Women Share How Much They Hated Their Wedding Day

This article originally appeared on Broadly. 

"It was, hand on my heart, the best day of my life," echo brides and grooms across the world, over and over.

Really? The best day of your life? Ever? But you don't get to sleep in, you don't get to relax, you're expected to wear a form-fitting dress, and you have to coordinate a room full of drunk friends and family in a highly emotional situation—all while achieving peak hotness.  There's so much potential for disaster and drama. I'd personally take eating leftovers in my sweatpants with my husband any day over marrying him again. Apparently, this sentiment is not as rare as we thought.

My best friend "forgot" to come and my father's speech were these words only: "Thank you for coming." Then, horrid pictures of my husband's bachelor party were sent to me at the reception as a "joke". Amazingly, many years later, we are still married.

I hated every minute of the day because I was doing the wrong thing. Even in the car on the way to the church full of seventy guests, I was crying. Not because I was happy, but because I was petrified about the mistake I was making. Everyone, of course, thought I was just being the nervous bride. I had tried to call it off but it had all fallen on deaf ears, and the groom had even threatened to kill himself.  By the end of the wedding, I was a nervous mess. I ended up having a panic attack in the toilets and my father-in-law (bless him) snuck me out the back and into the car. I spent the evening locked in the bathroom until "husband" fell asleep. I left him ten months later.

I spent my wedding morning alone. I just remember sitting on the bed, holding my dress and thinking, "This is really shit." Then, my sister's boyfriend proposed on the dance floor. She insisted on asking the DJ to announce her engagement and demanded they get their own first dance.

I was so pissed off by the end of the night I asked the DJ to play the Manic Street Preachers. The only song they had of theirs was "If You Tolerate This" (a song about the Spanish Civil War), so I ended up dancing alone to it, because I had insisted he play it. How do you dance to that? You twirl aimlessly.

I spent the entire time feeling like a Category-A shit. I couldn't face the whole "center of attention" thing, so we decided to marry on vacation in Italy and break the "happy" news to the family the night before.

Well, it went down like a lamb chop at a vegetarian dinner party. Our families thought we were just going on holiday, so my folks were really upset from the shock. It suddenly dawned on me how selfish I'd been. While the location was stunning (Malcesine on Lake Garda), the few pictures I have are of me with a very red, puffy face from crying.

On the day, my mom's boyfriend entered the room to my music just before I did. I was furious. Everyone, all day, talked about his scene-stealing and not our wedding. Then, a storm ruined our "beach wedding" so instead of beach hut cocktails, crabbing on the quay, beach walks and a BBQ, we sat in a conference room all day.

I was 13 weeks pregnant so couldn't even drink to console myself. To this day, I can't even talk about it with my family or look at the pictures.

Just before I left for church, my mother revealed that she had tried on my wedding dress while it was stored at her house and my dad had photographed her in it.

Our wedding presents were stolen from the reception, and the best man's speech was all about his wedding; he rambled on for ages but said nothing about me or the groom. My mother-in-law turned up wearing black from head to foot, and told anyone who would listen what a sad day it was because she was losing her only child.

One of the guests missed the wedding, but turned up to reception sweaty and wearing shorts because she had come straight from watching the Wimbledon women's final. Our photographer pulled out at the last minute. My dad kept it a secret so I didn't panic, and replaced him with a photographer whose day job was to photograph corpses for the local hospital morgue.

Still, nicest photos ever taken of me.

My husband is American, so his parents decided to throw a second wedding for us in America, since they didn't bother to come to the first one. His mom ended up booking a tacky wedding chapel and buying me a rhinestone-covered dress.

She told my husband, "I don't care what she wants. This is my day!" She didn't speak to me once on the day. At the dinner afterwards, she had planned that my husband would give red roses to her instead of me during the first romantic love song. (He ended up giving one to her and the rest to me.)

She tried to insist that the first dance be between them to a song she liked. We got around that by switching the song to "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis. Then his family passed around a picture of my husband (not us) and everyone signed it, with messages to my husband but not to me. He and I got out of there as soon as we could, went go-karting, and then to find a margarita bar.

We've just celebrated our 15th anniversary.

My fiancée was South African and we got married in Durban. I had two requests: I didn't want to get married at the country club, and I wanted a DJ. His dad booked our wedding at the country club, and hired a band. While eating dinner on the terrace, a golfer started playing right in front of us. My friend went up to him to say, "I'm sorry, but are you mad?" and the guy continued to play because "I'm practicing for a tournament. Don't worry, I'm a decent golfer so I won't hit anyone."

And the night before the wedding, my fiancée had done a lot of drugs at his bachelor party. His brain was completely fried on the day. He wasn't back to normal for two weeks.

I haven't watched our DVD yet because it all makes me cringe. The wedding itself was lovely, but the reception was fraught with difficulty. My dad (who I guess, it turns out, doesn't know me very well) gave a weird speech and we spent the day on tenterhooks wondering if my alcoholic mom would behave.

My so-called friend kept going into the cellar of the pub, where the music system was, and fucking with our carefully constructed playlist. Then, I did an off the cuff speech after a few drinks in which I paid tribute to my elderly aunt in the "absent friends" bit, before hurriedly adding, "She's not dead, though."

Halfway through the wedding breakfast, a friend arrived late because he had been watching a football match and Scotland versus Azerbaijan had gone to penalties.

*Names have been changed