled another at no cost to see if I could placate her. I recommended colors for her to wear that would ‘compliment her skin tone’ and scheduled the second shoot for the golden hour, where the light would be most complimentary (she had insisted on the first shoot being at noon). Two days after the second shoot, I delivered the photos, and she was content enough to agree that I could be honored enough to be their wedding photographer.
We (my assistant and I) get to the wedding location an hour early. We took literally hundreds of shots of pre-wedding preparations, all the family shots that could be done with the family that actually showed up on time, and everything else that was agreed upon.
We shot the wedding as discussed. After the formal ceremony, we continued to shoot more casual shots, cake cutting, first dance, the reception and everything else that was agreed upon. At that point, the dinner was being served. Again, as previously agreed upon, I wasn’t going to shoot a bunch of people jamming food into their faces, and it was time for a break anyway. Her mother, who was actually the one paying me, invited myself and my assistant to discretely grab a plate of food and sit at the back of the reception area and relax for a few minutes.
The bridezilla came completely unglued at that point. She stood up and literally shrieked that, ‘The idiot photographer isn’t here to eat, he’s here to take photos and make me look good!’
The entire clubhouse went silent and all eyes turned to me. I set my fork down, glanced at bridezilla’s mother, and then back at the entire ballroom and mumbled through an apology that wasn’t warranted but somehow seemed necessary. So I proceeded to aim my camera directly at the monster bride while she chewed every last bite of her meal and jammed seemingly endless desserts into her maw.
Shortly thereafter, her mother and brand new regretful husband approached me and suggested that despite our contract to shoot through the duration of the reception, it might be better if I go ahead and call it a night.
So I left. Very happily, I might add.
The next day, as I was starting to do post-production edits on the photos (and while she was on her honeymoon, I should add), this psycho bride called me and screamed about how there was no way in they were paying for the photos (that she hadn’t even seen yet) and that she was going to call the local TV station to make sure I never got work again.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I understand you’re upset. Please enjoy your honeymoon, and we can discuss this later.’ And I guess I kind of hung up on her.
A half hour later, her mother called me. She assured me that the bill would be paid in full (she was the one paying me to begin with) and apologized profusely for how her daughter acted.
I got paid in full. EVERYONE in the family was perfectly happy with the wedding photos except bridezilla. Her mother thanked me for my patience. Her husband thanked me for my tolerance. And I thanked the powers-that-be that I’d never have to see or deal with the atrocious bride again.
“What A Peach!”
“I worked management at a resort in a popular tourist town. When weddings are booked at our venue with the event coordinator, we can hold certain number of rooms for guests attending. A manager was always required to check in the bridal couple, so I had been given a heads up by the coordinator on bridezilla.
They wanted a room on the top floor and closer to the beach, but they were already booked into the Honeymoon Suite on the third floor with ocean views. Nope, she wanted higher and closer. Had an absolute meltdown at the front desk when I explained there was nothing higher or closer. A colleague of mine ran for the event coordinator when she started screaming at me and her husband to be. He was very apologetic and trying to calm her down. She was placated and sent off with keys, but less than 30 minutes later she was back and demanded we empty the rooms next to and below her. Honey, those rooms cost $640 a night, and we are fully booked!
I was lucky enough to not be working the night of the wedding, but I heard all about her abusing the wait staff, kicking the band out for playing a song she didn’t like and the screaming match she got into with her mother-in-law. What a peach! All up the wedding was about $40,000, and she made everyone miserable. The groom left out front desk staff and box of drinks to apologize for her behavior.”
Defying The Laws Of Physics Will Cost Extra
“I work at a bakery and part of my job is to help pair couples with the correct designer for their cake. One bride wanted a cake large enough to feed 500 guests, and she wanted it to float. This multi-tiered cake was going to be filled with fresh berries and custard, covered with buttercream and fondant, and decorated with edible flowers and more fresh fruit. And she wanted us to somehow defy the laws of gravity/physics and make it float.
Apparently, she had seen a floating cake in an anime show and decided nothing else was acceptable. When I told her we can’t make floating cakes, she threw her coffee on the floor and cried that we were ruining her wedding. Her fiancé ushered her out the door and I never saw either of them again.”