A lot of this is red flags leading up to the wedding but there's a pre-wedding moment that caps it off. Long story incoming.
One of my best friends (We'll call him Clay) was getting married and it was not a good situation. He's a really kind-hearted guy but unfortunately, she took that as "easy to manipulate", and she (we'll call her Whine) complained about *everything*.
I could go into stories about how we got him a ticket to a major sporting event, she wanted to go, we didn't have any other tickets, so she tried to guilt him out of going because "he'll be there having fun and she'll be sad and alone at home."
Or the numerous times she tried to force a "joint bachelor/bachelorette party" to which all of us said, "fuck no." Or the fact that she invited herself to join one night we were playing games, spent half of it in the other room by herself, and then came around the corner *in my own house* and yelled "SHUSH!" She literally forced him to bring her, then complained the whole time about how loud we were being.
Still, it's the night before and the wedding itself that stands out. I already was considering talking him out of marrying her after she was being rude to him at the rehearsal dinner, and we found out she snapped at his grandmother for no good reason at all. Clay's grandmother is the kind of woman that would bake you a pie and then talk shit. You don't fuck with her, she's the best.
Whine was pushing me to say where we were going for his bachelor party (at that point, an escape room and a bar...he didn't want to go anywhere that may upset Whine) and we realized it wasn't because she was being friendly and curious, she was trying to go too.
Hell no. Went outside to smoke, trying to figure out how to be the bad guy that says "please don't marry this woman" and a long time friend of mine walks out. Then another. Another. We're all really uncomfortable about the situation, smoking, drinking our beers. Another friend comes out and it gets quiet for a second, before he just drops the bomb. "So...Clay shouldn't be getting married, right?"
It got to a point that Clay's mom came out, we shut up, and she even dropped on us that she wasn't for the marriage. Offered to give us however much money we need "if we can make sure Clay doesn't show up for the wedding tomorrow".
We tried. Went to the bachelor party and suddenly Whine is texting and messaging all of us, trying to manipulate info out of anyone that she could. We realize she's doing this and make a decision to turn our phones off.
Meanwhile, one of our friends who was helping her with her bachelorette party said she was going ballistic because she "didn't know where Clay was" and "wanted to join us" and "it was supposed to be a joint thing".
We haven't even gotten to the bar, we were in the Escape Room. We had taken Clay's phone and she sent endless amounts of messages demanding to know where he was, said she cancelled her party because she was so upset, and he needed to come back.
We spent all night trying our best to talk him out of it, all the way into the next morning. When we found out Clay showed up to get ready, we decided if he was going down, we weren't letting him do it alone. One last conversation with the groomsmen and he was ready to walk. His mom pulled the car up to the door outside the dressing room.
Family and friends all were watching to see how this would go...and his dad walks in and goes "Hey bud, why not go through with it and if you decide it's not for you, you can always get it annulled." I have never seen a murderer born in a moment but the look on his mom's face was probably as close as I was going to get.
We literally had every groomsman and even some of the bridesmaids saying "don't do this". Family was begging him not to do it, but he didn't want to hurt her. So we went out for the wedding, and she was shaking. We thought it was wedding jitters, which would make sense. Nope.
She stopped shaking when the "if anyone objects to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace" line was dropped and no one spoke up. I think she thought (rightfully) that someone would object. She immediately became calm...scary calm, like watching a murderer get a not guilty verdict.
But when the pastor continued, you could tell where the family and close friends were in the audience by the deep sighs of disappointment. She spent the rest of the wedding giving him shit for the night before, making him feel guilty for not coming home because she "needed him", so on.
We thought he was stuck for life because if all this didn't stop it, nothing would, but he thankfully was just done with it all after about a year or so because people stopped inviting him to things, and when they did, he spent most of the time embarrassed by her actions.
I've never seen so many people object to a wedding though, and while so many of us wished it didn't last at all, the night before and day of were some of the craziest red flags against a marriage that I had ever seen.
Username: heartstringsdev