Can anything possible stop a dreaded bridezilla's rampage? Turns out wedding shop workers need some bizarre solutions to calm everything down! I'm glad I'm single after reading these stories! Content has been edited for clarity.
“There’s No Possible Way To Fix This.”
I worked as a wedding planner and coordinator, and 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. Anyways, 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 of the decorations had melted, the cake got a little banged up in the car ride, and there was icing on the inside of the box. The entire cake was even 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, sees the cake, and completely flips out. She was screaming, crying, throwing things, and collapsing on the floor. She threatened 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 she 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 it was 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. That was honestly the most bizarre part. She literally had never given me any inclination that she was worried about the budget in any way. She didn’t bat an eye for any of the quotes, even wanted to spend lots of money of stupid little extras like customized napkins.”
Have A Massive Slice Of Humble Pie
“We had a bride and her mother show up at nine in the morning. They wanted to order a bridal bouquet, a mother of the bride cattelya orchid corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen. The wedding was scheduled for noon. Yep, only 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 FTD sample book and pointing out the style and flowers she wanted. Think garden roses with long sweeping trails of stephanotis and variegated ivy, all three 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. Same with the cattelya orchid for the mom’s corsage. My boss told them that since they didn’t place an order beforehand, they would be limited to what we had in stock, along 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 to and ask their flower department to make their order with whatever they had in stock. The mom said she would do just that, and 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 dendrobium orchid bouts. Meanwhile, she threw together a ribbon wrapped bridal bouquet with some white roses that were nearly past their prime with some more dendros. 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 witch tax, ahem, ‘rush fee’.”
Every Day Brings More Chaos
“I work in management, and you have no idea the sense of entitlement that walks into my store. I would consider us the Walmart of weddings, and we cater to everyone from bums who smell like urine to rich nobodies who think they’re somebody. I’ve seen it all, from people complaining that the dresses were too cheap to people complaining that these dresses were too expensive. I’m a rational person, and being part of management team means I’m trusted to make important decisions and enforce policy. All sales are final, depending of course, but you have to have one incredible excuse to get a penny out of me. The best (by best I mean craziest) excuse yet was a spouse who had her wedding coordinator go in to refund the items, because she was in a psyche ward after trying to kill her sister when she announced she was pregnant with the groom’s baby at the bridal shower. We refunded everyone but the sister, who was ironically the maid of honor.
One time, a woman waited outside of our work for a co-manager because she wouldn’t return her dress, which turned into a fist fight, which turned into the bride having a black eye and spending time in jail. I’ve had women come in wasted and throw up in fitting rooms. I’ve had to call the police on a few occasions about a bum lingering in our parking lot with a knife. Women have peed themselves or bled into wedding gowns or fitting rooms. The bathrooms are a nightmare to clean, because the floor is always sticky with urine. Don’t even get me started on the awful children wreaking havoc on the store. Children have poured cement into the toilets, ran around the store knocking t-stands over, mannequins, and displays. We have clear doors, and I can not tell you the amount of times young children have ran straight into them at full speed. Unmonitored kids have locked the front doors or physically prevented other customers from coming in. Let’s not even get started on the screaming or crying, or even the fact that we have a fitting room with mirrors for walls that kids with sticky hands feel compelled to touch with every part of their body. We are not like say yes to the dress, people need to stop asking.
Women come in and are spending thousands on their wedding and are shocked at the price of a gown that hasn’t been mass produced for the populace since the 1800’s. please when I say we are the Walmart of weddings I can point you to 10 other places with gowns upwards of $25,000. Our most expensive dress caps at $2,800, which is still a lot by my standards, but so are weddings in general, and you don’t really need either to celebrate a successful union. Don’t get me mistaken, I have my own wedding planned out to the last second, and I appreciate the ideas and symbolisms behind a lot of the celebrations within, but it’s not the most important thing in life.”
Everything Unraveled In An Instant
“I work at a hotel that does a huge 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. Anyways, we knew there were going to be issues, because neither the bride or groom ever smiled. She was always complaining about how he was ‘wishy-washy’ with picking a date, and he was always silent. The mother of the bride had her hand in EVERYTHING to make sure things were perfect for her little princess. 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 fiancee, ‘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. That 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 was standing at her side and nodding in agreement, and interjecting occasionally with supportive comments. He was pleading 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 they couldn’t, since they would have to pass by the couple to get to the only exit.
