The 25 Craziest Things Brides and Grooms Have Ever Done

1 | The bride who turned down an heirloom engagement ring.

In February 2019, 29-year-old Reddit user @secondhandring posted the story of her engagement, but it wasn't exactly the stuff of fairytales. "I was really excited when my sister told me that my boyfriend asked her which kind of ring would suit me and he sent her some pics from Tiffany’s," she wrote of her boyfriend of 10 years. "The day comes and I’m really excited. ... I said yes and then he showed me the ring. It was not even a new one. It looked old and the stones looked average at best."

It turned out, her boyfriend's mother gave him her ring, which was especially meaningful since his father had passed away. "He told me that it had a great sentimental value since his father was the only man his mother ever truly loved and I’m the only woman he’ll ever love," she wrote. "It's all sweet and cheesy but it doesn't look great. Also, I don't want the beginning of my new life to start with a second-hand ring. ... Was I wrong?"

Needless to say, Reddit users were quick to tell her she absolutely was.

2 | The bride who made guests dress according to their weight.

Telling people to dress in black tie attire or cocktail wear is one thing, but dictating their outfits based on their weight is on a whole other level. In a post on Reddit, user @insanepeopleonfb posted a screenshot of one bride’s wardrobe requirements for the guests of her wedding, held in Hawaii in 2019. These included women weighing between 100 and 160 pounds wearing a green velvet sweater, orange suede pants, red-heeled Christian Louboutin shoes, and a Burberry scarf. Men who weigh between 100 and 200 pounds were told to wear a purple fuzzy jacket, soda hat, all-white trainers and plain glow sticks.

Women weighing more than 160 pounds were instructed to wear a black sweater and pants, as well as black shoes. Men weighing more than 200 pounds were supposed to wear black sneakers and “camouflage.” Oh, and she also stipulated that guests should spend at least $1,000 on their wedding outfit.

3 | The bride who asked a guest to cover their tattoos and dye their hair.

Another bride even took that a step further by asking a particular guest to cover her tattoos and dye her hair back to a natural color—and she was't even a bridesmaid!

“It doesn't matter that you're not in the wedding party, you'll still be in photos and you will ruin them,” the bride-to-be wrote in a text message, shared via a screenshot by the Daily Mail.  “You're very pretty normally but your look doesn't work for my wedding and it is very fair to ask you to do something simple so that my day is perfect.” Is it though?

4 | The groom who married himself.

Not everyone wants to get married, but that doesn't mean they can't still have a party. In 2005, Kevin Nadal, 27, a performance artist, decided to marry himself in front of 125 guests as a way of celebrating single life.

"Single people are marginalized in our culture,” he told The Guardian. “People think you don't have the commitment to be in a relationship or you're too picky. Women have it tough. Heterosexual men, they get a free pass and are congratulated for being a 'player.' But for gay men and single women, there's a stigma because we don't have a partner." Nadal said many of his guests called it "the best wedding they'd ever been to." At the very least, it was the most unique!

5 | The couple who took wedding photos in front of a forest fire.

Everyone wants that unique wedding photo, but one couple took it to an extreme. Sara and Michael Kramer planned to get married at a venue near San Juan National Forest in Antonio, Colorado, in June 2018, but had to move it because of forest fires. They took a photo in front of the fires at sunset that quickly made the rounds online after the photographer posted it on Instagram.

People were upset that they made light of a natural disaster, but in the caption, the couple wrote that the images were “not meant to glorify the situation ... or minimize the impact it is having on our town and the economy or what the families that have been evacuated are going through. We fully understand everyone’s pain." Seems like a strange way to show it though, no?

6 | The couple who had a Costco-themed wedding.

When most couples pick a theme for their wedding, it’s usually a certain color scheme, or going for a “rustic” feel in a barn with mason jar vases. But in 2014, one California couple had a Costco-themed wedding and walked down the literal aisle of the frozen food section, reported local news station KEYT. The couple originally met at the bulk superstore, so it was a special location for them. After their first kiss, they got cozy in a double recliner.

7 | The couple who dressed as characters from Toy Story.

When Garrett Smith and Jason Bitner got married in Illinois, they ditched the traditional tuxedos in favor of dressing as Buzz Lightyear and Woody from the movie Toy Story. Naturally, their first dance was to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” reported ABC News.

