Something about the high stress and expectations of a wedding seems to bring out the worst in people, especially brides. In their defense, society has been telling women forever that a wedding must be "perfect" and "the best day of your life." So you can't really blame a gal for caving under the pressure. But many brides take entitled, nightmare behavior way too far, earning the much-loathed and feared title of "bridezilla." And nobody is more familiar with bridezillas than people who work in the wedding and bridal industry.
Someone asked people on Reddit who work in this industry: "what are your worst bridezilla stories?" And it's not only brides who are guilty of bad behavior. Here are 20 stories about bridezillas, groomzillas, momzillas and a few made-of-honorzilas whose entitled, batsh*t crazy behavior was impossible to forget:
1.) From CapitanMyCaptain:
Oh I work as a wedding server, awesome job I love it. As soon as someone says bridezilla this one story where the manager of our hotel had to shut down the wedding halfway through comes to mind. This was the bridezilla of all the bridezillas I've ever seen.
There were a lot of little things leading up that were casual bridezilla until the wedding took a sharp turn. At one point she accused the wedding server staff of stealing her veil... then the manager found it in her room and also showed her the card swipes to her room proving only she had been in the room that day.
About 20 minutes later she was screaming at some poor front desk employee accusing her of stealing her wedding boots. Manager intervened and after a long talk the photographer told them he had a photo of the boots on the staircase of the church, and asked if she had worn them since... when she said no she told our place it was our job to have picked them up and made sure she had them (the church was not related to our place at all).
THEN shortly after she started opening the wedding gifts frantically inside the ballroom and screaming at anyone and everyone, guests included, saying someone stole her wedding certificate.
After that , our manager gathered the wedding staff and told us to take off our uniform jackets, Empty them in front of him, then to clock out and go home. Which we all did, none of us stole anything , and we heard next day the maid of honor had the certificate and after we left the wedding was shut down completely. Room left as is for the bride to come back to in the morning.
2.) From Haceldama:
Florist- We had a bride and her mother show up at 9am. They wanted to order a bridal bouquet, a mother of the bride cattelya orchid corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen. The wedding was scheduled for noon. Yep, three hours from then, and they wanted them ready by the time they were done with thier makeup appointment at the beauty parlor a few doors down. The bride was flipping through the FTD sample book and pointing out the style and flowers she wanted. Think garden roses with long sweeping trails of stephanotis and variegated ivy, all three of which would require at least a week's advanced order with our suppliers. She was absolutely gobsmacked that we didn't carry extremely expensive and highly perishable flowers at all times. Same with the catteleya orchid for the mom's corsage. My boss told them that since they didn't place an order beforehand they would be limited to what we had in stock, and simple styles that could be assembled quickly. The bride and her mom kept pointing at the book and arguing that we should have those specific flowers in stock. My boss eventually took the book off the desk and tossed it behind the counter.
The bride vacillated between tears and petulant whining that we were going to ruin her big day. My boss, who had a bone deep loathing for brides in general, told her she had ruined her own day by not ordering her flowers before her actual wedding day. The mom tried chewing out my boss for her lack of customer service skills. My boss told her that she was welcome to go down the street to Vons and ask their flower department to make thier order with whatever they had in stock. The mom said she'd do just that, and reassured the bride that she'd have her flowers done by the time her appointment was over. Both women stormed out.
I figured that was that, but my boss told me and the other girl to start on six simple dendrobium orchid bouts. Meanwhile she threw together a ribbon wrapped bridal bouquet with some white roses that were nearly past thier prime and some more dendros. Sure enough, twenty minutes later the MoB slunk back in and meekly asked if we were still able to assemble what they needed. We did. We also charged her a very large bitch tax- ahem, rush fee.
3.) From tishamingotrish:
I am a florist and serviced a bridezilla and groom without a hitch on my end. On their end? They Had to go out of state to get married because they had protective orders against each other!
4.) From Jadenlost:
I work at David's Bridal. Most of the times...it's not the bride. It's a mother of the bride or maid of honor.
