I had a come apart when I DH and I realized only 2 hours before the wedding that our marriage license was in our car that he had dropped off at our hotel that was an hour away from the ceremony site. Thank God for his Uncle who rushed there and back to get it for us!
the morning of my wedding, my grandmother announced "THE WEDDING IS RUINED!!!" because my two cousins (9 and 3, ring bearers) had put too much gel in their hair. My mom was able to fix it and they came to me for "approval" and I was like.. whatever. But apparently too much gel can ruin a wedding according to my grandmother.
Then my sister and her boyfriend decided to have a fight at my wedding, which I ended up not even finding out about until later, but she left early because of it.
The only thing that kind of bothered me was that my sister's boyfriend was driving one of my grandmothers and he got lost (which I still don't understand, it was a 5 minute drive straight shot on and off the highway) so we ended up starting later than we had planned- didn't ruin my wedding but I wasn't too happy about leaving everyone standing around waiting.
But the biggest was my SIL being pissed about some absurd bachelorette drama where she felt that she was mistreated by my friends and it was my fault since I didn't side with her (when in reality it was the other way around). She didn't talk to me at all during our wedding and even during the after party leaned over me to give FIL a hung good bye and didn't acknowledge me at all!
That didn't ruin the day at all! As time goes by I remember it less and less (unless I am watching the video and see the snarky faces she's making at me....)
Only if you let it ruin your day. Attitude it everything. I figured that if we were married at the end of the day, then our wedding day was a success. Everything else was just insignificant details.
My wedding day wasn't perfect, but I didn't let any of it really get to me. Our cake was not at all decorated as requested or ordered. The flavors were correct and it tasted SO amazing... the décor looked okay, but was completely not what had been agreed on (we had requested a geometric quilt type pattern on it and they some swirly piping design instead). We figured it didn't really matter and enjoyed the cake anyway. Our reaction was really just "oh, that's not what it was supposed to be... oh well, doesn't really matter", then kept on partying.
Our DJ was horrible. For our first dance, he started playing the father-daughter dance song. Then we had one song we had requested to be played sometime during the night... he played it during the cake cutting when nobody was dancing. Then he started playing songs and genres from our do-not-play list. Our wedding coordinator finally talked to him when he started playing hard core rap (complete with swearing and not at all wedding appropriate) to our group of primarily 50-60+ year old guests. But, it was what it was... it certainly didn't ruin my wedding.
BIL's gf was pissed because his ex gf texted him and us congratulating us and their family the morning of the wedding. She was part of the family for 7 years, and we were close, so we were all touched at the things she said in it. Current gf had taken his phone, saw it, and proceeded to be angry half of the day. Its obvious in some photos she is upset. She had other personal issues happening too but it was frustrating that a text that was meant to be a kind gesture unrelated to her made her angry for the duration of our ceremony.
My flowers were a bit different than what I asked for. They were great, but one specific very bright orange red set wasn't quite my taste. I took a breath, thanked the delivery person, and proceeded to go get married. No point being upset, and they were still gorgeous.
I suppose if I fell into the lake when we went canoeing after the ceremony that would have sucked, but it would have made for a lifelong hilarious story. I was able to make it out of the canoe and stay dry thankfully.
My only real fear for our wedding day is that I will have a migraine. I have chronic migraines and though I've been dealing with them for about 6 years, I haven't been able to find anything that helps control them for a long period of time. I do know most of my triggers so I think that will help decrease my chances of having one of our wedding day but like anything else, some are unpredictable. I need to keep reminding myself to relax because the anxiety/stress I am feeling about possibly having a migraine that day could very well cause me to have a migraine that day! I know it won't completely ruin the wedding because I'll still be married to FI at the end of it but I would prefer to be pain free.
1) The couple or close family member get into a horrific car accident on the way to the ceremony.
2) A tornado comes through the night before and destroys your wedding venue
3) Everyone at your wedding gets food poisoning and vomits/shits everywhere
4) The couple or officiant gets arrested right before or during the ceremony
5) Guests start to fight at your reception and someone stabs someone else with a steak knife
6) One person decides to become a runaway bride/groom right before the vows start
I am sure there are others, but to me those would put a major damper on a wedding day.
But in all reality there are very few things that would ruin a wedding day. The wrong flowers, too much hair gel, a tear in the dress, the wrong music played at the wrong time, etc, etc, etc do not ruin a wedding. And unless pointed out to guests are hardly/if at all noticeable. Things only "ruin" a wedding day because the couple chooses to let those things ruin it.
Besides those big ones like a license, officiant, and your FI.
One of our guests toddlers was running around the back of the ceremony space for the duration of the ceremony (which was only like 15 minutes). He didn't make a sound, just ran in circles while mom tended to him. I had no clue that this happened until after.
Someone came in late. Didn't notice.
