Maybe I'm just sadistic, but there are few things more darkly funny than a sad, awkward party. Especially when that party is catered. Nothing compliments a tragically uncomfortable social event like decorated tables full of hors d'oeuvres. This is part of what makes Party Down one of the best, most underrated shows of all time.
Someone asked caterers of Reddit: "what's the saddest party you have ever catered?" These 22 stories from caterers, DJs and others in the party planning business are so sad, they're actually funny (although maybe not for the people who hosted or attended them):
1.) From Kurrylyn:
Happened to a friend, fellow caterer. Showed up to cater a birthday party. We usually show up as servers with limited info. Asks client " So when does the Birthday Boy arrive?" He doesn't, he is dead. Such an important detail left out of the event logistics . Awkward moment followed by slightly uncomfortable party complete with cake.
2.) From trent_pee:
I was cocktail-ing a beer release party from a couple local brewers at the restaurant I work at.
I had a guaranteed $300 from the brewers for them taking over my section. ( two ten-seat high-tops)
Before I went in, I checked the fb event page and some 300 people were invited.
The event lasted four hours and three people showed up. I felt pretty bad for the poor motherfuckers. I bought their food with my discount.
3.) From emfizz:
Same thing happened at a graduation party I worked. She threw the biggest tantrums all day as they were setting up the hall because it had to be perfect, had a very expensive DJ, and 10 pizzas ordered for her friends who were supposed to show up at 7 after the family ate what we had catered. No one showed up. Not a single friend.
I felt awful for her.
4.) From Eaglesun:
Not a caterer but WAS a performer. And this party was only sad at the beginning.
Showed up at this fancy pants restaurant where a company had rented out the entire building for a dinner party. Our orchestra was there for twenty minutes and no one had shown up. This guy walks in the door alone and starts talking to the manager. He doesn't know why no one is there either, and is visibly upset. Ten minutes go by and some lady comes in the front door, absolutely baffled. At the same time the guy gets a phone call from his boss. The party had been cancelled. It was too late for them to cancel reservations though, and since it was already paid for, the guy and lady figure hey, why the hell not? and decide they will have dinner.
So a half hour goes by and we get called out into the dining hall. Our orchestra wasn't a traditional one, and we always made it a point to walk between and around the tables during our performances while we were playing, even get down on our knees and sing directly to the eating audience members. Normally this is really cool because you get all these violin, viola, and cello players dispersing through the room while playing, and it brings the music directly to the listeners. But when we walked in, we saw that there was only one table set up (thus why we had to wait a half hour) with candles and everything (the manager really went out of his way to make this nice), along with the amenities of the party (chocolate fountain, little bar in the corner, all that.
So we come in in two lines, split up, and encircle this one lonely table with a guy and a girl, whom we were told was his girlfriend, and begin playing. Everyone looked super awkward during the whole thing, and we all felt terrible for these guys.
Anyway, about 6 songs in, after we had done our whole "down on one knee and sing to the person" bit, the guy stands up and asks us to stop. Everyone is confused as fuck, until the guy starts talking to his girlfriend. He drops some romantic words, and as his passionate speech gets to about minute 3, the staff start coming out of the woodwork and watching from a distance (behind us). Eventually, he gets down on his knee and proposes to her, and there are tears in the corners of our violists' eyes, contented smiles on the faces of the violinists and bass players, and a dumbfounded look on our young cellists' faces.
She said yes, and everyone started clapping like mad. We then pulled out our happiest most high octane song and played for the couple, and played our hearts out, before playing our exit tune and leaving.
I presume he was going to do this in front of coworkers and friends at the party... or else this guy was the smoothest motherfucker alive.
5.) From logomachy:
My father used to DJ weddings, parties, etc. Well I used to help him out with the equipment load-in and out, and there was this one party that took place in a nursing home. One of the workers there was insisting he go around with his wireless mic and take song requests from some of the residents. He starts going around the circle of old folks and when he gets to this one woman, she grabs the mic from him and yells: "GET ME OUT OF HERE."
He didn't take any more requests.
6.) From everthustodeadbeatz:
I was a server at Maggiano's and we catered a party for OA (Overeaters Anonymous). I shit you not. And keep in mind, Maggiano's is a family style all you can eat huge portions restaurant.
7.) From bebemochi:
I'm an event coordinator, hope that's close enough...
Several parties definitely stick out as being horrifying or disastrous... but as far as "sad" goes, it's more of a type than a particular party...
There's always a bride who comes in all starry-eyed and blows her whole budget on things like a DJ with tons of effects, a designer ballgown, huge floral centerpieces, specialty lighting, specialty linens... Chasing after a particular "look." That's fine and all, as long as she's actually budgeted the money for CATERING. So many brides think of food as the absolute last thing, and so their guests end up being allotted four cheese cubes, two chicken wings, and a cash bar. So this gorgeous venue done up to the nines, and you gotta shell out $5.50 cash for a glass of chard, oh, and while you were waiting in line at the bar, the food ran out in the first 30 minutes of the reception. Wedding receptions like that end very, very quickly, and usually you have a bride and groom wandering around a half empty ballroom trying to scrape together enough singles for the garter and bouquet toss.
