“I Now Pronounce You….Ooops!”

Photo credit: Renee Barth Photography

By Kristi Gay, freelance writer

June is the start of wedding season for many couples, which may send you back down memory lane of your own weddings. If you’re a woman, remembering the months of planning every detail to the menu to the bridesmaid dresses to the invitations to the music list.  If you’re a man that might mean remembering perhaps only the beginning of your bachelor party, as the end would have likely been fuzzy after several drinks, and if you’re like many men, likely didn’t care much about the details. I’m still fully involved in weddings even in my middle age being married 20 years, as both a weekend event server at Stout’s Island Lodge in Birchwood, WI, where weddings are hosted every weekend, as well as the daughter of the owner Rustic Elegance barn in Bloomer, Wi, which also hosts several weddings and receptions during the summer for which I help prepare the grounds. This article is more of a story time of wedding FAILS, most of which I have been personally involved in, to hopefully garner a chuckle and maybe help you reminisce about some of the crazy stories from weddings in your past.

As a 19-year old college student, I started bussing tables at the Eau Claire Country Club, which included clearing dishes and refilling waters to guests. However, for weddings, they had “all hands on deck” to get food to all guests as fast as possible. Seasoned waitresses would speed-walk around with humongous trays balancing confidently on one hand above their head holding two layers of covered plates, while whipping out a standing and setting the tray down. However, as an inexperienced busser, I had that big tray out in front of me, holding with two hands, barely making it around the crowded reception area, with no ability to set up a stand. But that wasn’t the bad part. Somehow someone had me serve the meals to the head table. I had the common sense to serve the bride and groom first. But I will never forget the steps that followed me taking off the metal plate cover to reveal the filet mignon in a puddle of steak juice, aka cow blood. I walked behind the bride and attempted to place the plate down in front of her, but being the very first plate I dealt with, didn’t realize the slightest tip of the hand sent the puddle of blood into her lap, pooling on the snow white dress. Mind you, this was BEFORE the first dance, reception, and basically the majority of the event. The last thing I remember was the entire head table swooping around her to problem solve and sap it up while I slowly backed away, all the way out the door, muttering, “I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry…”. And that was the day I simultaneously quit and was fired.

Wedding fail story #2 has to do with a wedding I was working for last summer, along with my teenage daughter who was 16 years old. This wedding party were PARTIERS, quickly downing beers as fast as I could deliver them the second the 4pm outdoor wedding completed. By 11pm every guest was literally plastered. The staff usually makes their way into the lodge after the dessert is served and prepares “late night food”, typically pizza, for the second wave of hunger from guests and partiers. All of the sudden, the drunkest guy who was also the best man and around 30 years old, stumbles into the lodge. He is wearing his tux’s white shirt, unbuttoned at the top with blood stains down the front, zero pants, and black socks, and has two bunches of bloody tissue hanging out of his nostrils. Apparently he had face-planted during the dance. But then he starts hitting on my 16-year old daughter, to which she could only laugh with pity. The crazy part was his girlfriend eventually followed him in to yank his arm away and yell at him for hitting on a child while also being bloody and pants-less.

I hope you enjoyed these stories and can remember some of your own. Or maybe you are revisiting the wedding season with your children, grandchildren, or late love affairs of your own.  If so I have two tips: be careful of steak juice, and drink responsibly with your pants on!