10+ Worst Bridezillas Ever

What makes a bride turn into a bridezilla? Is it the nervousness and anxious thoughts that make brides lose their cool, or do they get angry because of other things? Some Redditors shared their worst experiences with bridezillas and what happened on their big days.

Tying the knot with the person they love the most is one of the biggest dreams of many girls. They imagine walking down the aisle wearing the perfect white dress paired with their favorite makeup look and hairdo. Every woman wants her big day to be nothing less than perfect, but sometimes, things don’t go as planned.

Many people on Reddit opened up about witnessing brides get angry to the point of ending friendships on their wedding day or a few days before it. Let’s dive into the world of the worst bridezilla stories and understand why some brides acted that way.

Comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

u/gabygygax: When I was doing my first job after graduating from college, a colleague got engaged and asked me to be her bridesmaid.

She had also asked two other colleagues to be her bridesmaids (in addition to one friend from high school).

I had only known her for a few months but felt uncomfortable saying no because she was one of my bosses.

In addition to being in a wedding for someone I barely knew, which is terrible on its own, there were so many horrible things about this nightmare bridezilla wedding.

First, I ended up hosting both her bachelorette AND her shower because no one in her life planned anything, and she showed up to her shower an hour late, hungover and wearing pajamas when she mandated that everyone dress for a luncheon.

She ordered our dresses from Etsy (as opposed to any bridesmaid dress company), and they looked like seafoam green raw silk pillowcases with holes cut for the arms and head and had giant bows at the back. We all looked like infants.

Moreover, the bride-to-be wouldn’t let us wear heels with said “dresses” because the groom was short, and we all had to buy new flats in a specific shade of gold.

She wanted us to wear our hair in an ugly, extremely complicated updo and said we would have to pay to have one of the hairstylists do our hair (we refused).

The wedding was on a Sunday in a highly inconvenient and faraway location, and it was not a long weekend.

The rehearsal dinner for this SUNDAY wedding was THURSDAY and started at four in the afternoon, requiring everyone to leave work in the middle of the day.

She forced us to stay at an expensive hotel in the area the night before the wedding for no apparent reason and refused to pay for our hotel room. Fun times!

u/ajlawford: I had a silent bridezilla. She was my best friend of 15 years and didn’t ask for much during the wedding planning as there were only two months between the engagement and the wedding day.

There was no bachelorette party, dress shopping, gift exchanges, or in-person meetups. We lived two hours away, but she didn’t want my input.

She wanted me to buy a dress, look pretty, and attend her wedding. I thought, “OK, whatever you want. You’re my best friend, and I’m excited you are getting married.”

She didn’t even let me help with her hair and makeup on the wedding day. Instead, she just asked me to focus on my hair and makeup. She didn’t trust me to do it well enough because I had short hair. Okay, fine. It’s your day, whatever.

Everything went well until the bride got her sister (the maid of honor and my close friend of 15 years) to call me.

During the two-hour-long call, the bride’s sister criticized my every move throughout the wedding, saying that I should never have accepted to be a bridesmaid if I didn’t want to participate.

She also reviewed my Facebook profile to note what I had spent my money on (for example, I posted about joining a bowling league for fun). She said I should have spent that money on the wedding.

The wedding was two days after Christmas, and her family didn’t even celebrate Christmas that year because of the wedding.

Meanwhile, I was criticized for not spending more time with her, even though I traveled three hours by train the day after Christmas to hang with her the night before her wedding.

Apparently, I should have stayed the night of the wedding to hang with the other two bridesmaids, but I opted to drive home with my boyfriend as I needed to work.

Initially, the bride said she would pay for my makeup on the wedding day, but she changed her mind two weeks before the event.

She asked me to drive for two hours and buy an expensive makeup brand. Despite knowing I was broke after Christmas shopping, I accepted her wish and purchased the makeup. However, she still thought I had an attitude about this.

I was also criticized for not giving a gift, although the bride said, “Being a bridesmaid was gift enough.”

After these events, the bride stopped talking to me and blocked me on Facebook. After months of being mistreated, I finally cut my best friend and her sister out of my life.

The last time I saw either of them was the wedding day, which was five years ago. I never even got to see the wedding photos. It’s so sad to see long-term friendships ending over nothing.