I work in alterations. Most of the time, it takes more than one appointment to get things perfect. Bride comes in for her 2nd appointment for us to do any adjustments. She needed a couple of things adjusted.
Her mother told me I ruined her daughter's marriage.
Not wedding...but marriage.
All I could think was if needing to adjust something on your dress and having to come back for one more appointment make you think someone ruined your perfect life with someone...well...good luck to her groom.
5.) From atomic_tango:
My mom and I saw a great bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years back. We were in a small, local shop when another mother-daughter duo came in. The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they were here to pick up her daughter's dress, so the attendant looks her name up in the computer, frowns, and says, "Ma'am, you never bought the dress."
"What are you talking about?"
The attendant shows the lady the notes on her computer screen. "You said you wanted to think about it, and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn't hear back from you, we assumed you didn't want it."
"Well, we want it now."
"It's been over eight months", the attendant explained, "We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order you another one, and have it expedited here in a few weeks."
And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. "This is unacceptable!" The mother shrieked. "We have her alterations scheduled in two hours! The wedding is a week away! I can't believe you sold her dress!" The bride, meanwhile, is slumped against the desk and sobbing like someone killed her dog.
My mom and I are just open-mouthed staring at this point. The attendant was trying to be diplomatic, but is clearly as baffled as we are. "Ma'am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn't yours until you pay for it."
After some more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant came back over to us and I asked her, "Does that kind of thing happen a lot?"
The poor lady just deflated. "All the time."
It baffles me to this day. How do you schedule alterations on a dress that you never purchased? Why would you wait until a week before the wedding to pick up your dress? How do you make it to adulthood without knowing how basic buying and selling transactions work?
TL;DR - Turns out dress shops can't read your mind, and you need to actually pay money for a wedding dress before it is yours. Go figure.
6.) From Adnarim-Rekanoh:
I worked at David’s Bridal and I have to say that I never really had a terrible bride. It was always the moms, grandmas, sisters and friends that were terrible. Either they hated what the bride would pick out for them to wear or they would hate what she was picking out for herself to wear. At DB we have kinda strict appointment guidelines when it comes to time and a lot of brides that would bring entourages wouldn’t find a dress because everyone would bombard her with their opinions and overwhelm them.
The worst thing I’ve ever witnessed was when a bride that always struggled with her weight came in. She was overweight and had been working extremely hard on it over the last year. It was a slower day and we all loved her story and wanted to make that day special so we all decided to help. She finally found a dress that she loved and she started crying along with most of us. Then she looked at her mom and asked for her opinion and her mom looked at her and said “you look fat in it”. We all stood there in silence and the bride lost her happiness. She asked to be assisted in taking it off and they left.
It was one of the saddest days that I had experienced there.
7.) From Doves_inthe_wind:
I worked at a mom/pop shop. We had a bride who was polish, who my boss called 'polish princess', she wasn't my bride but they picked a very bad consultant for her. Made worse by the fact that this girl wanted stuff added to her dress that wasnt done by the manufacture so we had to do it all in house. To give you an example, she wanted lights, those tube lights? I think that's what they are called, all around the bottom half of a dress that we had already spliced with two different dresses.
Side note: my boss loved anything that meant money.
Anywho, we spent months fixing and refitting this dress because she not only lost 45lbs from her first time being measured, which brought her 4 dress sizes less than her original, she also got a massive boob job, bruskia. Well, after finally fitting her into her gown, on the last week she decided the lights that took our poor 70 year old seamstress two months to sew in, looked tacky. She was crying and throwing herself at her mother in a tantrum, screaming in polish all this crazy shit. She ripped the bottom of the dress and ultimately had to buy a dress from David's bridal because my boss finally got smart and kicked her out. Just a mess. She made our seamstress cry!!!!! The bitch.
8.) From jackerick84:
I worked at a high end bridal shop in my early 20s. One day, I had a bride-to-be shopping for a gown and she had brought her Mom, Aunt, and sister (who had just become a new mom) with her to her appointment. The sister was obviously a little jealous that attention was no longer being lavished on her and her new baby, and instead the bride was the now the center of attention. As I was fitting the bride in a $2500 Lazaro Bridal Gown, the sister decided to change her newborn’s diaper in the dressing room & proceeded to hold the shit filled diaper up to the gold- hued gown and exclaim “look the colors almost match!” I excused myself from the room for fresh air and to regain composure. In my experience- the brides were rarely the problem- the family was!
