Mother-in-Law Books Rehearsal Dinner at Restaurant and Everyone Got Food Poisoning

A couple’s wedding day is a celebration of their marriage, but oftentimes, loved ones’ wishes reign supreme. When one bride was making preparations for her nuptials, her mom and future mother-in-law took over the planning process, which contributed to a disastrous weekend of events that included food poisoning, an unexpected visitor, and a fist fight, among many other calamities. Using her past wedding to her now-ex-husband (which she denotes as “XH”) as an example of what not to do, the former bride encouraged Redditors on the “Wedding Shaming” subreddit on December 19, 2024, to “push for what you want.”

As soon as the original poster got engaged, she noted that her mother and the groom’s mother started calling the shots—which she attributed to marrying young, coupled with her people-pleasing tendencies. The first difficulty she encountered was with the guest list. “Before XH and I knew it there were over 400 people invited to this wedding probably 1/2 of which we didn’t know,” the Redditor revealed. “Every time we tried to cut someone one of the mother’s would say ‘oh but so and so HAS to be invited don’t worry we’ll pay for it and we KNOW they’ll bring you a good gift.’” They also ended up having 30 “random” children—“to this day I couldn’t tell you who they were/are,” she said—on the guest list, even though the bride pushed for a child-free wedding.

Once the wedding weekend arrived, the couple kicked off the festivities with a rehearsal dinner at a restaurant that the groom’s mom insisted on booking and inviting the wedding party and anyone who was traveling for the affair. “Her version of out of town guests and mine was very different so we ended up with 75 people at our rehearsal dinner at high end restaurant’s private room,” the bride shared. Some of the food that the restaurant served ended up being bad. “The next day everyone that ordered chicken had food poisoning,” the bride recounted. “Half the bridesmaids showed up for make up and hair a lovely shade of green from being sick.”

For one bridesmaid, feeling ill wasn’t the only setback that prevented her from getting a good night’s sleep, At 2:30 a.m., the bride’s most recent ex-boyfriend showed up unannounced—“drunk and whining,” she noted—trying to convince her friend to stop the wedding. 

The wedding day itself also had its fair share of chaotic moments. Before the bride and groom traded vows, the father of the bride yelled, “You know it’s not to late to leave we could just go out this door right now,” the bride recalled of her dad’s words at the church (advice she said, in hindsight, she should have listened to). One of the groomsmen ended up “passed out” against the garage door of a home near the venue. At the end of the night, after the bride and groom had already left, one of the bridesmaid’s boyfriends decided to start a fist fight with the groomsmen, and it got so out of hand that the bride’s uncle, another groomsman, and the bride’s sister’s boyfriend all had to break up, per the post.

Although none of these catastrophes were the bride’s fault, by any means, the Redditor said she regrets not standing up for herself and setting boundaries early on. “Entire day was insane and looking back I realize my mistake was not taking control from my mother and MIL immediately and planning the wedding I wanted,” she wrote. Five years later, the couple ended their marriage, which the Redditor described as “miserable.”

In the comments section, the OP responded to some of the internet’s questions, giving more insight into her story. As it turns out, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, because her former husband ended up being controlling: “He had opinions on what I should wear, where we should go, what friends we should have (always his), where we should live, how our house should be decorated etc,” she revealed. As she got older and started realizing her self-worth, she started to set more boundaries, which led to conflict in the relationship until it became so intense that she filed for divorce—which her partner at the time wasn’t at all expecting, she said. She also shared that she eventually met someone else, married him, and welcomed a daughter.

The internet was both appalled and amused by the series of events that the OP recounted. “This was really entertaining 😂,” one Redditor said, while another sympathized with the former bride by writing, “Sorry your XH turned out to be so controlling, but Congratulations on getting out!” Another Redditor commented on a pattern that she noticed from similar stories: “It appears from this sub, weddings are for the mother of the bride,” the comment said.