She should have told me about her expectations instead of expecting me to guess them and then judge me for not meeting her demands. She also should have talked to me directly instead of involving her sister.

u/ittakesonetoknowwon: A friend I went to school with got married. One day after her wedding, she went on a rampage on Facebook about how none of her friends showed up on her big day. She added that the ones who attended it didn’t dance or participate in anything at the reception.

She also made her wedding party feel terrible because she spent too much money on unnecessary things that no one used, including the photobooth and several costumes.

She made a second post an hour later, complaining about the people who stopped her from taking pictures and didn’t let her enjoy her party. Watching the comments flood in from people who went and were angry was hilarious. A few people even asked her to return the gifts.

The kicker here is that a former classmate, someone who has a lot of mutual friends with the bride, lost his infant son earlier that week, and the baby’s services fell on the same day as the wedding.

As a result, most of her guests opted to go to the child’s funeral service instead of her wedding. She lost a lot of respect and friends in two hours after complaining about those people not attending her wedding.

u/sojadedblond: A friend took out a $7500 loan for her wedding. Okay, that was not too bad. It was workable and sounded pretty reasonable. Then, she asked her fiancé to take out a $25,000 loan. (She forced him by saying she’d leave him if he didn’t.)

He had much better credit and got the loan. Then, my friend begged his parents to pay for their honeymoon while they had no idea she had asked their son to take out a loan.

They thought her parents were paying for a modest outside wedding at a local garden, and she repeatedly lied to them until a few weeks before the wedding. She kept threatening to leave her fiancé if he didn’t do things as she wanted them done.

Anyway, his parents were so happy to pay for a cruise (a nice Alaskan cruise) for their honeymoon, but that wasn’t enough for her.

She then lied to her parents, saying that his parents were only giving them $250 for the honeymoon. Her parents were shocked as they were paying for the wedding and reception and thought the groom’s family would at least pay for some of the honeymoon.

They encouraged her to get a better job (she worked 20 hours a week as a receptionist at a nail salon) or to at least go full-time at her current job, but she flat-out refused, saying she had so much to do in planning for the wedding/honeymoon, etc. She was an absolute nightmare.

She and I hadn’t talked since high school (we weren’t very close, more like acquaintances), and she had gotten my number from a mutual friend to call and ask if I’d sing at her wedding.

During that phone call, she told me about everything that happened. She added that she wanted her fiancé to take off two and a half weeks instead of the nine days he’d already taken.

When she asked me what she should do about the honeymoon, I told her she was being a little unreasonable and very demanding with people.

I said it gently and kindly. I wasn’t just like, “Wow, you’re being the worst person ever right now, and your fiancé is really stupid to marry you for a lifetime.”

I said, “It seems like you’re putting a lot of pressure on everyone around you to do things your way and only your way. This is Evan’s wedding, too. Maybe ask him what he’d like. Planning this together instead of you alone can be much more fun. You guys will be together for a lifetime, so putting this much stress on everyone, yourself included, just makes things so much harder than they have to be.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “Uh, okay, I deserve this wedding, and Evan will give me what I want. I don’t want you to sing at the wedding. You’re so mean for telling me I don’t deserve a beautiful wedding!”

When I tried to explain that I thought she could have a gorgeous wedding, just with less stress and anxiety, she said, “You’re just like everyone else. You don’t want me to be happy! My dad keeps telling me to get a better job, and Evan fought to get the loan, and you saying this makes me want to give up!”

After that, she burst into hysterical tears and hung up. It was bizarre. She was like that in high school: very dramatic, mean, and selfish. However, I don’t remember her being that crazy and delusional. They got divorced 14 months after the wedding.

u/hotel_girl985: A friend asked 16 girls to be her bridesmaids. During the 1.5 years between the engagement and the wedding, only six agreed to be her bridesmaids, three of whom were her sisters.

She wanted 16 shades of blue and 16 dresses in different styles for each bridesmaid. She threw a fit when the store didn’t have that many options.

Besides that, she demanded everyone pay for a week-long bachelorette party in Vegas (including her share) and then got mad when some people opted out (I was a single mom/college student then).

Her parents gave her a $20,000 budget, and she ended up spending $100k and demanding they pay for it. As a result, they took out a loan they are still paying off.

Moreover, she wanted everyone to have the same hair shade, so she asked the two blonde bridesmaids to dye their hair, but they declined.

