Best wedding I went to was very casual. It was in a barn, no dress requirements (even the groom was wearing a plaid button up and jeans, and they brought in a bunch of food trucks for lunch.

It was pretty quick compared to most weddings too.

Best: Indian friend invited me to his wedding in India, 5 days straight of eating delicious food, rituals and ceremonies. As a European, this was entirely exotic to me. Also it was my first time in India and I did a little bit a tourist on the side of the events. Main wedding day had over 2000 people invited, traditional food service for lunch, ice cream booth. The ceremony was in an amphitheatre with the a temple built on stage entirely covered in flowers, it smelled very nice.

Worst: my wedding 😅. Married during COVID in a foreign country, my family were not allowed to travel, country on lockdown. It was my wife and I, ceremony was 3 minutes top-chrono. Witnesses provided by the municipality. It was still a great time, we had the photoshoot after and spend the week exploring Copenhagen without tourists. We had a celebration with family and friends 2 years later, it was very humble but everyone was so happy to meet after all the isolation and it was a great time too.

Best: My wedding. It was low-key and beautiful. The only thing I should have done differently was hire a photographer because the family members who were taking pictures did a shit job.

I’m honestly hesitant to answer the next part. I will with the disclaimer that it contains references to sexual violence. If that’s uncomfortable for you, please accept my apologies and read no further.

Worst: My brother in laws wedding. The ceremony was fine. After that, we stood there for a bit talking to my wife’s dad and step mom. Her dad basically admitted to mollesting one of my wife’s cousins when she was a teenager. He didn’t phrase it as an admission. He said she “accused him” of getting her drunk and assaulting her. And then he laughed it off saying that he couldn’t imagine why anyone would accuse him of something like that.

My poor wife stood there the entire time, speechless; gripping my arm like a vice. We excused ourselves and went back to the car. She cried the entire way to the hotel. One of the few times I’ve ever seen her do that. She said she thought he had only assaulted her. She never imagined he would do that to other girls, otherwise she would have said something.

It took every ounce of restraint in me to keep from knocking his teeth out while he was telling that bullshit story because I knew he had done it but I also knew my wife wouldn’t like it if I made a scene.

The lesson I took away from that experience, one that I try to carefully convey to my kids, is that if you are a victim of sexual assault, please, please, please tell someone. You may not be the first. But you most likely won’t be the last. I know it’s hard. I know it’s painful. I know you wish it had never happened. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame my wife for not telling anyone because I know how painful it was for her.

But here’s the thing. You can’t erase the past. But you might be able to make sure you’re the last victim, if you can find the courage within yourself to speak up.

Worst: EVERY wedding in summer. You want to get married when it’s 30+°C outside? Fine, do whatever you want, but I will come in shorts.

Best: None. Weddings are pretty boring. I had fun at mine I guess but I got chewed out afterwards because people kept coming to me and asking me to do things and apparently I was supposed to be glued to my new wifes side the whole time.

Worst: Went to a friends wedding, somehow got mistaken as the groom by the priest, which I cleared up, but then during the ceremony the priest said, “I believe that with the power of Jesus any marriage can work, even between people of different races” while looking directly at me, the only non-white (Lakota) person in the entire room.

Best man was trashed before it started. Grooms family sat in one corner and didn’t say anything the entire time. Baby daughter of the new couple had thrush or some other contagious disease. Was held at a VFW, where they had the attached bar still open.

Groom went partying that night and didn’t go home to his new wife.

Divorced within 2 years.

I must have been lucky because of the many weddings I’ve been to between family and friends, none stand out as obvious worse ones. Sure, some were not the most exciting affairs with a standard ceremony + meal + dancing formula, but they were by no means bad.

As for the best, it’s a tie between two, both friend’s weddings. What stood them apart is that after the usual ceremony the party was held outdoors with bands playing music live, with the focus not on fancy and expensive stuff, but on letting people have fun with the newlyweds.

I was forced by my idiot ex husband to go to a wedding of family I didn’t even know while one of our horses was at home dying of colic. Spent the day crying, was stared at disapprovingly by strangers and ended up eating some pink dessert with surprise salmonella. Returned home to a dead horse and three days throwing up with diarrhea.

I hate weddings and only have been to two including my own, so that would leave my own as the best one, getting married to the above mentioned idiot. Just us, our kid and my parents at the civil registry, then burger king. Fuck weddings, for real. Best day of my life my arse - I’ve always thought how awful that sounds because it means it only gets worse from there (and it did).

