The end of Easter marks the start of a major calendar event - wedding season.

Those forgotten invites you received SO many months ago (we bet you stashed them somewhere very ’safe’, didn’t you?) are now vitally important as you fend off an abundance of phone calls from bridezillas who NEED to know whether you’d picked the lamb or the chicken choice for their wedding breakfast.

But wedding season isn’t all bad news; it marks special days spent with family and friends, lots of food, too many glasses of prosecco, the hot usher that gave you the eye during the ceremony, and so many plates of food that you couldn’t possibly eat them all.

You know, before you ate them all.

Yup, everyone loves a wedding. And rightly so.

Unless you happen to be a waitress at a wedding…

Behind the scenes of a wedding is not always a happy place.

I’ve spent the last 5 years waitressing at a local wedding venue, and in that time I’ve witness some seriously hilarious and cringeworthy scenes, and have had the privilege of being part of hundreds of couples very special days.

Here’s everything you need to know, from someone who is IN the know!

What you can expect to see on a normal shift (aka all the cliches!)

And if she’s not crying at the bar, she will be attempting to seduce a man at the bar.

Because she’s the only one of the group whose still single.

Out of the ordinary events…

OK so whilst most weddings DO run smoothly, there are occasions where disaster has struck… in spectacular fashion.

The cake that collapsed. Literally.

Yup, it’s just as bad as it sounds. The cake looked amazing (when it was upright). It had 4 tiers that were held together by champagne flutes. But unfortunately the baker hadn’t thought to test whether the flutes were able to take the weight of the cakes they were holding up.

And so, after a tense half an hour watching the flutes groan under the pressure, the masterpiece collapsed and the couple were left with a cake that looked like a giant had sat on it.

The puking bride.

We all know that getting absolutely wasted on your wedding day is a big no no.

Or at the very least you should wait until after the wedding breakfast to start necking shots.

Not this bride.

Minutes before she was about to walk down the aisle, our waitress duties were taken to a whole new level as we were instructed to hold back her veil as she vomited into a bag.

The wedding of all weddings; the wedding planner’s own wedding.

As a local wedding planner, the bride was able to pull in a few favours for her big day to make sure it would be remembered for years to come. And boy did she succeed.

Her connections within the wedding industry helped her to source 10 antique wedding cars, a laser light show, 3 chocolate fountains and a trained owl.

Who was the ring bearer.

Obviously.

Need I say more?

The groom who spent his wedding night passed out in the toilet.

One wedding party was a particularly rowdy crowd and by 2.30am, we were more than ready for them to exit the building. Tired and run down, as staff we made a fatal area and locked up the venue without checking the toilets for stragglers.

The result: a very confused and hungover groom waking up on the floor of the gents toilets at 8am the following morning. Safe to say, he was in the dog house for the duration of his honeymoon.

And since that unfortunate event, staff have ALWAYS made sure to check the toilets at the end of a shift (no matter how tired we’re feeling).

The bridesmaid whose boobs fell out of her dress.

The poor woman had been made to wear a bridesmaids dress that although gorgeous, was very, very booby. But she was pulling it off. That is until she took to the dance floor and with one energetic Travolta move, she accidentally flashed everyone.

The wedding dress that caught on fire.

Tea lights are a lovely addition to the table decorations. But for anyone who decides to incorporate them into their decor, please, please, please remember: THEY ARE A FIRE HAZARD.

One lovely bride ended up covered in fire extinguisher foam rather than confetti when she stood too close to a tea light and her dress ended up in flames.

But on the bright side, her guests will never forget her special day.

The very worst part of the job…

It is, without a doubt, the awkward canapé exchange between a waitress and a guest.

Handing out canapés is possibly the worst job for a waitress at a wedding. OK so the first plate of canapés is easy because the guests see the first glimpse of wedding day food and get excited.

But with the next plate, things start to get tricky.

Long lost relatives have struck up conversations with each other and don’t want to see a plate of food being waved near their eye line.

Neither do the bride’s girlfriends, who are quickly realizing that they’re going to have to curb their food intake for the day if they want to refrain from getting a tummy bulge in their new bodycon dress.

