Wedding guests have opened up on Reddit about the most ridiculous requests they received from married couples in the lead up to their weddings.
And it’s safe to say a lot of them ended up in major feuds.
From the couple who wanted their maid of honour to pull weeds out before their garden wedding to the couple who weren’t allowed to speak to or dance with one another for fear of ‘out-cuting’ the bride and groom, here are their stories.
‘They banned me from speaking to or dancing with my partner.’
“I was a bridesmaid and my significant other was a groomsman, and we were banned from looking at, speaking to or dancing with each other for fear of ‘out-cuting’ the happy couple. We’d been together for five years at this point.”
‘They banned umbrellas. It rained.’
“Outdoor wedding with no back-up plan on the shores of lake Michigan. Pouring rain and wind but the happy couple requested no umbrellas because they wanted to be able to see the faces in the crowd.
“They were able to see the very wet and angry faces of people whose clothes were ruined while the bride and groom stayed dry under the gazebo.”
‘They said it was my responsibility to keep their marriage in check.’
“In college I was a best man for a wedding where the bride demanded we all wore designer suits. I had to sell a guitar to afford just the rental. I had no money before, and after I had no money and one less guitar.
“Then at the reception the groom pulled me aside and told me it was my job as best man to make sure their marriage went well. I was supposed to check in and help them with marriage stuff to make sure they didn’t get divorced.
“I looked him in the eye and said I can’t be responsible for your marriage. He didn’t talk to me from that second until just a couple of months ago - six years after his wedding.”
‘They wanted me to fork out $500 on trousers.’
″[I was asked to buy] $500 pants. After I refused, the bride freaked because it made the wedding party uneven. Groom bought my pants, I wore them once, they divorced. He seems a lot happier with his new wife.”
‘They wanted me to pull weeds out of their parents’ yard.′
“I was the maid of honour. She demanded I come pull weeds out of her parents’ yard a day or two before the wedding because the reception was at her parents’ house. I had already gone though multiple ridiculous requests the week leading up to the wedding, so this one I put my foot down and said ‘no’. Got through the wedding. No longer friends. She did send a gift when I got married - a centrepiece from HER wedding, that I had helped make.”
‘They asked me to dye my hair brown to match the other bridesmaids.’
“My best friend asked me to dye my hair from blonde to brown, because her other bridesmaids all had brown hair and she wanted to be the only one with blonde hair. She did pay for me to get it done at a professional salon, so I didn’t mind too much, and her photos did look amazing after. However, I definitely have a few friends who thought I was crazy for agreeing to that request.”
‘They asked me to cook the whole dinner and pay for half of it.’
“Got asked to stand up for a wedding during culinary school for a high school friend. She said she didn’t want us to buy presents, but wanted us to help with various wedding things since it was a backyard wedding - like someone help with the flowers, another do favours, table settings, etc. She wanted to know if I could help with dinner. I said ‘sure’ and asked her what she wanted help with, figuring it was prep work for someone else to do.
“No, she wanted me to handle the whole dinner. As in cooking for 200 people, as a 19-year-old having only done a year of culinary school. She also wanted me to help pay for the food I’d be making, as their gift. She wanted me to make caesar salad, potatoes au gratin and roast enough ducks for 200, by myself, and pay for about half of it.
“I was learning how to be a pastry chef, I explained and she just stared at me blankly.
“I told her there wasn’t any feasible way I could do it, not only because that’s fucking crazy, but because I literally wasn’t trained to do it, and I got uninvited from the wedding.”
‘They asked my girlfriend to get extensions so she wouldn’t ruin the photos.’
“My friends were getting married and my girlfriend and I were both in the wedding party. The bride’s mother suggested that my girlfriend got hair extensions to be in the wedding to not “ruin the photos” for her daughter.
“My girlfriend has very short hair because she has Graves’ disease. Her hair has become very brittle and started falling out in clumps.
“I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be rude, but telling somebody that they have to put on a wig because you don’t think they look good enough to be in your daughter’s photos seems pretty terrible to me.”
‘They asked me to be dandruff monitor for the groom.’