Traditionally, brides pay for either the bridesmaids’ makeup/hair or the dress, but she didn’t pay for anything.

Besides that, she demanded we purchase specific shoes, jewelry, and dresses and wanted us to get our makeup and hair done according to her choice. She also wanted us to stay the entire weekend at the hotel she was getting married at.

After including everything except the gift, the wedding cost was over $2,000 per bridesmaid. Since most women were still in college and lived in a poor/middle-class area, this wasn’t the best option for them. The bride also had three separate engagement parties/bridal showers.

The final straw for me was when she demanded to see my toast a month prior so she could edit it. She ended up rewriting it.

As a result, I skipped the wedding and ended our friendship. The couple got married, but the girl’s husband seems miserable six years later.

u/Cute_Quarter_9399: So, a little background. I am the second youngest of five kids. My older siblings are two brothers and one older sister. Let’s call my sister E for this post.

E and I have an age gap of five years. As a result, we never really had that “sisterly” bond you would expect most sisters to have.

Growing up, I was always a burden to her, and anytime it was my turn to pick the family movie (or really anything), she would get upset. The reason was that she had control issues as early as nine.

I’m 18 (about to turn 19), and E turned 24 earlier this year. Her boyfriend “A” proposed to her on a family beach day in June this year. It was one of those “big white letters and rose petals” proposals that he set up before my family arrived.

She was thrilled and said yes. Meanwhile, my parents and siblings were delighted. Here’s the drama: my sister went into bridal mode after the proposal.

At the behest of my mom, E made me a bridesmaid. So, I had to be a part of everything. She made several demands, including asking the bridesmaids to pay for a $300 dress in blush pink, shoes, hair, and makeup.

She also demanded the bridesmaids attend all wedding and bachelorette events, including the spa day, which costs $800 per head, the vacation week to Toronto, including a stay $1,000 stay at a hotel, the dress appointments (even if they are just for the bride).

Besides asking the brides to pay for their dresses, she also asked them to cover the dress alterations by themselves for $300.

She also demanded the bridesmaids attend the cake and food tasting by paying $25. Besides that, the guests and the bridal/groom party needed to pay $150 to reserve their spots. The gifts were also of her choice.

She asked the guests to give her cash, a check, or something from the list of registry items and intended to return gifts that wouldn’t match her demands.

According to my mom, my sister is acting like this because of bridal anxiety, but I think it’s just my sister trying to control everything because she wants a December wedding on a ski hill.

u/bridezillaaita3: I (27 F) recently got married. My dress was this long, lacy gown that my mom wore at her wedding. My mom passed away years ago.

Because the dress was so important to me, I wanted to keep it safe from any damage. I planned to wear it on the wedding day only and later switch to a casual dress for the reception. I had decided not to eat or drink anything except water while wearing the dress to protect it from damage.

I promise I’m not usually this crazy about cleanliness, but this was my mom’s dress, and the thought of it being damaged broke my heart. I wished to wear it on my big day to have a piece of her with me. She adored this dress and always wished I would wear it.

My bridesmaids knew very well about my particularities with the dress. I had a room above the venue where I was getting ready. My dress was hanging in a safe place in the room.

On the wedding day, I went down to check on something for the wedding, leaving my bridesmaids in the room. They told me what happened next.

According to them, they opened a drink bottle to celebrate, poured themselves glasses, and began walking around the room, checking everything out.

One of my bridesmaids, Anna (27 F), wanted a closer look at my dress. She got close to it and touched the lace. Somehow, her hand holding the glass slipped, and wine spilled all over the bottom of the dress.

When I came upstairs, they told me what happened, and I started sobbing. My maid of honor called several professional cleaners, and they said there was no way they could get the dress in before the wedding. They told us ways to save the dress until we could bring it to them, so my MOH started doing that.

After that call, I became furious. I asked Anna what she was doing holding the glass so close to my dress when she knew how careful I was being.

She dismissed it and said it wasn’t a big deal because I was planning to wear the dress, and it could have gotten damaged that way, too.

Her response was unbelievable. Furious, I called her thoughtless, careless, and stupid and told her she was no longer a part of my wedding. I asked her to leave, and none of the bridesmaids spoke to her after she left.

I got married in the dress I planned to wear for the reception, and I was heartbroken not to wear my mom’s dress. After the wedding, my bridesmaids joked that I was a bridezilla for kicking Anna out after she made an “honest mistake.”

