14 Runaway Bride Stories

Posted by u/QuintinTheKitten:

A friend did not know she was the bride until she reached the middle of the aisle.

Her parents arranged a marriage, common in her culture, and told her the family invited everyone to a cousin’s wedding. My friend knew everyone would wear white for some reason. They arrived at the church just before the bride walked down the aisle. Thinking they were late, my friend wanted to slip in the back. Her father took her arm, and they began walking up the aisle.Halfway up, she stopped and saw everyone looking at her, smiling, and crying tears of joy. She turned to an aunt in the pew next to her and asked who was getting married.

The whole church went silent. Then, the aunt looked at my friend's father and said,“You planned a wedding for your daughter and expected her to go along with it? You can’t be serious!”“Have the two of them even met? Did you seriously think this would work?!” The room started chattering about them. The father cleared his throat and told his daughter to keep walking. Luckily, the aunt grabbed my friend first, pulled her into the pew, pushed her past the row, and they both ran out of the church. Her parents disowned her, and she moved in with that aunt.

(NOTE: They are an Indian family in the US. Her parents are very traditional, and she wanted to focus on her career instead of getting married.)

Posted by u/girlsxgonexmild:

I waited a long time to share this.

Years ago, I was a single mom. I worked hard but did not advance. I met a 'good guy' type, an architect with a good sense of humor. We dated for about a year, then got engaged. Then the unthinkable happened; this is where I became the [jerk] in many people's minds.

A terrible car accident broke the groom's both femurs and his back about ten months before the wedding. Because he was a poorly controlled diabetic, his healing lagged. He ended up in an electric wheelchair. Since his legs were in casts from hip to ankle, his legs had to stay straight out in front of him always.

I tried hard to stick by him, but he made it impossible. He did nothing but p*ss and moan and complain about everything the doctors said. He refused physical therapy. He would not take his medication correctly. He did not cooperate with wound care. He would not take his insulin right. All these things made him a horrible patient and an even worse person to be around. He got addicted to narcotics, sleeping pills, and Xanax too.

His family mostly handled wedding planning. He moved from the hospital to a group home. His health and attitude worsened there. Wearing pants proved hard, so he wore nothing on his lower half for months, content with a bed sheet on his lap. His moods became out of control; he grew aggressive and used insulting language.One evening, he missed a Final Jeopardy question. He threw his open urinal at me.

Doctors insisted he must start bending his legs. He absolutely refused. He would not do it.

My wedding day arrived. Group home staff worked hard decorating the backyard, making the day special. Our families gathered, the pianist played, and my dad stood by me.

They opened the door for us to walk down the aisle. He sat there, legs straight out, hospital socks sticking out from under a blanket. I froze. I told my dad I needed to go back inside. Once we were out of everyone's hearing, I told my dad I could not do this; I was so sorry. My dad just smiled and said, "Thank God."

He signaled for my kids to come over. He loaded them and me into his car, and we drove away. We moved to another state, closer to my family, and we thrived. The groom ended up moving between several facilities and never left the wheelchair.

I now see he suffered physical, emotional, and mental pain I cannot grasp. I knew I could not raise my kids in that setting; my first duty was to them. I finished my degree, and my kids are adults now. No one has thrown urine at me since.

Posted by u/Lady_Otaku:

Not me, but a friend's wedding. He married a gorgeous girl. She is a legit 10/10.

Everyone was excited because he lacked good looks, but he possessed many talents. He could garden, craft, design, and build. He designed a watering system for his garden. He felt proud when he made it, but we all asked, "Couldn't you use a sprinkler?" He laughed and said, "Yeah, but I made this."

The wedding day proceeded normally. We met up, talked things out, and spoke with the bride's family, who all seemed strange.

The wedding began. Flower girls walked, the bride walked down, and so on.Right before the vows, our guy ran away and bolted out of the nearby door, leaving the bride standing there.

