Though they’re often discussed, described and marketed as the best day of your life, there’s no doubt that someone's wedding day can be a horror.
Let’s begin with the costs. The average cost of a UK wedding stands at close to £20,000, but all-in costs can reach £30,000 when you take honeymoon, stag and hen do costs into account.
But some of the scariest elements of a wedding can be surprise events on the day. The 2020 podcast Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding? has seen a resurgence in popularity and notoriety on social media recently. It explores the journey of married couple Karen Whitehouse and Helen McLaughlin as they endeavour to find out which wedding guest defecated on the floor of the ladies bathroom at their wedding venue.
The couple enlist their best-friend-turned-amateur sleuth to look further into it in true crime podcast fashion, interviewing guests to try and get to the bottom of their horror story and mystery.
So why are wedding day dramas such a big thing (everyone seems to have a story) and why are we so obsessed with them? Well, it’s fair to say we are slap-bang in the middle of peak wedding season once again – it being summer and all, and after two years of a pandemic-sponsored fallow period for nuptials, maybe we’re even more privy to and hungry for the disasters that come with the big days. Also, pack a load of people, nostalgia, love and alcohol into one venue and you’re likely to get some stories.
"There were two poo-cidents!"
Clare tells Grazia about her own fecal-related wedding horror, which shares parallels and themes with Karen and Emily’s. When she was on her honeymoon, Clare received an email informing her that hundreds of pounds would be deducted from her wedding venue deposit because someone had pooed all over a toilet stall.
‘We were obviously mortified, but also because everything with weddings starts to feel like a money-making scam you start to get paranoid,’ she says. ‘Over dinner with our in-laws we told them what had happened. My brother-in-law said that he'd seen the incident in question. Someone had obviously, he said, got caught short, had an accident and stuffed their dirty boxers down the side of the loo on the floor.’
Clare felt a small amount of relief that ‘no-one has maliciously dirty protested my whole wedding’, and her guilt had been slightly assuaged over the cleaner dealing with such an incident, now she knew the full story and that they hadn’t had to deal with ‘something out of Trainspotting’.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the saga. ‘A week later, we had an email from the venue, telling us that the incident was in the disabled toilet in the ladies. So, in fact, there had been not one, but two poo-cidents at my wedding.'
We had to repaint the walls of the banquet hall because someone punched a bridesmaid.
Daisy tells Grazia about her dramatic turn as a bridesmaid, having to deal with a rather unpleasant wedding reception guest.
‘He seemed friendly enough at the start, but as the drinks sunk in he got more and more aggressive with his flirting and suggestive dance moves,’ she says. ‘Even though I told him I had a boyfriend, he continued to buy drinks for me and try and grind up on me on the dance floor. Multiple people I’d met at the hen do had to keep telling him to give me a wide berth, it was very uncomfortable.’
Towards the end of the reception, the man in question disappeared, much to everyone’s collective relief. However, according to discoveries made the next day by the bride and groom, the reason for this is that he had locked himself in a toilet stall and fallen asleep. He was discovered roughly two hours after the celebrations by the owner of the reception hall. Maybe all the most memorable wedding horrors happen (or end) in toilet stalls.
"Someone punched the bridesmaid"
Weddings are, above all, drama central when it comes to affairs of the heart. There’s something about the lethal combination of formal wear and an open bar – it brings out the passionate side of so many of us.
Sometimes, though, these vibes have dire consequences. Hanna tells Grazia about the most horrifying wedding moment she witnessed while working at a country hotel in Devon.
‘We had to repaint the walls of the banquet hall because someone punched a bridesmaid,' she says. 'There was blood splattered everywhere, but she wasn’t seriously injured, luckily. It turns out the bridesmaid’s ex was at the wedding with a new girlfriend, and the two women had a drunken scuffle.’
"We had to send out a search party for the bride"
Camilla was maid of honour at a wedding where a rather dramatic relationship-related altercation occurred, also. ‘A groomsman and his new wife had a champagne-fuelled jealousy fight in the isolated castle grounds,’ she tells Grazia. ‘She ended up throwing a chair at him, stormed off and then couldn’t find her way back. There was no phone reception, so we had to send a search party. She was of course rescued and he grovelled fairly successfully!’
Incidents such as these make you question a lot – whether you’re engaged and soon to be married or not. Should you vet your wedding guest list more closely? Are these disasters always completely down to alcohol consumption? Who is likely to be quite literally a wild card on one of the most important days of your life?
"He smelled like rotten fish"
Sometimes, the wild escapades of your guests are just plain hilarious. ‘At our wedding, one of my husband's groomsmen was so drunk he fell into some stagnant pond in the venue's gardens,’ Anna tells Grazia. ‘Whatever was in there absolutely stank, but that didn't make him rush off to get a shower. No. He came straight back to the wedding, carried on drinking and chatting and dancing on the dancefloor in his soaking wet suit that smelt like rotten fish.’
She adds that as the bride, there were more questions about the guy who stank of pond water than anything else. Talk about stealing the show!
Some slapstick moments just add to the memorable moments of the day: ‘My sister's marquee housing the caterers blew into the lake at her wedding,’ Clio tells Grazia. ‘We kept it from her to minimise stress and managed to get a replacement one. The original had to be fished out the next day!’
"The couple took all of our presents"
On her wedding day, Jo faced trouble from a couple who weren't even on the guest list. ‘The wedding venue stored ours and another bride and groom's gifts in the same room overnight, and the other couple drove off with all our presents, claiming they were theirs,’ she tells Grazia. Not even pointing out that most presents would’ve come with a labelled card with the correct bride and groom’s names on it changed the outcome, the damage had been done. ‘They had already opened everything saying it was all their stuff,’ she explains.
The wedding venue stored ours and another bride and groom's gifts in the same room overnight, and the other couple drove off with all our presents, claiming they were theirs.
Perhaps, though, the way to navigate the possibility of wedding disasters is trying to find some form of silver lining in them. This might be more difficult with the ones that take place in toilet stalls or involve bloodshed or stolen gifts, admittedly, but it’s still a pragmatic way to face these potential horrors.
Flora tells Grazia about how multiple nightmares ultimately led to a beautiful moment on her own wedding day. First of all, the celebrant’s car caught fire on the way to the venue, meaning the ceremony started late.
But, like in a lot of cases, the reception was when the fun really started. ‘It started raining heavily after the wedding meal, which caused a power cut,’ she says. ‘So the band moved to the centre of the dance floor and performed a capella for half an hour.’
What began as a definite disaster went down as a hit with the guests. ‘Someone even booed when the lights came back on,’ Flora adds.
So when you're looking forward to a wedding, whether it's yours or not, be braced for disaster – whether you like it or not – as well as the opportunity to make lemonade from it. Unless a toilet stall is involved, of course.