Since I’m planning to do things second time around, let’s revisit the first honeymoon…

We went to Bali, based in two different spots. The first place was meant to be the beach lounging and sunbathing bit. Only it wasn’t very warm, in fact it was cloudy and windy, and the sea was only about 6 inches deep and full of seaweed. We went out snorkelling on a boat. Most of the coral was dead and there were hardly any fish. I had to alternate between being in the sea (freezing) and on the boat (seasick). For ages, while some other people went scuba diving. We rode crap bikes with one pedal on terrifying roads to what a guide book promised was an amazing beach and temple. The temple was closed, and the beach was like a landfill. We rode back to the hotel. That night, I started to feel quite ill, the next day we bought be some antibiotics. They did not work.

We arrived at the second place, up in the mountains – the bus ride there assisted by Imodium. On arrival we were upgraded to a palatial villa with private plunge pool, marble floored bathroom with sunken bath, towels made into swans etc etc. I spent the next two nights on the marble floor, relieved to have somewhere cool and luxurious to lie down between bodily ejections. The hotel (where the staff were genuinely lovely and did everything they could to make me feel better) called a doctor who gave me new antibiotics which did work. I spent the remainder of the honeymoon weak as a kitten and unable to tolerate the heat of the sun (which had finally come out) or the cool of the private plunge pool.

It may surprise you to hear this wasn’t the worst holiday of the marriage, but that’s another story. Or two.

Prospective husband number two broke his ankle on his first honeymoon and had to have surgery. So far we have made no plans for a honeymoon this time around…

Anyway, who else can offer up a tale of wedding woe or honeymoon mishap?

Two weeks before I got married someone driving a car decided they really wanted to be where me and my bike were on a part of my ride home from work. That got me a broken clavicle (which wouldn’t start to heal until it was plated three weeks after the wedding) and about half a dozen broken ribs. I managed one night in bed after the accident while still full of morphine from the hospital but then spent four or five weeks pretty much living sat up on the sofa as the ribs hurt too much to lie down. I didn’t get much sleep.

None of this made the wedding day particularly easy; really didn’t help when MsGinge decided to reassuringly queeze my shoulder during her speech either (I may have screamed a little). The stay in the fancy hotel on the wedding night was pretty much pointless and our honeymoon ended up canceled as there was no way I could manage more than a short trip anywhere (or do anything other than sit very still) at that point.

Fun times.

I have only had one wedding/honeymoon & though my wife is no longer with us she would still laugh at the absurd stuff.

Wedding day, her parents house was at the top of the street where the church was and a bit of an unofficial car park. This resulted in everyone and all her aunties calling in to use the bathroom at her parents house. As a result Carolyn couldn’t finish getting ready for 45 minutes so we got maximum value from the church organist and quite a few people thought I had been stood up on my wedding day 😀

The fact we had been together for 17 years by this point was not lost on some!

The reception was at Chavenage House which is down a long bumpy drive and one of our guests wives went into labour as a result of said bumpy drive! Our wedding car (RR Silver Spirit bought for the wedding by my father in law was driven by my father in laws chief mechanic at 3 figure speeds to make it on time)

We were so shattered from the actual wedding day our wedding night was us fast asleep in our clothes till 7am the following day!

The Honeymoon on the west coast of Scotland was mostly fine apart from me dropping my debit card in a deep bit of Loch Awe and us both returning to different companies but the same jobs!

Mine went without hitch, but I was usher at my wife’s brother’s wedding.

Part of my “ushing” involved waiting for the bride’s car to turn up before legging it up to the organ loft and giving the organist the nod to start the Here Comes the Bride routine.

As the car rounded the corner I bounded up the stairs to find the organist frantically flicking the switch to fire the damn thing up whilst staring forlornly at the big red lamp that was stubbornly refusing to come on. “It won’t bloody start!” he said, followed by “What are you going to do?”. Now this was the first wedding after my own, which whilst it passed without a hitch was still a bit stressful. Today the pressure was off and I was going to have some fun.

“What do you mean, what am I going to do?” I added helpfully then I legged it. Another usher had the foresight to send the car round the block again and I went back in to check on progress. On the way up to the loft I could hear the frantic and repeated throwing of “The Big Switch” until the contraption wheezed into life.

We flagged the car down as it was on it’s second or third lap then I gave a cheery thumbs up down the aisle and we were off.

No particular wedding disasters or honeymoon night. We then had the Sunday at home, and flew to SanFran on Monday.