The argument continued for two more hours, and the bride insisted that her children would never see a Christmas tree in their entire lives, so they wouldn’t be confused. Good luck with that one, lady! The groom finally stated how maybe this wasn’t going to work out after all. The bride threw her ring at him and screamed, ‘THEN WHY THE HECK 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. Seriously, that dude dodged a major bullet.”
Everyone Was Out To Get Her
“Oh I work as a wedding server, which I normally really enjoy. But whenever someone brings up a bridezilla, I need to share the story where the manager of our hotel had to shut down the entire wedding halfway through the ceremony. This was the biggest bridezilla I have ever seen. There were a lot of little things leading up that were casually cruel until the wedding took a sharp turn. At one point, the bride accused the wedding server staff of stealing her veil. Then the manager found it in her room and also showed her the card swipes to her room, proving only she had been in the room that day. About twenty minutes later, she was screaming at some poor front desk employee, accusing her of stealing her wedding boots. The manager intervened, and after a long talk, the photographer told them he had a photo of the boots on the staircase of the church, and asked if she had worn them since. When she said no, she told our place it was our job to have picked them up and made sure she had them. The church was not related to our place at all. Then shortly after, she started opening the wedding gifts frantically inside the ballroom and screaming at anyone and everyone, guests included, saying someone stole her wedding certificate. After that, our manager gathered the wedding staff and told us to take off our uniform jackets, empty them in front of him, then to clock out and go home. Which we all did, none of us stole anything, and we heard next day the maid of honor had the certificate. After we left, the wedding was shut down completely. The room was left as is for the bride to come back to in the morning.”
Nonstop Cringing
“I used to be a ‘Bridal Consultant’ at a retail store, which basically meant that I helped couples scan things onto their registry, although the training for it just meant I knew how to use the scanner and the computer. My actual job had nothing to do with bridal shopping. This one couple came in to start a new registry, which quickly turned into only things that the bride wanted. Anything the groom wanted to put down on the registry was deemed as childish, stupid, ugly, impractical, or never to be used. I was cringing during the entire appointment. The bride to be kept asking for my input and opinions on everything in the registry, and I just felt so bad for this poor groom. His bride-to-be seemed so selfish and entitled, and I couldn’t believe the fact that he was soon to be married to this woman. The poor man just wanted a waffle maker, who doesn’t want waffles?! My guess is that the couple didn’t stay together for very long at all. I am so glad that I didn’t have to witness that awkward ceremony, it must have been such a nightmare!”
“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, and I had been given a heads up by the coordinator on the Bridezilla. They wanted a room on the highest floor and closer to the beach, so they were booked into the Honeymoon Suite. It was on the third floor, with lovely ocean views. Nope, she wanted some place higher and closer. She 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 the bride started screaming at me and her husband to be. He was very apologetic and was trying to calm her down. She was placated and sent off with keys, but less than thirty 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. Not the only Bridezilla I ever dealt with, but definitely the craziest I ever had!”
She Did It All For The Attention
“My experience with a bridezilla happened at my great aunt’s house. She has a private lake and a lovely set up for a small, country style outdoor wedding. The mother of the groom was a close friend of hers, so my aunt was happy to open up her home for the event. I got the feeling leading up to the wedding that the groom’s family didn’t care much for the bride, and after witnessing her throwing a temper tantrum over the placement of the food table because it started to rain, I kind of started to see why. Listening to the way she talked to everyone around her appalled me. She was a completely spoiled brat, and she really was lucky that everyone didn’t just leave the wedding completely. I wouldn’t have blamed them a bit. However, the worst was the fact that she decided that she wanted her bridesmaids to walk barefoot in the muddy, wet grass. After that, she had them buy new boots to wear specifically with their dresses. Anyone who has ever bought cowboy boots knows that they are upwards of $100, and she picked out pink ones to match their pink dresses. All five of the bridesmaids had to buy these boots on top of whatever they had to pay for the dress. And she decided ten minutes before the wedding starts that she doesn’t want them to wear the boots anymore.
Of course, everyone complies with her and pacifies her and the wedding goes well. Although it got pretty tense during the ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ part. Not surprised to hear that the marriage didn’t make it to six months. She was the most selfish person I’ve ever met, and I’m convinced that she didn’t want to get married at all, just wanted all the attention on her.”
