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Posted by wallflower 19 hours ago

Four-year wedding crasher mystery solved(www.theguardian.com)
307 points | 95 comments
kranner 10 hours ago|
My uncle turned up drunk for my wedding reception. He’d got the venue wrong and had already spent an hour at a different wedding reception eating and drinking, easy to do at Indian weddings with a huge number of guests.

But that’s only half the story. He’d got the date wrong too, and had already done the whole thing the night before.

BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago||
Three wedding receptions in two days. Not many people would have done that even when actually invited to all three.

Hardcore!

quadragenarian 9 hours ago||
So the night before, was he at the wrong venue as well?
kranner 8 hours ago||
Yes, I believe the same venue that he first went to on the second night, so the wrong one.
potatototoo99 15 hours ago||
Something like this has also happened to me when in holiday in Spain. I was looking around nice buildings open to the public, and entered one that I later found out happened to be a university. Walking around I entered one very well decorated hall, also because it started to rain and had to wait somewhere until it passed. To my horror, more people started coming in as well and I realized I was in for some sort of book or thesis presentation on the subject of Spanish language on the Balearic islands.

I barely speak Castilian Spanish (the more common one) and it was instead in Catalan Spanish, so I didn't understand a word, but stayed for the 1-2 hours it took, clapped, and skipped the handshakes/signing part of it.

JaumeGreen 1 hour ago||
FYI naming it Catalan Spanish would be akin to naming Welsh as Welsh English. Catalan and Spanish (also known as Castilian) are two different languages, like French and Italian.

So it's normal that you didn't understand much, as even it having some words that are similar the tonalities and some of the constructs are very different.

And they might have been speaking in Balearic, which is a Catalan dialect, and that's sometimes even harder to understand.

xanderlewis 1 hour ago||
I don’t think it is akin; Welsh is almost completely different to English with only a few modern words in common. Just try reading some Welsh as an English speaker. It’s unintelligible.

Catalan is very much a Latinate language, and anyone who speaks Spanish or Italian or French (or even English) can guess the meaning of a lot of words and understand the grammar quite easily.

SenHeng 2 hours ago|||
I had a similar experience in Monza, Italy. Was taking a walk around some old church and a guy was giving an explanation in English so I stopped to listen. They started ushering the entire group into the crypts underground so I just went with the flow.

While showing us where the dead bodies were stored the guy said something like “but you’re all doctors so I’m sure you’re used to it” was when I realised this was an organised event.

I thought this was the difference between the laid back European culture vs the more, um… detailed mindset of the Far east one I grew up in. The Italians probably didn’t care if there were strays while the Singaporean or Japanese organisers would be doing a headcount at every stop.

AlecSchueler 15 hours ago|||
Couldn't you just leave? Like what if you had genuinely been there intentionally but had an emergency at home? People understand
timthorn 10 hours ago|||
Doug Englebart and Ted Nelson came to give a lecture at my university when I was a student. I was busy in the lab and engrossed in my work, and realised the time 5 minutes after the talk was due to begin. I was too embarrassed to walk in late, so to my eternal regret I didn't go. I'm more comfortable with that sort of situation now, but I can appreciate the desire not to make a scene.
detourdog 9 hours ago||
I'm sorry you missed it. I'm also sorry I missed it.
paulddraper 8 hours ago|||
Yes of course but most don’t think that
zduoduo 3 hours ago|||
Haha yeah, same here—I totally get that feeling. Sometimes the best stories end up being the ones we didn’t live through, because we keep replaying the “what if” in our heads. At least we can laugh about it now, and share it here. Makes me feel a bit better knowing I wasn’t the only one who missed out.
sixothree 14 hours ago|||
I attended a funeral for the family member of a friend of mine. After the funeral we all were to convene at his sister's house. Because of the crowds I parked half a block away and found myself in a group of similarly dressed people walking towards what I remembered to be her house. After maybe 5 minutes of not recognizing anyone, someone simply says "who are you", and after explaining my relation to the deceased, my error became apparent.
bongodongobob 12 hours ago||
[flagged]
Mogzol 11 hours ago|||
This is a weird comment to make when the original comment didn't mention anxiety at all, and wasn't even worded like it was a bad experience or that they felt they were forced to stay there. Maybe they had nothing better to do, they were waiting out the rain after all.
aDyslecticCrow 12 hours ago|||
If its a lecture hall, Leaving may make them VERY noticable and force others to move to let them through.

Imagine having a final thesis presentation only for one of the facualty leave mid presentation without a word.

jraph 11 hours ago|||
If someone I didn't know had left, I wouldn't have minded. Even someone I did know, in fact, although I would have asked what happened afterwards and if everything was okay.

People have all sorts of emergencies.

I would have minded if the person leaving said anything though, unless I really needed to be informed of something. Better to leave in silence without disrupting the presentation. It is stressful enough as is.

macintux 15 hours ago||
Many years ago I took a look at my high school senior yearbook for the first time since I’d graduated. I spotted a note from a girl asking me to call her after graduation.

I didn’t remember the name (first name only), and the phone number was from a different town 20-30 miles from my high school. Unfortunately I don’t believe I still have the yearbook, so it shall forever remain a mystery. I literally had, and have, no clue.

