"The most depressing wedding I have ever been to."
This is the story of the most depressing wedding I have ever been to. It happened well over a decade ago when I was a college freshman, but reading through this sub has reminded me of it so I thought I would share.
A friend of mine had been asked to photograph the wedding of an old family friend she knew through church. She was doing it for free and asked me if I wouldn't mind helping her out. I had only just moved to the States and had never been to an American wedding, so I said "sure' why not!"
We had been asked to get to the church and hour before the wedding (a tiny Baptist church in the middle-of-nowhere). When we arrived, no one was there. We waited for 20 minutes before the bride and a friend showed up to let us in.
The bride was in her 50s, it was her first wedding, and most notably - she was sobbing. She had come from her hair appointment, but had no make up or dress on yet. Her brother was supposed to be walking her down the aisle.
He also had BPD, which I think is relevant because for some unknown reason he had very angrily told her that he would now not be walking her down the aisle. He was also ranting and raving outside the church. I never did find out what he was angry about.
The friend left to deal with the brother, so my friend and I were left to help the bride with her make up (we managed to get her to stop crying in order to do her mascara), we helped her into her dress and even put on her shoes. Her bridesmaids were the groom's two teenage daughters, and they were also no where to be seen.
Eventually, a cousin of the bride stepped in to walk her down the aisle, and we positioned ourselves in the church hall to take pictures. The groom looked to be maybe 50s/60s and in a wheelchair. His daughters looked incredibly grumpy, and never said one word to the bride.
The angry brother stood in the back against a wall with a face like thunder. Bride walks down the aisle, crying again, and continued to cry through the entire ceremony. Despite the tears, the groom clearly loved her very much and was very sweet to her throughout.
The group pictures were a disaster, no one but the groom looked happy. We stayed long enough to take pictures of them cutting the cake in the dingy church function room (there was no dancing for obvious reasons), and we quietly left.
Three months later my friend got the news that the groom had died. I felt so sorry for that poor woman who was married for such a short time and left with a horrible brother and two step daughters who clearly hated her. If you have a story for most depressing wedding that can top mine, I'd love to hear it!
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
Sounds to me like the groom knew he was dying and wanted to marry his long term partner for an inheritance reason, which could explain the two daughters. As for the brother, well, I have BPD, it could have been anything, or nothing.
This was exactly what I thought! Bride also knew he was dying and could be another/additional reason she was crying (not just the brother).
Some readers decided to share their worst wedding stories as well:
My cousin asked me to photograph her wedding. After months of her dodging my calls for logistics, I bailed. She found another cousin to do it who told us there was no rehearsal.
The bride texted everyone the morning of the wedding to “bring lawn chairs.” I already knew it was going to be a train wreck but this kicked it off. Everyone arrives, sets up their lawn chairs outside, waits 2.5 hours for the bride and groom to show up. It is Kansas in July, ya’ll.
The bride walks down to no music, toddler (2) in one arm, other toddler (3) screaming and hanging on her leg. Her dad looking like he wants to scream. She never puts the one kid down. The other is screaming the entire ceremony.
The third is playing by the water unsupervised, aside from when the groom yells at him from the alter. No one can hear the vows. They don’t kiss but instead walk back down the aisle and straight into the reception to immediately get their food and sit down.
The food is AWFUL. My parents have a bbq catering business but they decided to have some random family member do it instead (mine would have done for free). The meat is rotten, truly. These Midwest farmers will eat anything and nothing was touched.
Literally the saddest event I’ve ever been to and the saddest part was that they didn’t seem to want to be there at all. And absolutely none of the guests did so I’m not sure why they even wasted the money… But that was 7 years ago and they’re still married so…
This was several decades ago when I was a teen but I remember it vividly. The wedding itself was depressing but not as depressing as the circumstances around it. Our long time babysitter, Katie, was getting married very suddenly.
She turned 18 and the next day the announcement was made that she was getting married in two weeks. We assumed she was pregnant but she wasn’t. She’d only been with her boyfriend (her first) a couple months. They were devoutly Catholic so we figured they wanted to be intimate.
The wedding itself was mass followed with cake and punch in the community room. Bare bones. Kind of a weird, strange vibe. No one seemed terribly happy. No registry. No honeymoon. They would be living with the groom's family.
I photographed a wedding where the maid of honor and best man had broken their engagement that week. After finding out that both of them were cheating with other members of the bridal party.
The maid of honor was cheating with her fiancé's younger brother, the best man was cheating with his fiancée’s bff. You can call BS if you want, but we’re talking small town Midwest in the 2000s and it’s too early in the morning for me to make this up.
I went to a wedding in Las Vegas about 15 years ago. No bar, so they passed around two bottles of liquor for about 100 guests. One of the bottles disappeared immediately and the other was grabbed by the groom, who swigged from it the entire night.
(As I was leaving, I found the other bottle. Someone had accidentally left on a chair and then shoved it under the table so it was hidden by the tablecloth.) Hey, I understand it is your wedding, but the bride got up and made a 40 minute speech, during which she sang her favorite high school song not once but TWICE.
When I was a freshman at a religious college, I joined a service organization that did prison visits. One of my fellow freshman friends got romanced by one of the inmates & decided to marry him. There was a sort of ceremony at the prison, then we all bussed back to campus where there was a reception in the student union building.
Bride had chosen a full on fancy wedding dress, and I still have an image of her out alone on the dance floor, doing the “first dance”. Her family disowned her so she had to drop out.
She got pregnant during a conjugal visit & the last time I saw her, she was living in a run down trailer with a baby & no support, and had gone all in on believing her husband was unjustly incarcerated & they were the star crossed victims of a diabolical government.