Getting married is one of the most important and exciting times in life. It’s not uncommon to hear “if you know, you know.” But what about those who don’t know until it’s too late? Unfortunately for some, their partner’s true colors come out in the midst of the wedding or shortly after when the knot has already been tied. People who married bridezillas share what happened after their wedding. This content has been edited for clarity.
Grow Up
“My coworker married a crazy bridezilla. I’m going to try to hit the bullet points of what happened leading up to, during, and after the wedding.
The moment he proposed, she lost her sex drive. According to him, she also basically stopped acting like the woman he fell in love with and started acting like her real self. Which was batshit crazy. A week after he proposed, she quit her job because her full-time job was to plan the wedding. She had a fight with his mother because she demanded the groom’s mom pay for half the wedding but get zero input. His mom also wasn’t allowed to contribute to the guest list which was 95 percent the bride’s friends and family.
Subsequently, the bride, who was 30 years old, egged her future mother-in-law’s house. When the bride and groom had a spat about the egging, he went to work the next day and she sent him a video of her screaming and sobbing as she buzzed her hair off in the bathroom. I worked with him and he showed me the video when he said he had to leave. I strongly urged him to have her assessed by a psychiatrist. He made a dumb joke about sex with a crazy girl being the best kind and I pitied him.
The wedding was in a pool ‘clubhouse’ in summer and was much too small for the 150+ people invited. Someone forgot to turn the AC on until after the place was packed. A lifeguard showed up in a swimsuit to turn it on but it did little given it was already sweltering.
Two rows of chairs in the clubhouse were ribboned off with ‘reserved’ signs, so they remained empty. They were later occupied by the six seated bridesmaids, leaving about a dozen chairs open once the wedding started. The one groomsman stood by the groom and didn’t sit. Elderly people were left standing or reduced to sitting on the floor as there was no way to get to the chairs once the ceremony started.
The bride showed up 90 minutes late having been unhappy with her hair (wig?) and makeup. She took it all off and did it herself so all the guests were standing for an hour and a half waiting for her. The groom was standing at the altar the entire time sweating in a wool suit and was clearly not sure if she would show up. He looked like he felt sick.
When the bride showed up, she burst into the clubhouse, marched down the aisle, and snapped at the officiant to ‘hurry up and get started.’ During the prayer while the religious groom had his head bowed, she turned to wave at everyone (I don’t pray so I was looking up), then she told her mother to go get her some water. She drank a bottle of water during the prayer and kept grinning and waving at people in attendance, paying zero mind to her groom in front of her.
When the ceremony was over, tables were crammed into the clubhouse and apparently only family and immediate friends of the bride had seats at tables. The rest of us were going to be standing outside during the reception. So I didn’t see a dance, a speech, the cake cutting, nothing.
The food was served outside in the Southern U.S. July heat with bugs everywhere. The bride made the groom go get her food over and over. He meekly stood in line with the other 150 people until people insisted he go sit and let them get food. He said he had to be the one to get the bride food because she said so. She never left her table or greeted any of her guests.
Apparently, they had a massive fight as they were leaving the following day for the honeymoon. The bride was laying out all the failures of the wedding she planned at his and his mom’s feet. She threw his luggage out of the car and tried to drive to the airport by herself, but he had their tickets and jumped on the hood to stop her from driving off. The groom got fired from his job about a month after the wedding because he kept showing up late, leaving early, and leaving in the middle of the day because she called him with some crisis.
One year after the wedding, I got a thank you note for my wedding gift which was signed by just the bride. There was a note that said, ‘As you may have heard, Ryan and I have had a bumpy start in our first year as a married couple and we are separated now. Thanks for the lovely gift.’ They divorced a couple of months later.”
Time To Party
“My brother married a bridezilla. Everyone in my immediate family didn’t care for her. She was very unfriendly to us from the beginning, especially to my mom, who is one of the most welcoming people I’ve ever met. None of us understood why he was marrying her but my brother has always had ‘interesting’ girlfriends, so we kind of went with it and supported his decision because it was his life.
