25 People Share Wedding Stories Where Everything Went To Hell Right At The Altar

We’ve seen it in movies, that moment when someone ‘objects’ to the wedding at the altar itself. It’s always incredibly dramatic with audibly shocked gasps as the music crescendoes. But have you ever seen it happen in real life? One Redditor became curious about this rare phenomenon, what caused it, and how things played out. Scroll below to check out the most intriguing responses when asked, “Has anyone ever attended a wedding that got called off on the altar?”

#1 I was a bridesmaid. All of her friends (including myself), her parents, and anyone else with half a brain had been telling her to get rid of him all along, and to definitely not marry him (no job, physically and verbally abusive).

Image source: SFbaimei, Alina Skazka/ pexels (not the actual photo)

We’d given up by the time of her wedding, and I was trying to be happy for her. Instead of saying ‘I do,’ she was just looking around the room and then ran back down the aisle. We were all dumbfounded, except for her father who yelled a variation of what we were all thinking, “Thank You, Jesus Christ.”.

#2 I’ve been at a wedding that got called off. The chick’s ex-boyfriend came up and punched the groom in the face. It was a pretty bad altarcation.

Image source: Nothing_But_Puns, Lukas/ pexels (not the actual photo)

#3 My mother owns a wedding photography business and she has personally shot well over 1000 weddings. She has so many stories that would go great in this thread.

Image source: Chase1126, Pavel Danilyuk / pexels (not the actual photo)

One of my favorite being when the groom put photos of his fiance cheating on him under everyone’s chair and when the ceremony was about to begin he told everyone to grab the picture, called her a cheating wh*re and walked out leaving her father with the bill.

#4 A friend of my family had been together with his lady for 7 years and decided to have a lavish destination wedding. We’re from Australia and they wanted to have a Las Vegas wedding. If you wanted to attend you had to pay the ridiculous amount to fly over to America, and for most of the family it took a lot of saving. Apparently, for months before the wedding the sister of the bride had been saying to the bride spiteful things about marriage and about not going through with the wedding.

The big day came, everyone had spent a lot of money getting to their dream destination and the ceremony was beautiful. However, when it came to sign the documents and make it legal the spiteful sister decided to have one last “joke” about marriage being forever. The bride then proceeded to freak out and didnt sign the paper, she just said “I can’t do this” and ran out. The sister and the bride ended up taking the honeymoon and the groom just wandered around the hotel for hours in a daze.

Needless to say everyone was pissseeddd that the bride insisted on a lavish overseas wedding that most family members couldnt afford and didnt end up going through with it.

Image source: thorns92

#5 Wedding in Niagara, groom and groomsmen show up for the photos HAMMERED. They r so rude and horrible that the bride storms off saying she “just can’t do this”. Then the would-have-been mother in law reams out the a*****e groom. He flips out, tears his tuxedo off of his arms and body in a fit of rage, and runs in to the woods to escape. True story. Happened this summer.

Image source: anon, Spencer Selover/ pexels (not the actual photo)

#6 Went to a wedding in Tuscany, the couple was from San Francisco, but both had family from around Europe and the East Coast, so Italy was a good central location.

Image source: solderat90, Jonas Wilson / pexels (not the actual photo)

They rented a villa to have the wedding at, around 100 guest, gorgeous setting, impeccably catered, but the bride got cold feet and disappeared about an hour before the ceremony. The groom gave a very eloquent speech, thanking everyone for coming, explained what had happened and really put everyone at ease, and we had a great party. He got pretty smashed afterwards, but the social grace with which he handled it was remarkable.

#7 A good friend of mine was getting married to a guy we all liked. He was a strict Catholic, refused to have sex before marriage, always went to confession. I was a bridesmaid and my husband was Best Man. When the priest said, “Is there anyone who objects to this wedding? Speak now,” everyone giggled because the guy’s mom was giving the stink eye to the crowd, daring someone to speak up. The priest chuckled and began to talk again.

Image source: bekahbv, Pavel Danilyuk/ pexels (not the actual photo)

“We come together not to mark the start of a relationship, but to recognize a bond that…”

“SCREW THEIR BOND! She’s pregnant with my baby!”

Turns out my ex-friend was having sex with the groom’s cousin. She was, in fact, pregnant by him and was hoping to trick her fiance into thinking it was his. Her fiance was livid. In the end, he forced her to pay his family back half the money they spent of their $75,000 wedding.

#8 I was not there, but my wife was (before we were married). One of the gifts was a set of nice new white sheets for the marriage night, so they do not ruin the bedsheets on their first time. During the reception post ceremony, the bride comes back and tells everybody to go home and take back their gifts, except the white sheets. They were used by her husband and sister.

