Wedding Smashers

"I OBJECT!"

"Villains know that anyone who tries to ruin the happy ending wedding gets trounced within a few minutes so there's still time to complete the ceremony in the same episode. It's not generally worth the effort."

— Tarquin, The Order of the Stick

A wedding ceremony is supposed to be a time of joy and celebration. Many, however, find it an occasion to bring up old grievances or new kidnappings. Yes, weddings can be rough in several ways, but the worst is when the ceremony becomes interrupted by a conflict of characters.

Many types of conflict can occur at a wedding. Some only happen at the wedding itself, like when the guards prevent the hero from reaching the bride to make their Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace line. Other common reasons for a fight are Feuding Families that get provoked during the ceremony, or the wedding is being forced by a villain unto a helpless damsel.

The final result may vary. The wedding may have a happy ending anyway, it may be cancelled for the time being and resumed later (for example, if the bride is kidnapped), or it may even result in the bride or the groom giving up the whole thing. Wedding/Death Juxtaposition (or its subtrope Widowed at the Wedding) would be a particularly extreme result.

Sub-Trope to Ballroom Blitz, where any party gets interrupted by a fight. Sister Trope to The "Fun" in "Funeral", another sacred occasion liable to being ruined by hijinks. Compare with Prom Wrecker. Not to be confused with Themed Wedding.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Code Geass has Xingke perform quite possibly the most epic Wedding Crash of all time, kicking off a coup against the corrupt rulers. And then, Lelouch, true to form, upstages him fabulously.
• Daiakuji: An omake episode had Akuji getting married to Satsu, and an all-out gun battle erupts in the church. Akuji's a crime boss, so that might have been expected.
• The climax of The Last: Naruto the Movie occurs when Toneri attempts to marry a hypnotized Hinata. The rescue team goes off to storm the castle and rescue Hanabi, while Naruto himself goes off to stop the wedding himself and rescue Hinata from Toneri.
• A tragedy version of this trope happened in episode 18 of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 for Louise when she is attending her cousin's wedding in spain. Nena Trinity fired 2 rifle beam shots that killed innocent people, including Louise's parents, who are present at the wedding site. Nena's reason? She simply can't stand others having fun & did it on a whim just because she can.
• In the Four Emperors saga of One Piece, one of the Straw Hats's goals is to crash the arranged wedding of Vinsmoke Sanji and Big Mom's daughter Charlotte Pudding. It's such a serious circumstance that not only the Straw Hats are involved: one of Big Mom's sons-in-law (Capone Bege) and Jinbe from the Sun Pirates (whose first mate's married to another daughter of Big Mom) see this wedding smash as the chance to assassinate Big Mom,^note The fact that two of Big Mom's daughters (the wives of Bege and Aladine) are fully on board with this assassination plan should give you a good idea of just what kind of mother she is. and have established an alliance with the Straw Hats for it.
• Ranma ½: The last chapter of the manga. The wedding that Ranma was bribed into going through with turns into a battle. In the end, the wedding is cancelled. And there the story ends.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: Subverted. The ceremony to establish diplomatic relations between Planet Xing and Dog Planet is made to play out like a wedding, and Big M. and Little M. have a robot monster try to assassinate Ambassador Wang to ruin the "wedding". The robot is mistaken for a superhero and gets caught up with the attention he's getting. But then Cat Planet's ambassador cuts the electricity to the building where the ceremony is taking place and kidnaps the Global Leader, thus ruining the whole event.