She yelled at my mother the day of the wedding for asking her where she wanted certain decorations at the reception site. There wasn’t a written plan so my mom had nothing to go off of. She never thanked my parents for financially contributing to the wedding and accused a bridesmaid of trying to upstage her by getting a spray tan before the wedding.
My brother wanted me to be in the wedding party but she told him to his face that I was too pretty to be in the wedding party as all of her bridesmaids had to be less attractive than her. She stole my sister-in-law’s jacket in the middle of the reception–literally took it off her back– because one of the bridesmaids was cold. The list goes on.
Well, they got divorced about a year later because apparently her demanding attitude carried over into the marriage. I was surprised he didn’t see it before the wedding since they dated for three years before they got married. I guess love truly is blind. Needless to say, the rest of my family had a little party when we heard about the divorce.”
Last Minute
“I have officiated a few wedding ceremonies that came about because things fell through for whatever reason. Only one of which I had to walk away from. I had received a call from my sister-in-law that one of her friends was supposed to get married and the priest had passed away the week before. They didn’t want to change the date and move anything, so they asked if she knew anyone who could help out.
I said, ‘Sure, when’s the wedding?’
It was in an hour. I was on my way home from work where I had finished up an important meeting and was reasonably well dressed so I figured I could swing it. I called home to say I was going to be late. When I arrived at the venue, the ‘happy couple’ looked at me and asked if I had proper priest vestments. Um, no, I didn’t. Even if I did, I would probably not be carrying them in my car.
The bride asked if I was able to go buy some and come back. I told her I wouldn’t begin to know where to buy something like that. The groom then told me if I couldn’t even try, then maybe I should leave, so I did. My sister-in-law later told me they cornered a priest at the church and told him he had to marry them or they would sue the church for a breach of contract and that it was the moral thing to do.
They divorced nine months later when her ‘surprise’ baby was of a different ethnicity than he was. It didn’t help that he had a side piece as well.”
Secrets On Secrets
“My first marriage was to a bridezilla. She got wasted before the ceremony and wouldn’t dance because she was ‘too anxious people would make fun of her.’ She tried bragging to my cousins during the dinner that our wedding was better than theirs and invited her ‘ex’ boyfriend to the ceremony. I later found out she had been sleeping with him both before and after our wedding.
The list goes on. She took the money we had received as gifts and spent it on a bunch of random stuff when we were planning on using it for a house down payment. She also had a ton of debt she kept from me and kept spending money more quickly than she could make it. I ended up having to take on a second job to cover the bills even though I already worked over 50 hours a week.
She got into drugs and stopped going to work. She’d go visit her ‘friends’ in the evenings but it turned out she was going to her boyfriend’s. The final straw was when I found out what she was doing with the money. Paying bills online wasn’t as popular back then, so I would give her money to go pay our bills during banking hours. One day, I got pulled over and was charged with no insurance on my vehicle so I knew something was up.
It turned out she was taking the money for bills and buying drugs. When the notices for no payment would come in the mail, she would hide them or rip them up. I handed her separation papers on our one-year anniversary and never looked back. I’m now happily married to a great woman.”
Engaged At Nineteen
“After getting back with my ex-boyfriend I broke up with in high school, his parents got it into his head he should propose. They got married at the age of 19 and thought we should follow in their footsteps as we were 19. We were only back together for a month at that point. Nevertheless, he proposed and I was excited as it was an important moment in my life and I could plan the beautiful wedding I always dreamed of.
I immediately started looking at venues because we only had ten months to plan. His mom complained to everyone behind my back that I was planning too soon. When I planned to go wedding dress shopping, she complained again about how I was doing it too soon even though our wedding was in eight months. She also brought some of her kids without asking me. On top of that, I invited a mutual friend of ours and got a text from that friend on my way to the bridal shop asking if she could bring her kids because my fiancé’s mom told her to.
