Just-Married Couples Tell Us Their Most Awkward Wedding Moments 

Oof, that’s awkward: When moments you just can’t plan for arise—an uncomfortable conflict, an inappropriate declaration, an unfortunate blunder—you’ve got to handle it on your feet. Read these local couples’ stories to learn from their discomfort—or, at the very least, to know you’re not alone.

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My dear guy friend from back in middle school professed his love for me. On the dance floor. At my wedding. He told me that he wished he’d been the one standing at the end of the aisle. I think he was very drunk, but it was awkward nonetheless.

At the end of the reception, as we were getting into the limo to go back to the hotel for the after-party, our DJ came tearing out of the venue kind of aghast, yelling, “This is not what we’d agreed on!” All the other vendors had invoiced us before the wedding and been paid, but she hadn’t—we had just agreed on payment via email—so we hadn’t cut her a check yet. Turned out that my wife’s father had handed out envelopes with tips to all the vendors, including the DJ, who opened it, thought the tip was her full payment and that we had shortchanged her—and was furious. We explained what had happened and everyone calmed down, but it made for a sort of awkward end to the festivities.

Besides coordinating the food and cake, all the on-site coordinator had to do at the hotel where we had our wedding was deal with the tent—and it took her forever. I waited for size options and quotes for months, and when she finally forwarded me an email from the tent company with the info, I started reading from the bottom and saw that she wrote to the vendor, “Please let me know when you can get this quote turned around, we are dealing with a very ‘high maintenance bride.’” I obviously called her out on it—it was so unprofessional! (By the way, her only other job, the food, was messed up, too. I asked for a white cake and they made it green!)

After a Catholic mass—including a wedding mass—the priest closes with, “This mass is ended; let us go in peace.” My husband and I had been married all of a few minutes, and as we turned to walk back up the aisle and process out of the church, my uncle, who was the priest celebrating our wedding ceremony, bellowed, “This marriage is ended! Let us go in peace.” The church mostly burst into laughter right away, and my uncle held it together until we turned around—but my aunt snapped a picture of us walking back up the aisle with me wearing a somewhat pained smile on my face, and my uncle in the background in front of the altar, doubled over at the waist and laughing.

My husband’s extremely drunk, extremely annoying cousin followed me around all night at our wedding, begging me to give her my bouquet so she could take it home and dry it for me, so I would have a keepsake forever and ever. I was finally so fed up with her nagging that I handed it over halfway through the reception. Guess what? I never laid eyes on that bouquet again.

A Real Housewife from O.C. tried to get into my wedding while the party was in full swing. My brother-in-law had to go deal with it and tell her it was a private party and nobody could come in, and evidently she and her party got pretty huffy.

My uncle performed our wedding ceremony, so he was standing at the end of the aisle along with Doug, my husband. My dad and I came down the aisle to where they were waiting, and Uncle Charlie started in with my dad standing beside me, waiting for that point in the ceremony where the officiant asks, “Who gives this woman to be wed?” so he could go and take his chair on the lawn. Only Uncle Charlie blipped right over that “Who gives this woman” part, so Dad was just left … standing there with Doug and me, like a fifth wheel, while the ceremony went on. Awkward! At some point, he realized his redundancy wasn’t going to be recognized by Uncle Charlie, so he sort of shrugged and turned around and went and sat down. I’m not sure anyone else there noticed, but boy, I sure did.

This article originally appeared in the fall/winter 2015 issue of Philadelphia Wedding. 

RELATED: Brides & Grooms: Read These Nightmare Tales from Wedding Guests So You Don’t Make the Same Mistakes These Couples Did 

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