9.) From MissyMack:
I worked management at a resort in a popular tourist town. When weddings are booked at our venue with the event coordinator we can hold certain number of rooms for guests attending. A manager was always required to check in the bridal couple and I had been given a heads up by the coordinator on Bridezilla.
They wanted a room on the highest floor and closer to the beach, they were booked into the Honeymoon Suite. 3rd floor, ocean views. Nope, she wanted higher and closer. Had an absolute meltdown at the front desk when I explained there was nothing higher... Or closer.
A colleague of mine ran for the event coordinator when she started screaming at me and her husband to be. He was very apologetic and trying to calm her down. She was placated and sent off with keys, less than 30 minutes later she was back and demanding we empty the rooms next to and below her. Honey those rooms cost $640 a night and we are fully booked!
I was lucky enough to not be working the night of the wedding but I heard all about her abusing the wait staff, kicking the band out for playing a song she didnt like and the screaming match she got into with her mother in law. What a peach!
All up the wedding was about $40,000 and she made everyone miserable. The groom left out front desk staff and box of wine to apologise for her behaviour.
Not the only Bridezilla, but definitely the craziest I had
10.) From _marjaz_:
I used to be a "Bridal Consultant" at a retail store which basically means I helped couples scan things onto their registry, although the training for it just meant I knew how to use the scanner and the computer and my actual job had nothing to do with bridal shopping. This one couple came in to start a new registry, which quickly turned into only things the bride wanted. Anything the groom wanted to put down on the registry was deemed as "childish, stupid, ugly, unpractical, never-going-to-be-used". I was cringing during the entire appointment, she kept asking for my input/opinion on everything and I felt so bad for this guy. His bride-to-be seemed so selfish and entitled, couldn't believe the fact that he was soon to be married to this woman. The poor man just wanted a waffle maker, who doesn't want waffles?!
11.) From sig863:
I work at a hotel that does a huge amount of wedding business, and we had an engagement shower with the plan being that the couple would be having the wedding with us as well. This involved the bride-to-be and to an extent, her mother.
Anyways, we knew there were going to be issues because neither the bride or groom ever smiled. She was always complaining about how he was "wishy-washy" with picking a date and he was always silent. The MOB was your stereotypical Brooklyn Jewish Mother and had her hand in EVERYTHING to make sure things were perfect for her little princess. (My experience has shown that the MOB/MOG are exponentially worse than the actual people getting married.)
Well, the engagement party starts, and everyone, except for the couple, seem to be having a great time. Then, halfway through the party, we suddenly heard the girl scream at her fiancee "WE WILL NEVER HAVE A CHRISTMAS TREE IN MY HOUSE, SO YOU CAN GET OVER IT!!!!"
And from there it devolved into a shouting match between the couple, who moved from the banquet room to the lobby so their "guests" couldn't hear the argument. (Didn't work. They heard everything.)
Apparently she was Jewish and he was Protestant and not once in their relationship had they discussed religion. They went at it on and off for two hours. She was screaming at the top of her lungs about how their (non-existent) children would be raised Jewish, and how his traditions didn't matter. Her mother standing at her side and nodding in agreement and interjecting occasionally with a "that's right" or "you tell him".
He was pleading (in a good attempt to be quiet, but was obviously frustrated) for her to at least compromise to let him at least invite his pastor from his home town for the wedding, and that their (non-existent) children could possibly do things with his parents for Christmas, even if they didn't celebrate.
The guests just kept partying, pretending nothing was happening, but you could see on all of their faces that they wanted to leave, but couldn't since they would have to pass by the couple to get to the only exit.
Only after two hours and the argument eventually devolving in to her INSISTING her children would never see a Christmas tree in their whole lives so they wouldn't be confused (good luck with that one in this country, lady) the groom finally, dejectedly said "Well then maybe this isn't going to work."