His mom also got mad at me for not including all seven of her daughters in the wedding party. Whenever I tried to plan wedding stuff with my fiancé, he ‘couldn’t handle it’ because planning the proposal took too much energy out of him. That lasted a few months. His family is also strictly Catholic so when I didn’t want to have a mass for our wedding, they made sure the priest talked me into it
Whenever his family tried controlling the wedding, I got bothered because they were planning around themselves. They said it wasn’t about me and my fiancé, it was about their family because their family is a ‘big deal.’ Worst of all, they called me a bridezilla to my face multiple times because I didn’t like how they were controlling my wedding. Within those few months, I remembered why I broke up with my fiancé the first time. So I broke up with him again. F that.”
Mother-In-Lawzilla
“This wasn’t a bridezilla situation but a mother-in-lawzilla. My wife wanted a regular-sized wedding at a historic venue she loved. We had planned for about 100 guests at most and planned to do a lot of the work. My MIL started to pressure us about having to invite tons of people as our in-laws are loaded and social butterflies. She also wanted us to change the venue and the photographer. I didn’t care as long as my wife was happy and did my best to adjust. Finally, about two months before the wedding, my wife had a breakdown crying because of all the changes and bullshit from MIL.
I told my wife I would handle my MIL from then on. I called her, read her the riot act, and told her to cool her shit or we would just get a courtroom wedding and forget about the religious wedding (which was a huge deal to the family). My wife’s entire family fought me for weeks but I told them all to pound sand. We had our original wedding. I was folding invitations and favors the night before until three am, but by golly we got it done.
Of course, my MIL still changed the DJ and photographers without us knowing so we had completely wrong music and have yet to see the pictures 16 years later. Let’s just say we have minimal contact with her family.”
Never Again
“I wasn’t a bridezilla but my fiancé’s mom was a momzilla. We didn’t want to have a wedding because quite honestly, we were poor. We just wanted to get married and didn’t care about the wedding. Well, his family insisted that we had some form of one. So fast forward to the actual wedding day and part of his family is two hours late. Like two hours late. They made us wait for them to get there to get married because remember– the wedding wasn’t really for us.
I had not asked for very much regarding the wedding. We aren’t religious so we didn’t want that brought in but my MIL made sure someone got up to say a long prayer for us. I asked that the cake simply not have fruit/jam or anything like that in it and guess what? It was filled with strawberry jam between layers.
Next, she couldn’t accept that he wasn’t going to shove the cake all over my face (gotta do that!). So while he put the bite of cake in my mouth, she shoved his arm forward HARD which caused him to scrape his nail across the top of my mouth and stab into my back gums. It hurt so freaking bad and I was bleeding a ton. My gums ended up getting infected because of it.
At that point, I was so done with the wedding (that we didn’t even want) and went to change out of my dress. It was too tight and I had been wearing it for two extra hours already because of the late family members. In the meantime, his family stood there talking shit about me in Spanish. They didn’t know my best friend spoke Spanish so she informed me they were saying how I ruined the day for all of them.
They ended up taking all the food and leaving. We were married for nine years but his family and I never really got along, to say the least. I’m glad to not have to deal with that anymore. If I ever get married again, it’s going to be simple and casual in the woods, potluck style. Screw weddings.”
Wedding “Expenses”
“My sister was a bridezilla. She asked me to be her bridesmaid and the dresses were hundreds of dollars. My mom ended up paying for it because she knew I couldn’t afford it. 70 bucks in alterations later, the stupid dress finally fit. I lived in Edmonton at the time and my sister was in Abbotsford, BC (by Vancouver). She demanded I fly down for her bachelorette party. Fine. I dropped 300 dollars on a flight.
During the bachelorette party, I was told I needed to bring drinks for myself and the bride. Fine. I went to the store and my sister ran up 100 bucks on my card with what she wanted. Whatever. It was her wedding. She proceeded to drink none of it and went to bed at the hotel early because she was in a bad mood for some reason. She then gave all 100 dollars worth of my alcohol to her husband for his bachelor party the next night.
The party was a week before the wedding so when I flew down, I just stayed until the wedding. I was staying with my mom until my sister kicked me out the night before her wedding because she wanted a ‘special night’ with her TWO maids of honor. I was the only normal bridesmaid and therefore couldn’t be there.
