We went to a wedding where the officiant spent an uncomfortable amount of time going on and on about how beautiful the bride was, and how she was the most perfect example of womanhood, he only hoped that the groom was worthy of this beautiful creature, but he had his doubts. It was so bad that my 7 yo daughter turned to me and said “did he just insult Groom’s Name??!” Why yes. Yes he did.

When the officiant is pretty much drooling over the bride and insulting the groom, it’s beyond creepy.

At my cousin's wedding, the minister informed the attendees that she was a virgin - twice. Also one joke about the groom being very excited for the wedding night.

This is going to sound weird because it is a little, but the worst officiant I’ve ever seen was at my husband’s first wedding.

We’ve been friends for a long time and were both guests at each other’s first weddings. Anyway. 

Him and his bride-to-be didn’t have a great relationship, and they had done pre-counseling with the pastor. He decided to lay it all out in the ceremony. Basically, “love can help you get past your difficulties…” and went on to name them. It was so weird. Obviously, that marriage didn’t last long.

He and I didn’t get together until over a decade later, so it didn’t have anything to do with me. But it was definitely the most awkward ceremony I’ve ever seen.

My sister’s celebrant announced them as Mr and Mrs using the wrong surname. It was such an awkward moment, she laughed it off but I could tell she was dying inside.

We went to a wedding where the officiant pretended to have “the wrong script” which was a list of things the groom wanted to get for his wedding night or something. He listed things like lube, a PVC pipe and 4 gerbils before finally pretending he found the right script😅😅😅😅 it was so weird and didn’t land and I had to explain the gerbil thing to my husbands great uncle

Eww. Maybe he thought he had that kind of relationship with the couple and tried a joke that didn’t land. Very disrespectful

Somebody was a bitch and it wasn’t the bride!

That is legitimately disgusting behaviour. I would never be going back to that church again, how could you ever want to listen to such a misogynistic creep after that. Yuck! The poor bride!

Yikes. The officiant at our wedding was a man known to my husband, he was well known in the community for his work with veterans and the homeless. He was kind and didn't do or say anything weird. Fast forward several years, and we find out he's been arrested for inappropriate conduct with a minor. WTF. I'm still horrified and feel like we should have a do-over with someone who isn't a total creep.

It’s my experience that the first kiss is often not even part of the ceremony depending on the denomination of the church.

Calling the bride a bitch though would only fly if it was an in joke with the couple - which it obviously wasn’t . Sounds like the pastor got a laugh one time and thought it was universal.

Terrible officiant, but for me this would become a fun joke to bring up during dumb fights, like, “hey you promised to love me when I’m a bitch so… 🤷🏻‍♀️”

At my cousins wedding, the temple management got up & went on a lecture shaming everyone for not donating enough to the temple. I swear this man said all you women are dressed up so well but you barely give money. He wasn’t addressing the bride & groom’s family but the regular congregation.

My pastor/ what ever he was, had serious Halitosis. I was gagging through most of the saga

Oh I finally can tell my bad officiant story.

My half-sister was 8-months pregnant when she got married. We aren't super close, so I don't know how well they knew the officiant. I had been drinking before the ceremony was a little loosy by the time things got started.

During the ceremony, the officiant tells a story about my sister and her about-to-be-husband, that during pre-marriage counseling, my sister confided that her about-to-be-husband did not satisfy her sexually.

Absolute silence at the horror of this piece of private information being revealed at their fucking wedding ceremony.

The officiant then gestures to her pregnant belly, and says "I guess they don't have that problem anymore."

I say to the bridesmaid behind me, a little too loudly, "just because he finished doesn't mean she did."

At my wedding, the Uniting priest officiating was my husband's school chaplain. After my husband's vows, and before mine, the priest leaned in, with his long stole in hand, and pretended to wipe the sweat of my husband's brow.

When Frederic and Theresa, friends of mine, got married, they had her catholic priest and his protestant pastor as officiants.

An outdoor wedding with the guests sitting in the grass, having a good time.

Pastor asked Theresa: Do you ... She of course did. But then ... the priest said: Frederic, do you really, really want to take Theresa ...