Cue these classic comments: “Oooh no, I couldn’t possibly have anything else”.

“We won’t tell anyone if you want to eat them all yourself!”

This leaves you to wander aimlessly around until good ol’ Uncle Pete takes pity on you and relieves you of your now-slightly soggy vol-au-vents.

It is a different story if you’re lucky enough to be given the task of handing out the mini fish and chip canapés. With novelty canapés you can become everyones favourite waitress and your plate is always cleared in minutes.

Which is great, until you realise that you’re now stuck with a less than desirable nickname for the rest of the night.

“HEY fish lady!”

Sigh.

The very best part of the job…

Apologies to those of you who are expecting this to be something sickeningly cute about getting to watch madly-in-love couples saying “I do”.

Not that watching that happen isn’t lovely, because it is. But its not the high point of waitressing a wedding.

I asked a few of my fellow waitresses what they enjoy the most about the job.

One waitress confessed that she most enjoyed taking a sneaky look in the bridal suite - and occasionally borrowing the bride’s perfume if it happens to be particularly expensive.

But lets not dwell on THAT (probably!) sackable admission…

It was decided that there are 2 main reasons why our job is so fun.

1. The bride’s big reveal.

Lets be honest, a lot of fun can be had from judging the bride’s dress.

Without trying to sound harsh, a lot of brides seem to be more worried about being able to tell everyone that they’ve fitted into a size 10 bridal grown rather than ACTUALLY be able to fit into a size 10 bridal gown.

And then there are the bride’s who have made sure that their dress complements their wedding theme. There’s been brides wearing gold converse, one in a witches hat (her wedding was on 31st October), and there’s even been a bride who donned a pair of Minnie Mouse ears before she walked down the aisle.

And now for the cute bit.

It’s always amazing getting to watch the groom see his bride for the first time- whatever she happens to be wearing. If you’ve ever spent a whole afternoon bingeing on YouTube videos of “groom’s reaction to seeing his bride for the first time” like we have, then its like that, but better.

**2. The ‘drunk guest at the bar’ **

Whilst there are lots of drunk guests at a wedding, there is always one who will stay at the bar the whole night and ends up becoming best mates with most of the staff.

The drunker they get, the more they reveal about the rest of the guests. Whose slept with whom whose had a pre-wedding tiff and whose looking especially good tonight.

The ‘drunk guest at the bar’ will try, on at least 3 separate occasions to get staff to get on the dance floor with them for “just one dance!”

And if the wedding party has provided disposable cameras for the guests to use, it goes without saying that this special guest will find one of these cameras and use it to take several snaps of themselves with their new waitress pals.

Always a laugh and usually an amazing tipper- the ‘drunk guest at the bar’ makes a waitresses shift go by in a flash.

The stuff your wedding venue doesn’t want you to know…

1. We might seem gutted when a guest rushes over to tell us that someone’s puked all down the side of a chair.

But we’re actually jumping for joy on the inside, because we get paid an extra ten quid for clearing up a guests vomit!

^ that's us jumping for joy.

2. Sorry to break this to any brides reading this, but the waitresses at your wedding probably ate more of the food at your wedding than you and your guests did.

And you paid for it.

When preparing a wedding breakfast, the chefs make sure that there is always surplus food for the staff. And the chefs are always pretty generous as they normally stay after their shift to eat with the rest of us.

So unless there’s a lot of staff on shift, we generally end up with a WAY bigger portion of food than what is given to the guests.

#perks

3. TBH wedding chefs can be pretty badly behaved. I say this because a chef was to blame for probably the biggest scandal to hit our wedding venue.

A couple of years ago, our venue manager discovered that when the sous chef had been ordering food for the follow weeks weddings, she’d bump up the amount of stock she was ordering by a small amount. Then she’d sneakily transfer the extra food from the kitchen freezer into the boot of her car and take it all home!

That was her food shop sorted for the week!

4. Most of the prospective couples to visit the venue would probably think twice before booking with us if they knew what went down at a staff party.

The company are generous (and stupid) enough to put on a free bar for the WHOLE night at the venue.

In the past this has caused…