(My husband and I both dislike children, so we didn’t invite any children to our wedding and we spread the word that we didn’t want any kids or babies there. Most family and friends were cool with it and either clubbed together to pay for a crèche service for the day or sent us their regrets that they wouldn’t be able to come. All fine, until I get a phone call from one of my cousins.)

Cousin: “I just heard that my baby isn’t invited to your wedding even though I am?!”

Me: “Sorry, but we’re not inviting any children or babies to our wedding.”

Cousin: “You selfish c***! What do you expect me to do?!”

Me: “Either find someone to look after your baby for the day or don’t come to the wedding. We understand that people who can’t be without their children for whatever reason won’t be able to come, and that’s totally fine.”

Cousin: “What are you going to do once you start having babies?! Huh?!”

Me: “We’re not having any kids, but that’s irrelevant. We don’t want children at our wedding, and we’re paying for it, so we can make the rules.”

Cousin: “F*** you, you selfish c***. I’ll turn up with my baby, anyway! You won’t notice she’s there; she’s quiet. The wedding isn’t about you! Selfish! Selfish!”

Me: “If you’re going be this insulting, then you’re uninvited, anyway.”

Cousin: “You can’t do that, and you can’t ban babies from a wedding! It’s not a real marriage if you’re not having kids, anyway, you stupid c***.” *hangs up*

(She DID, in fact, show up on the day of the wedding with her baby in tow, despite telling us via email she wouldn’t come to our “sham wedding” after that phone call. The rest of our guests told her to GTFO, so she ended up driving 40 miles home again right away! I only found out about this after the wedding, which went very well. We have a lovely, happy, childless marriage now.)

(When my late husband and I are first getting married in 2009, his family is going through the old saying, “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” This is the little conversation I have with his mother and sister. It’s worth noting that my late husband is 18 years my senior; we marry when I am 19 and he is 37.)

Sister: “Okay, got your… something new?”

Me: *holds up ring*

Mother: “Something borrowed?”

Me: “My sister is letting me use her tiara.”

Sister: “Something blue?”

Me: “My garter will be blue.”

Sister: “What about something old?”

Me: *looks directly at husband*

Husband: “Hey!”

Sister & Mother: *laughing hysterically*

Me: “Well! You are my something old!”

Husband: *laughing*

Me: “So, uh… Do I have to have a penny in my shoe?”

(We joked about that for years until his death. Even now, it’s a running joke for someone in his family to look at an older person when getting married, usually their father or uncle. And yes, I had a penny in my shoe.)

I am a musician, and I get jobs playing for weddings. At one particularly memorable wedding, the bride and groom were amazing people. I couldn’t help but like them, even though I probably only spent an hour in their company.

The bride wanted me to play at the ceremony, just an acoustic guitar and singing outside the church for the guests as they walked in. They invited me to the wedding and reception so I wouldn’t just be there for an hour and then go home.

About a week before the wedding, the bride asked if I’d also mind playing their first dance song.

I said yes, as I was going to be there, anyway. She wanted me to play a cover of “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran. I agreed, told her that was a lovely choice, and that I looked forward to seeing her on the dance floor.

Fast forward to the day of the wedding. Everything was going according to plan, and about ten minutes before the first dance was due to happen I went to get my guitar.

The groom’s mother followed me, basically confronted me, and told me not to play that song. Instead, she wanted me to play “Can’t Help Falling In Love” by Elvis because it was her favourite song and she wanted her son to dance to that.

I cringed. As nice as Elvis is, that song completely out of sync with the couple, and certainly out of sync with the wedding. I very politely informed her that my agreement was with the bride and groom, and therefore I’d play the Ed Sheeran song.

She wasn’t happy, went on a rant — I don’t remember what she said, I stopped paying attention — and she ended it with, “I’m paying for this wedding, and I don’t care what that little [another name for a prostitute] wants; you will play what I tell you to or you won’t get paid!”