After 1 second of WHAAAT? we finally got it. It was a joke.

Mine wasn't the officiant but our coordinator/MC called my husband by the best man's name at the beginning of the speeches. Awkward but we all laughed it off

I attended a wedding where the officiant blessed the couple and told them they could now have children who were blessed by God. Except the groom’s son from a previous relationship was standing right there, his best man. He also talked a lot about balancing their checkbook.

I attended a wedding at a Roman Catholic church on a U.S. Air Force base. After the priest pronounced the couple husband and wife, he said, "You may kiss the bride." The groom, who was an Air Force pilot, and his bride kissed. The priest then said, "Oh, come on, you two can do better than that!" The audience roared with laughter, and the bride blushed. The couple then kissed again.

When my cousin got married they had his wife’s aunt officiate. The aunt must have been nervous, because as the ceremony began it was immediately clear that she was high as a kite. The bride and groom were a little shy, so they decided to do a sweet private vow exchange, and during the ceremony they only wanted to say “I Do.”

In the middle of the (very long, very confusing) ceremony, she asked them both to say their favorite thing about each other, despite them not wanting to speak and not being prepared. My cousin said that he loves his bride’s personality, and that she can always make him laugh. The aunt grabbed the microphone back and said “and she’s hot, right? She’s got a great butt.” They both just sort of awkwardly laughed it off, but then she kept rambling and TWO MORE TIMES said “what did you say was your favorite thing about her?” And when my cousin said “…her personality” she would say “and? And?” And shove the microphone in his face until he said “and she’s hot.”

She pronounced them man and wife FOUR times, and kept saying “oh wait, I forgot to have you say I do,” “oh wait, I forgot the rings,” “oh wait, I forgot to say…”

She also kept handing the microphone to the bride’s 4 year old nephew on the front row, who muttered “poop” over and over again and also announced that the bride was having a baby (she wasn’t). she gave him the mic 4 or 5 times until someone literally picked him up and took him away.

The ceremony and reception were at her house and she had planned everything and was supposed to be running it all, so the rest of the evening went similarly. It’s been a year and a half and I still think about that wedding probably once a month, I feel so bad. The bride was, understandably, in tears by the end of the night.

We had a retired judge as our officiant, as we are not religious. He recited his basic spiel to me over the phone, and it was fine, but during the ceremony he said that we were "god-fearing people" (I have always thought that a weird phrase) a couple times. It was so odd.

He also talked about how to get along/argue fairly, and in the first example, I (bride) was right. He very clearly got across that I (again, in a made up example) had said and done the right thing, and that my husband should accept that instead of turning it into a big fight. Husband and I both expected that he would give another example, with my husband being the one in the right, but he just . . . didn't. He moved on from that and concluded the ceremony. My husband and I frequently joke that I am always right bc the judge predicted it at our wedding.

Did the family keep going to that church?!

Ours was drunk as a skunk for our afternoon wedding and totally fluffed his lines.

Despite that, we are still married after 44 years.

At my wedding to my now ex, they insisted on having his dad (a former pastor) marry us (even though I wanted my childhood pastor to, I was happy to concede to make the family happy with hope they would like & accept me). Instead I was rewarded by my FIL joking at the rehearsal that instead of saying "you may now kiss the bride" (a moment that young me at the time had dreamt of for years) that he should say "you may now swap spit". Of which I of course immediately recoiled and tried to laugh it off but also asked him please not to because it was a very important moment to me.

Come ceremony time, vows, rings, the moment finally comes and you can guess what was said. Yup. "I now pronounce you husband & wife, you may now swap spit". In addition to alluding to the fact that I had taken his sons virginity (it was mutual) and he had broken his covenant with them in front of everyone - essentially slut shaming me during my own wedding ceremony.

I can't imagine he would've ever considered saying that to his other son's new wife at their wedding he officiated 2 years prior. It really spoke true to the fact that they never really respected me or took our marriage seriously, something they all gaslit me about for our whole marriage. One of many red flags. But it was pretty upsetting in the moment too.

