“Like rain on your wedding day … ” Alanis Morissette sang in her 1996 hit Ironic. This – and the song’s other unfortunate events – have been ruled decidedly not ironic, but it is certainly bad luck. Still, it’s got nothing on the dramas and mishaps that have befallen some people on their big day.
Lisa, 53, was all set before her wedding in 2003, when she realised she couldn’t find the rings anywhere.
She remembered they had sat in the bag for a couple of weeks after purchase. But then what?
“I had a vague recollection of looking into the bag, thinking it was empty and throwing it away. Each ring box had a white cardboard sleeve, so perhaps they looked like the bottom of the bag. I had this huge sinking feeling as I realised I might have thrown them away,” Lisa, a charity worker who is from the UK but now lives in New Zealand, says. “My partner was pragmatic and calm, which is what I love about him.”
The rings never turned up and it was too late to buy new ones. But there was a silver lining.
“We were married with his dad’s and my mum’s rings on the day, which was actually really lovely,” Lisa says. They even managed to get money back, she adds: “The insurance company were somewhat baffled by my description of what happened, but they paid out anyway.”
Darren Smith and his wife managed to hang on to their rings – but struggled with an errant wedding musician. Smith, 37, from North Carolina, decided to hire an acoustic covers performer after seeing him play at the opening of a salon.
The couple met with him a couple of weeks before the wedding to go over the setlist they wanted at the ceremony and reception.
“To our bemusement, he showed up in a neck brace holding a small pomeranian dog,” Smith, who works in marketing, remembers. “He assured us all was fine so we paid the deposit and gave him the list of songs.” The couple asked him to play a selection of music on his speakers during the ceremony, and a setlist of live covers on his guitar at the reception.
The pomeranian was but an inkling of what was to come.
“On the day, he showed up late, without a guitar, and without the songs downloaded ready to play at the ceremony,” Smith remembers of their 2010 wedding in Florida. “He then stated he was unable to use his phone, as he was worried he would receive a call from creditors during key moments.” Instead of enjoying a quiet pre-wedding moment, Smith spent the final minutes before the ceremony “frantically downloading songs” to his own phone.
Shortly after, the musician was nowhere to be found, Smith says.
“Within 30 minutes of the reception, he had vanished,” he says. In his absence, the couple played a Spotify party playlist and “everybody had a lot of fun”.
They didn’t let the chaos ruin their nuptials. “We knew we would laugh about it one day and it ultimately added to the relaxed nature of the day, resulting in more enjoyment for all,” Smith says.
For others, the ceremony went according to plan; it was everything else that went awry.
Ahead of her 2019 wedding in Hampshire, Nicola, 35, a web editor, had booked a room above a picturesque pub for their first night as a married couple.
“We let them know it was for our wedding, and double-checked they’d still be open for us to check in late. They said as long as we checked in by midnight, we’d be fine,” she recalls. The loved the atmosphere of the cosy venue, and after booking they realised they had actually gone to the pub on one of their first dates: it was perfect.
Come wedding night, the happy couple arrived “before midnight – like good Cinderellas!” to find the pub closed. Still in her wedding dress, Nicola hammered on the door and tried calling, to no avail.
They gave up and went to the nearest hotel after the owner told them over the phone that there was a room available. But when they arrived, the owner appeared in her dressing gown “apologising profusely”, explaining she had been mistaken: they were fully booked. She offered the newlyweds a night in her son’s bedroom instead. “We trailed up to see the room – she opened the door and several cats ran out of what was very much a child’s bedroom,” says Nicole.
They politely declined, and spent the night in a budget hotel chain, which threw in breakfast on the house “out of pity for [their] Mary and Joseph-esque tale”.
Julia Fauci’s wedding was the scene of a 1980s culture clash. “We had what was then referred to as a hippie wedding, where the atmosphere was relaxed – but still there were things that went wrong,” Fauci, who is now 71 and retired in Illinois, says. They held a small reception in their home, where over the bar, Fauci’s father’s “jet-setting friends” clashed with their hippie circle “over martinis and cheap beer”.
The chaos reached a climax when her husband’s friend decided he should be the one to carry the bride over the threshold. “He picked me up in the garden, where it had rained, and then dropped me in the mud,” Fauci says. “I was mortified, but a secret part of myself thought it was great fun … A thumb-to-the-nose gesture towards marriage itself!”
For all her embarrassment, things turned out well in the end, she reflects. “It was a crazy, crazy day – but we’re still married 44 years later despite everything that happened.”
Speak now: A Guardian guide to the realities of a modern wedding