Comic Books

• The Avengers:
  • Til Death Do Us Part (Avengers #60, Jan. 1969): The Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime crash Hank and Jan's wedding, ostensibly seeking revenge on Thor (who didn't actually attend). Being one of the lamest crime combos in existence, they decide to wait until the most powerful guests have departed before they make their move (and still get trashed by the second-stringers).
  • The first issue of Kurt Busiek's run has a bunch of mythological creatures attacking a wedding in Wakanda. Which, naturally, is being attended by King T'Challa, the Black Panther.
• In Avengers Unplugged #4, the good guys crash the wedding of Crusher Creel (The Absorbing Man) and Titania, assuming they were up to no good because of the high concentration of super-villains that attended it. After a few tussles the Avengers realize it's a wedding rather than an evil plot and leave.
• Black Canary and Green Arrow's wedding was invaded by numerous villains. During the commotion, the bridegroom was kidnapped, and the actual ceremony carried out with an imposter. After Green Arrow's rescue, they had a second, much quieter ceremony, which was not crashed.
• An early Catwoman comic (from the mid-Nineties) showed on its cover Selina Kyle, half in her (then) purple cat costume and half in a ripped-up wedding dress (with little cats embroidered on it, of course) wielding two AK-47's and duking it out with a band of South American militants. "Here Comes the Bride," indeed.
• Exaggerated and Played for Drama at the end of the Red Queen arc of Elephantmen. Joshua Serengheti and his goons arrive at Sahara and Obadiah Horn's wedding and start shooting up the place. By the time it's all over, Panya and Gabbatha are both dead, along with dozens of innocents, Serengheti kidnaps Sahara's baby, Sahara is emotionally devastated, and all the Elephantmen inevitably have to deal with the fallout of the shooting.
• Downplayed, but Billy and Teddy's official wedding at the end of Empyre ends up interrupted by Abigail Brand, who decks Carol Danvers and chews her out over how she left Alpha Flight out of the loop during the Cotati invasion. Amusingly, the Skrull and Kree officiants consider this a good omen and offer to lend the women weapons and an arena if they want to duke it out.
• Fantastic Four:
  • Rather hilariously, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby try crashing Reed and Sue's wedding, threatening vengeance (i.e. writing up new FF threats) as they are turned away from the door. Earlier on, the wedding was interrupted by a cavalcade of villains looking to get even with the Fantastic Four (their hatred amplified thanks to Doctor Doom's interference), leading to a massive battle royale between them and every other superhero who'd shown up for the event; it got so out of hand that the Watcher ended up popping in to give Reed the means to reverse the damage.
  • Johnny Storm's marriage to Alicia Masters, or rather the Skrull spy Lyja impersonating her, proceeded uninterrupted, but behind the scenes, the Puppet Master was on the verge of wrecking the wedding by making Ben crush Johnny's skull. At the end, he had a change of heart. (As Alicia's father, he realized that this would ruin her life.)
  • Mostly averted during Ben and Alicia's wedding in Fantastic Four #650, due to Ben and Reed both being Genre Savvy. Ben insists on a small, family-only wedding, with none of his super-powered acquaintances invited to cause shenanigans. Reed, meanwhile, spends the days before the wedding building a chronal displacement device that, once the inevitable interruption arises, creates a four-minute time bubble that allows the ceremony to conclude while keeping the rest of the world intact for saving.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • Averted, subverted and played straight during Rick Jones's wedding to Marlo Chandler.
    • The wedding party already filled with heroes, Mephisto arranges for invitations to get to Drax the Destroyer, the Frightful Four, and every named Kree and Skrull, hoping that mayhem would ensue, but it didn't (except for a little smack that the Hulk laid down on him). Plus a special guest appearance by DC Comics' version of Death. (Hulk is a Marvel comic.)
    • The attack on Rick's bachelor party by the sinister Ecdysiast! Ecdysiast is a fancy term for "stripper". She's armed with a hairdryer. She was sent a false invitation by Impossible Man because he wasn't invited. Mephisto took advantage of the situation.
    • Furthermore, the hen party for the bride visited a male strip club, which was promptly robbed. The perps kinda regretted trying to rob the most powerful women on Earth... (though She-Hulk claimed they were "Hillary Clinton's fan-club!")
  • Bruce Banner's wedding to Betty Ross is crashed by her father Thunderbolt Ross, who tries to shoot Bruce, and wounds Rick Jones instead. Jones absolutely insists on the preacher finishing the ceremony before he goes to the hospital, 'cause he knows that otherwise it'll never happen.
  • It may be worth noting that an earlier marriage attempt (Hulk 124, 1970) was foiled by The Leader and the Rhino, both of whom meant Serious Business.
• Given that it's about superheroes and romance, Love and Capes naturally brings it up. One supervillain does inadvertently attempt this (he uses Time Travel to kill off the Crusader, and his fiancée has to time travel on her supposed wedding day to Set Right What Once Went Wrong), but said supervillain didn't know about the wedding. Beyond that, though, it's actually averted at the wedding itself - because the heroes use Time Travel to go back during the wedding and prevent any interruptions.
• In the New Titans comic, Nightwing and Starfire had their wedding interrupted by supervillains frying the minister.
• One Moment in Time Retconned Spider-Man's wedding with Mary Jane to instead have Spider-Man be rendered unconscious due to being hit with a brick and having a thug fall on him during the ceremony. In the subsequent Brand New Day era, Spider-Man was turned into a bit of wedding smasher himself, when he and the Black Cat used another couple's suite for their anonymous-sex tryst, in the process spoiling that couple's wedding night.
• Marine Rachel Cole-Alvez teams up with The Punisher after (in an eerie parallel to Frank's own backstory) members of The Exchange start a shoot-out at her wedding, killing her new husband and the rest of her family.
• Robin (1993): When Tim Drake's father Jack remarried the wedding itself went off without a hitch, but the rehearsal was crashed by an undead sorceress hell bent on decimating the human race using an amulet Jack had found during an archeological dig and gifted to Dana.
• In an old issue of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Robotnik is shocked to learn that Sonic and Sally are getting married, and declares an all-out assault on the wedding. After a massive brawl between Sonic and the badniks, they tell Robotnik that he wasted his time: the wedding was just a stage play.
• Star Wars: Union has disgruntled Imperials trying to attack Luke's wedding. Luke has enough able fighters to deal with what turns out to be a distraction attempt but then has to talk down a guy who wants to cause an interplanetary computer network crash.
• Superman:
  • The wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane averts this trope (having a secret identity helps).
  • Their honeymoon was uninterrupted as well, mainly due to Batman arranging for every available superhero to cover Metropolis in his absence.
  • The wedding of their daughter Kara to Bruce Wayne Jr. in Superman & Batman: Generations is played straight, as Superman's son Joel in a battle suit developed by Lex Luthor attacks Clark with a blast of Kryptonite radiation.
• X-Men: Averted with the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey, but only because Wolverine preemptively stopped Sabretooth, the only villain at the time insane enough to actually want to attack such a ridiculously powerful group.
• Young Avengers: Kate Bishop made her debut as a character when her sister's wedding was attacked. Kate proceeded to tear a slit in her bridesmaid's dress, then start kicking ass alongside the Young Avengers, earning herself a spot on the team.