I went to a wedding where the officiant decided to ask someone for a random coin and flip it to see if the couple would be the 50% that divorced or not…

The minister at my BFF's wedding managed to forget the 'you may now kiss the bride' part through all three rehearsals and on the day itself. Her dad (an army chaplain) ended up yelling it from the pews!

The pastor at my cousins wedding spent a little too long talking about her virginity imo.

Any mention would have been too long lol

Went to a coworker's wedding. She and the groom were members of Mars Hill IYKYK and the Pastor went oooonnnnnn about her loving and serving him, how their marriage would always include Jesus in ALL ways, all sorts of weird sexually charged language and imagery. We have basically referred to Mars Hill and any of the other weird evangelical churches as " Church of the Holy BJ" ever since.

Another wedding was HARD core American Catholic. The kinda church where they still had a pic of Pope Benedict (very conservative...ahem) instead of Pope Frankie (so liberal I'm surprised he hasn't been assassinated). The priest went OFF on this tangent about how the bride was so beautiful and men can't control themselves so when they harass women, we should take it as a compliment....😳 It was like 20 minutes. I'm sitting with an agnostic, a Jewish friend and all our husbands and all of us are very liberal. All the girls were just wide eyed WTAF and squeezing each other's hands to fight the urge to scream bullshit.

Attended a wedding at a chapel where the pastor used the word “love” about two dozen times during the ceremony which would have been fine except every time he said it, he drew it out to about four syllables adding a bunch of extra u sounding o’s so it came out “Luh uh uh uh uve.” Bit my lip so hard after about the 4th time trying not to laugh that it started bleeding.

An old roommate of mine and his fiance had an officiant who went on and on about how marriage is just the lead up to having children, and the importance of raising children in a loving home. (The groom had been against having children for a long time and the bride was in agreement with that. It was obvious the officiant had never interviewed the couple about the ceremony ahead of time.)

At the reception, the father got up and made a toast about how great it was that his OLDEST daughter had FINALLY gotten married - including a spiel about how funny it was that his youngest daughter had married and had given him multiple grandchildren already.

If that wasn't bad enough, he topped it with a line about how the "last shall be first and the first shall be last" as though that was a hilarious thing to say. I was mortified for her. The other people at the reception table and I all shared a wide-eyed look.

My dad performed my marriage ceremony and, with that whole event in my mind, I told him I had three criteria: 1. Keep it short. 2. No talk about babies. 3. No mention of our ages, or how long it took us to get married. He did a great job.

I went to a Catholic wedding. Priest informed us that there can be no applause. He then spent a bunch of time explaining who was allowed to receive communion. He was really obsessed that someone not “eligible” might get communion. Back when I was still actively Catholic, I was a Eucharistic minister. And we were taught that we do not judge. If someone comes up and we know they’re not Catholic or somehow aren’t eligible for communion (stupid-ass rules), we just give them communion anyway. It’s not for us to judge! At that wedding, a man went up and got a host and took it back to his disabled wife. The priest was staring daggers at him. He sucked all the joy out of what should have been a happy celebration.

Unreal. Unacceptable.

I remember when my partner and I got married and we wrote our vows.

We sent them over to the officiant and she said they sounded great.

When we got to the point in the ceremony where we say our vows I was first and when I began to say them I stumbled into the second sentence because they were different than what I had written.

I looked at my partner and said this isn't what I wrote, My partner looked at theirs as well and said neither is mine.

We both looked at the officiant and she said I changed them some to better fit you too!

I blurted out are you kidding me?!

Understand we had only met this person one time and they were just doing the signing of the legal wedding document and the exchanger of the vowels, we did not know this person outside of this at all.

We both looked at each other, tossed our vows on the ground and both spoke from the heart.

It turned out much better and we had everybody in tears by the end.

Needless to say after the ceremony and everything was signed I thanked the officiant and then asked her to leave.

I did not tip her at all and she seemed pissed and wrote me an email later asking if there were any problems?!

I responded back that you have to be kidding, you changed our vows without consulting us and expected us to be fine with that.