I absolutely don’t think I’m a bridezilla because Anna’s reaction was so horrible and insincere. But I wanted to get the story off my chest and ask people on Reddit who might be impartial.

u/atomic_tango: My mom and I saw a great bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years ago. We were in a small, local shop when another mother-daughter duo came in.

The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they came to pick up her daughter’s dress, so the attendant looked her name up on the computer, frowned, and said, “Ma’am, you never bought the dress.”

The lady was shocked. She asked, “What are you talking about?” The attendant showed her the notes on the computer screen.

“You said you wanted to think about it and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn’t hear back from you, we assumed you didn’t want it,” the attendant said. Then, the lady replied, “Well, we want it now.”

“It’s been over eight months,” the attendant explained, “We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order another one and expedite it here in a few weeks.”

And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. “This is unacceptable!” The mother shrieked. “We have her alterations scheduled in two hours! The wedding is a week away! I can’t believe you sold her dress!”

The bride, meanwhile, was slumped against the desk, sobbing as if her dog passed away. Meanwhile, my mom and I were open-mouthed, staring at this point.

The attendant tried to be diplomatic but was clearly as baffled as we were. “Ma’am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn’t yours until you pay for it.”

After more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant returned to us, and I asked her, “Does that kind of thing happen often?” The poor lady just deflated. “All the time.”

It baffles me to this day. How do you schedule alterations on a dress that you never purchased? Why would you wait until a week before the wedding to pick up your dress? How do you reach adulthood without knowing how buying and selling transactions work?

u/rncat91: I am a bridesmaid for a close friend of mine. She is a good person, but I saw a different side of her.

She pressured her fiancé to propose when he was still in college. It almost reached the ultimatum level, but he did once he graduated.

The bride is religious and traditional and wants to live together until the wedding. Her parents are wealthy, which is also what is ticking me off for this wedding.

Had I known I was expected to pay for this much, I would have declined to be a bridesmaid. However, the bride was not transparent about the costs.

The bachelorette weekend alone cost $1,000. I accepted that as we are in an expensive state. I didn’t know that we also had to pay for the catering for her bridal shower and a gift.

She recently told us she wanted a professional makeup artist and hair stylist to do our makeup on her wedding day. She wanted us to pay $300 for it. Since I was at my limit for spending, I wanted to avoid getting my makeup and hair done professionally. The bride said I’d have to practice and send a picture of my makeup for approval if I wanted to do it myself.

Besides that, the hairstyle she wants on me will only work on long hair, and my hair is short. I sent her a picture of my hair, asking her if I could do a low bun with pieces in front.

She replied, “I will see if everyone else is okay with that because it will throw off the uniform look.” And we are not even wearing the same dresses.

Had I known she would be a mild bridezilla, I would have politely declined and happily attended as a guest.

u/CapitanMyCaptain: I work as a wedding server, and the word ‘bridezilla’ reminds me of this one story where our hotel manager had to shut down the wedding halfway through. This was the worst bridezilla of all the bridezillas I’ve ever seen.

Many little things were leading up that were casual bridezilla until the wedding took a sharp turn. The bride once accused the wedding server staff of stealing her veil.

Then, the manager found it in her room and showed her the room card swipes, proving only she had been in the room that day.

About 20 minutes later, she screamed at some poor front desk employee, accusing her of stealing her wedding boots.

The manager intervened, and after a long talk, the photographer told them he had a photo of the boots on the church staircase and asked if she had worn them since.

When she said no, she told us it was our job to pick them up and ensure she had them (the church was not related to our place at all).

Then, she started screaming at everyone, including the guests, saying someone had stolen her wedding certificate.

After that, our manager gathered the wedding staff and told us to remove our uniform jackets, empty them in front of him, then clock out and go home.

We followed his instructions, and it turned out none of us had stolen anything. The next day, we learned that the maid of honor had the certificate, and the wedding ended after we left.

u/[deleted]: A friend asked me to be a bridesmaid about a month before her shotgun wedding. She asked us to order semi-expensive dresses which had to be altered to a certain length.

She also asked us to order shoes, paint our toenails to a neutral color, and get a French manicure on the fingernails. She didn’t allow us to paint our nails. We had to get them done at a salon.