“The groom asked me to ‘keep an eye’ on his tux for signs of dandruff (he had a bad case of it at the time). I told him to choose a light-coloured tux, but the bride insisted the guys wore black - a colour that, of course, showed every particle of dandruff.
“So I placed a small brush in my pocket, and every so often would ‘dust him off’ as discreetly as possible throughout the day.”
‘Attending their wedding is costing me more than my entire wedding.’
“It wasn’t one single request, but more rather an unreasonable accumulation of requests that have added up. I am a bridesmaid in a wedding for a friend who moved to another city five hours away, and she and the maid of honour just keep planning event after event that all the bridesmaids are expected to attend.
“I had to drive in for her wedding dress shopping and bridesmaid dress shopping, they planned a three-day-long bachelorette party in a third city, she’s having TWO bridal showers, her wedding is at a resort in yet another town where we’ll have to take a three-day weekend to get there and there is only one (expensive) hotel option, and of course, I also have to pay for my own dress, shoes, make-up, hair, and jewellery that she picked. Oh and the whole bridal party is making her extra DIY-style nostalgia presents as well as the regular wedding present I’m expected to bring, so I have to buy craft supplies (which aren’t cheap) and shit for a fancy scrap book, photo album, letter book, ‘wedding day emergency kit’ and a bunch of other shit the maid of honour keeps thinking up. All of the things sound normal and reasonable until you start adding up the costs ($2,500-$3,000).
“I had a teeny tiny super considerate wedding when I got married and to be a bridesmaid in this wedding is literally costing me more than my entire tiny wedding. I do recognise that it’s not an entirely fair comparison when mine was unusually small, but I think spending less than $3,000 to be in someone else’s fucking wedding is a fair expectation.
“I 100% regret accepting being a part of her bridal party and I would never do it again except for my sister. It’s a huge honour to be asked, but I simply can’t afford it.”
‘They wanted me to bring my engaged male friend, not my boyfriend, as a plus one.’
“My sister addressed my invite to me and a male friend I had known for about 10 years. A male friend whom she had always had a huge crush on. Even better was that I had been dating my boyfriend for two years at this point and my male friend was engaged.
“When I asked my sister why she put my friend as my plus one, and not my boyfriend, she said that she didn’t want some random guy in her wedding pictures.
“I went to her wedding solo. No surprise, she and her husband divorced two years later and I have been happily married to that ‘random guy’ now for 15 years.”
‘They continued to add things on to my to-do list, which I couldn’t afford.’
“My friend was set to get married in November of 2016. He got engaged in October of 2015.
“From the time he got engaged until April 2016 he continued to add things on to my to-do list for the wedding. It seemed like once a month he’d say: ‘By the way, I need you to do this and buy this for the wedding.’
“My wife was also a bridesmaid. The bride had picked out very expensive outfits for the bridesmaids - $300 dresses, $150 shoes, and $75 costume jewellery. There was also a weekend at the beach planned for the summer and my wife was responsible for the food at the bride’s shower.
“In March 2016 my friend had pneumonia and was hospitalised. In total, he was down with it for about three weeks. During that time the wife and I talked about the wedding and totalled up how much it would cost us. We ended up with a figure of about $1,500 for a wedding an hour away from where we live, which we thought was absurd. The wife and I both worked, but didn’t make enough money to drop that much on someone else’s wedding.
“So when my friend healed up, I went by his house and told him the wife was going to drop out as a bridesmaid as the cost had risen too high. We were also upset with how they had been treating us as friends. He was initially surprised, but then we continued talking. The next day, after getting an earful from the fiancée I’m sure, he called me and told me I was out as the best man and to never speak to him again.”
‘They wanted the wedding party to do a group picture in their underwear.’
“It was my wife who was one of the bridesmaids. The couple was way over-sexed or trashy, I’m not sure which, but they wanted the entire wedding party to do a group pic in just their lingerie/boxers (except the bride and groom).
“She noped out of that but apparently the other two girls and the groomsmen went for it - they still did the pic anyhow. Then they wanted the groomsmen and maids to pair up and kiss for a picture - none of them knew each other.
“Apparently she [my wife] was the only one who didn’t. Then they basically shamed her for opting out of both of those to the point she came and found me, crying, so we went home.”