Nothing particularly bad happened there either but if you want some stories anyway

– first night in SF, we went to the Stinking Rose restaurant, where the main ingredient is garlic. Lots of it. Leading to some incredibly pungent farts. We weren’t aware how pungent but when we came back to our room after sightseeing the next day – the windows wide open and half a dozen airfresheners gave us a clue.

Second issue was we did fly-drive. After a few days in SF we went up via wine country to Lake Tahoe. Waking up after overnighting in SLT, I looked out of the window and announced it had snowed. ‘That’s nice’ said the wife. ‘No – I mean proper snowed’

We’d had about a foot and it was still coming down; the local radio said roads were passable with care so we dressed and headed off before it got worse. Heading out and over the rim things deteriorated, chains were mandated and all along the road there were guys in oilskins with signs offering to fit them for $20. We stopped and asked where we’d get chains from and were directed to a service station, I went in and asked and they asked what size – I had no idea, small, medium, large…what? ‘No, what’s your tyre size?’ I went back out to check and the wife listening to the radio had just heard that roads no longer had chains as compulsory so we hopped in and legged it. We then got flagged down by a CHiP’s car patrolman who asked if we had chains, we said no but we’re only going over the rim and then out of the area.

Then the next issue – ‘where to?’ he asked. Plan was to go through Yosemite, over Tioga Pass, into Death Valley and then on to Vegas. And he just laughed…’Tioga’s shut!’ – and naively, I asked when it would be open again. ‘How long are you staying?’ ‘Three weeks’ ‘I’m thinking late April or early May’ (wedding was late October!!)

That scuppered plans but then he got our map out, and circled a load of lowland towns around the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and gave us a new itinerary around some amazing proper cowboy and ghost towns – real saloon door swinging in the wind stuff.

Which led to the third story; our Yosemite and Death Valley hotel plans were no use and we ended up in a couple of americana style motels between Tahoe and Vegas. But also one with a real meat eaters dream steakplace just over the road. I’ve never had meat sweats like that before or since. And the wife completely blocked the pan in the morning and new husband had to break it up with a wire coat hanger to get it to flush. Ah, the romance!!

One of the few weddings where I as a guest didn’t embarrass myself was my sister’s wedding.

However…. She started drinking shots with the best man and his group.

One of the groom’s friends was caught using his penis to make balloons (the idea was you would use your thumb to make a balloon which you would sign over a picture of a house (think the film Up) that my cousin had drawn on an A3 bit of paper) by our Aunty Paula, a nun.

At some point the bride, my sister, was caught doing the caterpillar (in her wedding dress) across the dance floor.

On the way home she (unsurprisingly) threw up in the car.

The neighbours had the nice thought of lining the drive with tea lights. Whilst my mum and her new husband were trying to placate the driver and mop up the sick, my sister walked up the driveway, moaning that she needed a piss….

I remember my sister panicking that she needed to pee and me fumbling with the house key. Then she started slurring “I’m burning” and me just laughing. I looked down and she was literally on fire.

She told me recently that she cleared out the loft and found her wedding dress. Needless to say she didn’t even bother to see if it still fit.

It was burnt, singed and mouldy. It went straight in the bin.

And the wife completely blocked the pan in the morning and new husband had to break it up with a wire coat hanger to get it to flush.

I’m genuinely jealous… My GF is vegetarian.

Not a major story, but at a friend’s wedding, I was called down to the kitchen where the meal was being prepared, on the basis that I was both “handy with stuff” and tall. A cold water pipe passing across the ceiling had sprung a leak, and was spraying water all over the kitchen. All bodge repair efforts failed (water’s a sod like that); I ended up stood a chair, stripped to the waist, holding towels over the hole so the chefs could keep working, until a real plumber appeared after an hour or so.

Maybe 6 months or so later, my mate must have been told about it and got straight on to me “OMG, I never knew, I never thanked you, so embarrassed” etc, but I was (and still am) “you’re my friend, it was your wedding, you weren’t supposed to know so it didn’t spoil anything… and I know damn well you’d have done the same for me.”

I spent my 2 week honeymoon with all the drugs I could stomach, and lots of ladies in nurses uniforms.

Because I was in hospital, narrowly avoiding having bits of my foot cut off. In 2018. Still haven’t been away anywhere for it. Maybe for our 5th anniversary.

Foot’s still not properly fixed 😩

I’ve never had meat sweats like that before or since. And the wife completely blocked the pan in the morning and new husband had to break it up with a wire coat hanger to get it to flush. Ah, the romance!!

@theotherjonv

Ah well … tangent coming up, but with some curious similarities.

