Your Wedding Nightmare

[er1]

We all have had a Bridezilla or equipment malfunction... just wondered what is your WORST nightmare wedding

story... This question has been asked before but there are always new stories to add to the list.

[Matt Laur]

I have this nightmare where, incredibly, and with a sinking sense of crushing, soul-destroying inevitability, I actually get talked into shooting a wedding in the first place. Talk about waking up in a cold sweat.

 

Those of you who do it regularly are very brave (or foolish!). I'd rather be out working on field dog portraits with #6 birdshot sailing over my head than hear a sentence that starts, "I know this is short notice, but the bride's mother has this great idea..." Yikes! My hat's off to you regular wedding shooters. That's a tough gig.

[viet_ngo]

Shooting the wrong wedding.

[henryp]

I did a wedding on a boat on the Hudson River south of Albany one sunny hot afternoon and after I got the cake

shot, but before the cake cutting ceremony the heat melted it, it listed too far to one side and slid off the

table and over the side into the drink.<p>

I did one once where the groom demanded his outfit and the ring bearer's match exactly. They did except the

tuxedo shirts studs (the little jeweled buttons) were yellow metal with fake pearl on his and white metal with

fake pearl on the kid's outfit. He halted everything and it took his mother 20 minutes to get him back to a

semblance of cooperation.<p>

I assisted a wedding outdoors once where we accidentally posed the bride (in a flowing floor-length gown) over a

nest of ground-bees. <p>

I shot one where the schedule called for extended family groups after the entree, but by then the bride-n-groom

wanted a 20-min "honeymoon" break so we sat & cooled our heels while the rest of the family got _much_ drunker and

by the time the now disheveled couple returned the caterer was screaming at ME for killing his timetable. (Of

course his bug was he didn't want to have to pay his people overtime.) I could hardly blame the "happy couple,"

but it was unpleasant.<p>

I don't do weddings anymore. :-)

<p>

-- <br>

Henry Posner<br>

[steve_c.5]

Fortunately for me, I'm well-suited for the wedding photography task (mentally and technically, and working on "physically"), so I enjoy the work, and most go very well. In spite of the following, it's really not that bad, Matt, I swear!

 

Nightmare: Catholic church wedding with reception at local garden club. Bouquet toss to bridesmaids from upper deck down to the waiting girls below. I'm trying to get in position quickly to frame up the bride, the flying bouquet, and the girls with a wide angle lens. Some lady is standing right where I need to be at that moment. Without turning to see who she was, I politely ask her if I can trade places with her. She gets mad and stomps off as I move into position and crack off the shots. About 2 minutes later, she comes back and blows me out in front of the whole party...it was the bride's mother! Apparently, she had been drinking a bit and going through some life-threatening health issues few knew about, and it hit her the wrong way. I apologized profusely, told her I didn't even see who she was, I was just trying to do my job. She yelled that all she wanted to do was see who caught her daughter's bouquet, etc. and chided me like I was mere papparazzi. I felt awful, of course, and her husband and family came over and apologized to me profusely, trying to get her to back down. She sarcastically told them "I don't need you to apologize for me". The bride also apologized to me, and told me not to worry about it, that her issues were nothing for me to be concerned about, and that I was just doing my job. I still found this traumatic for all, but went back to doing my job, and otherwise it all turned out great. I'm still great friends with the bride and groom.

[steve_c.5]

Henry, you may call those nightmares, but I call them entertainment! Bees under the dress?! Cake in the drink? ROTFLOL!

[rayt]

Shooting an outdoor wedding on a lakeshore. Needed to be fairly on time to get the setting sun and the rest of the wedding party. Time went on and the sun was setting lower and lower, no bride. Sun finally sets and I am not a happy camper. I complain to the groom about the bride being late and not being able to get the shots they desired; not my fault. While I was standing there fuming the groom got a phone call. Seems the bride had been in an auto accident on the way to the ceremony and was killed. I, meanwhile, feeling like a total jerk, slithered away. I refunded all the money to the family; gave the mother of the bride all the engagement photos, and sent flowers to the funeral.

 

The good news is that three years later the groom got married and I got to photograph his wedding. This time it all went well and was an indoor wedding.

[amanda___minnesota]

Ray - yours takes the cake... sorry, B-A-D pun. terrible. I don't ever want to know what you felt that day!

[lou korell]

Don't think you could top that one, that's for sure.

[chris_autio]

Shooting the father and bride together as they walked up the red carpet... out of focus. I later learned the bride's father died that

night.

[steve_c.5]

I'm very touched about these two very sad stories, and can totally empathize with you fellows who lived them. I do want to hear some more stories that are funny in retrospect too.

[jack_fisher1]

Those two above indeed are sad.

Once I took a wedding where the bride had been so nervous on her wedding day that she was unable to eat anything all day. At the afternoon wedding, after the ceremony she fainted away. When she revived a little, she was unable to stand. I was able to get the formals - but with the bride and groom seated in the church on the chancel steps. Her gown was beautiful in that pose.

 

Jack

[er1]

Imagine this if you will: Best man and brother of the groom are horsing around and by complete accident the groom

gets smacked in the face (and bumps the photographer who drops his Mark III and breaks it) as the bride enters the

scene, panics and trips over her $3,000 gown falling flat on the front of her dress staining it. This all happened in 10

secs... how do I know? I was the 2nd shooter. The reception continued but the parents were quite upset to say the

least.

 

Yes I've read some tragic stories but got to admit there are some very funny ones out there too.

[daverhaas]

Mine isn't as sad or as bad as some, but....

 

Groom calls me and sets up the wedding photography...

 

He explains it's a small wedding with the reception in the same space as the wedding and that there really isn't an alter, so do I have a backdrop that we can use... Yep - got a really nice neutral colored one that will look great. He's good with that and all is set.

