We planned our wedding for Memorial Day Weekend so that it would be easier for family to get the time off to attend. We had to change the time three times due to two of the teenage guests performing in a parade.
We found what we thought was a wonderful place to have the wedding. A victorian manor in Orange, California. They had a nice quaint little tea room with a gazebo in the front. The owner is a wedding planner and said she would run the show so that my overbearing mother-in-law and sister-in-law couldn't make a mess of things. The first rule was no liquor! The in-laws still brought along two cases of champagne even though they were told “no”. We worked that problem out however to allow only one glass of champagne to those who requested it. All this was decided two days before the wedding. It all went downhill from there…
The Restaurant that we reserved the banquet room at for the rehearsal dinner lost the reservation and booked someone else in our space, so we had to have our dinner at separate tables throughout the restaurant. Not good-when the whole point was to hand out thank you gifts and schedule who was taking home what from the wedding…not to mention we had reserved the room so the 6 toddlers in tow could get down and wander about. Yes that was a fun night--NOT!
About an hour before we were supposed to go to the manor I just had this feeling that I should get dressed at my parents hotel rather than at the manor, so I did. Everyone thought I was nuts! When we arrived we were glad I had changed because although we were guaranteed an upstairs room to dress in, the room had no door and there were guests across the way in another room watching us!
Then the officiant arrived and groped my bridesmaid. He even asked the wedding planner who she was and was told that it was my little sister and to back off! Didn't work. My sister finally told him she was a lesbian (she isn’t) and he left her alone. The planner was supposed to let everyone know when we were ready so we waited patiently for her upstairs taking a few pictures here and primping and so on. What we got instead was a scream that the wedding was starting in 4 minutes with or without us! So of course we raced down the stairs (Not easy in formalwear!)
We get outside and lined up to walk only to find we couldn’t hear the music! So finally one of the ushers gets a clue and waves at us that we can start walking. The Officiant went through the ceremony at record speed. We were married in oh, about 5 minutes! And he had the sides cheering to see who was louder... ummmm not my idea of romance!
Then we start the pictures and notice there is a woman there we've never met directing our pictures. We had arranged for the groom’s uncle to take the pictures and apparently he decided that our wedding was a good time to bring his new girlfriend out. (His wife was the mother of the groom’s sister. She hasn't been dead more than a year so everyone was slightly offended.) But anyway she was a real pill. Every picture had to be perfect and she didn't seem to understand that, well, toddlers are not perfect! Giggle! My 3 year old son shed his suit about half way through the pictures.
Finally it’s time to go inside and eat. They gave everyone nice large tables – except, of course, the table for us. I had told them we would be sitting with our children. No assigned seating except apparently us. We were placed in a corner with a tacky hand written sign that said Bride’s table.
They started with a salad that was wilted and drenched with dressing. About 20 minutes later they brought out the kid’s dinners. Chicken nuggets (they were cold) and then about 20 minutes later they began to serve the adults lasagna. It was lukewarm too! But the bread that was with it tasted good. In fact everyone asked for more bread. I think that's all anyone ate.
Then it was time to do the toasts. Now we had arranged for the place to serve the apple cider to everyone with the cake. But apparently that was forgotten and they didn't serve it. They had glasses on the tables ahead of time. All they did was hand each table a bottle and we had to pour our own - another moment of pictures with a nasty lady directing us.
Then my father made a wonderful toast welcoming Scott into the family. His father however made his toast inviting my mother into his family. Not sure how he goofed up but he did. So we turn to the cake to take more pictures and it’s already cut! We of course say hooray no more pictures but the server quickly reassembled the cake... (How do you reassemble a cake?) And we faked the cake cutting for the picture.
Next came the weird part. The cake was cut and all the adults were given a slice but nobody served the children or the bride or groom. I finally sought out the slices and served the kids myself.
Then I went upstairs to get the kids stuff together to send them off with the grandparents. When I got down and announced it was time to toss the bouquet and do the garter I was informed nobody wanted to catch them! So we tossed them to the kids.
Scott went to get the car and transfer the car seats to the grandparent’s car and everything got out of control at that point. (Not that we had control of anything anyway.) His parents started to demand that we open the wedding presents right there! I said not a chance and took all the single cards with us and had his brother take home the rest of the presents. While we were dealing with that, the nasty uninvited lady took all the bubbles that we bought for the kids to blow at us when we left and handed them to the adults! By the time we got them back and in the kid’s hands his parents were throwing another fit refusing to let us leave. They felt the kids shouldn't see us leave! So we finally had to let the kids blow the bubbles because we were never going to get out of there in style. We were finally the last ones to leave! And when we went around the front to go in and let the servers know we were leaving, we found the door was already locked!
Even they left before us!
-Cheryl P.
-Cheryl P.
re-printed from: http://www.veilubridal.com/wedding-stories.htm
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