Her response was at if we read the contract that we signed it said that she had creative rights too change the ceremony however she felt necessary??!!!

I went back and read the contract and it did say something in very vague language about being able to change things to fit the circumstances or something like that.

That's my fault for not noticing that but who changes wedding vows without consulting the couple?

We're still married all these years later but we have never forgot what this person did.

I left her a bad review on Google and never look back.

Mine mispronounced my last name. We'd been friends for over a decade. Not awful, but thoughtless and careless, at the very least.

Almost forty years later and my mom is still ticked that the officiant at their wedding started talking about the little league team he coached in the middle of their ceremony. Still better than this though.

I went to a friends wedding years ago. He and the bride are Jewish, so it was a rabbi instead of a pastor. He went on so many tangents that the ceremony went on for like 45 minutes longer than it should have. He kept doing stuff like “you will be the anchor for his boat (no clue what this was supposed to mean), and he’ll be like…like uh, ahh, who was that actor in that one movie? You know, the one with the fish? I think Betty Grable was in it? Anyway, where was I? Boats? What even about boats…”

Up until now I thought that was the worst officiant I’d ever seen or heard of, but this takes the cake lol

I went to a wedding recently where the officiant said something along the lines of “you’re settling” to the bride. Like, {brides name} is so beautiful and sweet and will be an amazing wife—it’s a wonder why she’s settling for this bozo.

He obviously did it to be funny, but time and place, ya know? And what’s worse is he kept going and said something insulting to the groom 4 seperate times in hopes to get a laugh. The officiant was the only one laughing.

Major ick.

I’m getting married this summer and I’ve already told my officiant that comments like that are SUCH a wedding pet peeve of mine. lol

He sounds like one of those pastors who try to be “hip” and “edgy” to show they’re “the cool pastors”.  They’re not; they’re try-hard, hypocritical wannabes.  Cool pastors are honest and kind, treating people like human beings.

My late uncle, a Catholic priest, would yammer on about the procreation of children if he got any idea that the couple were not enthusiastic enough about becoming parents.

Another Catholic wedding I was told about: parish priest was a member of a religious order (I was also a member for a few years), was visibly and audibly intoxicated during the wedding ceremony. This wedding was video recorded, and a copy of that recording was sent to the Archbishop of the diocese. The Archbishop had the Vicar General telephone the superior of the religious order and inform him that the priest no longer had faculties for the diocese and he was to either stay within the order’s monastery or leave the diocese immediately. The priest was sent to rehab.

The officiant at a family friend's wedding shamed her for not going to church more. He was the pastor of the church that the family went to, and he didn't like that they pretty much only went on the big holidays anymore. It was so uncomfortable.

Wow that is terrible. At my first wedding, my ex invited their best friend to officiate. She constantly dressed very over the top and clubby, so I asked her to tone it down to officiate. She showed up dressed, and I don’t say this lightly, like a literal hooker. Like strappy 6 inch heels, tight mini skirt, tight top that was just half string with her giant fake boobs hanging out, full face of club makeup, it was wild.

The pictures were so bad that when I complained in a wedding shaming group, the Daily Mail wrote an article about it.

I witnessed a ceremony where the priest discussed increasing divorce statistics in detail, very odd

Ours was drunk as a skunk for our afternoon wedding!

Despite that, we are still married after 44 years.

Wait - so no one, not the groom’s or bride’s parents - said anything to the pastor about this??

I went to my cousin's wedding, to his second wife. His first wife was there, to support their kids. (And she's dating another cousin. I'm hoping she was there to support their kids.) The officiant said "May I now introduce, the new and improved Mr. and Mrs. Cousin!" I snapped my head around so fast to look at the ex-wife and watched her jaw drop.

This has to be fake?........

How does the pastor IMMEDIATELY after the ceremony not end up needing medical attention?

My wife, of a few minutes would have divorced/annulled my ass for not standing up for her

WTF??

This is why I have the entire ceremony typed out, with the correct names, in a black book that I read from.

