13.
“My husband and I got married a few months ago. We had a very small wedding — 35 guests with a short ceremony and reception afterwards. Overall, the whole weekend was beautiful. We are rather nomadic, and we had friends travel in from all over the country to be there. Lots of love and celebration. However, I wouldn’t be here if there hadn’t been any drama. A few months before the wedding, I asked my best friend to officiate. As wedding planning went underway, I checked in with her several times to make sure she was comfortable and preparing for her part. She assured me that she was there for me. My husband and I created a script for her to read with very specific wording. She had a copy sent to her the week before the wedding and confirmed that it was beautiful. The only section I left up to her was the intro.”
“I wanted her to put something personal there. She knew both of us, and she knew how special this day was — especially to me, as this was my second wedding, and she had been there for the disaster my first marriage turned out to be. I had never thought I would ever want to be married again, and yet, I found this wonderful man, and she had seen how wonderful he is as well.
Well, the day of the wedding came, and it all went to hell quickly. I’ll spare the full details, but basically, leading up to me walking down the aisle, it was all about her and her life drama. I ended up being incredibly stressed the entire morning trying to manage her feelings when it should have been my day.
Now, for the ceremony, she walked down ahead of me. She enters and immediately exclaims, ‘Fuck!!’ Everyone is shocked. Still, my husband tries to recover and get her set up with a clip microphone for our live stream (we were running everything ourselves with no wedding planner). She didn’t want a mic, which, in retrospect, was probably good because at least our live stream viewers couldn’t hear what happened next.
I walk in with my dad, and we are finally ready to begin the ceremony. She says a few housekeeping things and then turns to us. Here are the highlights of what happened: After saying sweet things about me in her intro, she looks at my husband and says, ‘I don’t really know you.’
She then gestures to us to start our vows. We hadn’t done the ‘I dos’ yet, which was in the script. I had to stop, get a copy of the script out of my own folder, and hand it to her. She stops, reads a little, and then does those.
After our vows, she went completely off-script again. She didn’t have me repeat after her for the exchange of rings, but then turned to my husband and made him repeat after her. None of which she said was in the script either. After he finished repeating after her, she said, ‘GOOD BOY!’ and slapped his ass.
She didn’t say our introduction as husband and wife correctly either. She just made it up and spoke like a ringmaster in a circus.
Throughout the ceremony and reception, she kept trying to fluff out the train of my dress when it wasn’t necessary at all, even while my husband was reading his vows to me. She got up out of her seat, walked over, and grabbed the train on my dress. Did it twice.
This is all recorded, too. Every time I watch it, my blood pressure rises. It was so straightforward, and all she had to do was look down and read. We had gone over the script, so it was not a surprise to her at all.
I have since ended my friendship with her. While I don’t think it was intentional sabotage, the fact that her nervous reaction made it all a big joke and a spectacle really, really hurt me. She has told everyone that she felt pressured into it when that was not the case at all. I have other friends who happily would have done it, but as I said, I had thought she would have it together for her best friend’s wedding.”