A few months before I met the current MrsReeksy when i was in my mid-twenties, I flew out from the UK to LA to stay with my Best Man to be. We did a week long road trip. First we drove to Vegas with a bunch of his mates, then headed off across Death Valley up to SF and then back down the coast.

One night in Vegas was enough. But it was a rather big one. The night kicked off in a restaurant where they bought course after course of meat and carved it in front of you off big skewers. It was obscene, I thought I was going to die.

About 10pm the restaurant turned into a club, with dancers in cages and all kinds of shenanigans. I could barely walk, let alone dance. Hours of black jack (I have no idea how to play) and beer later we ended up at the OG, then about 6am we got breakfast, before more cards (pretending to the croupier that we were all sober and took it very seriously). Unfortunately check-out time was 10am so we got about 2 hours sleep before hitting the road.

A successful crossing of Death Valley later we tried to find dinner in (I think) a town called Independence(!) We could only find one restaurant in town. A quaint and quiet looking place. I didn’t pay much attention as we walked in as I rushed straight to the toilet … last night’s dinner was a bolus suddenly looking for a bowl! Some considerable time later I emerged to see my mate sitting at a table surrounded by families. He looked slightly embarrassed – everyone in the little place knew where i’d been and I expect there was some lingering aroma or maybe I’d been particularly loud…

As i sat down he whispered to me “I think we better go. It’s Mother’s Day and everyone else is here for that.” He then got up from behind the table and in attempting to squeeze out seemed to pull the tablecloth up and upset the flowers and cutlery making a racket. We ended up pretty much running from the place.

The next day we headed for Yosemite, only to arrive at the road in just as they were closing it due to snow! In May!

I’ve met a bride who made it to the reception, got drunk, had a huge row with her husband and legged it off down the road only to collapse in a muddy pile wearing her full wedding kit.

&

Another who through excessive nerves drank too much and puked all over her rather extravagant dress.

My wife broke her ankle in three places on our wedding day!

Spent our first night as newlyweds in hospital, in our full wedding attire, her being operated on.

Were due to fly out to the Maldives the following morning, which we obviously couldn’t.

Kind of laugh about it now … almost.

When arranging my wedding with my best man I said I didn’t want the hassle of a stag night, all my mates were spread all over the country and we wanted a cheap relaxed wedding. So we’d just go for a few drinks with those that were coming early for the wedding a couple nights before hand. With a  fair but to do the next day (the day before the wedding) I was just up for pizza and beer with my mates.

Only one of my mates decided that a quite stag do wasn’t the done thing and started rounds of shots. This obviously escalated into missing our taxi back to my rural home and getting back at 4am to my future wife’s annoyance and at this stage pity.

By 4:30 I was projectile vomiting around the bedroom – as was my brother on the sofa in the living room. Future wife puts us both in shower covered in vomit. I end up sleeping in the bath until 1pm, having missed all my morning wedding chores. Wife increasing annoyed.

1:30 is the wedding rehearsal in the church, hangover now in full THUMPING flow. Mid way through the rehearsal I need to puke…. So run down the isle, Infront of parents, parents in law, grandparents, sisters in law and future wife. At this point the vicar thinks it’s pre wedding gitters but my sis in law explains nope – it’s stag do beers.

I make it outside with a trail of puke down the isle and my front only to be greeted by relations that had traveled from Switzerland who I hadn’t seen since I  was twelve and puke at their feet.

Anyway – the wedding itself the next day went well, and Im still married 19years on. It made it more memorable if anything and cirtainly gives us a story to tell about our wedding.

A couple we know decided to get married in February, picked especially because February generally has the most settled weather of the NZ summer. Still lovely and warm in the tail end of the summer, but the pre-Christmas winds have died away and it’s generally ideal weather for getting married outdoors…

They’d hired a big marquee which filled their back lawn (the lawn was level and supported by a wooden retaining wall at one end, which came in very useful later in the day).

On the Big Day we had what is known locally as a weather bomb. Basically the arse-end of a tropical storm. Storm-force winds, torrential rain, all that sort of goodness. The groom, best man, me and another mate begged and borrowed a ton of clamps, tie-downs, ratchet straps and so on, put some massive nails into the retaining wall and anchored the marquee down. The tall, very full, glass-fronted beer fridge in the tent started leaning because the ground was saturated, and we luckily caught it just as it started to topple. We managed to get some boards under it to keep it upright. We also managed to scrounge some big sheets of ply to make a floor down the aisle.