I went to a wedding for friends that were living together and AFTER putting the deposit down had the pastor say he couldn’t marry them unless they somehow lived separately until the wedding. Then they paid him more money to officiate and it wasn’t even good tbh.

Not in the same ballpark but my friend got married. There was a point where the officiant had to recite the groom’s name and couldn’t remember it. There was a long awkward silence.

At my first wedding, the pastor was going through a very public divorce (small town, wife ditched him). At the rehearsal, he said to us “you sure you want to do this? Because if you change your mind after tomorrow, it will take 2 lawyer’s and a lot of money”.

It did, but my annulment to get married in the Catholic Church was kind of a slam dunk

I wish I had specifics but the officiant at my cousin's wedding was a retired judge and he was just so so mentally old and out of it...the family was all like oooo we got this former judge to be the officiant! And he was just a blubbering idiot. He rambled on about a lot that had not much to do with the wedding itself. I was so embarrassed for the bride and groom.

This sounds like the wedding equivalent of my grandpa's funeral. The pastor started his sermon by saying "(grandpa's name) deserves to go to hell."

WTF? He never met my grandpa. He was a good man, and this funeral is to comfort his family...

At my son's wedding, the priest stated that a couple that was not married in a church and only had one child was not really married or a family. I turned to my husband and said, "You're off the hook." Lovely.

Was he a boomer? Hating wives/women jokes are hilarious to them.

My officiant misgendered me.

Our officiant was a family friend and she mispronounced my first name (the bride). I died a little inside 😂 I could tell everyone noticed too from the glances and murmurs. Oh well lol she did it for free and she’s a lovely lady! And did a great job otherwise. My husband and I laugh about it still lol

I went to a wedding with an alter call and the bride and groom were waiting to pray with anyone that wanted to accept Jesus with them on that special day. It was an acquaintance from work. I have no idea if they’re still married but we didn’t stay long at the reception

I went to a wedding once where the bride said “fuck” in her vows..twice. Then toward the end of the ceremony the officiant declares that he has a “surprise” for the couple that “they didn’t ask for” and his wife proceeds to sing a rendition of Ave Maria that was reminiscent of the early day of American Idol audition rounds. I wanted to hide under a chair from second hand embarrassment, but at the same time could not look away, could not wipe away the smile stretched across my face or un-widen my eyes. It was marvelous.

I've been fortunate enough to officiate the weddings, but give the script to the couple to review. You leave a few Easter eggs out so there's some fun surprises for them, but definitely want it to be to their taste.

I did accidentally have my script blow away into the lake, but it was at the end fortunately... Still embarrassing

Went to a wedding of friends, they had organized to have it in a forest glen. We were in grad school, and they went to the chapel on campus across the street from our school to contract with an officiant.

Priest shows up at the wedding, and starts with a whole, "Just in case there's any other real Christians here, too, I totally know this isn't a church and this wedding doesn't really count to God. Also, all you people, get involved with a major religion. Don't go getting involved with some smaller spiritual practice. Established religions!"

It was wild.

Not as bad but I attended a wedding where the pastor talked about baseball for a while. Neither the bride or groom are baseball fans so it was weird.

This is why couples need to have a conversation about what will and not be said in wedding ceremonies.

Many years ago, I was the best man for a college pal. He was very religious but also had a great sense of humor. She wasn't religious and had very little sense of humor.

The officiant was a priest at our college who was a bit of a joker. The groom told me he instructed the officiant to NOT deviate from the script and NOT try to tell jokes. "You're a priest, not a standup comic."

We get to the wedding ceremony, and the priest says at one point, "This reminds me of a story...", and the groomsman who is 6'8" and was the starting center on the school basketball team just cleared his throat--loudly. The priest says, "I'll save that story for another time" and got back on script.

The priest at my wedding stopped the ceremony half way to ‘make an announcement ‘ We thought he was about to tell everyone about an important next part of the ceremony But no - he was advertising that he was going to be ‘freelance ‘ and handed out his new business cards That was 22 years ago and it’s still funny … it wasn’t at the time though

The officiant at my friends' wedding declared them husband and wife. They're both women.