You attend a wedding and hear that one line, “If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your peace.” Most of the time, the peace is held. But what happens when it isn’t?
Take a gander at these 20 times people were NOT into holding their peace.
1. Missing the point with the catering comment.
My friend Steve was in a questionable relationship. He was with the girl, basically, because his family pressured it, and while he did find her attractive and all, she just didn’t treat him well.
Anyway, the marriage ceremony was underway, and right when they got to the end part, his brother Doug showed up blasting “What Is Love” out of a ghetto blaster and, needless to say, Steve didn’t end up getting married that night.
It was pretty messed up, his dad already paid the caterer.
2. I Joke, I Joke, I Kid, I Kid
So I’m attending this ultra chill beach wedding in small town Canada, I don’t know most anyone because it was my ex-step-aunts, so my brothers family I never see . It was fun anyways, the bride flew in on a seaplane and all the chairs were set up on the sand.
Anyways, the groom is from Trinidad and Tobago, so all his relatives traveled a long way and had cool accents, there was a party before; we were all a little bit tipsy.
So as the ceremony progresses, everyone is watching, gettin’ teary from the vows. Then the line comes ‘….any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony speak now.’
Nobody expected this; The father of the groom gets up, flailing, and a collective gasp followed by silence overtakes this tiny venue. We’re all waiting with baited breath but, he’s just standing there with glassy eyes. Turns out he was baked; this 70+ man in a suit and dreads laughs and says ‘No, I kid, I kid’ and the whole spirit of the audience cheers up as he sits back down.
Rest of the reception, people are going up to him saying ‘good one’ or scolding him. Damn good night. Best wedding I’ve been to.
3. Just keeps walking away.
I was performing the ceremony. I ask the question as a part of the liturgy, and a guy gets up after the question and says, “Yeah, I object. That’s my wife.”
Bride’s mother is the only one to speak, and she says, “Who is that? AARON?!”
Sensing that something was amiss, I say, very calmly, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats while we conclude this.” I pull the guy aside, and he claims that they got married at 18, she abandoned him and they never divorced. He had been trying to get a hold of her, and he actually told her that if she didn’t at least get a legal divorce, he would show up at her wedding. She had just ignored it like it would just go away, never returned a call – basically just walked out at age 19, never returned. (Bride was near 30.)
So I ask the bride to step aside, with her parents. They say, “You never divorced him?” I’m in panic mode as I don’t know what to do. If she was still married, I couldn’t marry them. The groom comes over, ready to fight – me, the husband, anybody.
Complete disaster. Wedding was cancelled. They married a year later after the divorce went through, in a small private ceremony. And here’s the kicker: 2 years later she just walked out on him.
4. Not Welcome.
I didn’t have a traditional church wedding, but my husband’s mother showed up at the courthouse to yell one last time about how I probably have STIs (because I wasn’t a virgin), how I’d never belong in the family (we’re different races), and how we were rushing things (we’d been best friends for 13 years before being ‘together’).
I haven’t spoken to her since; he’s spoken to her twice since, both times to tell her she’s not welcome in our lives until she apologizes.
5. Impure
Back in the late nineties I was invited to the wedding of a guy I was in the army with. He married his girlfriend from Uni in his southern (Italian speaking) swiss Hometown-Church, all very traditional.
During the ceremony a girl crashes through the door, obviously drunk as hell, and starts cursing in Italian that the bride can not get married in white in a church as she is not a virgin and is not “pure.” The whole audience is stunned and waits for the reaction of the couple or someone in general. Suddenly the groom’s mother stands up and screams at her in the most vicious voice I ever heard “Manuela, shut up, everyone knows you take it up the ass!”
I’ve been told that the girl was the grooms high school girlfriend but he left her as she wanted to wait till marriage…
6. Best Line Indeed
The best line I’ve ever heard an officiant say is “if anyone has any objections to why these two should not be married, now is not the time. You had years leading up to this point, but please find me after the wedding because I love gossip.”
7. Incest
My dad’s seen an objection – he volunteers at a church. The bride and groom were siblings, and their father hadn’t told them until he objected (I believe he was estranged to both of them). They already had a kid apparently.
8. Duel?!
My prof from a religious studies course was a priest and officiated weddings from time to time. During one wedding that he was officiating their was a objection.