They Wanted To Be Treated Like Royalty
“In the past, I worked in event planning, and wedding season was always interesting, to say the least. There was a bride who had zero consideration for my boss’s time. She and her mother dropped by more than once when my boss wasn’t there and blamed my boss for being ‘unprofessional’. It was like neither of them knew what a phone call was, yet couldn’t keep themselves off of their own phones when they did meet with my boss. Anyway, leading up to the wedding, the bride couldn’t decide what she wanted finalized regarding kegs. My boss gently informed the bride and her mother that we could no longer wait for a decision, or there would be no drinks at the wedding. The bride stormed out, who, by the way, left her kid alone in the car. The mother of the bride blamed my boss for ‘not considering her daughter’s feelings’.
At the final pre-wedding meeting, the bride decided that she wanted a theme for her wedding. This was never, ever discussed, and the wedding was that Saturday! The bride went postal and demanded that her ‘Country Chic’ wedding theme be exactly like what she found on Pinterest. I took one look at this picture and laughed. The bride basically wanted what could have been likened to what you see at a state fair. Oh, and did I mention that the bride demanded that we find the exact checkered table cloths? Well, I managed to find the table cloths online, only we weren’t going to have them by Saturday. By the grace of the event planning gods, a local rental company had comparable checkered table cloths, and the bride liked them. I couldn’t wait for that wedding to be over.”
So Much Kicking And Screaming
“Strap in, folks. This is going to be a bumpy ride. I work in a relatively high-end country club in the American South. We had a doozy last season. 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. That coordinator quit shortly after booking. The new girl had 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 useless. Ours didn’t even know she existed until the rehearsal. The bride had 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 drinks, after two original food tastings, I’m not playing ball anymore. You’re paying for it at that point. You and the five people with you. Fast forward to the rehearsal. We have regular dinner service going on in our dining room for our (rather exclusive) members. Renting the ballroom for a day does not entitle you to take over the entire clubhouse. The bridal party are drinking, yelling, cursing, and being generally ugly all over the grounds. Bridal party is getting louder and more wasted. The little old ladies trying to eat poached salmon in peace are obviously annoyed. The father of the bride has set up a provisional account to pay for the wedding (we don’t accept cash or cards, only accounts). Bridal party knows the account number, and we’ve been told to put everything on it by our managers, as long as the person ordering knows the number. You can see where this is going. He didn’t see it that night, but he argued every single drink when the bill came. Even the 18 year old bottle that he alone was drinking.
Okay, enough of the day before. Onto the main event. Most of this day I was on the periphery, since I was working on the other end of the building. This was the end they weren’t supposed to be on, except the bride and bridesmaids, since their dressing room was on that side. I could still hear pretty much everything that was happening, and I saw way more than I should have. As guests arrived, they were directed around the outside, as per the request. The mother of the bride freaks out because OF COURSE they didn’t want HER side of the family to have to go that way. They need to be allowed to walk through the active dining room and around the other side, where the golf course is. At this point, 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. And by that I mean that we caught them multiple times pouring drinks behind the bar while the bartenders were getting their bar ready in the ballroom. The 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. Everybody and their grandmother had flasks and airline bottles and whatever they thought they could hide. I’ll share the highlights of the reception, because this is already pretty long.
During hors d’oeuvres, the 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 three hours because they had scared off all the members already. It shouldn’t have been my job, but the attendant had gone home early due to an emergency. I figured I would take a look. I came right back out to get every manger I could find. I even cleared the coast so our chef could come look after he saw my reaction. It was, quite simply, disgusting. The small wastebasket was 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 ten empty bottles, everything a normal person would put aside or throw away 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. By this point, all of the guests are so loud and obnoxious and not staying on their end of things, that we call in extra security just to stand at all access points and wrangle them. Remember all those ‘hidden’ drinks? About two hours into the reception, the security guard nearest the men’s restroom hears an awful noise from inside. He goes to investigate and finds a broken urinal and an empty handle of Jack Daniels. Time for cake! This can’t go wrong can it? 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. She exclaimed, ‘OH MY GOD! 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. As it was a nice night, many of our members were enjoying the patio off the dining room. One member in particular had been listening to the hubbub, and asked me the names of the couple. I had to laugh when I remembered that he’s a prominent divorce lawyer. I, jokingly, asked if he wanted me to pass out his card. He, very seriously, said yes. The party was shut down two hours early. The cops were informed of potential wasted drivers leaving the property. The bridal party were staying in rental houses on club grounds, so our security took them back. 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 drank three kegs in that sort of time. He was right, sorry for the mistake, we should have charged for the fourth tapped 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.
I think that’s the whole story. I probably blocked some stuff out. 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.”