Comic Strips

• One Big Nate comic sees Nate's dad accidentally knock out the groom at a wedding with one of his many failed golf shots.

Fairy Tales

• In Madame d'Aulnoy's "The Yellow Dwarf", the wedding of Toutebelle and the King of the Gold Mines is interrupted by the Yellow Dwarf and the Fairy of the Desert. The king and the Yellow Dwarf duel together. The sun turns red, the sky darkens, and thunder and lightning are heard. It ends with the Yellow Dwarf carrying off Toutebelle. Sadly, they don't get a second chance - both Toutebelle and the king die at the end.

Fan Works

• On Coreline, this is such a regular occurrence that when members of the In-Universe superhero teams are going to marry, there is a standard procedure of the event providing three days off (one day before and one after the event's, in case of a necessary last-minute rescheduling and to allow anybody who wants to be part of the event to be able to, because there's a high chance they may not) and all heroes that decide to witness the wedding are to be fully armed.
• In Dance with the Demons, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle's wedding gets interrupted by a hitman shooting a poisoned dart at Selina.
• So far averted in DC Nation, where there have been three weddings and a vow renewal so far. A subversion was when the Dibnys renewed their vows after Sue got better. Some of the Rogues Gallery showed up, but it was to pay their respects and bounce any adversary that was going to be on less than their best behavior.
• Chlorhydris in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Empath's Wedding" doesn't appear at the wedding itself. However, she does transport Smurfette out of the village before the wedding starts, causing Empath and some of his guests to join in finding and rescuing her.
• In the Firefly fic "Cold Feet", an old Army buddy of Mal and Zoe's tries to crash Zoe and Wash's wedding by kidnapping Wash just before the ceremony's supposed to start. Mal and Zoe figure out he's involved when he bolts from them after being asked if he knows anything, and they chase him to where he's got Wash. He keeps trying to say Wash isn't right for Zoe and isn't good enough and all that, even as Mal tackles him, and eventually, Zoe shoots him in the foot to shut him up. She offers to postpone things slightly because Wash is all banged up, but Wash insists their day not be ruined, and they have the ceremony, then go to dinner in their banged up outfits.
• A subversion appears in the Fullmetal Alchemist fan fiction Flowers of Antimony. It's not so much that the Big Bad wants to disrupt Ed and Winry's wedding; it's just that the ceremony is the reason that his real targets are available to attack.
• Chlorhydris teams up with Hogatha to kidnap both Smurfette and Wonder on the day of Hero and Wonder's wedding in the Hero: The Guardian Smurf story "Hero's Wedding". They also subject Hero with the Sadistic Choice of freeing only one of the captured female Smurfs while the other is subject to being rendered totally unfeeling with the Wand of Ice. Fortunately, Hero with the help of his friend Hawkeye frees both female Smurfs and also hands a devastating defeat to the two witches before he returns to the Smurf Village to resume his wedding.
• DC Universe/Kim Possible fanfic Knights has this: Dick and Greta Hayes are about to get married when the DEO pays them a visit. 20 minutes later, President Luthor shows up and says all the DEO agents are fired, and to one random one he says: "you're not fired yet. You report to your superior, the one who decided to clear an attack on an innocent couple, in broad daylight, IN A CHURCH, to report to me bright and early Monday at Washington. After you do that, you're fired." CMOA and Even Evil Has Standards moment.
• In the Game of Thrones fic The Price of Bread and Salt, Robb Stark switches places with Jaqen H'ghar before the Red Wedding, and what began as a secret mission to sneak into the Red Keep and assassinate Joffrey turns into a suicide mission to slaughter the Lannisters at Joffrey's wedding.
• In the Twilight/Supernatural fanfic The Wedding Crashers, Sam, Dean, and Cas end up going to the wedding of Renesmee and Jacob at the request of Leah. They try to remain civil but reach their limit when Leah's own mother starts insulting her and one too many vampires offer to turn Sam, resulting in them acting as rude as possible towards the guests. Things come to a head when Jacob attacks Leah under Renesmee's orders and Dean and Cas shatter the illusion that vampires are invincible by smiting a few.
• The Lyrical Nanoha/Sailor Moon crossover fic White Devil of the Moon shows that, no matter who you think you are, it's a bad idea to try to crash a wedding attended to by the Takamachi family. And Fate.
• The whole plot of Zero Context Taking Out The Trash revolves around representatives of multiple factions—including two that are actively at war with each other—setting out to ruin the wedding of a sorceress and a Corrupt Corporate Executive via active sabotage and destruction.
• The Palaververse: Wedding March is about the wedding of a Princess turning violent due to foreigners trying to take over the country through massive invasion.