She threw her ring at him and said, (I swear to god) "THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOU LET ME MAKE YOU PROPOSE?!?!?!?!?!?!" She then changed her mind, picked up the ring and said "Whatever. I'm keeping this." and stormed off. Her mother looked at her ex-potential-son-in-law, told him he was an idiot for letting her baby go, and went after her.
I've NEVER seen a banquet room clear of people so fast. Within fifteen minutes, everyone was gone, and it was a ghost town, and from the looks of it, everyone took their "Gifts" with them.
Worse still, it was the former-bride's family who had hosted and were staying at the hotel, so we spend the next two days "commiserating" with them about how awful the groom was as they moved their daughter out of his apartment.
Dude dodged a bullet.
12.) From disgruntledrep:
Restaurant manager story.
The wedding dinner was on a Sunday so instead of the usual 1 manager on, we had the banquet coordinator come on for a few hours to make sure everyone was happy. They were a rich couple and we wanted more of their bussiness. Their menu was $119 a person and they had $80 bottles of red on the table.
So guests start to arrive and order obviously start ordering drinks. At this point bride and mother see this and approach the head server. They tell her that everyone except the head table are to get separate bills. That they are not planning on paying for anything but what's at the head table. Server finds us, tells us what's happening and banquet manager heads over to figure out what's going on. Seems that the bride and mother decided that their guests should have to pay, and they didn't want to be the bad guys so they expected us to have to tell the guests. They also decided that since they are their guests at their wedding, they will drink and eat what they are eating.
We tell the people that have already arrived, half of them laugh thinking it's a joke, once we told them the truth, they laughed and left. My job became to stay at the front and tell all the people arriving for the dinner that they are going to be responsible for their whole bill, and what the costs were.
Final guest count was 20 people. Most left once I told them what the costs were. We ended up threatening legal action against them since they signed the banquet sheet stating that they agreed on 60 dinners. Best part was they paid the full 60 dinners, plus gratuity, and only had 20 people there because they wanted to save some money.
Other end of the spectrum was a Muslim wedding. We had to even cover the wine in glass storage in their wedding dinner room. The parents who were paying the bill felt since it's there money, it's their type of wedding. Except the bride and groom showed up the day before, left a credit card and told us to have an open bar ready for any of their guests. Alot of people went upstairs to the bathroom that day which oddly enough was right beside the bar
13.) From rubywolf27:
I used to work at a jewelry store.
This young guy (college age) came in one day to look at engagement rings. Very polite. Asking good questions. You could tell he’d been considering this for some time.
As I’m helping him and showing him some rings in his budget, She walks in. She’s wearing a t-shirt from the high school senior class from the previous year, and she comes over by him.
“Oh my god were you seriously considering that ring??? Ugh. It’s so ugly. Besides, it looks just like my LAST engagement ring.”
How I wish I could have told him to dump her, run for the hills and don’t look back.
14.) From notasugarbabybutok:
Baker here. I wasn't present for the freak out, but it was my fault so...
A few months back, I had a bride who wanted a Navy to white ombre cake (something like this ) made with white sponge. Now, dark, rich colors like that in white cake fucking suck. they always taste terrible because they have so much gel coloring in them to get them right. However, you can do it, if they're willing to have the dark layers be chocolate. Navy is especially easy, thanks to blue velvet. I tell her this when we're planning. "But I want white cake!" I tell her I'll do all but the last few in white sponge. She agrees, and I make the damn thing and drop it off.
I come back to pick up the staging stuff the next day, only to find my whole fucking cake sitting there.
Apparently when they cut into the thing and fed it to each other, she freaked out over it being chocolate, and refused to let any of the cake be served. Apparently she forgot that she had agreed to have the bottom tier have two layers of blue velvet, so she threw a massive fucking temper tantrum over 'the cake being wrong' and how I ruined her wedding, then locked herself in the bridal suite. if she wouldn't have been a little psychopath and let the staff cut the cake like they should have, she would've seen that 90% of the cake was white sponge like she wanted.
15.) From orbital_cheese:
Wedding band member here.
