Mine was one of those "big Italian" weddings...minus the fights. Everyone behaved, and we got through the ceremony and reception with tons of food left over, but no fights. Did the traditional tarantella dance, sang some Italian songs, and I had a "money bag" for all the checks and cash we were given. (Photo shows my mother holding my money bag at an audition she went to...they were looking for Italian grandmothers dressed for weddings! She didn't get the part but had fun!)The only hitch to our wedding came two weeks before the actual ceremony. The priest who was to perform the service called to say the renovations on the church wouldn't be done and we'd have to find another church...and this was right before Christmas. Luckily, we found another church and priest so had our ceremony. But, we had to notify all our guests about the church change since our invitations had the first church listed.
Went to a wedding and found out three years later that it wasn't "real". The bride hadn't gotten her divorce in time so the couple decided to go through a "ceremony" with a biker buddy of theirs acting as a minister. None of us knew it at the time...not even the parents of the couple.
This same wedding had a interesting dress made by the bride...black and white. Bride wore a white dress, black belt, and black boots. The bridal dress was cut too low on top and the hemline landed right below her crotch. She spent the day pulling the dress up and down. Never quite found the right position. This caused many of my Italian relatives to raise eyebrows and frown throughout the day.
Went to a double wedding. The minister kept calling one groom by the wrong name. He just never did seem to get it right. At the reception, one of my cousins brought a "questionable" choice of date. She drank too much, became loud and obnoxious, and they were told...politely...to leave.Same wedding: the family of the bride I didn't know brought a pinata. Of course, all the kids were excited. After it was broken and the kids grabbed what had fallen to the floor, my 10 and 11 year old children came to show me what they got. "Balloons"...according to them.
Actually, they were colorful condoms. I grabbed the condoms and told my kids to get more desserts to eat. That married couple lasted 5 months and eventually divorced.
Another wedding: big Italian/Jewish event. Wonderful food...more than anyone could eat. The bride's Jewish family didn't go to the Catholic ceremony, only the Jewish ceremony. The groom's Italian family went to the Jewish ceremony and Catholic ceremony. Divided feelings and not a great start. The happy couple eventually divorced.
Another wedding: lavish garden ceremony. Too much food. Happy couple. Three months later the bride was pregnant and the groom had a affair...with a fellow teacher who worked with the bride's mother. They divorced.My youngest daughter's wedding: the photographer didn't get to the venue until the ceremony was over. Five minutes before the ceremony, I ran around and asked people to take photos...even handed my nephew my camera, shoved him to the front of the ceremony room, and told him to take pictures. The photographer gave some excuse about "traffic", but I was not amused.
Another daughter's wedding: the day of the wedding, my daughter was running a temperature and vomiting. She forgot to tell the bridesmaids to get to the church early to help her dress. I did that, and ran with her into the bathroom so she could puke...I kept the dress clean. I just prayed she'd make it through the ceremony...and she did. The couple didn't leave on their honeymoon that night...nor the next...since the groom got sick the next day.
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I wonder how my heroes and heroines would react on their wedding days...their HEAs would include a trip to the altar. I never wrote an Epilogue for my romance stories, but I can just imagine adding some type of funny/strange event to mark their special days!
Have you got a wedding tale to tell? Please share it!
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Oh, Marianne! Sooo funny! And I seldom attend weddings, so I have nothing to share...I barely attended my own.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Marianne.
ReplyDelete"Mine was one of those "big Italian" weddings...minus the fights." - LOL, I know what you mean. This is so funny. :)
ROFL! Love those stories!
ReplyDeleteMy upstairs neighbor came down a week before her wedding and asked my for advice on how to get out of it. I told her she had three options: a) be honest and call it off; b) pick a fight, throw the ring at him and call it off that way; or c) leave him at the alter. She was concerned b/c her parents had spent a lot of money and it was too late to get their deposits back.
She went through with it, but got drunk at the reception and began wailing she'd made a huge mistake. Her bridesmaids and I tried to calm her down, and thankfully the groom was on the other side of the room and didn't hear it. She calmed down and they left on their honeymoon.
Three months later they were separated, and she told me she wished she'd taken my advice. She's now been happily married to #2 for over 15 years, so I guess she finally grew up:)
Weddings are so stressful, I'm not surprised by strange events. For my first wedding, we fought at the rehearsal dinner and almost broke up. We had to do all the set up and someone knocked into the cake which was a leaning tower of goodness. His friends got terribly drunk at the reception and had photos of them with their hands in their pants. We were married for 20 years and had two wonderful children before I found out about his affairs. For my second wedding, we escaped to Vegas! That was a blast and now 8 years later, still going strong. :)Tweeted and shared!
ReplyDeleteROFL Funny, Marianne! My sister and I drove like mad to her wedding. We talked and laughed all the way there. Our maternal grandmother wouldn't attend because the groom was Catholic, and my sister had joined the church.
ReplyDeleteWhy this was such a big deal was beyond us because she had many friends who were Catholic, and Gramps and her lived right across the street from the Catholic Church. Anyway, she fell for my brother-in-law hard when she got to know him.
What a fun post. lol I can picture the Italian relatives' faces. hehehe
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I'm sure some of that wasn't too funny at the time thought. The photographer never made it to my wedding and I have no pictures of it, only me in my wedding dress which was staged for the newspaper. The Ohio-State-Michigan football game was on and the groom and best man kept disappearing from the reception to watch the game...
ReplyDeleteMy wedding was beautiful, but full of funny things happening. The first was before the wedding even started. An older gentleman friend of my Dad's called on his way to the wedding. His car had broke down, so someone had to go get him. He was also very early (he got there for the pictures prior to the wedding). The Minister pronounced us Mr. & Mrs. my maiden name. Everyone laughed and we corrected him. My new husband had to leave shortly after he ate to go get our rollback wrecker so that he could pick up the gentleman's car. The friend also had to be taken home because of course at this point he had no car. And the final straw of the day was we had to leave our own reception early. Our cows had gotten out and we had to go retrieve cows and fix fence. Thankfully our neighbor had arrived and was helping fix fence. I still was running around the car in my wedding dress though. Oh and the last thing was my family owned a garage and towing business. By this point life was going on. Our wedding day was closing. My husband and my Dad ended up going on a service call to fix a truck :) LOL it was quite a day. It was beautiful though and even with all the things that went wrong it was the happiest day of my life. My husband and I just celebrated out 6th anniversary. We are still very much in love and yes our life can still be just as crazy as our wedding day was :) LOL
ReplyDeleteMarianne, what stories! You've had your share of funny/strange weddings. I've been to many Italian weddings, being Italian, but none were as exciting as the ones you were involved with. Enjoyed the stories. Thanks for the laughs. I enjoyed the comments, too. I feel I had such a boring wedding after reading your stories and the comments.
ReplyDeleteWow, Marianne, I'm feeling 'wedding deprived' after reading your stories. I've only been to a handful in my life. Now I'm hoping to be invited to an Italian wedding at some stage. Sounds like you could write some humorous wedding novels.
ReplyDelete