'I was witness to maybe the worst groomsman speech of all time.'
"I was witness to maybe the worst groomsman speech of all time."
I found this sub a while back and love it. I finally feel like I should share my favorite go-to bizarre wedding story anytime cringey wedding stories come up. Warning this is a long one. For a bit of back story, I’m going to try and keep some details vague for the anonymity of the B&G since they didn’t do anything to deserve this.
The bride and I were in a big group of 10+ friends from college in a small town from a southern state. Once we graduated we scattered but the bride moved to a big city and met her husband there (he is from said big city).
The wedding was delayed twice, the second time was when the groom had a crazy medical emergency. Like, we thought he was going to die, that type of medical emergency.
He survived and although recovered well, you could tell he was never fully back to 100%. But he was a good guy and our friend and him seemed really happy, so without a doubt, when wedding day came, everyone present was very happy the couple had made it.
Wedding day arrives, my friends and wife and I turn it into a big reunion weekend for all of us. The venue is in the aforementioned big city is beautiful. The ceremony is beautiful. They say “I do” with no hitches. The cocktail hour is great, drinks are flowing, everyone has a solid buzz going. The reception comes, we eat and tell old stories from college, then the speeches.
Two bridesmaids give speeches, both great. One is a tear-jerker. Then first groomsmen gives a speech, surprisingly also a tear jerker. Then the second groomsmen gets up to speak. I don’t remember his name. I don’t care what it is. We’ll call him Tom.
Tom, for frame of reference since overly drunken guests are a theme on here, is from what I could tell, completely sober for this speech. Everything he said and did was within his right mind.
Tom has this big smile on his face, is pacing around the reception hall (probably about 120+ guests here) mic in hand doing some small crowd work. He then introduces himself as the brother in law to the groom (so married groom’s sister) and says that amongst him and his brothers, they all gave speeches at each other’s weddings.
Apparently, it became a running joke that they tried to 1-up each other by giving the longest speech possible, and well since the groom is now an unofficial brother, Tom is going to keep his stupid tradition alive. At first I thought “well, this is weird, but everything has been great up until now, how bad could it be?” I was so very wrong.
Tom’s opening joke is basically as follows: “You know, it’s the best man’s job (he was not the best man btw) to do what the groom can’t. If the groom needs a drink and can’t get one, the best man steps in.
If a grandmother needs picking up from the airport and the groom can’t, the best man steps in. However, it’s also the groom’s job to consummate the wedding on the wedding night, and since he has his medical problems and probably can’t, I’d be more than happy to!”
You could hear maybe a couple chuckles from the audience, but what was louder was the sucking sound of the collective gasps of the other 100 or so people who didn’t laugh.
Now listen, I’m not a prude. I don’t shy away from a raunchy joke. And maybe, juuuuuust maybe, if you have the right bride and groom, you can bust out a raunchy joke at the rehearsal dinner. But not at a wedding in front of a hundred or so people. And NOT this crowd.
The bride’s family are nice people but very religious, and did not find this humor funny. Secondly, you just made a joke about the groom being impotent at the expense of his near death experience when we literally thought he was going to die last year.
Thirdly, Tom’s wife, WHO IS THE GROOM’S SISTER, is sitting in the crowd with their children while Tom is joking about sleeping with his new sister in law. Yikes. But Tom, ever the AH, and with a giant grin on his face, forges on.
His second bit, he pulls out a “letter” he says he “found in the groom’s stuff last night”. It’s not real, Tom wrote this obviously. But the letter is supposedly written by the groom to his future father in law.
Mind you, this is a handwritten, 2 pages front and back on college-rule sized paper letter. Meaning it took him at least 10-15 minutes to read the entire thing (remember he’s going for broke with his longest speech ever)
In the “letter” the groom says some niceties about the bride and how much he loves her. This is maybe the only redeeming thing in Tom’s entire speech. I asked my friends about what they remembered about the speech and someone said there was a recurring leprechaun intimacy joke in the letter but I can’t remember what that was fully about.
However the most memorable part of the letter was how he ended it. Basically the groom tells his future father in law that “he’s so excited to grow old with the bride because I’ve seen what my future mother in law looks like.
You know what they say, look at the mom and that’s what she’ll look like when she gets old. And let me tell you, I’ve spent many nights, alone in the dark, thinking about my mother in law, if you know what I mean.”
Again, like 5 chuckles, cue a bunch more gasps. My wife disagrees with me but at this point I remember the father of the bride standing up looking very angry but his poor wife (the butt of the joke, mind you) pulling him back down into his chair, probably thinking that causing a huge scene will only make this worse.
