'Serial procrastinator' bride shows up late to wedding, skips planning, rushes vows.
We've heard of runaway brides, Bridezillas, cheap couples trying to snag free vendors, or mother-in-laws showing up in floor-length lace white gowns, but what happens when the bride bails on the planning process and rolls in more-than-fashionably late to the ceremony?
So, when a frustrated newlywed decided to consult the gloriously petty and judgmental 'Wedding Shaming' Reddit group about her own wife's trail of disappointments throughout their wedding process, people were eager to listen to the harrowing tale.
Bride 1 hour late to wedding, didn’t contribute to planning...
Here’s a wedding story for y’all: my own from 2 days ago. My wife and I (same sex couple) got married on Saturday and it’s safe to say the ceremony was an absolute disaster. I’m mostly just venting, hopefully it makes someone feel better about their own wedding.
They say something goes wrong with every wedding, right? A LOT went wrong with mine. My wife is a serial procrastinator. It is excruciatingly frustrating. She is close to perfect if you disregard this fact.
We were engaged for about 18 months before the wedding, and did not want to talk about the wedding AT ALL until literally 4 weeks before. I had to practically force her to help with any planning at all in the 17 months before the month of the wedding.
I did almost 90% of the planning, but it was insanely difficult and frustrating because there were things that I obviously wanted and needed her input on before I could do. There were very few things that were her responsibility to organize, and she organized practically nothing. Some examples of things that happened due to her procrastination/things she was meant to do but didn’t.
She: -ordered her dress online 2 weeks before the wedding. Amazingly, it arrived on time -help me pick a photographer since I was struggling to find a good one. She said she would handle it. She didn’t.
2 days before the wedding I ask an old friend who is a semi-professional photographer if he can do it and luckily he can -never told me what flowers she wanted, so I could never organize with a florist what flowers to order. We bought our bouquets from the local grocery store the night before the wedding.
I Frankensteined my bouquet with a few different of the store bouquets (but it admittedly looked very nice) -she didn’t like any arbours, so she said she would build one (she works in a manual labour job and does woodworking so it would have been a piece of cake.
She did not make the arbour.) -buy a bubble machine (she didn’t) -practice the song we wanted to sing at the reception together as our “first song” instead of first dance (she never practiced/never wanted to practice together, so we didn’t sing it) -buy/rent microphones (she didn’t) -organize a translator for her family since they don’t speak English (she didn’t) -organise movers to help transport chairs/decorations/non existent arbour (we had to make multiple trips in my mum’s tiny car to transport all the chairs and decorations, and I decorated and set up the entire ceremony and reception space myself and with help from one uncle)
-she did not go to her hair and makeup appointment, she threw her hair together and wore no make up (which is fine, but not what she wanted) -wrote her vows the morning of the wedding
Other than these things she was meant to do/organize, I organized every other single thing in the wedding, which was a LOT, since she didn’t want to contribute at all.
The ceremony was meant to start at 3:30pm, with guests arriving at 3:15. I arrived with all the decorations and set up at 2:20. I bought my dress along with me and got changed at the venue after setting up, after getting my hair and makeup done earlier (and I was SWEATY from setting up chairs + decorations).
The guests all arrived on time, including her relatives who, as previously mentioned, do not speak English, who I barely speak any of the same language with. They kept trying to take photos of me even though I kept telling them clear no’s, and they would physically pull me aside and physically force me to take photos, which then made my family think THEY could take photos, despite firmly saying no to them.
My wife ended up arriving… at 4:30, an hour after the ceremony was meant to start, and at the end of the time we had booked for the venue. The venue was nice enough to let us continue past the time we booked.
Waiting for my wife to arrive was excruciating. I kept phoning asking where she was and she’d say “10 minutes away”… for an hour and a half. She was so late because she was still trying to build the arbour despite having no way of transporting it, and because she had not written her vows yet.
The only person who kept me sane throughout the waiting was our celebrant. My family kept watching me, waiting for me to react and I felt extremely observed, so I hung out with the celebrant since she was the only one actually distracting me from the situation instead of asking me questions I couldn’t answer (the questions being, where is wife? What time will wife get here?) It was horrible. I legit wanted to die a little bit.
Luckily my wife did arrive, and her vows were very beautiful. The celebrant made multiple jokes at my wife’s expense about her hour’s tardiness, but they were actually pretty helpful because no one else gave her additional sh*t for it later on.
So basically, the entire ceremony was a mess. The saving grace to the entire wedding was that the reception was absolutely BOMB. Minus the lack of song and microphone for speeches, it was honestly perfect and went so much better than I could have possibly expected it to, and was so incredibly fun and amazing, and because it ended on such a good note, the guests all ended up being very happy.
The two good things to come out of my wife’s extreme tardiness: She is never allowed to be mad at me again for being late to something, ever, for the rest of our lives, and -everyone’s opinions of me skyrocketed because I did not lose my sh*t and stayed patient (externally). Almost every guest told me I had the patience of an angel, and couldn’t believe that I could handle the situation (again, externally.)
Now that it’s all over and I’m on my honeymoon, I’m kinda trapped between two mindsets of being pretty pissed at how things happened and how we missed out on doing so many of the things we wanted because my wife did not organise a single thing she said she would organize.
And the mindset of what’s done is done and there’s no point worrying about it because it’s happened and over and there’s nothing that can be changed so what’s the point of stressing about it and being angry?
It has definitely awoken me to the extent of my wife’s procrastination though and I am going to consistently lie to her in the future about the times things start/dates important things happen so that we are/she is not late to important things in the future, which I have already begun doing by lying about our honeymoon flights lol. Wish me luck, y’all.
Of course, the jury of wedding shamers was eager to pile on this messy bride. Here's what people had to say...
Entertainer-True said:
Um...I’m glad the vows were beautiful because I’m not sure I wouldn’t be furious at her for prioritizing her vows and the arbor over you and all the guests waiting for over an hour for her. That is some next level poor behavior, and good thing your venue, you and officiant were flexible!
My officiant said he would cancel the whole thing if we were late, I legit had to tell (and stress) to my MIL that we were going to start exactly on time so she best not be late. She ran in right as I pulled up lol
IncredibleBulk2 said:
I can't fathom how chill you are about this.
jeansandsneakers4me said:
Enjoy your honeymoon, you deserve it, couples counselling as soon as you get home, she needs to step up to the plate.
Highway-Awkward said:
I do think you should say something about how deeply hurt you are about what cluster the planning was plus her tardiness. If not it's just going to come out in a very not nice way during a future fight.
I do think you deserve an apology from your wife and you wouldn't be wrong to ask for one. But if it bothers you then please talk it out, it will make you feel a lot better to vent about how you feel to your wife.
sushigoaway said:
I'm going to be honest, it sounds like there wasn't much enthusiasm for the wedding on your wife's side at all. You are a saint for still going through with the wedding, and hopefully your marriage turns out OK. I think you guys really need to have a talk about this though, because there's procrastination and then there's 0 contribution towards one of the biggest milestones in a person's life.
allthebacon_and_eggs said:
I was having a sympathetic panic attack on your behalf reading this. Starting a marriage off with knowing you need to lie to get her to do anything is not healthy, though. I hope there is some way she can see how selfish it was to put all that work and stress on you.
She wasn’t thinking about your feelings. After the honeymoon, I hope she will be open to couples counseling, or even individual counseling to help her with time management and to see how poor time management hurts her wife. She’s walking all over you.