Weddings are beautiful, special, happy occasions, full of love and good feelings and just so much joy.
Except when they’re not.
And in a story shared in in Slate’s advice column, Dear Prudence, we see what happens when perfectly lovely weddings take a dark, scary turn.
A woman wrote in to Dear Prudence, asking for advice about a certain event that occurred at her wedding.
As she explained, “My husband and I started dating, got pregnant, had a child, moved in together, bought a house, and got a dog in that order.”
She wrote that in all that time, friends and family kept asking them when they planned on getting married, but that they just kept postponing it “to build better lives.”
After a while, they were able to afford a “huge blowout wedding,” and so they did.
Her now-husband chose his best friend, who she called John, to be his best man — and John was also able to officiate the ceremony. How special, right?
On the day of that great big wedding, “everyone seemed happy” and the guests were “overjoyed” that this moment had finally come.
The bride wrote that “the entire atmosphere felt moving” — in fact, it was so moving that John “stopped mid-ceremony to propose to his longtime girlfriend, ‘Jane,’ and reveal her pregnancy.”
Hold the damn phone.
The best man is actually performing the ceremony, and in the middle of everything, he stops to have his own moment?
Well, at least it can’t possibly get worse, right?
Ha ha, just kidding, of course it can.
This poor woman said that “I couldn’t even hear the vows my husband wrote or the rest of the ceremony over the noise of Jane’s happy sobs, her very surprised family who were also guests, and people seated nearby congratulating her.”
“Even the videographer cut to her frequently during the ceremony, and you can’t hear anything over the chatter.”
And when, when the best man gave his toast, “he apologized for being caught up in the moment, and then proceeded to talk about he and Jane’s future with nary a mention of us.”
… Well, surely it can’t get worse than that.
Except that “During the reception John and Jane became the primary focus of our guests. John even went out of his way to ask the band for a special dance just for him and Jane on the dance floor.”
This woman wrote into Dear Prudence to ask for advice on how to move forward, because she’s “shocked and angry” about what happened.
And honestly, it’s a miracle that she isn’t shocked and angry and in prison awaiting a murder trial.
Her husband, meanwhile, hasn’t spoken to the best man, and “has joked that he’ll resume his friendship when John and Jane give him a $ 40,000 check for ‘their half of the wedding."”
So not only were things bad enough that this couple feels like the best man stole their thunder hard enough that half of the wedding was theirs …
But this was an $ 80,000 wedding.
Good ol’ Prudence advised the woman to encourage her husband to have “a difficult conversation” with the best man about what happened in an attempt to save the friendship.
However, Twitter was not so kind.
“Unbelievably rude and self-absorbed,” one person tweeted. “During the fecking ceremony?! Their asses wouldn’t have got into my reception!”
“DO NOT TRY THIS AT MY WEDDING,” another advised. “I can fight in a tux.”
One particularly imaginative person gave the advice to “Stay friendly. Go to their wedding. Take a [poop emoji] in the aisle mid ceremony. Walk away. Even Steven.”
Makes sense to us.