Not all wedding day surprises are minor ones. Some couples have to deal with some pretty heavy-duty wedding related crises. Here is a wedding disaster involving a cat, and another near disaster involving a bankrupt vendor.
Cat Attack
Shannon ended up in the emergency room on the day of her wedding. The culprit? Her cat.
Two days before her wedding, Shannon’s cat bit her on the left index finger. By the time her wedding day came around her entire hand had ballooned up like a blown-up latex glove.
“The day of the wedding, the pain became so bad, I couldn’t stand it,” says Shannon, pointing out that she arrived at the emergency clinic only 30 minutes before her hair appointment.
Luckily, the staff was able to squeeze her in and give her the antibiotics and painkillers that she needed.
By the time the 6 p.m. ceremony began, Shannon’s hand was still too swollen to wear her elbow length gloves.
“I took another (painkiller), gritted my teeth and shoved the glove as far as it would go,” says Shannon.
Although everything else went smoothly, Shannon says she can’t remember much about the day.
“Many of the details and things I had so looked forward to I don’t remember due to the pain pills,” says Shannon, adding that a few days after the wedding disaster she ended up in emergency surgery because of the cat bite, and spent six days in the hospital.
On Her Knees
Grace and Michael had a different kind of crisis on their hands. It involved their wedding venue.
For their reception, the couple wanted a place that was intimate, and not ‘banquety.’
“I wanted my guests to feel like they were in someone’s home, rather than a big reception hall,” says Grace.
They settled on an upscale venue, where they and their guests were assured privacy.
Four weeks before the wedding – after the invites were sent out, the couple found out the venue had closed down.
Although the couple was still able to have their wedding in the building (it was owned by a nearby golf course), they needed to hire a caterer – and they had lost a $2,000 deposit.
As if that wasn’t a big enough problem, when the couple went to take a look at the building (it had been a year since they had been inside), they found it in “a total disaster.”
“When I booked it, it was so pretty. Now the paint was ruined, the doors were damaged, the outside was full of dead plants and leaves. The inside smelled bad, it was so dirty. I can’t even describe it!” says Grace.
Grace found out that another couple was having their wedding reception at the venue on the same day, so they got together and cleaned up the place themselves.
“Nothing short of a complete remodeling would solve all the problems, but we did clean up a lot. We had to hose down the chairs for her ceremony. We had to buy things for the bare walls. We had to touch up holes in the walls,” Grace explains. “Two days before my wedding I was on my hands and knees scrubbing, and screwing lightbulbs into sockets!”
Her work paid off. When her wedding day arrived, the place looked lovely, and a wedding disaster was prevented.
“I walked into (the venue) and I was so overwhelmed. I spent so much time trying to fix things, I just never knew how magical it would turn out. People were there! They were eating! They were laughing! The place looked like something out of a magazine,” says Grace. “It took my breath away!”
Although not all couples would be able to handle a wedding disaster as charmingly as Grace and Michael did, it helps if you can take a deep breath and keep all those wedding-related snafus in perspective.
Besides, given enough time even the biggest wedding day glitches can oftentimes be looked back upon with a feeling of calm acceptance. Unless, of course, there’s a mean cat and surgery involved.
Photo: Ralph Heinze Photography
No matter how much we fret about our weddings or how “Bridezillaish” we become, there are some things that are positively out of our control. As the saying goes “expect the unexpected.” Although not all surprises can be looked upon with a sense of humor, many of the brides and grooms I interviewed were able to put their wedding day glitches into perspective.