The objectee stood up announced his name and title. I turns out he was some sort of European royalty. The crowd gasped and the minister swore he could hear the brides father swear under his breath. Baron said that he objected to the marriage because he had “grave moral concern” for the couples future well being. He claimed the groom was a “self abuser” and the bride was “far too fair for one such as he [the groom]”. Baron then challenged the soon to be groom to a duel and charged the altar. They both produced swords and the groom to be defended his honor by slaying Baron insert_name in front of the gathered crowd. The somewhat befuddled priest walked over and blessed the corpse to ensure safe passage to the here-after then continued the wedding without missing a beat.
The kicker is that the priest did know that the wedding was for a group of people heavily involved in The Society for Creative Anachronism but didn’t know about the “surprise” objection. Thankfully, he has a great sense of humor and loved the unique flavor of the wedding.
9. Trying to steal the show, or at least the people.
My father comes from a deeply Irish-Catholic family, literally in the history of my family no one has every married someone who was not Irish and Catholic until my mother. My mother is a Polish-German Protestant. This did not sit well with my granny (my father’s mother). My father’s father, loved my mother, and never had a problem with them getting married.
Day of the weeding: My granny says that she is allergic to dogs (she is not, but hates them so she says that she is allergic). While inside of the church, she says that because everyone has dog hair on them, she is having an allergic reaction (btw she wasn’t puffy, swelling, having a hard time breathing). She insists that she must go to the hospital right now. She take my father (the groom) and my MOTHER’S father with her to the hospital. She left her own husband behind. She took the two people necessary to have the wedding. Oh and this happened 30 minutes before it was supposed to start. My granny goes to the hospital, the doctors tell her she isn’t having a reaction, and they come back.
They did get married, and I am here. She is still pissed that I exist since I was raised Protestant and technically my parents, in her eyes were never married because it was in a Protestant church.
10. Didn’t skip a beat.
My mother in law objected our wedding. She never approved of our relationship as I am white and she’s Black. Through out our relationship she tried hooking her up with Black men. She claimed she finally “came around” and helped us plan the wedding. Then proceeded to not pay for anything leaving the bill on us and my parents which was well over our budget. In retrospective we should have seen this coming with her history. She scheduled surgery for the day of our wedding, then canceled without saying anything and showed up during the ceremony. She stood up during the objection part and was told very loudly to sit down by my father in law. Our paster didn’t even skip a beat he just kept going.
11. Dog’s know.
At my uncle’s wedding a dog started going [wild] and barked right after the “forever hold your peace” line.
The marriage ended up being a huge mess, only lasted a year or so. Darby knew what was up.
12. Fortunately they’re still together.
Apparently both me and my sister protested my uncle getting remarried. We were both very young. Think toddlers teetering down the isle as flower girls that look like they are gonna biff it at any moment. We both got the same message while the priest was talking about them “giving”. We both thought uncle was being given away like a present and that we would never see him again, so we both started bawling. Words were still not a thing for me, but my sister managed to articulate something along the lines of “No, I don’t want to give away Uncle Bill. He didn’t do anything bad.”
Thankfully my uncle and new auntie were very understanding and found the whole thing adorable. They are still married, 25 years later.
13. Dramatic much?
I was at a friend’s sister’s wedding; it was a really traditional Christian ceremony in a big church. When the minister asked if anyone objected, some guy stood up and screamed something along the lines of “You’ve ruined my life Amy. My heart will never mend, and on your honeymoon I hope you think about the sentence of solitude your actions have put on my life.” Then the guy stormed out, but here’s the thing: no one knew who he was. My friend’s sister is called Harriet.
14. Badger Howl
I was probably 13 or 14 at the time so forgive me if the details aren’t all that sharp. My sister was getting married up on a mountain near Telluride at the end of the summer. It was a beautiful evening, a beautiful ceremony in general. My sister and her (then) fiance had a dog, we’ll call him Badger, and they took him everywhere–if they didn’t he destroyed everything. Badger wasn’t just any dog, he was huge–part rottweiler, part boxer, part some other big dog–he must have weighed 150-200 lbs. When it got to the “Speak now…” part, or some variation thereof, Badger let out the most perfectly-timed, earth-shaking, thunderclap of a bark you can imagine. Following a brief moment of shocked silence everyone in attendance burst into a gale of laughter that went on for a good couple of minutes–a number of people, my sister included, were in tears by the end of it.
My brother-in-law has always insisted that the best man must have grabbed Badger’s balls or something right then, trickster that he is.