Then the bride, her father, and mother pulled out firearms and ran out the door, firing. But he was already far away; none of their shots hit him.

[Since then], the bride's father is in jail. The mother had a heart attack about a year later. The bride became a minor "influencer," and another guy is now in her life.

She forced him to keep a chart detailing his location, contacts, bank balance, return date, and activities because he left due to her extreme emotional behavior.

In three years, they only had two relations; he called her terrible. She never took responsibility. Her parents bought her a house, a car, and other things. She crashed a car when she got sick of it. She tried to kill his cat several times. Her puppy got "lost" one day.

She was crazy.

Posted by u/just_play_one_on_tv:

I was seventeen, still in high school. I met an alleged Army guy (before the full Internet, so no way to check), and we clicked. I was young and fell fast for guys, so I was ecstatic when he proposed.

Red flags existed. He asked my parents for permission. He proposed loudly at a pizza shop. He lacked his own place. I never met his family. I saw no proof of military service.

Weeks later, we fought because he called out his sister's name during relations. He then said everything would be fine. He planned to take me to Kentucky to live on an Army base. He also told me to be "barefoot and pregnant" often. They planned to marry and leave the day after I graduated high school.

I did some soul searching. I became quiet and withdrawn. I visited my nana one day; she asked, "Are you in love with him or in love with the idea of a wedding?"

The bubble burst. I cried and broke it off with him two weeks before I graduated.

He had booked the Justice of the Peace. He married three weeks later with the same ring he gave me. Poor girl. I wish I knew her to warn her.

Posted by u/JenniTheBunni:

In high school, I had a friend named Cheyenne. We were close and loved planning our dream weddings. Each month, we spent free period at a bench. We circled and gushed over dresses while the new bridal magazine arrived.

Flash forward to junior year, and she met Nick. Nick was popular at our school, known mostly for his triplet older sisters. She and he started dating after a couple of weeks, but it went poorly. They alternated on and off constantly. People knew he cheated on her every other weekend when she was at her mom's house.

After graduating, they broke up briefly then got back together after three to four months. During sophomore year of college, Cheyenne started acting strange. She drank heavily. That caused a fight, and they didn't speak for a year. The fight happened because she found out she was pregnant with Nick's baby and they planned a wedding. I was thrilled. Soon, they regained their closeness. I planned to be her maid of honor for their beautiful mountain wedding.

On the wedding day, Cheyenne seemed shaky. She claimed she was fine, but I watched her closely. Fifteen minutes before the walk down the aisle, I ran outside to check where Cheyenne was. She had stepped out, and no one knew her location. I reached the nearby road and saw a pair of heels. I left the shoes in case she returned and told the wedding coordinator. The ceremony stopped. We searched for Cheyenne. I saw Nick get furious, muttering, "That damn b**** when I get my hands on her..."

I do not know what to do. I worry about Cheyenne; I fear she fell down a hill or something, so people searched everywhere. I smelled something bad and thought she ran away, given their past and what Nick just said.I drove into town. It took ten minutes, or about a forty-five to sixty-minute walk. I saw Cheyenne in her big white fluffy dress. She walked into a bar.I spoke with her and asked what happened. She admitted Nick had verbally and physically mistreated her since high school. That morning, he threatened her, saying he would end her and her baby if she did not behave. I called the police right away, told the coordinator to cancel everything, confirmed I found her, and drove her to the hospital.

A long, messy trial followed, along with a protective order. He went to jail. She moved to Portland. This kept her near her family but far from him. Now, she remarried. Her baby is four years old and beautiful. Her name is Harmony.