"Things exploded and it just became an outright obsession," Smith told Good Morning America of the couple's love for Disney. "My entire family ended up really getting into it and I was very surprised and touched that they spent so much time and effort into their costumes because it meant so much to us."

8 | The groom who basically hated all music.

In 2014, one wedding planner told Brides about a potential client they worked with where the groom had a very long “do not play” list for the wedding band. The banned music included anything by Michael Jackson, Jimmy Buffet, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Barry White, The Eagles, The Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire, and more bands—as well as a separate list of more than 20 songs.

9 | The groom who didn’t attend the reception.

And then there was the time that the groom dropped the bride off at their reception, then drove off. “He let her attend the reception alone," one wedding guest told Brides. “She sat at the table alone. There was no first dance. I guess the groom told one of his family members that he didn't like what was being served at the reception, so he decided not to attend. It was very awkward, to say the least!"

10 | The woman who married the Eiffel Tower

Back in 2008, a woman who falls in love with inanimate objects decided to marry her true love: the Eiffel Tower. She also took the tower’s name, going by Erika La Tour Eiffel, reported The Telegraph. She pledged to love, honor and obey the structure in an intimate ceremony attended by a small group of friends (and presumably any tourists who happened to be around that day).

11 | The groom who wanted a Christmas-themed wedding...in September.

A lot of people love Christmas, but one man loved it so much that he wanted it to be the theme of his wedding, which took place in September. The problem was that the other groom wanted no part in the festivities. To make amends, the less-than-enthusiastic groom surprised his holiday-loving-hubby by having the DJ play the Mariah Carey classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” reported Brides.

While it was a lovely gesture, the groom got so excited that he made a running leap onto the dance floor from another room, fell, and cracked his head open. Fortunately, some of the bartenders were firemen and first responders, who managed to fix him up so he could get back to dancing.

12 | The groom who rickrolled his vows.

One wedding officiant told HuffPost about a couple who wrote their own vows. The bride went first, and hers were heartfelt and emotional. Then the groom started his vows similarly, but at one point said, “I’ll never give you up, I’ll never let you down…” at which point the guests knew exactly what was going on—an homage to his bride and Rick Astley’s 1987 hit.

13 | The couple that had a Golden Girls/Jurassic Park themed-wedding.

It’s hard to tell if this is a crazy wedding theme, or the best wedding theme ever. Brides Kelsey and Samara decided to combine their pop culture interests and have a Brooklyn wedding with plenty of tropical decor and dinosaur details, the Ruffled blog reported.

“We knew we didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, and we thought that having a lighthearted, joyous theme would put people at ease and get them on the dance floor,” Samara told the blog. “We were right; it was a very nuts dance party.”

14 | The bride who pranked her husband during the “first look” photo shoot.

Many couples today are skipping the tradition of seeing each other for the first time at the altar in favor of having a “first look” photo shoot before the ceremony. One bride decided to switch things up a bit by pranking her husband and sending her brother to the shoot dressed in a bridal gown, no less, reported Arizona 12 News. The good-natured brother-of-the-bride even went as far as to put on his sister’s deodorant and perfume to throw the groom off the scent. “When we were zipping him up, everyone was laughing,” the bride said.

15 | The woman who married—then divorced—a ghost pirate.

In 2018, Amanda Teague, a 45-year-old Jack Sparrow impersonator from Northern Ireland, married a 300-year old ghost of a Haitian pirate named Jack, People reported. The couple went to great lengths to be married, holding the ceremony in international waters so it would be legal, and having Jack say his vows through a medium. Sadly, this fairytale didn’t end happily ever after: Teague divorced Jack a few months later.

16 | The bride who wanted guests to pay $1,500 so she could be a “Kardashian for a day.”

After a psychic told one bride-to-be that she should have a more expensive wedding, she asked her guests to each contribute $1,500 so that could happen. All she wanted, she wrote on social media, was a $60,000 wedding in Aruba and wanted a little help from her friends so she could “be a Kardashian for a day,” reported Refinery29. Needless to say, the money didn’t come through, the wedding was canceled, and the couple broke up.

17 | The bride who banned people born out of wedlock.