My sister then got mad at me because my wedding gift for them wasn’t off her registry. I looked at the registry and there was nothing under 200 bucks– she even put a 900-dollar vacuum on there. Lastly, my boyfriend drove out for the wedding and drove us back after which ended up being 400 dollars worth of gas. All said and done, her stupid wedding cost me over a thousand dollars even with my mom paying for my dress.
My sister didn’t speak to me for years after. The one time she did it was to tell me she didn’t want me as a bridesmaid and that I ruined her wedding. She said she only asked me out of courtesy and that the spot was actually meant for her wedding planner, our cousin. I don’t know if she’s happily married or not, we don’t keep in touch. Her wedding ruined our relationship.”
Groomzilla
“This isn’t about a bridezilla, but a groomzilla. A friend of my father was remarrying. It was both his and the bride’s second time around, both in their early forties, and an arranged marriage. The guy was an utter groomzilla. He demanded every event be at top-notch hotels with obscenely expensive catering and hired string quartets and whatnot for entertainment. Mostly paid out of the bride’s family’s pocket, I might add.
The parties on the nights leading up to the main wedding event were opportunity enough for him to make a rather public ass of himself, talking at the top of his voice, and showboating the entire time. But the kicker came the next day when the bride was missing from her own wedding reception. Obviously, it was very odd and conspicuous, and the few relatives from her side made some noncommittal excuses about her not feeling well.
Turned out the groomzilla divorced the poor woman right after he’d had his wedding night fun. He said he ‘didn’t like her enough’ (and that’s an almost literal quote). So he gave her the triple divorce thing, and that was it. The marriage was officially over before the festivities even ended.”
Ex-Best Friend
Luis Molinero/Shutterstock
“My ex-best friend was a bridezilla. She was always quite short with people and had a short fuse but I put up with that side because we used to have a good laugh. I met someone who I was with for three years when we got engaged, then another three years before we got married. We had also been friends for four years before we got together. But before we got married, she used to stay over at our house all the time. We all got along.
Then she met a guy. My husband actually helped her as she liked him and my husband worked with him. After being together for about four months, they got engaged. She started changing from then on. She would talk to people really posh as though she was above everyone and went out and bought a horse to appear like she had money (when I knew full well she didn’t).
When she asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, I said yes but really wish I hadn’t now. A couple of months later, we met for coffee and I told her I was pregnant. I thought she’d be as happy as I was as we’d been trying for a while, but nope! According to her, I got pregnant just to ruin her wedding and take the focus off her. She was also mad because we wanted to finally tie the knot since we were pregnant. It wasn’t perfect timing, but we wanted to get married on our anniversary and it happened to be three weeks after her wedding.
When her wedding day arrived, she had it in a church even though she’s not religious at all and he was a very vocal atheist. She had an expensive wedding dress and hired out the most expensive hotel in our local city. It was a big ordeal which I know weddings are and that was fine, it was her special day. I was there for her, helped her, and did everything a bridesmaid was meant to do even if I did have morning sickness. I kept a smile on my face holding her ridiculously long veil up most of the day.
When our wedding day arrived, it was a very small registry office affair which was perfect for us. She sat there looking like she was chewing a lemon, didn’t smile once, then outside she spoke with my mom who’d she’d known for years.
My mom said, ‘You’ll be used to all this by now,’ or something like that.
She replied, ‘Yes, but mine was a lot grander.’
She came to the reception at our friend’s hotel where there were about 30 people max. She accused my other best friend from childhood of playing footsie with her new husband under the table! My friend was not like that at all, she’d caught his foot while crossing her legs. When I eventually had my baby, it was the final straw. She visited for the first time six months later and said, ‘Oh, it’s got red hair.’ That was all she said and she didn’t even refer to our daughter by her name.
I cut her off which was the best thing I ever did. I hadn’t noticed how toxic she was and how on pins and needles I was around her all the time. Now my husband and I live in the same little house we did before we got married, don’t have any debt at all from the wedding, and are still very happy six years later. Adversely, she was in loads of debt from her wedding and her husband lost his job for gross misconduct. He had crashed a company car and tried to cover it until the person he hit sued him via the company. She had to sell her horse and the last I heard they’re living in her dad’s basement.”