DH's weird unpredictable brother decided to show up to the wedding in his tux that we weren't sure he had followed through and ordered. We threw him in the line up, no problem.
All these things that seem like OMG I WOULD JUST DIE don't really matter in the moment.
I kissed FI too early (like, in the middle of our ceremony after our priest made a long awkward pause). Oh well, two kisses, NBD.
My MOH didn't eat all morning (even though I kept telling her she should eat something) and almost passed out during the ceremony. She ended up walking off the altar and sat in the back row until the ceremony was over. I didn't hear/notice a thing until afterwards when guests were asking me if she was ok. Luckily, she was.
MIL wore a white dress with silver accents (so not COMPLETELY white). Oh well, at least she warned me ahead of time so I was expecting it.
None of these things "ruined" my wedding. In fact, the unstaged kiss is something I'll fondly remember.
1) The couple or close family member get into a horrific car accident on the way to the ceremony.
2) A tornado comes through the night before and destroys your wedding venue
3) Everyone at your wedding gets food poisoning and vomits/shits everywhere
4) The couple or officiant gets arrested right before or during the ceremony
5) Guests start to fight at your reception and someone stabs someone else with a steak knife
6) One person decides to become a runaway bride/groom right before the vows start
I am sure there are others, but to me those would put a major damper on a wedding day.
But in all reality there are very few things that would ruin a wedding day. The wrong flowers, too much hair gel, a tear in the dress, the wrong music played at the wrong time, etc, etc, etc do not ruin a wedding. And unless pointed out to guests are hardly/if at all noticeable. Things only "ruin" a wedding day because the couple chooses to let those things ruin it.
H and I went to his friend's wedding a few weeks ago where 2 of the groomsmen got arrested the night before the wedding. Only one of them made it to the ceremony in time. As much as it probably sucked to not have the other GM there, the bride and groom had a wonderful time and enjoyed every second of the ceremony and party!
My only real fear for our wedding day is that I will have a migraine. I have chronic migraines and though I've been dealing with them for about 6 years, I haven't been able to find anything that helps control them for a long period of time. I do know most of my triggers so I think that will help decrease my chances of having one of our wedding day but like anything else, some are unpredictable. I need to keep reminding myself to relax because the anxiety/stress I am feeling about possibly having a migraine that day could very well cause me to have a migraine that day! I know it won't completely ruin the wedding because I'll still be married to FI at the end of it but I would prefer to be pain free.
I have the exact same fear. We would have to have the ceremony in whispers in a pitch black room. FI would feel AWFUL because he knows how horribly painful migraines are for me. It would NOT be a good day.
I had a strong tropical storm hit on my wedding. It was to be a beach wedding.
Funny enough we had the wedding in NJ instead of the islands to avoid hurricanes/tropical storms.
My wedding was not ruined. I'm sure it would have ruined a lot of couple's weddings, but not ours. In our case it's about attitude. We can't control the weather, sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Oh and having a good backup plan for an outdoor wedding helped.
There are some legit things that can ruin a wedding. But I think those things are pretty rare. The people who find think the BM's shoes can ruin a wedding are mostly likely high maintenance.
ETA - because I didn't even understand what I wrote.
What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests. Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated.
My grandmother didn't come to the wedding... because my mom and her siblings were afraid she might inadvertently ruin it, and so no one volunteered to take her. She's got pulmonary hypertension and really shouldn't travel with her oxygen, etc, and is in denial about it so she does things she shouldn't.
Everyone was afraid she'd do something she shouldn't and put herself in the hospital in the middle of the reception. I'm not sure that would have ruined it, but it definitely would have put a damper on things to have an ambulance show up.
At my brother's reception an ambulance showed up because my cousin who has celiacs was served the wrong pasta and ended up very sick. Most guests didn't even know, and my brother and SIL were left mostly out of the loop. Now it makes for a great story (my cousin would probably disagree).
Wait, how is that a "great story" ? As someone with chronic stomach problems, I can tell you that a reaction like that is horrendous and painful and takes quite some time to recover from. And I believe that with Celaics, it's life-threatening as well. There's nothing entertaining or great about it. JFC.
I thought the same thing. That isn't remotely funny. I have friends who literally can go into a coma and die if they have gluten. That is so fucked up to call it a "great story."
I had a ton of things go wrong on my wedding day. The DJ was late, the PA system crapped out during the ceremony, DJ claimed I never sent him my list of songs, my cake FELL, we didn't get the posed pictures we wanted, I ripped the bottom of my dress.
But no, none of that ruined my day. In fact, my day was still perfect. The only thing that I would consider ruining it was if one our relatives fell ill or if one of us didn't show up.
I kept having nightmares before my wedding that we forgot the rings at home. I must have checked to make sure they were in the bag about 60 times before we left for the venue.
