30 Marriage Stories That Ended Before The Honeymoon Even Began

Sometimes the honeymoon ends before it even begins—these marriage fails will leave you speechless!

Sophia

• Published in Interesting
• December 30, 2024

Weddings are often celebrated as the pinnacle of love and devotion, a day where couples pledge to support and cherish one another forever. But what happens when “forever” barely lasts through the reception—or doesn’t even make it to the honeymoon?

While many marriages face challenges after years together, some unions crumble almost instantly, revealing just how fragile some relationships can be.

Accounts of marriages ending immediately after the wedding provide a window into the unexpected chaos that can follow "I do." From jaw-dropping betrayals revealed during the reception to hilariously absurd disputes that sparked irreparable rifts, these stories are as varied as they are shocking.

They serve as a reminder that even the grandest ceremonies and the most heartfelt vows can’t always prevent a relationship from falling apart.

Recently, people shared their most unforgettable experiences of weddings that ended before they truly began. Some stories are deeply emotional, shedding light on relationships built on shaky foundations, while others are so outrageous they feel plucked from a romantic comedy gone wrong.

Whether these tales leave you laughing, cringing, or shaking your head, they capture the unpredictable rollercoaster of love and the surprising speed at which things can unravel.

Just take a look at these...

1. Groom smashed wedding cake in to the bride's face on a Saturday.

By Monday she had retained a divorce lawyer.

I saw her a few months later and got an update, and told her I was very proud of her. I have no idea how things turned out.

2. The bride had gotten a personal trainer to look good for the wedding.

The marriage lasted 3 weeks because it turned out she started sleeping with the PT. Was a nice wedding tho.

3. The groom went missing between the ceremony and reception.

Bride found him banging the best man in the toilets. She smashed a glass in his face.

4. I got married and found out 2 months later that she had been cheating since 6 months before the wedding.

Could have saved a lot of money!

5. Spent so much money on a destination wedding.

They didn’t even last 6 months! He cheated on her with a 70 year old lady!… we are all 33-34 years old!

6. "3 times"

7. Wife caught the husband having sex with the pastor.

8. Bride cheated on the Groom with one of the groomsmen 2 days after the wedding.

The groomsman was from out of town and was staying at the couple's house. They did it on the couch while the Groom was asleep.

They divorced immediately. She left halfway across the USA to be with the groomsman without much of a word to anyone due to immense guilt. She didn't even tell her own family; the Groom told them.

Groom was in shambles for months. Seems to be doing better now. Happened in February of this year. 7 years down the drain.

Edit: He found out because the bride was so stricken with guilt that she told him the next day.

9. "I was at one where the bride and groom both got drunk..."

10. "Ex-wife divorced me for the guy she cheated with..."

11. I was at an Indian wedding.

The bride and groom were on stage and the grooms mom came on stage to feed the bride a sweet, some syrup fell on her dress and the bride lost her s**t and started cussing at the grooms mom. The groom got up grabbed his mom and his family as well as the rest of the people that were attending on his side and walked out.

12. Pre-wedding night, after many drinks and celebration with family and wedding party

everyone returned to their hotel room. Bride & Groom got into an altercation mid-coitus. She was 5'11" and he was 6'4", ex-amatuer baseball player. Bride punched the living daylights out of the Groom while straddling him. Groom takes off in nothing but a towel. My date was the Best Man and the entire wedding party were woken up by family members to go find the Groom to make sure he doesn't off himself.

Groom was found and talked down from the ledge at 6:30am. Everyone knew what happened but no one knew if the wedding was going forward. I was packing my luggage to leave, when I was approached by the mother of the Groom to put makeup on her son to cover his broken nose and bruises around his eyes. They did not take him to the hospital. Bride walked down the aisle like nothing happened and it's her happiest day while he looked like a battered panda with a chipped tooth.

They managed to be married for 9 months....9 longer than we all anticipated.

13. "Was in the ER..."

14. The groom filed for divorce half a year after the wedding

because he "got rid of the depression thanks to [bride] and since he's now healed, he wants to see what life has to offer him."

Took the bride some time to get over it, but she started dating again after three years of healing and is really happy now.

15. They married at 18, each to escape overbearing parents and home life.

Her parents were helicopter parents obsessed with their kid doing everything ‘first’ in their extended family. His family were extremely religious and abusive. ( the woman in this scenario is an extended family member)

After getting married he enlisted in the military, signing a multi year contract without telling her about it until the night before he shipped out for basic training.

She wanted to divorce right away but her parents were too ashamed to have her divorce only 2 months after the marriage. So they convinced her to stick it out for another year before they filed for divorce anyways.

16. Two days after the wedding, he ran off with the upstairs neighbour.

They are still together 40 years later. He was a total s**t for going through with the wedding in the first place.

17. That would be my own wedding, it was arranged and my parents were super confident him and his family were great people.

He had a pretty good income, they presented themselves as religious and very educated. Three weeks in and he started making disrespectful comments about my dad and family overall, I separated and knew I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life with a person who couldn't even respect my parents. 

After 8 months of narcissistic abuse during the separation, he turned my whole life upside down and by the time we had divorced, I lost and gained a lot of weight, had severe hairloss, depression, and thought I was going crazy/imagining things he did or said because of the constant gaslighting, failed all my exams and wasted over 6k of my tuition fees because I couldn't focus on my exams so i pretty much failed my whole semester which set me back academically and I ended up taking 2 gap years. I couldn't hold chunks of the previous 24 hours of my memory often because of all the psychological abuse. 