 

Get to the wedding site and find that it is a small community center with cream colored walls and dark brown 6 inch beams every 4 feet (little bit over a meter apart). No way I can do any kind of photos in front of those without the background.... Groom gets there, looks at my gray backdrop and is happy... Bride looks at it and calls for a huddle with groom. Huddle lasts about 10 minutes...they go look at the wall, and the backdrop, more huddle...Groom comes over and says..."She really doesn't like the backdrop...can we lose it?" I tried every technique I could think of to hide or minimize the beams...but they still showed in lot of the formals.

 

Makes me really glad all they wanted was the CD, since he's a photographer too and knows how to edit!

 

Just to add to the misery, one of the bridesmaids passed out during the ceremony. It seems that she forgot to eat that day...Glad she made it through the pictures.

 

Dave

[david_schilling___chicago_]

Not really a nightmare, and I've told the story before, but.....At the end of the wedding all the guys and the groom decide that there gonna jump in the Kankakee River so I position myself aft-end of a pontoon boat to get the shots. I got the shots but now that the dock has become wet and slippery, I trip and end up in the river while in my tux. I managed to rather gently set the camera on the dock before falling in and all the guys came over and pushed me back up on the dock. Fortunately I had my rain poncho in the car so I could change, we all had a good laugh and one of my first thoughts was how much fun it would be to post the story on P-net:

[Member69643]

I had a groom ask if it'd be ok if "uncle Bob" shot alongside me. I said sure, thinking, if your wedding photos get screwed up because this guy slows us down or gets in the way, don't blame me. Well, they were, hed did and he did. Nothing came of it but I will never again allow it.

[tim_ludwig2]

Mom and bride arrive at the church with the mom screaming at the bride to call off the wedding because the groom was not up to her social position because he managed a warehouse. Bride told her mom where to get off and the couple is still happy after about 25 years.

 

Father of another bride had a stroke on the way to the church and wasn't found for a couple of hours in his truck way out in a field off the road to the church. He survived, but never recovered.

 

August wedding in the park, 95 degrees and excessive humidity (heat stroke for me), bride and groom fly off to Mexico for honeymoon and get into a fist fight on the plane (30 years ago pre 9-11 rules) and take the next flight home to get an immediate divorce. I get told when I call about proofs being ready for selection three weeks later. That's when I learned to collect for the whole package before the date of the wedding.

[brad_hutcheson]

I think Matt Laur said it best in the first response. I always say I don't do weddings, I do landscapes and wildlife as a hobby. I still end up doing them once in a while though.

 

This is just a little bit of the craziness at my nephew's wedding, but how many times have you heard the bride yell "time out" in the middle of a ceremony as you hear one of the rings bouncing off the floor into the pine straw at the base of the porch they are on? My nephew had to tell the last minute substitute pastor they weren't doing a unity candle when he started that part of his usual ceremony a couple of minutes later. I almost forgot about the missing bride's maid and my niece being a last minute substitution as well. It was actually the most fun I've had at a wedding, but if I hadn't been family I don't think it would have been fun at all. From a professional standpoint it would have been a nightmare. From a family standpoint, I knew everyone and was able to laugh at the various situations that cropped up during the event.

[tim_ludwig2]

I've told my worst. Now for the best.

 

My most fun was a wedding where the bride a groom were married in a country chapel too small for anyone but 12 members of the family, so I was there to shoot candid portraits and groups after the ceremony at the family farm down the road.

 

Two guys were in charge of grilling hamburgers and hot dogs and all the 150 or so guests brought covered dishes. We all sat around on hay bales stuffing ourselves and having a few beers. Best party I've ever seen at a wedding and the bride and groom had registered at the local hardware store for items related to their jobs cutting down dead timber in a national forest in Idaho for log cabins. I was jealous of the chain saws and other neat stuff they got for gifts.

[tim_klimowicz]

@Ed Richter:

 

Pics or it didn't happen.... ;)

[er1]

Oh it happened Tim... Wish I had some pics for you and the gang but I was the 2nd shooter and was speaking with the grooms mother as my partner was grabbing some shots. I don't think any of it was documented and it certainly would have been in poor taste to continue shooting as our client fell on the floor. It wasn't a thing of beauty for sure. I've documented brides and grooms that have been caught in heavy rain storms but everyone was laughing afterwords but in this case no one was smiling. My partner is still waiting for the word on his Mark III which was knocked out of his hands onto a tile floor and have since found out the one of the elements on his 85 1.2 was cracked as well.

[tim_klimowicz]

Yikes, I didn't realize it was so recent, too!

 

Sorry to joke there; I assumed it was something long in the past that has grown to be quite funny with time (well, I guess it

can't be THAT long ago since it involved a Mark III...).

 

Hope everything turns out alright!

[catherine_oostdyk]

Was it Marc's camera?! That stinks.

[michael_notar1]

Ed-

 

Which Mark III model was broke? the 1d or 1ds?

[jessegonzalez]

I was hired to do a wedding a few years ago. As I was shooting the bride before the wedding, I stopped to change film,put that camera down and proceded to shoot with my back-up, so that way I had a fresh roll of film in my primary for the ceremony. Well everything was going well, or so I thought. I kept snapping away and moving snapping a few more and moving. Then it dawned on me that I had shot a few to many pictures, when I looked down at my camera I saw that it showed I had shot 32 pics, on a 24 exposure roll. Well needless to say I opened up my camera to see that I had not inserted my film properly and the lead was just hanging out in front of the shutter curtain. Talk about a real nightmare, I did manage to get shots of the bride and groom exchanging vows and rings. But talk about a disaster. The couple were really good about it, I did give them a really big discount for my mistake.