Posted by a Redditor:

At my 18th birthday party, my boyfriend proposed. All my family and friends watched. I said yes, mostly because I felt too embarrassed to refuse. We dated for two years. I was about to start university; I was not ready. Later, we spoke alone. I asked if we could have a long engagement, maybe a year or two, and he agreed. We told our families and friends we would wait to get married. Less than three months later, his mother and my mother took me to lunch. They wanted me to see wedding dresses, saying, "It's never too early to start planning." I saw a nice dress on sale. His mother insisted on buying it for me. Their family was rich. They saved money for all my fiancé's milestones: education, first car, wedding, etc. She said they would cover the big costs because they wanted a large wedding. She joked I could pay her back with grandchildren. A few weeks later, his mother introduced me to a florist she called a "friend." Soon, I was looking at bouquets and talking about table setups. Then, my fiancé started discussing wedding venues, saying we must begin planning to find the right spot.

I am panicking now. I am only a few months into university; I have not even chosen my field of study. Now I am picking wedding venues for a wedding scheduled years away? This wedding looks like the nuptials of a minor royal. I tried talking to my fiancé, but he would not listen. We found a venue we liked, but they had no availability for almost two years. So we booked it, and I could finally breathe. I had two years to get ready for my big wedding.

Then the venue canceled, less than six months before the date, and my fiancé accepted without telling me. He just canceled our future date and took the available one. Then he arranged the entire wedding with his mother's help (and mine, damn her helicopter ways!) before telling me. When he told me everything was booked, I went mental.His reaction was that he had chosen all my preferences—catering, venue, flowers, etc.—so I should be grateful he handled all the stress.All I had to do was show up.

When I explained I did not want to marry in six months and that this was the third or fourth time I said I was not ready, he called me childish. He said the invitations were at the printer, so it was too late to "change my mind".

I finally saw he was manipulating me. So, I gave him the engagement ring back and told him I did not want to see him anymore.

I told my family and friends and cried a lot. I changed my number because he would not stop calling. Two months later, my mother got a call from his mother because she could not reach me to arrange dress fittings and finalize bridesmaids.

He did not tell them they split up. My mother explained everything to his mother, and that was it.The next week, she presented my family with a bill for half the wedding cost. The bill reached thousands of pounds.They booked everything, cake and favors included, without telling me and expected me to pay!

We sued over this. I proved we were broken up before most things were booked, so I was not responsible. Still, I paid nearly two thousand pounds for items booked before we separated.

Posted by u/StoolToad9:

My dad was a runaway groom. He broke things off THREE DAYS before the wedding.

The mid-1970s placed him in his early twenties. His fiancée, not my mom, pushed him to propose, and he did so with my grandmother's ring. Society seemed to demand it; marrying at that age was more common then than now. Deep down, he knew she was not the one, but he assumed all men felt that way before a wedding, so he ignored it and hoped his feelings would shift.

Months passed, and the wedding plans finished. When relatives and friends from out of town arrived for the wedding and gifts showed up, reality struck him hard. He realized he made a huge mistake, just as Gob Bluth said.

He sat my grandma and grandpa down. "Guys...I do not want to do this," he said. They were proud of his honesty and actually felt thrilled: they hated her.But they told him he needed to tell her face-to-face right away.

My dad did. Like a scarred war veteran, he refuses to share details, but said it was the hardest conversation or fight he ever had. Then he ended it.

This happened in the 1970s. You cannot cancel a wedding by texting or posting on Facebook (which a friend did). My dad called every single guest to tell them the wedding was off. He also personally returned gifts to the people who sent them.

His fiancée sold my grandmother's ring.

Posted by u/uglyslurp:

He was not a runaway bride; he worked as a florist for the wedding many years earlier.

The bride and groom signed every contract and prepared to marry. The bride toured until two weeks before the wedding (she is in theater), so they mostly used email. The groom would visit to pay and drop off wedding items. He remained relaxed and laid back (uncommon for grooms).

He was cheating on the bride with the bride’s sister and the best man’s girlfriend (who was in their friend group).The bride found out just before the bachelorette party and called off the event. She felt bad about not refunding payments since they had placed bulk flower orders, but she offered credit for another event. They became Facebook friends.

She marries someone else now. She seems much happier.