The bride was due to arrive in a mate’s very fancy combi van but the apartment she was getting ready in was on the first floor and the only access was a set of external steps on the exposed side of the building. They basically had to wrap her in a sacrificial duvet and manhandle her down to the van as she couldn’t see where she was going. Then the van had to pull right up to the marquee with the side door up to the marquee entrance.

The noise of the wind and rain was so loud the ceremony was largely conducted by shouting at each other.

Despite all that it all worked out ok, and it made for some great memories. Luckily the photographer they’d hired was a surf-photographer as well as doing weddings. He turned up in his wetsuit and brought his waterproof gear instead, got great photos.

my Wedding ended prematurely.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-33127119

My wife’s friend managed to get us into a hotel up the road, so the party continued for our guests, but it was a bit of a write off for me.

everything before that was absolutely perfect tho.

And due to financial loss, we sold our story to the newspapers, so had a double page spread in the Sun. All very cringy!

Wedding was all booked and about the month before we discovered my wife was pregnant. Honeymoon was a morning sickness nightmare, I think she survived on Sprite and Digestive biscuits which was the only food she could keep down. (I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the Honeymoon anyway as had never been on a plane before.)

However we have just celebrated 28 years of marriage and still joke that my son was a honeymoon baby who was a bit premature!

Hope “second time around” brings you much happiness

Friends wedding. He is known by his middle name, Ian, has been since birth, typical Welsh, Irish and Scottish his first name is James.
Registry office, wedding, you have to go a few weeks before to do the formals etc, including telling the registrar that he would like to be addressed as Ian during the ceremony. Was assured this was no issue and perfectly normal, there was even a place on the form to show this.

You can see where this is going…

On the day they lady registrar was not the person they had seen before, she did the whole ceremony to James, not Ian, and then proceeded to accuse Ian of fraud when he signed his name starting with and I not a J.

There was a pause in proceedings while she was forced to check her notes, and did not give any apology..

Ours went really well as did the honeymoon. Still married 27 years later. One to balance out the disasters !

When arranging my wedding with my best man

Now that does sound like a complex setup 🙂

The only one I can relay is that a good friend, living on Arran at the time, went for ‘one last mountainbike ride’ before heading south to his wedding in two days and future life on the South Coast.

The ‘one last ride’ became a ‘can someone help me off the hill with a broken collarbone’.

I spent the wedding day as best man shovelling pain killers down him.

Apparently some honeymoon activities were ‘disappointing’.

Ours went really well as did the honeymoon. Still married 27 years later. One to balance out the disasters !

+1

One of my road cycling buddies. We were on a trip talking about our wife’s/GF weddings etc and someone asked him where he met his wife “On my stag night”….

No really serious problems from the honeymoons on both my weddings, but then the first marriage only lasted two years before the divorce and the second one seven. Two’s enough for me. I’m happy enough to spend the rest of this life living in sin/legal cohabitation.

Nothing as impressive or interesting as some of the stories here, but I spent the bulk of my honeymoon with a massive flare-up of piles. Rather than the more traditional honeymoon activities, most of the trip was spent playing board games standing up.

We had our wedding reception at my wife’s parents’ house (so we didn’t have a more normal ‘hotel’ reception). However many of our guests stayed at a hotel closeby and we booked the bridal suite so we could end the night there / have breakfast with our friends and family.

We had already dropped off the bags in the bridal suite (and pre-swiped our credit card) and the reception staff knew we wouldn’t be back until quite late.

When we got there, they had moved someone to our room, saying that they didn’t think we were coming. This actually meant that they had REMOVED our bags from the room to let the person have it!

Still, we did get a weekend at the Royal Bath Spa with all meals included out of it as an apology.

Apart from being a guest at one wedding where a fight developed at the top table and another where the best mans gf hurled a torrent of abuse at me including wanting to “shit on my dead relatives graves” I have no tales to tell but keep them coming 👍

Honeymoon?

Bollocks, I knew we’d forgotten something.

No really serious problems from the honeymoons on both my weddings, but then the first marriage only lasted two years before the divorce and the second one seven

Which reminds me of the mate who’s marriage didn’t really make it past the end of the honeymoon.
He was back living with a friend within a fortnight..

Honeymoon?

Bollocks, I knew we’d forgotten something.

Yeah, i’m still waiting to go on honeymoon. But as the wedding was a decade and a half ago, and i’ve now been divorced 5 years, i can’t see that happening.

The wedding did have one ambulance in attendance and one other trip to the hospital though.

Some of my “mates” tried to organise a stag do for me, but having seen the results of the previous couple, and the fallout between various attendees and their significant others. I just didn’t show up.