This one is, unfortunately, exactly what it sounds like. One Reddit user described her best friend’s co-worker’s wedding, where anyone born out of wedlock was not welcome to attend, reported People. Her friend is the daughter of a teen mom, so she fell into this category.

18 | The couple who got married in a Taco Bell.

Plenty of people get married in Las Vegas, but not many do it in a Taco Bell. But that was the case for Dan and Bianca Ryckert who won a contest to become the first couple to tie the knot in the fast food chain’s new chapel. Taco details were everywhere, including the bride’s bouquet and the groom’s boutonniere, which were made of an assortment of hot sauce packets, Taco Bell said on its website.

19 | The couple who got married underwater.

In 2017, a British couple got married in an underwater ceremony in the Florida Keys national marine sanctuary, reported The Guardian. A notary public used an underwater tablet to facilitate the exchange of vows. The bride wore a traditional white wedding dress and veil, the groom wore a tuxedo, and they both had on the appropriate scuba gear.

20 | The bride who put her bridesmaids on a strict diet.

One bride had a very specific vision in mind for her bridal party, and that meant controlling their weight. She required regular weigh-ins starting around five months before the big day, and later created a Google document where each bridesmaid could record her daily caloric intake, reported Gawker. As the wedding day approached, she recommended that they switch to a diet of rice cakes and water. Let’s hope the wedding dinner was filling.

21 | The bride who refused to let blondes be bridesmaids.

Asking your bridal party not to dye their hair unnatural colors before the wedding isn’t that unusual (regardless of the fact that it's fairly inappropriate), but what about banning blondes? That’s what one bride did, according to her bridesmaid, Reddit user @CharmesIsTheOne.

“My best friend asked me to dye my hair from blonde to brown, because her other bridesmaids all had brown hair and she wanted to be the only one with blonde hair,” she wrote. “She did pay for me to get it done at a professional salon, so I didn't mind too much, and her photos did look amazing after. However, I definitely have a few friends who thought I was crazy for agreeing to that request.”

22 | The couple who turned their wedding into a serious revenge plot.

One couple had enough with the groom’s difficult, racist mother, and so they decided to use their wedding to get revenge. Reddit user @hicctl, a friend of the groom, spilled the beans. The revenge included an explosive DVD the couple played before the ceremony with detailed accounts of how the groom's mother had attempted to sabotage the wedding due to her unsavory beliefs.

23 | The groom who wanted the reception to be lit—literally.

At one reception, the groom drank a little (well, a lot) too much, smashed a bottle of cognac on the dance floor and then tried to set it on fire. Like, actually set it on fire, not just tear it up with amazing dance moves, according to Reddit user @unverifiedscrobbler1. When the venue manager politely told the groom that he couldn’t do that, the groom responded by saying, “This is my wedding and if I want to burn this place down I will." After that, the police were called.

24 | The couple who had a Walking Dead-themed wedding.

This couple took the whole “til death do us part” vow pretty seriously and had a Walking Dead-themed wedding. The groom—NFL player DeAngelo Williams—hired a makeup artist to transform him, the bride (Risalyn Williams) and the guests into zombies, then filmed a video in which the guests chased the couple around. The video and the wedding made the rounds after being posted on Facebook.

“Everybody goes through weddings. They walk down the aisle. It’s over with,” the groom said. “[The zombie wedding] is a time for us to laugh and point and say, ‘Ha, you look goofy.’ It gives us a chance to step outside our comfort zone and put on our acting skills, whether we possess them or not.”

25 | The bride who read her (now-ex) fiance's cheating texts at the altar.

The night before Casey’s wedding, she received screenshots of her soon-to-be husband's sexy texts to another woman. Instead of calling off the wedding immediately, the next day she got dressed, walked down the aisle, turned to the wedding guests and said: “There will be no wedding today. It seems Alex is not who I thought he was.”

In an essay on the Australian news site news.com.au, Casey wrote about how she then pulled out her phone and read the text messages Alex had sent to another woman out loud in front of everyone. He stomped out of the church, while she said: “I love all of you and as horrible as this is I’m glad you all are here. There will not be a wedding reception today, but instead, there will be a celebration of honesty, finding true love and following your heart even when it hurts.” And for some more practical wedding advice, check out the 13 Wedding Trends You Should Ignore This Year.

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