Something snapped inside me, but I knew that it was better to pretend to play along, since time was limited and I didn’t want her to be looming over me, trying to wrench the guitar out of my hands or something. I told her, sweetly as honey, that of course, I would play her song.

She wandered off, smug and smirking, and sat down primly to watch what she felt was the perfect coup of the wedding.

Then, I got up to play and did what the bride wanted, making sure to stare at the groom’s mother as I played the first chords with my professional face on. Then I sang, my heart in the emotion of the song. The married couple looked fantastic, the bride was glowing, and this really was everything she could have hoped for, for her wedding.

The groom’s mother was outraged. She came storming up to me at the end of the song, and before she could even open her mouth, I promptly told her where she could shove it.

I figured it was best to not ruin the happy couple’s day, so I waited until they got back from the honeymoon before I told the bride and groom what had happened. They immediately made sure that I got paid, with some extra for the trouble of the groom’s mother. The husband promised that he would have a… little talk… with his mother for trying to take control of the wedding.

My sister and I have had a tenuous relationship for most of our lives. I was the little sister who worshipped her; she was the big sister who wanted nothing to do with me. You get the picture? We grew up, and I moved away and got married. She changed from the self-centered bully who ignored me unless she wanted something from me into a giving, intelligent woman, and our relationship slowly mended… until she started planning her wedding.

A thing you need to know is I have several life-threatening allergies: peanut, mushroom, and tomato. Life-threatening in the way that if I am in the same room of any of these and breathe them I can die. Literally die. I almost have three times. I inherited two of the three allergies from my father and have had them my entire life; they’ve been getting steadily worse until they reached this point of complete anaphylaxis.

Anyway, my sister was planning her wedding, specifically the food, and her first choice of meals was Italian. Tomatoes and mushrooms. Her logic was that Dad and I could eat something else, and maybe if we sat by an open door we’d be fine. I repeatedly told her that if I was in the same room as these foods they could kill me.

She did not listen. She went as far as to begin to book the caterers for the wedding until my dad stepped foot in their kitchens and immediately had a reaction. Suddenly, she pulled back and decided that if Dad was having health issues she didn’t want to risk it because she needed him there. So, she went another direction.

Then came the wedding cake. She wanted to have it topped with peanut butter frosting. I spent weeks trying to get her to comprehend that even if she made a tiny cake for just her and her husband to share, if it was in the room, I could not be there. It took my parents intervening to convince her not to have it.

I love my sister dearly and I understand wanting to have your way at your wedding but demanding I be in a room that could kill me just so she could have a specific type of food… yeah.

This happened when my sister was planning her wedding. I was coming home from work, excited about going wedding dress shopping with my sisters and mom the next day. A driver ran a stop sign and t-boned my car. It wound up damaging the nerves in my back to the point I cannot walk very far or stand very long, and it’s very painful to go up and down stairs.

I missed the wedding dress shopping but was there when picking bridesmaid dresses. My bride-to-be sister called ahead to the stores we were visiting to make sure they had chairs available so I could sit between trying on dresses.

The wedding venue had a bride prep area with several rooms and bathrooms for us to get ready, but it was upstairs. She arranged with the venue to have everything we needed upstairs so we wouldn’t have to take trips up and down the stairs; that way I only had to go up and down once before the wedding and once after to change. She rearranged the seating for the ceremony so there would be an empty seat in the front row in case I needed to sit down.

When doing photos, if we needed to walk to a spot on the grounds, she would look at me to make sure I was okay to walk where the photographer needed to go. Throughout the pictures, she checked on me a few times to make sure I was holding out okay and didn’t need anything. For the dinner after, she had my date and parents and me at the closest table to the door so I could sit down right after we walked in.

I already knew my sister was an amazingly kind and generous young woman, but with all the stories about bridezillas, it really stands out to me that on her special day she went out of her way to make sure it was as easy on me as possible. My family is amazing but she is someone very special and I am very lucky to have her as a sister.