Posted by u/PsychedelicSnowflake:

We dated six months. He proposed. We were young; we did not live together. My gut warned me it was too fast. I said yes anyway. I agreed because I believed he loved me and I loved him. I thought we could build a good life. I told him I needed time before marriage. He wanted to rush things. I kept it quiet from families; they would complain about the early engagement after only six months.

I told him I wasn't ready to marry at my age. I wanted more time with him first. He reacted poorly and accused me of cheating. He had no other reason for wanting to wait to marry. Things became toxic. I left him. I returned the ring and we separated legally. He kept calling and texting for weeks. He claimed I was obsessed and followed him. I saw he was not in a normal state. I felt scared, but things calmed down later. He began spreading nasty rumors about me.

He damaged my reputation and self-esteem. Refusing to marry him showed me I avoided a bad situation. Sometimes he messages me on social media asking to reconcile. I either do not reply or give him a firm no.

This detail is minor.He gave my engagement ring to his mother for Mother's Day. She wears it constantly. She must know it belonged to me, but she still sees it as a nice gift from her son.

Posted by u/MoVodka;

Not me, but my mother.

My mom called off the wedding weeks before. She found out her fiancé lied about his location. He was partying at a hotel with friends and other women. She caught him in a hot tub at 1 a.m. with twin sisters.

Three years later, she starts dating. She later marries my biological father.

Meeting the family felt awkward when she learned my father had three sisters. Two of them were the twins her ex-fiancé caught in the hot tub.

Posted by u/pleasuregarden:

My friend met a guy and got engaged in a week. He was in the military and ghosted her a month after proposing.

Six months later, he reappears. He starts working at the same place and acts like he never knew her.. Does that count?

Posted by u/madisonpreggers:

My cousin was set to marry a girl who fell hard for a guy she met two days before the wedding and left him almost at the altar.I was five or six. I was supposed to be a flower girl. My sixteen-year-old brothers served as ushers. We lived about six hours away. I recall the ride home. I felt confused the entire time about why I was not a flower girl while everyone else was quiet.

In a strange twist, the man she loved is a professor at my brother's university. His office is down the hall. He and the bride married maybe twenty years ago. My cousin has married three times. He got busted for DUI many times. I doubt he can get a license. He gained about three hundred pounds.

She made the right choice.

Posted by u/Qyro:

Not me. I do not know if this counts as running away. My sister broke up with her fiancé four months before their wedding. The wedding was already planned and paid for.

I will be honest. I do not know the whole story. Even eighteen months later, she still has not fully told us about it. But I never liked the guy. He was nice. He could not handle alcohol. He drank the whole bar every time. Then he came home and vomited all over the house. He then complained whenever my sister went out with friends for a few drinks. Eventually, he stopped letting her go out at all.

His family was a mess too. His mom and stepdad were cool, but they moved to Canada for their dreams. This left my sister and her fiancé with aunts and uncles who did not approve of her.His little brother had a complicated relationship with his teenage girlfriend. He eventually had a baby and kept trying to be better than my sister.

She eventually felt trapped by the guy, according to what she told us. He stopped her from seeing friends and forced her to attend family events with people who hated her. He made her pull away from us, which hurt her because she missed time with her new nephews. He controlled everything about her life.

Anyway, she dumped him on New Year's Eve. She canceled the wedding right then. I do not think she saw him again. She was always out when he came to get his things. His family was not happy about it. They harassed her for months. She became depressed and needed medicine. My family had to pay the wedding cost anyway. They were just happy to have their daughter back.

Posted by u/avageexplosive:

One person I know is a serial fiancée.She dates guys until they propose. Then, she says yes, searches for venues and dresses. She then calls off the wedding and breaks up with the guy, stating, "I didn't wanna marry him anyway; he's (insert reason here)."Last time, she did an AMA about her wedding on Instagram. Two months before the supposed wedding date, all her photos, AMA answers, and engagement mentions vanished. Perhaps she enjoys this.