Its been 3 years and im doing a lot better now though, regularly attending therapy, got back into uni and am working part time to support my studies. I look forward to a happier future. 

 Last I heard of him, he got re-married almost instantly but I know karma will get him good one day. One way or another, God will serve justice and ill just watch his downfall from afar ✌🏻😌.

18. She got into a bad car wreck and changed.

Physically she recovered but mentally she was a totally different person. Before the wreck she was committed to her career and wanted a house and a family. After the wreck she became a hippie, experimenting with d***s and travels the country in a van.

Unclear if it was the concussion/brain injury or the PTSD from the whole ordeal.

19. My sister had a kid with a guy and they decided to get married.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, she noticed he was disrespectful and a little controlling. I stupidly told her things like that could be worked through and marriage takes work and compromise from both parties.

The wedding was a mess: two hours behind schedule, the groom had no vows prepared, and they were never legally married. After the wedding, the guy's mask came off and he turned fully abusive and controlling. She tried to make it work, but he had no desire to change, so they ended up splitting after less than a year.

But because they had a kid together, he's still in her life and still trying to control her using the kid and weaponized child protective service check-ups (which turn up nothing). The kid's now 10 and he's picking up all the abusive language and behaviors from his father.

The moral of the story is (as always): if someone shows you who they are, believe them.

20. Turns out the guy cheated and infected himself and her with HIV.

She found out when she tried to donate blood.

21. "I'm a photographer"

22. "My best female friend..."

23. Bride basically immediately started cheating on the groom with their next door neighbor

and who knows how many others. She got herself a bachelor pad apartment and moved out insisting they needed to work on the marriage.

We all assume he only ended up filing after a couple months because his family forced the issue once they found out what was happening. Dude was crying about “winning her back” during covid and is now at the *very least* emotionally cheating on his second, current wife with the first wife.

We are all simply waiting for them to blow up their current second marriages and remarry and watch them pretend they’re both not spineless scumbags.

24. "I went to a wedding of friends..."

25. Brides dad and brothers were proud military men.

Groom bonded with them initially over his service as well because it was sort of how they defined themselves.

Bride’s family encouraged groom to wear his uniform for the wedding, so he did. All wedding pictures, the Groom in his uniform was prominent.

Found out shortly after wedding, upon being pressured to take out a GI loan for a house, that the groom admitted he was never in the military, and had bought his uniform off e-Bay.

26. According to my buddy, he just realized they were better off as friends than married so they divorced.

It was amicable and totally uninteresting. They haven't kept in touch.

Another friend found out his wife was cheating on him. She went on a trip to visit friends in San Francisco. When he texted her after her plane was due to arrive, she told him "SF is great, I just got there" and it stuck in his mind as weird that she said 'there' instead of 'here'.

He already apparently had some suspicions so he reached out to the people she was supposedly visiting and they told him she wasn't there. I guess they were prepared to cover for her only to the extent they didn't actually have to lie.

Anyways, this all played out on Facebook back when the posts started with "Your Name is...." so he put "Bob is wondering who his wife is with." It's the reason I joined FB, to follow the drama. Anyways, he's happily remarried with kids.

27. Shortly after the wedding, Bride was in a traumatic 2 vehicle car accident involving multiple family members.

Two family members died. Bride was in an induced coma for some time, missing the funerals even. She broke her back, shattered 3/4 of her face, and had several other injuries. A few weeks after she returned home, her new husband told her she needed to get over the accident.

They didn’t last 6 months.

28. They married in Feb, divorce started in July.

She didn't want to accept his kid from a previous relationship. Like literally none of her family knew about the kid. The woman was jealous when her husband bought flowers for his grandmother. She used to stay over with her sister and brother in law and sleep between them in the same bed. Super cuckoo.

29. My cousin & her ex-husband were both teachers.

Turned out that she legitimately enjoyed educating kids, while he liked to diddle them.

30. My friend dated an Italian girl for a while.

About a year in, durring the pandemic, they had a courthouse wedding so she could stay in country. Afterwards, they had a ceremony in our town, and then one in her hometown in Italy.

A couple months after that, she let her real self slip. Durring an argument, she threatened to slit his throat in his sleep if he did anything to jeopardize their perfect couple image / her pending citizenship. A couple days later, she flew back to italy for work (she was in imports)

He filed for divorce, got a restraining order and his lawyer told immigration, and she was barred from reentry. Also, She apparently really didnt understand his financial situation. His family is 10th generation in our town, which is one of the highest property values in the US, so they are quite wealthy, even if they dont act it.

She apparently didnt understand that most of 'his assets' were really part of the family trust, just allocated to him for management/ use.

She thought she was getting half of their $4M house. And part of the 2M investment account he used to create his buisness. Neither were in his name. She ended up getting a geotracker that barely runs, and like $5k. His uncle who was the lawyer who oversees and whose father created the trusts was his divorce lawyer and saw to that.

He and i recently had dinner, and i brought out a bottle of aperitivo id bought during the wedding in tuscany, and we were joking about how the bottle outlasted the marriage.

Love is unpredictable, and these stories remind us that a beautiful wedding doesn’t guarantee a lasting marriage. Relationships thrive on trust, communication, and a solid foundation—things that no amount of floral arrangements or fancy venues can replace.

While some of these tales are shocking or humorous, they also highlight the importance of truly knowing and understanding your partner before making lifelong commitments. Whether these couples’ journeys ended with heartbreak or a much-needed fresh start, they offer valuable lessons about love, resilience, and self-awareness.

Share these stories to spark conversations about what truly makes relationships work—or what can make them crumble.

Sophia