It takes hard work and commitment to make it to the altar. Unfortunately, not everyone does. A Reddit user asked for stories of people witnessing bachelor or bachelorette parties that went so wrong that they thought, “There’s not going to be a wedding.” Here are 15 standout responses:
Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
1.“A friend of mine apparently came to the realization he never wanted to get married. After the bachelor party and the hangovers, he sat down and thought about it. [He] then called his fiancé and broke it off. Yeah, people were pissed, but he admitted he really didn’t want to get married, and this was better than the divorce they were headed for.”
A person holds a wedding ring in the foreground, while someone sits on a couch, head in hands, suggesting emotional distress
—None
2.“Bachelor party group was drinking heavily, and [in the] middle of the night they get this great idea to try driving up skiing slopes during summer time. The slopes were very steep, and their car came down rolling for 80 meters. Groom got taken to the hospital by helicopter and spent his supposed to be wedding day connected to tubes.”
3.“My then-fiancée got hammered at her bachelorette party and came home and admitted to me that she was 662K in debt. $662k. She was only 34 but had student loans from undergrad, two master’s, years of rolling over car loans, and re-financing her townhouse as well as credit cards. I called the wedding off. She was furious at me and at herself.”
A person is holding a hand with a solitaire engagement ring, focusing on the ring
4.“My friend had been with his fiancé of 8 years when she got pregnant. Fast forward eight months, and we decide that because they are basically common law married we need to throw him a bachelor party. So we go to the nearest big city, and he’s [interacting with] strippers. We’re all quite drunk when he gets the call that his fiancé is in labor. None of us [are] in any state to drive. We end up calling a cab and paying over $300 to get him to the hospital as soon as possible. My friend is stumbling down drunk when he walks into the delivery room, smelling like strippers, with a dick drawn on his face, and covered in glitter. I was positive that was the end. They’ve been married 7 years and just had their second child last week.”
5.“Best friend’s bachelor party a few years ago. He had dated his fiancé for 6 or 7 years at that point. She made a male friend at work [who] became a groomsman. I hated him, didn’t trust him, and told my buddy that. The night of the party, after huge amounts of alcohol, the groom breaks down crying, leaves, and walks home. Didn’t say anything to anyone, just left. Found out the next day that the bride-to-be had been banging the piece of shit groomsman for months, and they were trying to work through it. He couldn’t get past it and canceled the wedding.”
Two people sit back-to-back on a couch, arms crossed, appearing upset or in disagreement
6.“One of my best friend’s wedding was canceled when he learned she slept with a stripper after her bachelorette party. Like three days after. He is happily remarried now with a kid. Worst part was that it was a destination wedding/honeymoon, and he couldn’t get a refund. So we all went anyway, and he was super depressed the whole time. His family was all there too.”
7.“Friend of mine had a bachelor party at the local strip club two days before the wedding. I was going to come later in the evening as I was flying in late for the bachelor party and wedding. Got a call right before take-off that the groom had fallen from upstairs in the VIP section, and they believed had severed his spinal cord. Turns out he had severed his spinal cord and after a few months of rehab was fully paraplegic. Amazingly the wedding did happen, almost a year later. It puts things in perspective that she still stayed.”
8.“Bachelor party in Vegas. Bachelor hooks up with a girl [and] gives her his cell phone number so they can continue the party that night. Bride-to-be is sitting at home with the iPad, getting all of the iMessages from the girl. She canceled the wedding that day.”
Person in bed looking surprised at an open tablet, covering mouth with hand
—hfi
9.“My wife has a cousin who, on the night of his bachelor party, his family spent most of the event talking him out of getting married. Both [he] and his brother, I think, wanted to get married for the sake of getting married. They finally got through to him.”
—None
10.“Bachelorette party is three days before the destination wedding. My sister (the bride) is taken by her friends for a dinner. I’m at the bachelor party. We start getting weird messages. Garbled texts and then we get a call from a local hospital. Food poisoning. The Groom goes, ‘Yeah, this isn’t happening boys.'”
Person sitting, clutching their stomach, appearing to be in discomfort or pain
“Never underestimate the determination of a bride and bridesmaids. The wedding was delayed a day (to the Sunday), and she walked down the aisle with enough Gravol shoved up her bum and shot into her veins that I’m not sure she knew where she was, let alone that it was a wedding. The bridesmaids were all various shades of grey, green and ill.”
—None
11.“On an expensive out-of-town bachelorette party (mandated by the bride), we were talking to the bride when she dropped the bombshell of ‘I don’t know if I want kids.’ This was a couple of weeks before the wedding. I was pretty good friends with the groom and knew this was a deal breaker for him. Once we pulled our jaws from the table, we looked at her and told her that she seriously needed to have this conversation immediately. The wedding was called off a week later.”
12.“Several years ago, I got a phone call from the maid of honor for a wedding I was going to attend (as a guest) two weeks hence. She was flustered but managed to get out, ‘There’s no wedding. Groom called it off. He’s in love with someone else.’ Well, I didn’t press. I was friends with both, so I knew that the full details would eventually make their way back to me. Oh, and boy did they.
Two people in formal suits, one in blue and the other in light grey, stand arm in arm. The person in grey holds a red rose and wears a polka dot bow tie
“Turns out, a couple weeks before the wedding, Groom called Bride and said he was coming over. They needed to talk. When he got to her apartment, he broke down in tears and confessed that he was in love with someone else. He loved her but couldn’t marry her because he didn’t love her in the way a bride deserves.
There was much crying and shouting over it all, but eventually the bride recovered from the news enough to ask him who he was in love with.
‘Well,’ Groom said, ‘It’s [Bride’s Brother].’
The wedding was definitely off at that point. Now, five or six years later, Groom and Bride’s Brother are married and happy. Though, I lost contact with Bride shortly after her wedding plans went tits up, so I’m not sure if she ever forgave the boys for that one.”
13.“Had a weekend of golf planned a couple [of] weeks before the wedding as his Bachelor party. His fiancée drops him and cancels the wedding. We all still went golfing and had a great time. Ended up being the first of our annual golf trips. We will be on our tenth next year. One of our buddies makes a giant scorecard for our trip and always has the title real big. Fiancé name memorial golf tournament.'”
14.“My cousin runs a popular upscale marriage venue and always tells the story way better than this so here is a rough overview. The groom’s mom was a heavy drinker and got belligerent when she drank, so understandably the bride wanted the groom to try to limit her drinking. The afternoon before the wedding, the bride arrives to see groom’s mom smashed with the groom himself giving her beers.”
“Next thing my cousin knows (She was there to oversee preparations), the bride and groom are in a straight-up fistfight which leads to an Anchorman-style street fight between members of both families in the parking lot.
Apparently they recently scheduled a new day for it. I can’t imagine the tension there.”
15.Finally, “Here is a more upbeat story: the night before their city hall wedding, the bride and groom had separate big parties and got so wasted they both slept through the wedding. They didn’t realize it until City Hall called asking where they were, and they decided [to say], ‘Fuck it, we’ll do it later.’ They did eventually get married and still are as far as I know. Over 20 years later.”
Vintage car with a “Just Married” sign on the back, driving away with tin cans attached to the bumper
Did any of these leave you in total shock? Better yet, do you have your own story to share? Let us know in the comments below!