I could still mention a third wedding I refused to go to because idiot husband was too drunk to drive us there safely. Had to flee with the kid and hide at a friend’s place for a week to escape his rage (shouldn’t have returned, but was talked into going back by that ‘friend’ and the idiot).

Weddings trigger the shit out of me to the point where I make sure to not have friends who’d ever consider having a wedding and inviting me to it. I’m now proudly non-monogamous and happy among people who don’t have to make a big expensive thing around pretending they want to be together forever.

Anything immediate family is pretty much competing for worst ranking, simply because of how much extra effort it is.

Out of 6 siblings, 3 have gotten married. Worst was the first, my brother. I was a groomsman - 1 out of 7, there a were 7 bridesmaids as well. A huge wedding party. Photos took -forever- and happened before the ceremony. It wasn’t too hot, but another groomsman (my other brother) ended up fainting (locked knees). We recovered from that. Later on, about an hour into a hour and a half ceremony (ridiculously long speeches) another faints. We’re all suffering because we’re standing for the entire ceremony.

Then it’s finally over, but like any good wedding they had to sacrifice on one aspect. - they hired catering from a friend of a friend, and the caterer’s crew were a no show (apparently they didn’t check the address when they agreed and when they checked and saw it was a 2 hour drive they just didn’t show up). So we all stepped up to help.

There was other shit too but despite outwardly going well that wedding gave me trauma.

Best would be my close friend’s wedding. Just a ceremony and photos. Indoors as well. Easy.

Best - The one I didn’t go to

Worst - Distant family member’s, he was VERY VERY Christian and she was not so much and he sprung a VERY VERY Christian wedding on her. When the priest started going off about how “the wife is beholden to her husband in all ways, submits in all ways, obeys in all ways” her eyes went all big and she started subtly pulling away and oh man I could just FEEL the “GET ME OUT OF HERE I MADE A MISTAKE” waves radiating off of her. So awkward in the reception she looked close to tears the entire time.

Best is one of two

First was a couple who are more like friends-of-friends. I like them, they’re cool people, but I’ve never really hung out with them except when we’re part of a group of mutual friends, so I was actually a little surprised to get an invite to their wedding.

But anyway, I booked a hotel room with a couple of those mutual friends. Did a little light pre gaming, and hopped on the shuttle bus to the venue. The ceremony was nice and short and it was a nice venue.

Then we head into the area to have dinner, and find our assigned seats, and we’re a little shocked when the bride and groom joined us at the table instead of being off at their own private table somewhere. They said they wanted to sit with their friends, so they did, they were of course off talking to various friends and relatives a lot, but they definitely carved out a nice chunk of the night to eat and sit down and eat and enjoy their wedding. I’ve heard a lot of stories from people getting married where they say they never even had time during their reception to actually eat, that’s always sounded terrible to me and I think they felt the same way. Food was amazing as well, I had just about the biggest slab of prime rib I’ve ever seen and it was cooked to absolute perfection. They even came around offering seconds if anyone wanted them.

A big part of how I knew them was because we were all part of a large group that regularly went to a music festival together, and as you do at a festival, we all tended to get belligerently drunk. Apparently part of the reason I got an invite was because of that, in their words they paid for an open bar and wanted to make sure they got their money’s worth, and they knew the whole music festival crew would be up to the task.

We were all on our best behavior, but we were all definitely pretty hammered when we boarded the bus back to the hotel to continue our party at the hotel bar.

We slept in way too late to grab breakfast at the hotel, so most of us made our way to a nearby diner to grab breakfast.

All in all just a really fun day with good friends, good food, plenty of booze, and a nice casual wedding.

The second contender for best wedding is actually one I officiated. Years ago I got ordained online from the universal life church, and never really did anything with that. I’m not religious, it’s just a fun little thing to be able to say that I’m a minister.

My buddy apparently remembered that. We were in scouts together, he was a couple years younger than me and sort of looked up to me as a mentor and we’ve stayed good friends. So time comes for him to get married and he immediately says he wants me to do the ceremony, and I of course agreed.

This dude has a way of finding really cool stuff, and somewhere in his adventures he finds a cave. It’s open for tourism by appointment and the entrance is through the owners’ basement. He gets to talking to the owner, and apparently it had always been her grandmother’s (who originally owned the house/cave) to have a wedding there, but no one had ever approached them about that. Since he was looking for a wedding venue he jumped at the opportunity. They also charged a ridiculously low price for it (I think they initially said like $50, he gave them like $500 and even that is fucking peanuts to pay for a wedding venue)

The wedding ceremony itself was pretty small, there’s only so many people you can cram into a cave at once, but more people were invited for the reception. I came up with what everyone seems to think was a really good script for the ceremony, even if it was a little hard to read in the dim light of a cave.