8.) From [deleted]:
I catered at a wedding where one of the male guests found it to be just the right moment to propose to his girlfriend. The girlfriend started to cry and yelled out apologies to the bride as she bolted out of there.
9.) From ForeverShitShow:
A couple years ago I catered a wedding that happened during the biggest hurricane of the summer, and ended up as one of the worst we had in years. The entire week we were all waiting for it to get cancelled, but they never shut it down.
Fast forward to the wedding day. The ceremony was held in a church down the street. Things are starting to get bad outside. We need to pack up and leave before it's too late, they won't really carry through with the reception today, will they?
Well, come 4 pm 150 people pour into the reception area. Right as the power goes out. Within half an hour the whole building is ~90 degrees, dark, and water is spilling in from the front door. Somehow someone calls up a friend who drives a generator to the party. So we have electricty but just in time for us to legally be required to throw out all the (probably 30 lb) of crab dip, lobster, etc. that couldn't be refrigerated. Well, these crazy motherfuckers decide to carry on and dance to the music from someone's boombox, in the light of halogen work lamps, while we attempt to serve dinner in the dark.
By the end of the night, I have managed to slip on the river streaming onto the linoleum entrance hallway with a giant tray of glasses. The storm knocked over a tree that blocked off the only road to get out, resulting in 150 people in formalwear (many of whom didn't live in the city) trapped in what might as well have been a furnace. I got yelled at by several guests and the mother of the bride for not serving the crab dip. And she made my boss cry, which led to the rest of the crew crying and begging the gods for mercy as well. Needless to say, it was a great night for all of us, especially the part where we had to drive through someone's front yard to get out of the damn place.
TL;DR crazy couple decides to carry on with their wedding reception through the worst hurricane our city had in years
Edit: This wasn't in Florida or anything, it was in Central Virginia, which was partly why we weren't prepared for it at all; a lot of "hurricanes" that hit us are just semi-heavy rainstorms, so nobody was expecting real damage.
Also, the ~90 means about 90, not negative 90! Can't tell if y'all are sarcastic or not.
10.) From CarmenFiFi:
I was a server at a baptist banquet center with no liquor license so every party was at least a little bit sad. The really hardcore baptists didn't even have dancing....which didn't exactly make for a festive wedding.
The worst was probably a wedding where the groom was ex-Amish and over half the attendants were Mennonites. Since the groom had been excommunicated he had almost no family at the wedding and had to do the mother-son dance with his new wife's aunt. Later the groom did a strip tease before the garter toss and immediately after all the Mennonites left. There were about 3 hours before the reception ended, leaving like 30 people to awkwardly stand around and attempt the Cupid Shuffle.
11.) From aggiekayla:
I was a banquet manager at a kind of run down country club while I was in college. We didn't have the classiest clientele. One wedding I worked had a pregnant bride that didn't even look 18. Her mom kept saying over and over that the rooms had to be cool because the bride was pregnant and would faint if she got too hot. So the entire staff is aware that this bride is pregnant. The bride then continues to drink wine for 2 hours before the ceremony(our bartender was going to try to not serve her by carding her but the mom kept getting her drinks and it was very awkward. When it came time for the toasts I give her cider and refused her champagne). Then only 12 of the expected 25 guests show up. Some don't even stay for the meal. None of the groom's family was there. They played music from an iPod and it would have long stints of silence. The bride's stepfather kept going outside and smoking pot. It was just sad how no one cared about this wedding and the bride was careless with her unborn child. The groom clearly was in college and the bride did not have higher education in her future. Shotgun weddings are just awkward.
12.) From punkwalrus:
I don't cater, but I have worked with caterers, and my wife had a catering business for a while.
Saddest was a wedding reception where something happened where the wedding was called off. I can't recall why, but it had to do with the exposure of infidelity on the part of one of the couple exposed during the ceremony, and the whole thing called off. But the father of the bride said the reception was already paid for, so why not just go show up and eat? Only about half the party showed up, and ate mostly in silence.
Another friend of mine was part of a quartet hired for a reception. She said sometimes the Greek weddings got a little out of hand (they got referrals from a Greek reception hall). One of them she said was a family who had obviously started drinking before they got there. The groom's side was Irish/Greek, and the bride's side was all Greek. There had been some kind of fight before the wedding, and during the ceremony, more scuffles. By the time the reception started, those who arrived early started fighting with other people who arrived early on both sides of the family. It seems there was a "who are the true Greeks" kind of war, and the groom's side accused the bride's side of being gypsy thieves. At some point, the police got involved, but no arrests were made, and everyone calmed down. Then the father of the bride gave a speech about racial purity, and this started another brawl that pretty much was a free-for-all: chairs thrown, tables flipped, wedding cake destroyed, both bars robbed clean of liquor, and the entire quartet were in the kitchen, hiding with the catering staff. She said that the owner wouldn't call the police again, because he feared losing his liquor license, but both parties were just tearing the pace apart to find things to throw at one another. Plaster details and wall mirrors were smashed, the carpet was being torn up, and it was chaos. At one point, the mother of the bride and the owner of the reception hall came back with them, and said, "we don't think you'll be needed tonight," paid in full, and the quartet left. Weeks later, they were asked to perform for another wedding, and she said, "as bad as that riot was, you couldn't even tell when we returned. The entire place had been repainted, carpeting redone, plaster recast, the mirrors on the wall replaced."
