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Wedding Recap and Withdrawal
Stranger ruined my wedding
I spent two years planning and every spare dollar putting together my dream wedding. The venue I was in love with, I had to book 2 years in advance. It was a gorgeous garden in a park, complete with garden house. I paid the top price to book the venue for the entire day, and to make it a private event that was closed to the public. (There are fences and unlocked gates with 'Closed for private event signs.) Our ceremony was beautiful and went as I had hoped. After, we moved into the garden house for dinner. While dinner was being served, ANOTHER COUPLE CAME INTO THE GARDENS, AND GOT MARRIED! As dinner was wrapping up and people began moving back outdoors, my priest mentioned that the other bride and groom were getting closer to where most of my guests were, doing photos. It ended up with the other bride calling my husband a pussy, and a very large feud between the couple and many members of our wedding party as the venue director arrived and escorted them out.
A lot of my guests were very riled up. And I'm still angry as hell. All that planning, patiently waiting for an available date, and another bride showed up to my wedding! Although my family and friends were very supportive, I'm still so embarrassed. On top of it being so tacky that the other bride and groom showed up, I'm embarrassed about the screaming and yelling.
I worked and dreamed so hard over this one day, and it's hard to imagine I'll ever remember it fondly. As much as I'd like to just forget, every time it comes up, I am so outraged by what this couple took from me.
A lot of my guests were very riled up. And I'm still angry as hell. All that planning, patiently waiting for an available date, and another bride showed up to my wedding! Although my family and friends were very supportive, I'm still so embarrassed. On top of it being so tacky that the other bride and groom showed up, I'm embarrassed about the screaming and yelling.
I worked and dreamed so hard over this one day, and it's hard to imagine I'll ever remember it fondly. As much as I'd like to just forget, every time it comes up, I am so outraged by what this couple took from me.
Re: Stranger ruined my wedding
I'm really sorry that another couple was rude and entered into the venue when there was clear signage prohibiting it. I'm sorry that the venue didn't have better stops in place to prevent it.
I'm not sure when your wedding was, but if it was recent, this probably still smarts. When expectations don't equal reality, difficulty ensues.
I will say that you are entitled to feel whatever you feel, but I think you may want to reflect about how much it actually took away from your day and how to deal with situations like this in the future. It is too bad that you couldn't have asked the venue to deal with this couple instead of getting involved yourself.
I would encourage you to start thinking about the parts of your day that were how you expected and focus on those moments. No wedding is perfect, but there can be some perfect moments.
If you find yourself dwelling on what happened, consider seeking out someone professional to talk with. A counsellor can help you process grief (which is real when things don't go as expected) and help you reframe your experience.
Goodluck and congrats on your marriage.
They didn't ruin your wedding. You married your husband in the beautiful venue that you chose. Your reception was nice, too, wasn't it?
What they did was to act like donkeys on their own wedding day. Imagine the happy memories THEY will have!
- Did they actually get married in the gardens or just to take photos? So did the venue allowed another wedding or did this couple just "jump the fence" to take pictures?
- Did your venue contract say you had the entire place booked?
- Had you hired security and security just missed them coming in?
Hindsight is 20/20 but what did you think was going to happen when a bride and groom (feeling entitled to "their day") confronts another bride and groom (feeling entitled to beautiful photos)? Heightened emotions and angry words were BOUND to happen. You probably should have had the venue coordinator go kick them out and never even got close to speaking with them.
My advice is to make a list of everything you DO remember fondly- your vows? Seeing your about-to-be spouse for the first time? A first dance with your father maybe? Dancing with your best friends maybe?
If you really reflect, you'll remember tons of amazing elements of your day. Remember, the couple didn't take anything from you- you are married. You had a reception with your closest friends and family present, right? Good food, beautiful decor? You didn't have exclusivity you expected, but even that's not the end of the world. Look at people who get married on a beach with tourists taking photos or other public places like that. Exclusivity is not required for a special wedding. There are worse things that could have happened, yes?
Try to focus on the positive. Enjoy your married life!
But maybe they did have exclusive use, maybe they didn't. There isn't really a way to know without seeing their contract. That's why I asked.
Sure it's a little different than your situation, but the point is sometimes things don't go as planned. Sometimes an outside influence can change things. It sucks, but shit happens.
My advice to you is let it go and focus on the good things. I look back at my wedding with fondness. All my family and friends all gathered during a hurricane to watch us get married. I remember how amazing my husband. I laugh at the cake melting. How is was my 90+ year old great-aunts last family gathering. How after 9 years we still love each other. Focus on what went right.
That all said, I also think it's a fair question to ask if you did have exclusive rights to the area. If you did, I would be demanding compensation from the venue.
There's nothing you can do to change what happened. Just focus on the good of the day and move forward.
However you can also find out why the couple got in on the property and look at your contract. If you had exclusive rights and they were able to get on property I'd look into some kind of refund because the area clearly didn't provide any kind of security.
I'm curious about the kind of space you used. There's an old historic mansion on state property that you can book for weddings near me. It's actually on the same grounds where DH proposed. The venue will stay open until after the park closes but the park doesn't close to the public until sunset. Was your venue one of these types of places? I could see bringing in my own officiant if I was one of two people on public grounds and as long as I didn't book the mansion I wouldn't think about it. However I also wouldn't take photos that encroached on the party of someone else.
A call to your venue management sounds like it's in order.
If another couple just snuck into the grounds without the venue's permission, it's not so much the venue's fault, but they should've probably handled escorting that couple out of the area before things got too heated. I mean if your priest knew they were out there, surely someone from the venue should've noticed it too? Heck, even if you were both booked by the venue, the venue should've done more to prevent any confrontations or overlapping between the two events.
I am sorry you had to deal with this, no wedding goes perfectly, but nobody should have to deal with unintentionally sharing their venue when they paid for privacy.
Hopefully once you get some explanation/compensation/closure from your venue, you'll be able to focus more on all the good parts of the day. And hopefully one day this will just be a really funny story to tell your kids.
That said, it's like the Tony analogy of Stop and take a moment to look around the room for all the brown, look up, look down, look for the brown... Close your eyes and tell me what's red? The point being is you're focusing on one detail of the day that went awry instead of the million other details that went as planned and were joyous. The best thing about the past is - it's over. "One day you'll laugh about this" - the reality is "why wait?!?!". How many ways can you now find ways to laugh about this situation? On your 10th Anniversary you do not want to spend the day dwelling on this because that's wasted time that you can be smiling at each other and engaging in romantic looks instead. That's a far more worthy use of your time and energy. Be angry (and all other emotions you're feeling now), but put a cap on the time that you spend doing so because the value of your time is immeasurable.