Aurornis 15 hours ago||
What a classy move to quietly ride it out and avoid doing anything to distract from the ceremony.
FerretFred 15 hours ago||
Yeah! He didn't want to appear rude by just walking out, so he stayed it's been all over the local TV News - he looks a tall guy so yes, he'd definitely be noticed making a sneaky exit!
saghm 11 hours ago||
That being said, it seems like he might be better at blending in than he gives himself credit for:

>You can’t exactly stand up and walk out of a wedding mid-ceremony, so I just had to commit to this act and spent the next 20 minutes awkwardly sitting there trying to be as inconspicuous as my 6ft 2 ass could be

And yet, no one actually seemed to notice him other than the photographer (who presumably didn't know most of the guests beforehand), and the bride and groom only found out he was there because the photographer took a number of pictures with him.

a3w 14 hours ago||
"Wrong wedding <leaves>" could have removed the tension of most weddings?
Aurornis 12 hours ago||
The article clearly explains it: He rushed in, the ceremony started, and then he realized he was at the wrong wedding.

Once the ceremony starts, you stay quiet. Getting up and leaving from aisle seat while the wedding party is coming down the aisle would have been a jerk move.

apparent 2 hours ago||
When I was an intern years ago I went to an event at a hotel in LA. I didn't know what room the event was in, so I approached the concierge, described the event I was there for, and he immediately whisked me to an upper floor, where I began to talk with the other guests. It took about 10 minutes for me to realize that while the people there were also interns, and we were in the same field, they were from a particular company, whereas my event was for an industry group. They had just been flown in from all over the country, so it didn't seem odd to them to see a new face (we were all new faces).

I eventually realized the error and quietly excused myself to look for the industry group meeting (which sadly lacked the delicious catered food and open bar that the first event had). Fortunately I made my exit before the higher-ups had arrived, as they would have quickly realized I was in the wrong place.

Tade0 13 hours ago||
I'm not sure I understand this correctly but did they mean just the wedding and not the wedding reception?

In my corner of the world it's still fairly normal to have people attempt to crash a wedding reception and it's typically the role of the best man to bribe them with offerings like a shot of vodka or treats.

I have a distinct memory of my friend's father in law, a man close to 2m tall, walking forward, vodka bottle in one hand, shot glass in the other, while the uninvited guest, with just a shot glass, walking backwards towards the gate to the venue where the reception was held.

On the flip side one night over a decade ago I was out on a walk with my SO when we overheard some rowdy people. We wanted to avoid them, but they caught up to us and it turned out that this was an after-party after their wedding reception. They invited us to join them to enjoy the leftovers with everyone.

js2 13 hours ago|
Yes, just the ceremony, not the reception. He left as soon as he could (after being held up for the group photo) to attend the wedding he was supposed to be at.
pif 10 hours ago||
When my father left us, a cousine of mine (from my mother's sise) got confused and parked a couple blocks away. She entered the house where people were mourning, and she realised the people she didn't recognise had to be from my father's side. Then she approached the casket and leapt forward exclaiming "I'll miss you, Uncle", only to find a lady laying inside.
tezza 15 hours ago||
this happened to my mother-in-law, where she was the crasher.

in North London there is a large Turkish centre that hosts Turkish weddings. She was invited to a wedding there.

Traditionally, the bride and groom stand in the centre of the room and then family members lineup next to them all in a procession.

As you enter the room to reach the bride and groom, you must shake the hands in turn of all of the people in the procession.

When my mother-in-law eventually got to the bride and groom, they realised that the bride and groom were strangers. The accurate wedding was taking place upstairs at the same time.

There are multiple wedding venues in that particular Turkish Centre.

foobarian 14 hours ago|
You just reminded me how awesome the wedding scenes were in the Diriliş: Ertuğrul TV show. [1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlaVdEv74NU&ab_channel=TRTDr...

gdw2 13 hours ago||
I woke up one morning in college and thought I had overslept. I threw on clothes and ran from my dorm to my class. I walked in two minutes late and grabbed an open seat on the front row, right in front of the teacher.

I didn't recognize anyone and soon realize that I hadn't overslept and was just an hour early. I was too embarrassed to get up and walk out so I sat through the class.

boothby 12 hours ago||
A student once arrived, disheveled and with 20 minutes left, to a midterm. I gave him a stern look and a copy of the exam. While I was grading the exam, I discovered with slight horror that he'd showed up to the first of two classes that I was teaching back to back in the same room -- he was enrolled in the second, and had arrived 30 minutes early. Horror turned to joy as I failed to find a single error on his exam. We had a good laugh as I returned his exam; he was justifiably proud and only slightly embarrassed.
mythrwy 7 hours ago||
I had a roommate back in college that was a devoutly religious catholic. We went out drinking one Saturday night and he started talking about church (I was and still am irreligious). He convinced me to go with him to mass the next morning.

Next morning we get up, get dressed, drive to the church and walk in all hung over. I hadn't ever been in a catholic church before but it was a huge crowd already seated and there were no seats in the back. The priest was up front speaking. So we walk through the pews looking for a seat and get all the way to the front before we find one. Everyone is staring at us. We sit down. The priest said a few words and I think there was a prayer and like 5 minutes after we sat down everyone got up to leave.

It was daylight savings time change and we hadn't adjusted our clocks being drunk college students. That was my one experience attending mass.

antonymoose 15 hours ago|
This reads almost like a scene from the IT Crowd.
uncircle 13 hours ago||
“The Work Outing”, the episode with a vaguely similar plot which made me cry with laughter the first time I saw it, is available for free on Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cj490uNht4o&pp=ygUVaXQgY3Jvd2Q...
noncoml 4 hours ago|||
The scene where Maurice finds himself behind the bar serving drink had me crying in laughter
riffraff 13 hours ago|||
"I'm disabled" still makes me giggle just thinking of it.
DonHopkins 15 hours ago||
Or Harold and Maude obsessed with weddings instead of funerals.
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