Whether it’s due to pre-wedding jitters or the idea of spending your life with the wrong person, people getting cold feet before their wedding is pretty ordinary. No matter what the reasons are, calling off a wedding is not an easy task. However, some people did take that risk for their own happiness.
Here are some people who revealed their stories about why they cancelled their weddings.
1. “The guy was super nice to me and earned decently. So, we proceeded but the ideologies and thinking of our families were a clear mismatch. My family is very open-minded and progressive and his family kept giving primary importance to pleasing their relatives. They forced us to give expensive gifts to their each family member. They forced us to bear the majority of the expenses. They did not even bother to visit our home town once. All the functions right from roka to the wedding were to be held at their place. All the dates, venue and rituals were decided by them. The only contribution my parents had was to finance the wedding. When my mom opposed all this, it led to a huge quarrel between the families. In the end, my father went ahead and apologized. I started having second thoughts about the guy and especially about his family. A day after the roka function, the guy messaged me saying that his family is extremely annoyed because the presentation of my family was bad, the gifts were not as per the expectations and they again wanted my parents to apologize for this. That was the point where I lost all my respect for the guy and his family and finally my marriage was called off.”
2. “I called off my wedding four days before the big day. Two of my bridesmaids (my best friend since high school and my cousin) got into a huge fight because they found out that he was sleeping with both of them. It was cheating within cheating and was easily the most surreal and heart-breakingly awful experience of my entire life.”
– Redditor
3. “I met Stephen when I was at University and was bowled over by what I thought was his charm and sophistication. He asked me to marry him after 3 months; he telephoned my dad to ask for his permission. It was only later I learnt that he had asked my dad for money for the engagement ring because I wanted an expensive one, which wasn’t true. My parents had suggested a local hotel for the wedding but he pushed for a 5-star hotel in a stately home. The guest list kept growing, 200 guests to a 4-course meal after the wedding, with another 300 in the evening. A string quartet, a live band, a photographer from London because anybody local was too ‘provincial’ for him. I was complicit in all of this, swept along in the ‘excitement.’ Of course, my dad was picking up the bill for all of this. And ‘all of this’ was (grotesquely) expensive. The meal alone was just over £100 per head. The champagne had to be vintage, the flowers needed to be ‘better than anyone else’s.’ I started to feel uneasy about 4 months before the ‘big day.’ My uneasiness and unhappiness grew, I lost weight (a lot of it) I didn’t sleep; I was drinking more than I should. I finally made my decision three days (yes, 3 days) before the wedding. I told my dad first. He looked me up and down, touched my hair, hugged me and said, “better now than afterwards.” It felt awful. It still feels awful. It isn’t about the money which my dad lost (although I feel tremendous guilt) it’s about my feelings of letting people down. I’ve cried again writing this, I don’t know why I got swept away by the event- the romance of it perhaps. I do know that not marrying him was the right decision. I just did it too late.”
4. “I was 18 and had just had a kid with my first boyfriend. Unfortunately, he was abusive as shit, but I’d been putting up with it because I didn’t have a family to help me out. The wedding was 2 weeks away, invitations had gone out and I had my dress. Everything was ready to go. Then, one night he starts up with his craziness and he ran into my infant son’s room, woke him up by snatching him out of his crib and threatens to leave with him and never come back. As I’m on my knees crying and begging him to please give me the baby, he’s held the screaming child above me like someone holding a piece of steak just out of a dog’s reach. I started thinking twice about the whole marriage thing. I did what I had to to appease him that night and the next day when he came home from work, he had no idea where I’d moved to. Fuck that guy.”
– Redditor
5. “My cousin’s wedding was called off after the engagement. The guy had been following her for some time now. In mid-2019, he approached her and she started talking to him. He was very nice and caring in the beginning and after talking for 3 months they told their parents and parents agreed. The engagement ceremony was done. A few weeks after the engagement suddenly the guy’s mom passed away from a lung infection. The guy was sad and depressed and it was decided that the wedding will be postponed by a year. My cousin was sad but understood the situation. When I met my cousin, she said that he had stopped talking to her citing reasons for depression. She understood and decided not to communicate and give him space. The only time she called him was to wish him on his birthday but he did not even pick her call. She was sad but felt that he was depressed due to the loss of his mother. Just before the lockdown, she happened to talk to a common friend of theirs who was unaware that they were engaged. She informed my cousin that she had just seen the guy a few days back roaming with his ex-girlfriend and they had even spent the new year in Gokarna. My cousin was shocked and she called her fiancée to ask to which he replied she is just a friend and they are not in a relationship anymore and if she wants to marry him she has to accept the girl as his friend as they are very close. She spoke about all this with her parents and later we found out that the guy’s family were very conservative and they did not allow him to marry his girlfriend, so he found my cousin instead to marry. And thus, the wedding was called off.“
– Priya
6. “My dad called off a wedding before he met my mother. He was with this woman that really pressured him into getting married. Basically, she just started wedding planning without a proposal. And my dad let it go too far. One night she and her mother were discussing what food was going to be served at the reception. So they asked my dad what he thought. “Roasted chicken or beef?” To which my dad replied, “I don’t care which one you’re having because I’m not going to be there.” Apparently, she bought her own ring, too.”
– Redditor
7. “My parents found a guy for me. We met once with the family and everything was okay so we decided to marry. However, when my father asked them to meet again to fix the dates, they always said they are busy. After 3 months, we met again. We came to know that one of his sisters is divorced and living with them for the past 6 years and they never told us about this. They had even put a condition that they will first marry one of his other sisters and only then he will be married. We asked them to at least fix the dates but they refused. They said that the marriage won’t happen if their daughter won’t be married. I was very upset when the parents called off the arrangement. I even tried to talk to that guy because I liked him a lot but he refused too. Now I think it was for the good.“
8. “I realized that she was more in love with getting married than she was with me. I was her Avenue to marriage, she felt that is be a loyal husband and good father. But she didn’t care about me more than a friend.“
– Redditor
9. “After a day of trying on wedding dresses, just me and my maid of honour, we met my family and hubby-to-be at my brother’s house for dinner. While showing a picture of myself in a dress to my mother, which was on my bff’s phone, she gets a text message from my fiance. This is odd because I can see him in the next room and I can see my friend in the kitchen. I read it of course and it’s a huge confession from him to her, addressing how they had fooled around a few weeks ago and he was really regretting he hadn’t taken things further with her. He had NO idea I had her phone in my hand. I simply stood up and walked the 10 feet to him, held up her phone and looked him in the eye. The look on his face was priceless, and when I could speak i and my entire family let them both have it verbally (we’re black, so you can imagine that was quite the showdown). Needless to say, I don’t speak to either of them anymore.“
– Redditor
10. “We called off our wedding because my fiance got cancer. We spent what was supposed to be our wedding day in the hospital. However! He is cancer-free now, so we’ve decided to MAYBE start thinking about getting married again in a year. We’ve both decided we’re not planning the damn thing though. Eff that. Elopement all the way betches!“
– Redditor