Guest shares wedding horror story of Maid of Honor's speech, 'the bride was basically a stranger?'

"Maid of Honor's bizarre speech claiming the bride was basically a stranger?"

Here's one of my wedding stories. The last wedding I went to was 2 years ago. The daughter of one of my mother's friends who I've known for maybe 20 years albeit from a distance. I don't know how old she is, somewhere in her 20s. I stopped counting years when I hit 40. She was marrying her BF who was a stand up guy and they shared a nice friend group.

The bride had a "Matron of Honor" and a "Maid of Honor". The "Matron of Honor" was a friend of hers who she had always been close with and who was married. The "Maid of Honor" was a friend of the bride and groom but, was a life long friend of the groom.

She was asked to be "Maid of Honor" alongside the "Matron of Honor" for whatever reason. Everything is fine. The reception is fine. Then it's time for the speeches. The Matron of Honor gave a nice speech about love and commitment and happy futures. The Best Man gave a speech about love and growing together.

The Maid of Honor, and I remind you that she had been friends with the groom her entire life and with the bride for several years, started by stating that she was surprised to have been asked to be Maid of Honor because "I hardly know the bride" and then spoke about them barely knowing each other for several minutes. Then she was done. That was the speech.

My wife and I just sat there stunned. We had been to the bride's mother's house many times over the years and seen the Maid of Honor with the bride acting like old friends. They had vacationed together. We were sitting at the table with the bride's mother, who sat there quietly for several minutes with a look on her face as if she was sucking on a lemon.

Obviously we're all here because we've either all had an experience in common: wedding drama. Or at least love a good wedding drama story. It's unfortunate that so many people's wedding days are marred by other people's bizarre behavior or bad decisions.

I don't know what or if anything happened between the bride and groom and the maid of honor after that. It's been a while now and I do know that they are no longer friends with the Maid of Honor. I could speculate that maybe the wedding speech has something to do with it but, I really don't know. I just thought this was a bizarre enough story to share.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

chicagok8 said:

That’s so sad and mean! It would have been far kinder to decline giving a speech, or say something generic about love and commitment. That’s so sad and mean! It would have been far kinder to decline giving a speech, or say something generic about love and commitment.

sabinoshku said:

The fallout happened before the wedding and the maid of honor decided to just nuke the relationship entirely at the speech, so this was just a symptom of the greater issues. I guess only they'll know what the actual underlying cause of the ending of the friendship was...

lsp2005 said:

Did she hold a torch for the groom? To me, that is a speech when she was playing pretend to like his girlfriend while secretly plotting how to undermine their relationship. Except this bride stuck and so she was not the consolation prize, she was nothing.

imamage_fightme said:

I'll never understand behavior like this. If you don't want to do a speech, tell them you aren't comfortable. If you don't know what to say, google some generic wedding speeches and piece something together above love and being together forever. This sort of stunt is just hurtful, to both sides tbh! If I were the groom, I'd be mortified that my friend would treat my new wife that way. And the poor bride, ouch!

Pennygrover said:

Sounds passive aggressive af. Maybe the bride “offended” her in some way and this was her response. Why would you accept the role in someone’s wedding if you “hardly knew them?"

Flimsy-Ticket-1369 said:

What the hell? If this wasn’t two years ago, I would honestly be suggesting the maid of honor go get some testing done because she may have a brain tumor. How are you gonna say you barely know someone who you’ve known your whole life, and who you’ve been on vacation with?

Wouldn’t everyone at the wedding have known that this was BS? If that’s how she felt, she should not have agreed to be the maid of honor…