15. Weddings and Whiskey
A friend of mine was getting married to this girl no one liked. His younger brother Kyle was the best man. Mutual friend Ryan and myself were two of the three groomsmen and the last groomsman was the girlfriend’s brother. Kyle, Ryan and I actually spent the hour(s) leading up to the wedding trying to talk the groom out of the wedding and also drinking a liter of whiskey in one of the back rooms of the church. By the time the ceremony started Kyle, Ryan and I were all pretty inebriated.
As the objection part came up, Kyle stepped forward and stated loudly that he objected. There were collective gasps and no one really knew what the hell was happening. Kyle stepped up and put his arm around his brother’s neck, pulled him to the side, and they proceeded to have a 10 minute conversation (which later we found out Kyle had left his truck running in the alley, right outside the back door and was trying to convince his brother to bail right then and there). After the conversation with his brother, Kyle stepped over to the bride and pulled her aside. After a five minute conversation he pulled them closer, had one arm around each and they were whispering in a huddle. Finally Kyle stepped back, resumed his spot and loudly stated, “Let em get married I guess.” There was audible sighs of relief after what seemed an hour of tension and the wedding went on without any other problems. Still laugh about that.
16. Surprise ending.
So, funny story about my dad objecting at a wedding.
This was about ten years ago, and my dad and his buddy got really drunk at our house one Saturday afternoon, then decided to go cruising in my dad’s truck (like responsible adults). A few blocks from the house there is a really popular outdoor wedding venue, and as they drove by, a wedding was occurring. They slowed to a crawl to creep on the nuptials, and as the minister got to the “Any objections?” bit, my dad leaned really far out the window and screamed, “YEAH BUDDY, THE BRIDE IS A WHORE!” then cackled and drove off.
Fast forward about a year, and dad is at the neighborhood gas station. He parks at the same time as this other guy, who gives him a weird look and follows him in. As dad collects his miscellaneous [stuff] from around the store, the guy is still staring at him. Dad pays, the dude follows him out, and asks if he’d interrupted a wedding at X venue about a year earlier, described the encounter, yadda ya. Dad sheepishly admits to it and apologizes. The guy said he recognized the truck and asked if my dad knew something he didn’t. My dad said he was just drunk, and the guy informed him that he found out about a month after the wedding his bride had been [screwing] his best man for months up to the wedding. Then thanked my dad.
17. I still love you though.
Was at my bosses daughters wedding. Her ex stood up right as the minister said the whole “If any object, speak now…” and professed how in love he still is with her.
Then the bride goes off on a rant about how bad he treated her and how he used to beat her and make her feel worthless. Two guys got up from the back row and dragged him away as he was crying.
18. NOOOOOOOOOOO…
My husband and I got married in Jamaica. The Jamaican wedding ceremony is very long and the minister really focused on the whole “if there is any reason why this couple, ANY reason at all…” and then paused for (I kid you not) 30 seconds.
My sister-in-law was standing up for me and there was a raised altar area, so her 2-year-old son was down below. Right at that moment, he decided he had enough and started screaming at the top of his lungs “No-o-o-o-o-o-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!!! Everyone was shocked for a moment, and then when they realized who had objected, they started laughing.
Later on, the wedding photographer got a picture of her on stage with my nephew holding her hand, standing behind a potted plant. It was so cute! He just graduated from college. I should send that photo to him.
19. Still married.
The person didn’t say “I object.”
But, when the minister said, “Does anyone know any reason whatsoever why this man and this woman may not be lawfully wedded?” a person in attendance said, “Yes, I know a reason – she’s still married to another man.”
Turns out he was accurate. The bride-to-be had been married before, and thought her divorce in California was over. But some snag in the legal process prevented it from becoming final – so legally, she was still married to another man.
At that point, the minister announced that the ceremony could not be completed until the matter was resolved. It was among the most awkward moments I’ve ever witnessed.
20. Thrown out at funerals and weddings.
Yeah, my cousins dad is a dick. He showed up to his ex wife’s sister’s funeral to scream at his ex wife and daughter. He was forcibly removed from the church by the deceased’s husband and son.
So when this guy showed up at his daughters wedding, you can probably guess how it went down. We were all actually super surprised how well behaved he was. Then the priest said “If anyone has any reason that-”
“YEAH I GOT A REASON!”
Audible groans happened. A few of my uncles got up to remove the guy from the church. He kept screaming profanities the whole time.
This post was originally published on Did You Know Facts.