The night before her wedding, Cathi Stier dropped off supplies at the country club where she would marry her fiancé, Mike, in an elegant garden ceremony.

Out of nowhere, she caught a whiff of an unmistakable stench in the air.

“In the darkness, I realized the lawn had been cut and they’d spread fertilizer,” she remembers. “Manure covered the lawn.”

The club’s maintenance crew scrambled to clean up and cover the freshly fertilized grass with artificial turf, but it wasn’t much of an improvement. “It looks awful in our pictures,” Stier says.

The couple made the best of it. “I wore white cowboy boots under my dress,” she says.

Of all the things that can go wrong at a wedding, Stier never imagined the lawn would cause problems. But that’s how weddings are. No matter how well planned, manure happens. These real-life wedding misadventures — and the advice from brides, grooms and wedding planners who lived through them — may help other couples avoid (or conquer) similar disasters.

"The photographer was charming, but the photos were a no-show."

There were no red flags when Liz Ranfeld met her sister Sara’s wedding photographer. He was recommended by a relative, he was friendly, and he had an amazing portfolio and website with client testimonials, says Ranfeld.

So it was a complete shock when it took months of Ranfeld hounding the photographer before Ranfeld was able to get even a few photos from the wedding. And, she later learned, he stiffed at least 15 other couples that wedding season. Ranfeld now believes the website testimonials were fake. In hindsight, she says, they should have hired someone with a more established reputation.

When the happy couple hires a no-show photographer, caterer, dj or florist.

The restaurant canceled the wedding two days before — and charged $11,000.

Bobbi Palmer didn’t bother to check reviews — she knew she wanted to be married in the best restaurant in her Southern California town.

“It had a gorgeous 360-degree view of the ocean and our sparkling downtown,” she says.

But, looking back, she says there were early signs that should’ve convinced her to find another venue. On a busy night, the restaurant refused to let the couple and their photographer conduct a walk-through of the space. The restaurant’s wedding planner often was unavailable. “But we were so dazzled by the venue we ignored the red flags.”

When the restaurant’s wedding planner was a no-show for a scheduled, pre-wedding walk-through, Palmer complained.

“The next day — Thursday, before our Saturday wedding — I got a call from the general manager, cussing at me for upsetting his staff,” she says. He said he was canceling her wedding.

She spent a half hour trying to change his mind. His reply: “I can cancel it at any time — and that includes as you’re walking down the aisle.”

With that, Palmer told him she accepted his cancellation and hung up. Minus a venue and a band, with less than 48 hours to go, she found another venue and pulled off the wedding without another hitch.

“Many people in our city came to our rescue,” she says. “We had a spectacular wedding with a jazz quartet at another venue.”

But the restaurant tried to charge her $11,000, “saying we cancelled,” she says. After a lawsuit, which took two years to wend its way through the courts, Palmer won a settlement of $20,000. 

When the happy couple has a major falling out with a vendor before the wedding day.

Our tent blew into the ocean.

Weather is always a wild card — and can prove harrowing if the wedding is outdoors.

Deborah McCoy, a wedding planner and president of the American Academy of Wedding Professionals, still rues the day she agreed to the tent the bride wanted on a South Florida beach, complete with floor, altar, seating and flowers.

Bad weather was brewing. “My gut was telling me not to.” But McCoy went along.

“That morning, a storm blew up of mini-hurricane proportions,” says McCoy. “At 10:30, I got a call from the frantic mother of the bride, who told me the tent had blown into the ocean and was not recoverable.” 

The bride was inconsolable.

Luckily, McCoy had a backup plan: She’d booked a small meeting house on the property in case of bad weather. Emergency calls brought her decorators, florists and other vendors, who turned it into a wedding wonderland, she says.

When the bride caught her first glimpse, she burst into tears again — the happy kind.

When the happy couple insists on a tent and outdoor wedding

All of a sudden, everyone was yelling, ‘Fire!’

The wedding in rural Maine had a rustic feel and involved amateur pyrotechnics.

“At one point, a few of the bride and groom’s friends put on a fireworks show,” says Lindsey Pollock, a friend of the bride. Guests, including young children, played with sparklers.

“All of sudden people around us start running around and yelling, ‘Fire!’” A dumpster by a very old wooden barn was burning. 

“People were carrying water in makeshift buckets from ice tubs, pots from the kitchen, you name it,” Pollock recalls. But the fire raged on.

One of the property owners raced in with a fire extinguisher, saving the night — and the barn.

When the happy couple unknowingly engineers the disaster
 

Our wedding night was spent chasing the keys to our car.

With her trademark precision, Joyce Baird choreographed each step of her wedding day. First, she and Roger married in a church in La Jolla, California; then, they hosted a reception at a swanky banquet hall at a marina, a 20-minute drive away. At the end of the night, they made a dramatic exit by boat to a hotel on nearby Mission Bay.

Only after they arrived at their hotel did Roger realize his car keys were missing. They were in his tuxedo pants, which had been given to a friend to return. Locked inside the car: Roger and Joyce’s suitcases, packed for their honeymoon in Hawaii.

The key design made the car virtually impossible to break into, and the couple spent their wedding night calling family, friends and locksmiths, and looking in vain for the spare key. “We flew to Hawaii without sleep — or the suitcases,” Baird says.

When the happy couple forgets a major detail
 

No power, no water, no gas, no food. Total catastrophe.

Adriana Santiago’s fiancé was granted his visa to come to her home in Puerto Rico the very day Hurricane Maria pummeled the island.

“Right after Maria, the airport was inoperable, so he came to us about two weeks later, in the middle of the crisis. No power, no water, no gas, no food. Total catastrophe.”

Santiago and her partner, who lived in Spain, had already been separated for a year and a half. The clock was ticking on his three-month fiancé visa.

The couple had planned to hold their ceremony and sunset picnic at a seaside fort in San Juan. But on their wedding day, the city was still being slammed by rain. They needed a new plan, fast.

So they scoured Old San Juan — still barely functional — for a venue.

“My fiancé and I drove there in the rain, no street lights at all, everything flooded,” Santiago says. “I started walking around until I found an open restaurant and asked if I could have my guests over. I couldn’t believe it when they said yes.”

Santiago texted the address to guests and crossed her fingers. Not only did they show up — the wedding arrived with them.

“They brought presents, a cake, champagne, the picnic and decorations,” she says. “My friend even had them change the music to our playlist.”

The day before, Santiago had verged on a meltdown, unable to locate fresh flowers and a house with power where she could style her hair. In the end, she realized her relative good fortune.

“I just said, ‘You know what? We are in the middle of a crisis, people are suffering or fleeing by the thousands, and I’m happy my family is finally together.’”

When the happy couple faces a major wedding meltdown
 

Written by

Katie McCarthy

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