The reception was at a brewery, and the food was mostly a buffet of fancy pizzas, all really good, excellent party food. Again, everything was really chill and low-key.

The worst was my brother in laws wedding. He’s a good dude, but if I hadn’t married his sister I don’t think we’d have anything in common with each other.

His (now) wife’s family is fairly well-off and have a really nice vacation house on a lake in upstate New York where they go a lot. So they had the wedding up there.

Even before the wedding, it rubbed me kind of the wrong way that neither my wife nor I were ever asked to be in the wedding party. Not that I had any particular burning desire to be in it, but that just kind of seems like a normal courtesy thing. Until that point I know that I had figured he’d be one of my groomsmen when my wife and I actually have a wedding (COVID threw a monkey wrench into our plans and we ended up doing the courthouse thing, so I think we’re planning to do a big 10 year anniversary in a couple years)

The place is about a 6 hour drive from where most of their friends and family live, and for the rest of them it’s even longer. It’s not convenient to any sort of a major city where you could easily take a flight or a train or something to save yourself some of the driving, and let’s be honest, no one really wants to take time off for a wedding so most people were driving up 6 hours on a Friday, doing wedding shit Saturday, then driving 6 hours home on Sunday. They didn’t seem to understand why some of their further-flung relatives RSVP’d that they weren’t coming.

The hotel they reserved a block of rooms at is what some people might call “charming” or “rustic,” but personally I’m more inclined to call it “a crappy old house where everything creeks, none of the doors seem to close quite right, and the bathroom fixtures haven’t been updated in about 50 years.”

It was also August, and it was an outdoor wedding. Fuck that shit, it’s too damn hot to be outside for a wedding.

And I’m pretty sure the reason we weren’t in the wedding party was because they needed someone to babysit his/my wife’s grandmother. She’s got a pretty bad case of dementia, and was just really lost and confused the whole time she was there. She lives with his/my wife’s mom, but if course she was going to be busy with wedding stuff all day.

My wife drove us up, so I didn’t have my own car there. The entirety of the town we were in was about 3 block long, and mostly touristy shops selling stupid knickknacks I had no interest in. We were in a nice wooded area, and I’m an outdoorsy dude, and I pretty much spent all day looking at the mountains surrounding us thinking how much I’d rather be hiking than wandering around this crappy town.

I also normally work night shift and had turned my schedule upside down for this. I think my wife assumed I was going to sleep in, so when I woke up at a pretty reasonable hour (9-ish) figuring we’d at least be able to grab breakfast together before we got stuck babysitting her grandmother, she was nowhere to be found. She’d gone off to get breakfast with her dad (who was really pretty much the only other person there I knew, and he’s a really cool dude, I was looking forward to spending some time with him, we don’t get to see him very often)

So that left me by myself with no way to really go anywhere, and no one around I wanted to hang out with. A pretty crappy start to my day which put me in kind of a bad mood.

No really good food options in that town either- a crappy pizza place, a bar that’s just like every other mediocre bar in a touristy town, and a little breakfast and sandwich shop that was trying really hard to be cool but had nothing particularly exciting on the menu. Your best option was to drive about 15 minutes to the next town and eat somewhere there.

And of course we still got roped into all of the wedding picture bullshit.

The wedding and reception were nice enough, aside from it being too damn hot, food was ok but forgettable (my brother in law and his wife have just about the most bland palates imaginable, no surprises there) if it had been somewhere closer where I could have just attended the wedding and went home that night I probably would have left with an overall fine impression of the wedding except for feeling a little snubbed about the wedding party.

But it was absolutely not worth 12 hours in the car, the cost of a hotel room, and spending most of the day either by myself or babysitting a senile old lady who had no idea what was going on.

But at least now I don’t have to feel obligated to have him in my wedding party and I can free up that spot for someone I actually like.

Worst: My sister’s wedding. Because I was so hungover the next day words cannot possibly describe its magnitude.

Best: My friends wedding. I was the best man, so I took it relatively easy, so despite being one of the last people to call it a night, I was relatively fine the day after.

However, I’ve only ever been to two weddings, so the range isn’t that wide: They were both pretty fun events.

I’ve been to two. For one I was the designated driver.