Image source: namer98, Yena Kwon/ pexels (not the actual photo)

#9 Wow this is so crazy it was posted today. I was supposed to be in a wedding yesterday that got called off three hours prior. (a lot of us were glad.)
The bride was crazy. Threw lighter fluid on her fiancé and had a lighter in hand. Threw household objects at his head. Tried to slash his tires with a huge butcher knife.  Then she put on Facebook that she hoped God had no mercy on his worthless soul.  She has no sense. Gladly he came to his.

Image source: Burnsite

#10 No, but a friend was in a wedding that ended up getting called off just before the ceremony. The groom refused to sign a pre-nup, so the father of the bride comes out and tells the guests that the wedding is off, the folks on the bride’s side can stay for the reception (this was at some country club), but the groom’s side can f**k off.

Image source: pppeater

#11 This is actually kinda stupid, but during an Indian ceremony, when the bride and groom stood up to start their ceremony, the bride’s skirt fell. The groom had a fit and stopped the wedding because of it. Apparently it was disrespectful on her part. They never ended up getting married later (pretty sure it was arranged though, so, good on her?).

Image source: Electro_Jade, Rani Sahu/ pexels (not the actual photo)

#12 My mom was engaged to a guy before my Dad, and stood him up at the altar. About a week before the wedding, this guy she was engaged to started to grow a beard, with plans to shave it off before the wedding. Apparently, it had a very red tint to it, and she refused to possibly have kids with red hair.

Image source: chronorunner, Karolina Kaboompics / pexels (not the actual photo)

She left the man at the alter day of the wedding, never walked down the aisle and just walked out.

Mom left a guy heartbroken because she wouldn’t have a ginger kid.
Then I married a ginger.

#13 Two friends of mine were getting married. They planned to tie the know in Edinburgh and had booked a church, hotel, reception etc. About 70 people flew over to be there, most from Dublin, but some from as far away as Tokyo, New York and Dubai.

On the morning of the wedding the groom said he didn’t want to be married and he did a runner after the bride (understandably) got a bit ~~angry~~ bats**t insane with rage.

Basically, he liked being single. He would get home, play his computer games, go and watch some GAA games at the weekend. He was happy doing his own thing and didn’t want that to change.

He dissapeared the morning of the wedding and hasn’t been seen since, that was two years ago. We know from speaking to mutual freinds that he is Okay, he’s just living the life he wanted to. He has never apologised for what he did.

What made the bride so angry is not being jilted, it was the fact that he waited to the morning of the wedding to pull out. He admitted he had felt that way for some months, but didn’t have the guts to tell her. A lot of money had been spent by a lot of people to get to the wedding and she had to do all the apologising.

Still, it turned out Okay. The bride calmed down after a few hours after realising she dodged a bullet and we all had quite a bender in Edinburgh that Saturday night.

Image source: MmmmBisto

#14 Yes. I was at a wedding of a close friend in Manchester, UK. Everything was going on as planned – ish, when the police came in and arrested the couple. ‘Someone’ had notified the police that an ‘illegal’ (sham) wedding was taking place. Lots of people from both familes explained that they have known the couple for 2-3 years – not a f**k was given by the police. The case went to the court, and the CPS (crown prosecution service) got some bollocking. My friend and his then fiance (now wife) were compensated – £22.50!

Image source: CrystalMaze

#15 Ive had a wedding were the husband jokingly said no at the altar, the clerk from the local authority was a bit of an old school dude accepted that anwser… They married 2 weeks later.

Image source: imNTR

#16 At my friends’ wedding, everyone stood as the bride started her walk down the aisle…everyone expect the groom’s great grandmother, who had died suddenly and quietly just moments before. The wedding was stopped and everyone disbanded so that the families could deal with the tragedy.

Image source: writenroll, Pavel Danilyuk/ pexels (not the actual photo)

They held a (non-fatal) wedding a few months later that included many tributes to the great grandmum and, 10 years later, are happily married.

#17 I’ve been to one wedding where the bride bolted about 20 min before the ceremony. She asked everyone to leave the room she was getting ready in, saying she needed a minute. So, family thought she was being super spiritual and talking to god, but in fact decided to do some blow and decided “f**k this marriage s**t” and left.

Image source: anon, Hebert Santos/ pexels (not the actual photo)

And another one where in the middle of the vows, the guy stopped the priest and said “i can’t do this” and literally ran out of the place. From what I found out later, he hid on the resort’s property in some bushes until his mother (who hated the almost bride) happened to walk by. He had her retrieve his cellphone and keys from his room. The groom also went on the honeymoon trip with his mom.. sooooo.. yeah.