Had a bride flip her shit at me and my band mates because our instruments weren't white or salmon coloured to fit in with the decorations and she was saying we would ruin the photographs. Even though I was playing during the reception and all the photos were already taken.
A sunburst jazz bass, blue Stratocaster and a red drum set aren't going to ruin your pictures darling.
16.) From QueenoftheBunnies:
Wedding coordinator here! I've found the mom's are usually worse than the brides. I worked a wedding this past summer with a ridiculous momzilla. During the rehearsal, she handed me the box of decorations and said "don't you dare make this look tacky". On the day of the wedding, she arrived and came up to ask me where the wedding programs were. I told her there weren't any programs in any of the boxes and she proceeded to bitch me out for losing them and then decided that I stole them. She also asked that we build a water station for the guests, but instructed that she didn't want the guests to have access to it until after the ceremony. It was 90 degrees that day and the ceremony was outside so that did not go over well. And when the guests complained that they were thirsty and we weren't letting them go to the water station, she told them how horrible we were and made a big deal out of opening the water station early, like she was the hero. Thank god they only booked the venue for the ceremony so she was only my problem for about an hour.
The next day my boss handed me an email the momzilla sent her. She wrote about how I lost the programs but then in the same sentence said she found the programs in her hotel room later that night and made a comment about how I should've gone to her hotel and gotten them. She also complained about how I wouldn't give her guests water and how the photographer was the worst person she's ever worked with. She actually wrote "don't bother remembering her name, she'll never work in his town again" about the photographer. Her letter ended with her complimenting the venue space and saying something along the lines of "I think I would be a great addition to your team of event coordinators! Let me know when I can start!"
Bitch was blatantly trying to take my job. The worst part is that my boss actually hired her. Needless to say, I quit working at that venue.
This isn't the worst story I have, but it's one of the most memorable.
17.) From Foxlust:
I once worked in a bakery and we had this bride freakout that her cake wasn't right and proceeded to smash it to bits with her fist. She smashed the wrong cake. Like wtf. Anyways the cops allowed her to wash her hands before placing her in handcuffs. I felt bad for the future husband and the couple that ordered said cake. people are cray cray.
18.) From Spydrchick:
Retired Master Seamstress checking in. Not Bridezilla but Momzilla. I was making her daughter a custom bias cut gown and had limited fitting time because the bride lived one state over. Now bias cut gowns are the debil to begin with. We (mom and I) would work on details between fittings. I would say our working relationship got very frosty. Each time the bride came for a fitting she lost weight. Tape measures don't lie. And she was not a big girl to begin with. Mom would scream that her daughter did not loose any weight. After the third fitting, third fight and the third rebuild of a very complicated gown, I finished it and told them to take the gown and do what they wanted with it. It was gorgeous but hung loose. The girl lost over 3" over the course of 7-8 weeks. I lost hours of my life, and the $$ for the work. The deposit took care of the materials ($140 per yard silk, venice lace), so there is that.
19.) From kimmycat88:
Bridal consultant here! My most memorable appointment was a party that showed up completely shits-to-the-wind HAMMERED. It wasn't unusual for bridal parties to have a little "tailgate" style party in our parking lot before coming into our store. Often they'd have mimosa's or a shot or two to loosen up before the scary gown search. This party must have finished a full bottle of whiskey between the five of them. They didn't appear too sloppy when we first got started but about half an hour into the appointment it was pretty obvious that they were way to drunk to be in the setting they we're in. I had to prop the bride up with her nose in the corner of her fitting room to lace her corsets because she couldn't stand, and each time we stepped out onto the stage the bridesmaids would scream, Beatlemania style, until they were red in the face. Eventually my manager came to me and said, very sternly, "Sell this girl and get. them. out of here." The appointment ended when she fell for a gown $700 over budget, her drunkest bridesmaid swiped her own credit card to cover it, and then one of them (not sure which) sprayed a brown bodily fluid of some kind over our ENTIRE toliet.
20.) From [deleted]:
I work at a hotel, but once had a bridezilla throw a cell phone at me and hit me in the face. Hurt pretty bad, one of those big galaxy phones.