Besides that, she said that her hairstylist would do our hair professionally. We were also not allowed to have visible bikini tan lines, although her wedding was right after summer, and I lived in an area where beach attire was popular, and everyone had visible tan lines.

I eventually had to tell her I could not afford to have everything done professionally with such short notice. I said I would be happy to do my hair and makeup but mentioned that I couldn’t do an updo because my hair was short.

Once I told her everything, she said her mom could pay for my expenses, and I could repay her later. That was the final straw for me.

I emailed her, telling her I could no longer attend her wedding. She was pregnant, about to get hitched, and now I was adding to her list of problems. I valued the friendship and told her such, but I just couldn’t do what she was asking.

We stopped talking to each other after that day. One day, years after the wedding, she sent me a message asking me to buy from her MLM campaign. That was the first time she spoke to me in years.

u/ShamedShamingShamer: Several years ago, a friend asked me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. There were six bridesmaids and one maid of honor (MOH).

The bride had picked out her dress already, one for the MOH and one each for the bridesmaids. The dresses were lovely but a bit expensive at $400 each.

Two bridesmaids, including me, were still in college, and the rest had graduated. Since I was still studying, my budget was super tight.

Once the bride picked the dresses for us, she asked the MOH to coordinate with us for the fittings. The MOH told us she would pay for our dresses using her credit card because she wanted Air Miles. She asked us to pay her directly and said we could repay her in installments if needed (I definitely needed to). We all agreed.

All the bridesmaids picked their dresses together, but I couldn’t join them because of my exams. As a result, I decided to go myself the following week.

The MOH said she would pay for mine on the group trip but to call her if there were any issues with the dress. She said she would handle it.

When I tried the dress at the shop, it looked perfect, and I was happy. The shop owner went to attend to another client while I was changing back into my clothes, but she confirmed that we were all set.

As I was walking out of the door, a shop employee yelled, “Hey! That will be $200!” I was stunned and totally mortified. I apologized and explained how I thought the MOH had paid for it the weekend before.

The shop owner immediately rushed towards us, diffusing the situation by confirming that the MOH had already paid for the dress. When I turned to leave the store, I realized the shop owner had said $200 and not $400.

Long story short, the dress was only for $200. When I confronted the MOH about it, she spilled the beans.

Apparently, the bride and MOH plotted together to charge us double to help pay for the bride’s dress. I let the rest of the bridesmaids know, and four of us dropped out of the wedding immediately.

u/Haceldama: I am a florist, and we once had a bridezilla visit our shop. The bride came with her mother at 9 a.m.

They wanted to order a bridal bouquet, a mother-of-the-bride Cattleya orchid corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen.

The wedding was scheduled for noon, and they gave us only three hours to fulfill their order. They wanted everything ready by the time they were done with their makeup appointment at the beauty parlor a few doors down.

The bride was flipping through the FTD sample book and pointing out the style and flowers she wanted. She wanted to order garden roses with long sweeping trails of stephanotis and variegated ivy, all three of which would require at least a week’s advanced order with our suppliers.

The bride was shocked when we told her we didn’t always carry extremely expensive and highly perishable flowers. My boss told them that since they didn’t place an order beforehand, they would be limited to what we had in stock and simple styles that could be assembled quickly.

The bride and her mom kept pointing at the book and arguing that we should have those specific flowers in stock. My boss eventually took the book off the desk and tossed it behind the counter.

The bride vacillated between tears and petulant whining that we would ruin her big day. My boss, who disliked brides in general, told her she had ruined her day by not ordering flowers before her wedding day.

The mom tried chewing out my boss for lacking customer service skills. My boss told her she was welcome to go down the street to another florist and ask their flower department to make their order with whatever they had in stock.

The mom said she’d do just that and reassured the bride that she’d have her flowers done by the time her appointment was over. Both women stormed out.

I figured that was that, but my boss told me and the other girl to start on six simple dendrobium orchid bouts. Meanwhile, she threw together a ribbon-wrapped bridal bouquet with white roses nearly past their prime.

Twenty minutes later, the bride’s mother slunk back in and meekly asked if we could still assemble what they needed. We did. We also charged her a huge rush fee.

These bridezilla stories prove that not every wedding is a fairytale wedding. Often, things go wrong, and the bride’s friends and family have to witness the unexpected. Have you ever seen a bride throw tantrums and get too demanding with her family and friends? Share your experience with us in the comments section.