Now the question I’ve gotten a lot when I tell this story is “why didn’t anyone stop him?” And frankly, I have no idea. It’s like that thing that happens when someone starts choking in the restaurant and everyone is frozen in fear assuming someone else will help but no one does.
I assumed that the wedding DJ or MC or someone would have cut the mic off, but no, we all just continued to sit through Tom’s rambling. What were the bride and groom doing during all this? The Groom continued to look angrier and angrier as the speech went on. The bride was on the edge of tears most of the time.
The first groomsmen literally got up from the wedding party table and sat down somewhere in the crowd as if the say “I don’t know this guy”. There were a couple people in the back of the crowd who shouted for him to shut up.
Another friend at a different table told me he got up halfway through the speech and hid in the bathroom. I look over at my poor wife, who 15 minutes before was giggling with her best friend, was white knuckling the table just quietly whispering “please stop please stop please stop” over and over.
But Tom didn’t stop. This was about Tom’s stupid ego and his brothers’ idiotic tradition. And Tom was going to give us his worst. At this point, too, pure fear and second hand cringe started to set in and I frankly started to brown out so the exact details of his speech are lost on me. I asked some friends and my wife what they remember and the highlights (lowlights?) were this:
He continues on at one point singing the praises of the aforementioned big city and how it’s the greatest in the world to which he then says something to the effect of “when I picked up so-and-so on the Bride’s side up from the airport I was shocked you guys wore shoes!” So insulting half the guests as some country bumpkin simpletons.
He at one point he points out a woman in the crowd and says “don’t ask aunt so-and-so for any marriage advice, she’s on her third divorce!” Cue the woman in the crowd looking very embarrassed.
He then also begins to wax poetic about his mom, rambling for a couple minutes saying his mom is “the strongest woman he knows”. You know, stuff dudes who are chauvinists but think they’re feminists say?
And it’s like DUDE, WHO IS YOUR MOM?!? WE DON’T KNOW YOUR MOM. WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR MOM. YOUR MOM DID A TERRIBLE JOB. AND GUESS WHAT?!? THIS DAY ISN’T ABOUT YOUR MOM. THIS DAY IS ABOUT THE BRIDE AND YOU ARE RUINING IT.
Numbers vary amongst us how long his speech actually ran, but most of us agree it was 25 minutes or so. But god it felt like eternity.
Finally, Tom lands the plane, him the terrorist who hijacked it, and us, the terrified passengers. With a raise of his glass, he asks all of us to toast the happy couple, and a few glasses meagerly raise to finally end the horrible spectacle.
People begin filing off to the bar and some to the bathroom, I think many of us trying to process what just happened. I remember most people looking like we had just witnessed a murder. Whatever alcohol and hallucinogens that once gave us a delightful buzz had been sucked out of us, and we all felt stone cold sober in the garish light of the reception hall.
I remember the father of the bride popping up out of his chair shortly after the end of the speech and grabbing Tom by the back of his coat jacket to haul him behind the stage presumably to ask him what possessed him to give that awful speech. A big group of girls ran to the bride’s aid while she dabbed tears from her eyes.
Shortly after that I found myself in the bathroom with a good 20 or so guys peeing at the urinals or in the stalls while we all eavesdropped on Tom and the groom in the middle of the room.
Tom stupidly and with a shocking lack of any insight, repeatedly asking “bro, what did I do? Just tell me what I said that was wrong?” All the while the groom is washing his hands going “dude, shut up just shut up.” Over and over.
Thankfully I think most of the people there understood the assignment and did what we could to liven up the party for the poor couple. There was lots of dancing and drinks and overall good spirits.
Lots of people danced with the B&G to do our best to make the night memorable. I remember even Tom dancing with them at one point, granted most of the night he seemed to sit at his families table by himself.
A couple years down the road a good friend of mine hung out one night with the B&G and asked about Tom. Their response was a simple “we haven’t seen Tom in a long time.” Good. Because UGHHHHH Tom.
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
This is jaw-droppingly awful! The fact that he had no clue how offensive he was makes it worse. How could he not read the room and realize no one is connecting with him? Just stunningly blind on all levels.
Can we all collectively agree that if any of us are at a wedding where this happens, one person grabs the mic, and two of the largest dudes in the place help the groomsman to find his seat?
I wanted to stop but I kept reading and it kept getting worse and worse. Well done to everyone who helped pick up the mood after that abomination of a speech.
sciencetown (OP)
Thankfully the B&G seemed very happy and enjoying themselves by the end.
Please tell me Tom’s wife left him within 3-5 business days of that speech.
Anyone seen my soul? Poor thing jumped out of me at Tom thinking it funny to joke about sleeping with another woman in front of his wife and children as part of a wedding "speech". I'm worried it'll never come back knowing it may be sharing air with Tom.