“There will not be a wedding reception today,” the bride announced, in place of the vows she’d spent so long excitedly writing. “But instead, there will be a celebration of honesty, finding true love and following your heart even when it hurts.”
Weddings are big days, and when they go wrong, it can be spectacular. Read on for one of the more dramatic wedding disasters we’ve come across.
Bride finds out about her fiancé’s infidelity the night before their wedding
A former bride-to-be, identified as Casey, told her story to Body and Soul, an Australian lifestyle website.
The night before the ceremony, while spending time with her friends in a hotel room, Casey received a string of messages from a woman she didn’t know.
They were screenshots of conversations she had had with Casey’s partner – the man she was set to marry the next day.
“Loads of them,” Casey narrates. “Including selfies.” The other woman had dark hair and an olive complexion; Casey is blonde and fair. He had sent her all manner of flirtatious and intimate messages, each word “like a dagger in my heart”.
‘He had no idea what was coming’
Despite petitions to call off the wedding, Casey decided to go through with it – with a twist.
After a rotten night’s sleep, she and her bridesmaids arrived at the venue. Her “dream dress” feeling more like a costume, she made her way along the aisle, watched by family and friends, until she reached her fiancé’s side. But when the time came to read her vows, Casey made an announcement instead.
“There will be no wedding today,” she said. She describes the “ripple of shock” that went through those gathered, taking out her phone, and reading “every single message” the woman of the night before had sent her. One by one, until the color had completely drained from his face.
“I let my weeping eyes rise and meet his, and he had not one thing to say,” she writes. “He had no idea what was coming.” He left the church with his tail tucked between his legs, and Casey turned to the stunned crowd of onlookers.
How the happiest day of her life became a ‘celebration of honesty’
When Casey received the fateful missives, she was understandably devastated. She’d been building up to the big day for a long time, saying it was “supposed to be the happiest day of my life”.
But the shocking discovery turned that on its head. Instead, it was to be the end of her “dream relationship”. Her decision that everyone should witness the unfolding events, rather than simply calling off the wedding, was painful but honest.
“I love all of you,” she quotes herself as saying. “And as horrible as this is, I’m glad you all are here. There will not be a wedding reception today, but instead, there will be a celebration of honesty, finding true love and following your heart even when it hurts.”
She then describes the audience’s muted reaction: a “smattering of applause” and a titter of awkward cheering.
“What was the correct response to this news?” she asks. “It was certainly not the wedding day I had planned. But to our credit, it was one hell of a party.”
Find Casey’s whole story here. Hopefully she’s familiar with the rules on who gets to keep the engagement ring if the wedding plans fall through…
