It's a secret fear many of us harbor: You're all dressed up in your finery, ready to marry the love of your life, and someone dares to object. Brides magazine assures us that this is extremely rare, but it did put together a cringeworthy roundup of wedding-objection stories.
Gathered from a recent thread on Reddit, these tales are mostly terrifying, but occasionally actually kind of funny. It all started when OneInAZillion asked: "Redditors who have objected at weddings or seen someone object, what happened in the next five minutes?"
Here are just a few stories of what happened when the officiant said, "Speak now or forever hold your peace"...and someone actually said something.
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From @reimaginingme: "This happened at one of my friend's sibling's weddings. Her parents are super-conservative and hadn't gotten the chance to know the daughter's fiancé very well before they got married. In their minds all that was relevant about him was that he was 10 years older than her and had previously divorced. They had made subtle comments here and there before the wedding that they weren't happy about it. It should have been a forewarning of what was to come.
"The day of the wedding, everything was beautiful. Friend's sister and her fiancé were ecstatic to be getting married and invited friends and family from both sides to their outdoor wedding. All was going well, until the preacher asks the audience if anyone has objections to why they should get married. And as serious as can be, dad of the bride stands up and says 'Her mother and I object,' and then after a long hesitation sits back down. Silence. No one can believe that that just happened. Not knowing exactly how to handle it, the preacher just says, 'Okay' and finishes the ceremony as planned."
From @lydocia: "This was in the paper a while ago. A couple was getting married and the groom, always the joker, answered, 'Do you take X to be your wife?' with, 'No...just kidding, of course I do!' Because he had said no, however, the ceremony had to be cancelled and postponed with six weeks."
From @PTSDPillowGuy: "When the pastor got to the part 'or forever hold your peace,' the bride said, 'Yes, I'd like to say something.' Then she turned around to her guests and said, 'I'd like to thank my maid of honor for sleeping with my fiancé last night.' With that, she threw her bouquet and stormed off. The story even made it on the radio at the time."
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From @jacktheknife1180: "Had a cousin get married and her brother got on mic and said he didn't support their decision and no one else should because they had just barely met only a couple months prior. It was a very awkward reception."
From @ParoxysmAttack: "I was a waiter for a venue that had a lot of weddings. We typically watched the wedding ourselves from the second floor and waited for everyone to come up for the reception. A guest for the wedding arrived a few hours early, so he sat in the restaurant and had a few too many drinks. He yelled, 'DON'T FUCKING DO IT (bride's name here). HE'S AN ASSHOLE.' There was the typical gasp by the crowd, then it was just silence as people from the bar escorted him out."
From @Redcap1981: "This actually happened at my sister's wedding. My brother-in-law's boss decided to rock up and yell, 'Yeah, mate, I gotta speak my peace...oh, sorry mate, wrong wedding!' ... Everyone laughed except my brother-in-law, who was pretty pissed."
From @Southern_Kisses: "My dad marrying his third wife. My stepbrother and I were in the wedding party. He was about 6, I was 10. The preacher asks if anyone objects and my brother raises his hand so very politely. My dad asks why, and my stepbrother replies, 'because I want you to promise to take me fishing whenever I want, first.'"