13.) From rawbamatic:
A friend of mine was working as a server for a wedding and apparently the bride cheated on the groom during the reception with one of his groomsmen.
EDIT: I've had a few people ask me for details so I will try to recall them as best as I can.
My friend was a server so he called me to tell me about his shitty day after he got off work, this was almost ten years ago. He said that it was a great wedding and reception but there was always some sort of tension among the head table. After the dinner was served and music/dancing was going on so the bride got up to use the washroom (she was drunk). My friend said that the bride and groomsmen would have gotten away with it but decided to use an employee washroom in the back. The music in the front would have masked the noises they were making. The kitchen manager caught them, thinking it was two employees going at it (there was a couple that worked there that would do this). Shit immediately hit the fan. There was yelling going on (from the groomsmen) about things like "how dare you barge in on us" type shit, and people from the hall could hear this going on so a few of them stumbled back to see why the bride and groomsmen were yelling. They were not fully clothed at this point. Eventually the groom made the bride and that groomsmen leave the reception, saying he wanted to spend his wedding day with people he cared about. My friend never heard what ended up happening to that couple.
14.) From Gluttony4:
The restaurant I work at caters to a Canada Day music festival every year, and I'm always one of the ones working sales at the main booth, because I'm one of the few employees without an Indian accent.
One man bought some curry, and then minutes later stormed back, furious at us because it had come open when he tossed it (literally, tossed) into the back seat of his fancy new car, which resulted in a bright yellow curry spilled all over expensive leather seats. Initially he was angry, shouting, swearing, and informing me how his lawyers would ensure that I (a 20-something student) would personally be buying him a new car.
My boss took him aside and very calmly, in spite of all the shouting, asked if he was actually angry at the young woman who'd served him curry, or if he was venting his frustration on others because he was angry at himself for making a bad decision by throwing a container of curry into his expensive car.
The man literally broke down crying and ran back towards the parking lot. We never saw him again, and while it didn't make the whole festival sad, it did awkward-up the next hour or so, as every single bystander who'd witnessed the incident wanted to chat about it while ordering their food.
15.) From bluecheetos:
Wedding where the bride was convinced she was friends with all the "society" people she'd ever met. She spent an obscene amount of money on the food for her "simple" reception. Instead of the usual pre-made heat and eat finger foods she had each one special made by an executive chef. She could have easily done a sit down dinner for half of what she spent. She rented a large reception hall. The bride invited 300 people, there were less than 40 there and most of them were family or the few people she worked with. The reception was horrible...a giant space with tons of food and we had more tables than people. The bride was noticeably embarrassed. The wedding planner made everyone crowd around four tables in one corner and literally coached people into posing so they could take pictures that didn't look like the place was empty. Same thing with the dance floor. Everyone was on the floor whether they were dancing or not just so it would look good in the pictures. The planned 2 hour reception was over in 30 minutes.
The couple left for their honeymoon, we threw rice, most people left for their cars. Those of us who had to go back in for whatever reason got handed empty to-go boxes by the caterers and were told to fill them and take them, whatever we left was going in the trash. I ended up with 10 pounds of bacon wrapped ribeye bites and more boiled shrimp than I could eat in a week. There was still enough food to feed an army so they were taking it to one of the local charity kitchens to see if they wanted it.
TLDR: Went to a wedding where nobody showed up so the family faked it.
16.) From soullessginger15:
This happened to my coworker: years ago she had a physical relationship with a man, who she later found out was engaged. Guess whose wedding she ended up catering?
17.) From SouthGaDJ:
The same day my wife and I split up because she was cheating on me I had to DJ a party for a military guy who was about to be deployed. Having to watch he and his wife just be in total love with each other and cherishing that last bit of time together before he was deployed was just torture.
I think in my 12 years or so DJ'ing private parties that is the only one where I absolutely did not want to be there.
18.) From [deleted]:
Worked a private party one time as a server (long time ago, 15+ years maybe) and apparently it was some super-rich c*nt that was "finally" leaving her job and retiring. Some executive or something. She rented an entire restaurant for a single evening. It was a planet hollywood, and we had a full staff that night for this, she said there were hundreds of people coming.
Only three people showed up. The cooks laughed their asses off that night, they only made three meals and the lady had a total meltdown t the end of the night, apparently it was some kind of "conspiracy" against her.
But no... She was just a huge bitch and her co-workers didn't want to come to her party.
19.) From [deleted]:
Not a caterer, but a DJ for an awkward party. I was running live music for this rich girls sweet 16. She was the type of person that refused to grow up so the party was almost like a 10 year olds party. Everything was in pink and yellow, even the food. There were kiddish party games like twister and a trampoline. Not to mention half the songs she requested were old Hannah Montana songs. Even her friends seemed uncomfortable.
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The backlash grew so loud, Jillian released a statement on Twitter. And no, she didn't back down.
