What Are the Worst Wedding Guest Mistakes You’ve Ever Seen?
It’s wedding season and you know what that means. Across the country, people are going to quit their jobs, buy (or rent) expensive new clothes, watch a former single friend say “Yes”, gorge themselves on past snacks, and get bogged down in the Macarena or Electric Slide Moment they swore not to participate in.
While much has been written about what not to do as a wedding host (see: not providing enough food, making guests pay for drinks, inviting people to a bachelor or hen party, but not to a wedding), here we turn our attention to wedding guests . Those friends, close relatives, and distant second cousins that your mother forced you to invite will make your after-wedding party unforgettable.
While a wedding would hardly be any fun without our closest and dearest people nearby, whenever you invite dozens (or hundreds) of people to a party, somewhere, old college roommate or extended family line, someone is bound to do some weird shit. . Even if it’s not something as egregious as getting drunk and giving a rambling, incoherent speech, there are plenty of ways – big and small – that wedding guests can make the day a little harder or more obscenely stunning than it needs to be.
Now, if you’ve only ever attended weddings, some of these gaffes might be harder to spot. But when you’ve planned or staged a wedding (your own or someone else’s), some etiquette blunders become more obvious.
Things like: failing to respond to an invitation and then showing up with an uninvited plus. Ignoring the wedding registry, the couple spent days spontaneously buying a teapot they liked (or worse, not offering a gift at all). Being late (or early), not specifying dietary restrictions in advance, texting or calling the bride or groom in the morning with questions related to clothing, the weather, or the venue. And how could we forget the people who use this opportunity to make their big claims, divorce statistics, or carelessly break the no-children rule?
In the comments below, tell us the worst wedding guest mistakes you’ve encountered, from mundane administrative courtesies to egregious behavioral fouls, and we’ll round up the best of them in a future what-not-to-do post. After all, every future married couple deserves to be protected from someone harassing the DJ, texting throughout the wedding, or stopping a professional photographer from posting a sloppy photo of your big day on social media.