Things that did happen that didn't ruin my wedding, but still kind of sucked: -DH's best woman didn't show up and didn't call us to say she wasn't coming (she had a pretty serious emergency, but still the lack of call was annoying) -one of the groomsmen's husband fell and broke his arm in 8 places and had to be rushed to the hospital after the reception. Groomsman calls H on his cell phone at midnight about it because he is worried that in rural Ohio the hospital won't be so good about letting him see his husband. I assured him that if that was the case, the hospital was going to have one very pissed off lawyer in a wedding dress making quite a scene until they did. -another friend's girlfriend got into a minor car accident on the way to the wedding, missed the ceremony and most of the reception. Fortunately, she was not the second guest to have to go to the hospital. -My best friend wasn't able to come to the wedding, much less be in it, because she was coping with serious mental health issues. It really bummed me out. -HVAC system in the reception area wasn't working very well so it was WARM. I was so uncomfortable in my dress that I ended up changing half way through the reception. But I rocked the sundress I had packed for the next morning and had a great time dancing.
But even with all of this craziness, our wedding was beautiful, we had a great time, our guests had a great time, and most importantly we were married.
Re: Can one person/thing ruin your wedding?
Then my sister and her boyfriend decided to have a fight at my wedding, which I ended up not even finding out about until later, but she left early because of it.
The only thing that kind of bothered me was that my sister's boyfriend was driving one of my grandmothers and he got lost (which I still don't understand, it was a 5 minute drive straight shot on and off the highway) so we ended up starting later than we had planned- didn't ruin my wedding but I wasn't too happy about leaving everyone standing around waiting.
Only if you let it ruin your day. Attitude it everything. I figured that if we were married at the end of the day, then our wedding day was a success. Everything else was just insignificant details.
My wedding day wasn't perfect, but I didn't let any of it really get to me. Our cake was not at all decorated as requested or ordered. The flavors were correct and it tasted SO amazing... the décor looked okay, but was completely not what had been agreed on (we had requested a geometric quilt type pattern on it and they some swirly piping design instead). We figured it didn't really matter and enjoyed the cake anyway. Our reaction was really just "oh, that's not what it was supposed to be... oh well, doesn't really matter", then kept on partying.
Our DJ was horrible. For our first dance, he started playing the father-daughter dance song. Then we had one song we had requested to be played sometime during the night... he played it during the cake cutting when nobody was dancing. Then he started playing songs and genres from our do-not-play list. Our wedding coordinator finally talked to him when he started playing hard core rap (complete with swearing and not at all wedding appropriate) to our group of primarily 50-60+ year old guests. But, it was what it was... it certainly didn't ruin my wedding.
My flowers were a bit different than what I asked for. They were great, but one specific very bright orange red set wasn't quite my taste. I took a breath, thanked the delivery person, and proceeded to go get married. No point being upset, and they were still gorgeous.
I suppose if I fell into the lake when we went canoeing after the ceremony that would have sucked, but it would have made for a lifelong hilarious story. I was able to make it out of the canoe and stay dry thankfully.
I kissed FI too early (like, in the middle of our ceremony after our priest made a long awkward pause). Oh well, two kisses, NBD.
My MOH didn't eat all morning (even though I kept telling her she should eat something) and almost passed out during the ceremony. She ended up walking off the altar and sat in the back row until the ceremony was over. I didn't hear/notice a thing until afterwards when guests were asking me if she was ok. Luckily, she was.
MIL wore a white dress with silver accents (so not COMPLETELY white). Oh well, at least she warned me ahead of time so I was expecting it.
None of these things "ruined" my wedding. In fact, the unstaged kiss is something I'll fondly remember.
Things that did happen that didn't ruin my wedding, but still kind of sucked:
-DH's best woman didn't show up and didn't call us to say she wasn't coming (she had a pretty serious emergency, but still the lack of call was annoying)
-one of the groomsmen's husband fell and broke his arm in 8 places and had to be rushed to the hospital after the reception. Groomsman calls H on his cell phone at midnight about it because he is worried that in rural Ohio the hospital won't be so good about letting him see his husband. I assured him that if that was the case, the hospital was going to have one very pissed off lawyer in a wedding dress making quite a scene until they did.
-another friend's girlfriend got into a minor car accident on the way to the wedding, missed the ceremony and most of the reception. Fortunately, she was not the second guest to have to go to the hospital.
-My best friend wasn't able to come to the wedding, much less be in it, because she was coping with serious mental health issues. It really bummed me out.
-HVAC system in the reception area wasn't working very well so it was WARM. I was so uncomfortable in my dress that I ended up changing half way through the reception. But I rocked the sundress I had packed for the next morning and had a great time dancing.
But even with all of this craziness, our wedding was beautiful, we had a great time, our guests had a great time, and most importantly we were married.