#18 My girlfriend at the time’s best friend, Sara, was supposed to get married this past summer, and my gf was going to the maid of honor. At 8 AM on the *day of the wedding* gf gets a call from Sara, who is hysterical, saying that Tim, the groom, disappeared the night before and no one can find him (it is implied that his parents know where he is, but they’ve always hated Sara for absolutely no reason and so they claim ignorance). We wait around for hours just waiting to hear something, but we’re getting tons of conflicting information, from “Tim just went out for a little bachelor hell-raising” to “literally no one knows where he is.”

So gf and I end up heading to Jean’s house, who was supposed to be the other bridesmaid, to wait around anxiously. Finally, Sara and her mother arrive, and Tim FINALLY calls Sara (after ignoring about 30 of her calls/texts). They have an obviously tense conversation outside, and Sara comes back in to announce to everyone there that Tim has decided not to go through with it (presumably because his (truly evil) parents have finally persuaded him not to be with her anymore). It is now 2 PM. The ceremony was supposed to be at 3 PM.

So we all get dressed up fancy anyway (except the ‘bride’ just goes in jeans, because, as she summarized so eloquently, “f**k it”) and just go to the reception, since, as the mother of the bride stated to her daughter, “we paid for all that food and booze and it is NOT going to waste. let’s go get smashed and say good riddance, baby.” So we got fabulously drunk on the open bar and danced around with her little 3-year-old nephew and shared all the things we’d never liked about Tim.

The real kicker though? Tim was in the army, so the two of them were already on-paper married so that she could be deployed with him. The ceremony meant *nothing* legally – it was just the worst way that he could ever have ended the relationship. AND, by the time this happened, it had been more than 6 months, so they couldn’t do a simple annulment. She’s still wading through the divorce BS, but at least her dad is a Marine and he can get this scumbag guy in craploads of trouble for what he did. His (deadbeat groom’s) CO was NOT HAPPY about having to reverse all the deployment paperwork and get the jilted bride’s stuff back out of shipment to goddamn Germany. All in all, epic fallout that he deserved, thankfully. It was quite the day.

Image source: tstandsfortrouble

#19 I was not in attendance because I was like 2 at the time, but a cousin of my Dad was on the altar ready to go, then the groomsmen showed up with the groom still f****d up from the night before. Groom threw up on the altar when he got up there. Wedding called off and the two never married. Great-grandfather prevented everyone from eating all the food at the reception and everyone just kinda went home.

Image source: countrytime, cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)

#20 I was to be married March 4, 2003. At my fiances bachelorette she ended up cheating on me with a guy from out of state, someone she had never even layed eyes on before in her life. We had everything paid for already. The night before the wedding I received a call from our good friend, (also the person to marry us) who told me everything that went down at her party. I guess to make a long story short, I went with her dad to the venue to let them know that there would be no wedding shortly after I broke the news to her.

Image source: axionj, cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)

tldr; We shot the cake that night.

#21 So close. Couple of co-workers got married on a Saturday. At the reception, with at least a few drinks in him, the husband told his wife, “You know you weren’t my first choice.” Monday morning, we found our wedding gifts on our desks.

Image source: wufoo2, YuriArcursPeopleimages / envato (not the actual photo)

#22 I have a friend whose fiancee ran his car off the road on the way to the wedding. Hey may have been trying to k*ll himself. Turned out he’s gay and hadn’t been dealing with it very well.

Image source: shadetreephilosopher, Hassan OUAJBIR/ pexels (not the actual photo)

#23 A few years ago, a friend of ours was working as a waiter at a big venue where they host receptions for huge weddings.

Huge crowd in attendance – then the groom has a heart attack and dies right in the middle of the reception. They give him CPR in front of everyone but he died right there.

It was hugely traumatic (obviously) – a lot of the waiting staff had to have trauma counselling.

We all learnt to appreciate life better after that night.

Image source: urtext

#24 My roommate was a bass player in a wedding band for 11 years. At one classy wedding, the groom’s father caught the bride and the best man f*****g before the ceremony. The two families got into a huge brawl, the police came, and the band never even got to play. After the commotion died down, the bride’s father paid the band anyway.

Image source: y0umadbr0

#25 My own wedding got called off mid-ceremony. I had just finished saying my own vows before being arrested by local police on a assault/domestic-violence charge. (I beat up my *almost* brother-in-law for stealing my car. FWIW, he punched me in the face first but that doesn’t matter in my state.) Police didn’t care what was going on, I got carried out in handcuffs in front of ALL of my family.

Image source: HollaPeno, Kindel Media / pexels (not the actual photo)

There are many negative consequences to having your wedding day ending like that beyond the obvious. Have never been able to repair my relationship with her family.

TL,DR; got arrested at the alter.