Went to a wedding where the best man had written a speech, trying to be edgy and hilarious but all he succeeding in doing was offending everyone and got told to stop half way through! the same wedding also had the reception venue playing background music but had just stuck a random CD on and managed to get one with loads of really inappropriate wedding songs like ‘tempted by the fruit of another’ by Squeeze ‘Wedding Bells’ by godley and creme, Band of Gold by Freda Payne…

I once rode with a guy who referred to a small optional feature on Hit Squad Hill at Glentress as the “wedding f***er”, as he’d come off riding it the week before his wedding and broke both his wrists! Apparently he’s holding his hands behind his back in all his wedding photos.

I was best man at a good friend’s wedding a few years ago. It was a small wedding, generally really nice, but there were a few hiccups.

The groom and I got sent off to the shops on the morning of the wedding to find him a new shirt as the bride accidentally cut herself and bled on the one he’d brought when ironing it. The wedding was at Blackpool and the party favours were little phials of sand from the beach, but the tide meant they couldn’t get sorted out before the service so I was sent out between it and the meal to get them. Unfortunately I had a torn ligament in my knee, so trying to scoop damp sand from the beach into little glass bottles while kneeling/squatting as little as possible was a touch uncomfortable.

Thankfully all of that is pretty minor and out-of-sight from the wedding itself, but the bride’s sister had a shouting row with her partially estranged dad in front of everyone towards the end of the meal, which did dampen the mood for a while. The groom’s dad did point out later on that given both families were Glaswegian they got off lightly given that the only thing that went wrong was a single brief screaming match.

Went to a wedding where the best man had written a speech, trying to be edgy and hilarious but all he succeeding in doing was offending everyone and got told to stop half way through!

The counter; we went to a friend’s wedding, she is a session / backing singer, he is a session guitarist and a studio recording engineer. Many of their other friends were “extremely” talented. The best man was a circuit stand up comedian, and I didn’t think we’d get through his speech without at least one of the assembled dying of laughing too hard. And then they’d hired the basis of a covers band for after the meal but many of the assembled took turns to get up and join in – no really top top names but plenty of session musicians with proper big names on their CV’s, and a few super session groups formed and disbanded that night.

My red haired partner went to the hairdresser the day before the wedding to have her hair slightly tinted and touched up.
They left a chemical in a bit too long and she ended up blonde.
Cue tears, and not ones of joy…
The morning of the wedding she was at the hairdressers for 2 hours getting it back to her normal colour.
Probably the most stress filled 24hrs of my life – and I’ve been in a couple of very sketchy situations over the years.

Went to a wedding where the best man had written a speech, trying to be edgy and hilarious but all he succeeding in doing was offending everyone and got told to stop half way through!

I managed to upset the father of the bride with my opening line of “Well, this is the second time today I have stood up from a warm seat with a piece of paper in my hand….” Thankfully, that was about the worst part of the speech and everyone else in the room thought it funny.

“Well, this is the second time today I have stood up from a warm seat with a piece of paper in my hand….”

The old ones are the best. Possibly.

One of my road cycling buddies. We were on a trip talking about our wife’s/GF weddings etc and someone asked him where he met his wife “On my stag night”….

That needs further details….

someone asked him where he met his wife “On my stag night”

There’s the plot of a film in those few words.

Got married in St. Lucia. It was damn hot and we were plied with (ok ok , I drank) non-stop glasses of cheap champagne all day. By the time of the evening meal, overlooking the beautiful bay, I was sick as a dog. Had to try to fake to the lovely new wife that I was ok, though had to disappear off to the loo after every few mouthfuls to chuck up. Needless to say crawling into bed later the only thing I could really look forward to was a massive cooked breakfast in the morning. Still we’d live together for years, so well, you know.. 😆
Turned out the guy videoing our wedding was as pissed as me and the results were unwatchable, choppy and jittery, edited to try to hide the crapness and dubbed over with awful music cos there was no sound. That was supposed to be for the family cos they weren’t invited!
2nd time around? Fat chance!

I got married in a registry office. We arrived a bit early so we waited outside the registry office, passing a bottle of Talisker round the fairly small group. All went well till it got to my best man who necked about half the bottle in one go. Became instantly pished and I had to take the wedding ring from him as he kept wanting to throw it away. Put an end to any nervousness I might have been feeling though.

I pie faced my brother with his own wedding cake. Fortunately it was at the end of the night and everyone thought it was hilarious. But it still makes me cringe.