Films — Animation

• In Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the Forty Thieves raid Aladdin's wedding; it's semi-justified in that they were there to steal a wedding gift. Princess Jasmine herself punches out one of them for daring to spoil her special day.
• In the third Cinderella movie, Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, Cinderella crashes her own wedding. It Makes Sense in Context; it's really Anastasia disguised as Cinderella marrying Prince Charming.
• Done as a quick gag in Flushed Away during a chase scene. Roddy accidentally swings through a wedding right as the newlyweds are about to kiss, and ends up receiving a huge smooch from the overweight bride.
• An unused plot for Frozen involved a more villainous Elsa crashing her sister's wedding, freezing the guests, and kidnapping her. Anna understandably is angry and Elsa's Villain Song "Cool With Me" has Anna mad at Elsa while Elsa is passive-aggressive and wants them to be best friends again, like when they were children.
• In a slight inversion in The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible is late to his own wedding because he keeps intervening in a series of calamities along the way.
• In The Little Mermaid, Ariel loses all hope of a happy life when Eric is suddenly off to marry a mystery maiden. But when she finds out Vanessa is Ursula the Sea Witch in disguise, she decides to make a stand, while Scuttle unites a bunch of sea creatures to crash the wedding.
• Monsters vs. Aliens has a rare occurrence of a wedding being crashed by the bride, when she suddenly transforms into a giant mid-ceremony. She is then captured by government agents, who were there investigating the meteor that caused her growth spurt in the first place.
• Monster Family 2: The wedding between Baba Yaga and Renfield is interrupted by Mila Starr, who was send by her parents to capture Baba Yaga.
• Shrek has Farquaad's wedding to Fiona first interrupted by Shrek entering, and when the bride turns out to be an ogre, chaos ensues, ending with Farquaad being Swallowed Whole by a Dragon. Though then the actual love story is solved, leading to the wedding just moving to Shrek's swamp.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Another example where the bride herself (albeit this time intentionally, as she was forced into it) initiates the wedding smashing. Peach starts by punching Kamek right when he begins his speech, and then pulls out an Ice Flower from her bouquet and freezes Bowser with it. Mario and Donkey Kong arrive shortly after and join into the action.
• In Wreck-It Ralph, Sgt. Calhoun's wedding was crashed by a Cy-Bug that swooped in and ate her fiancé right in front of her. At her second wedding, everybody on her side of the chapel came packing heat, because it wasn't gonna happen again.

Films — Live-Action

• Avoided in 13 Sins. It's the rehearsal dinner where all of the carnage happens.
• Alligator: The eponymous menace rampages through a high-society wedding, killing the Corrupt Corporate Executive responsible for his existence in the process.
• Beetlejuice features a very unorthodox wedding as part of the climax, and it gets interrupted at the last possible second by Barbara riding a giant sandworm through the roof of the house.
• Big Trouble in Little China: The climax of the film is centered on the heroes interrupting the wedding ceremony between Lo Pen and Miao Yin, which breaks out into a battle.
• In the 1968 movie The Bride Wore Black, the title character's brand new husband is shot dead on the steps of the church as they leave after the ceremony. It turns out a group of five men having a drunken party in a neighboring building decided that firing a gun randomly out the window was a good idea, having completely forgotten the old principle 'what goes up, must come down'. They don't live to regret it for very long, as the new widow tracks them down and murders them one by one.
• An early scene of Executive Decision had an SIS black bag team infiltrating a wedding reception; one of the guests being an international terrorist commander who was promptly abducted. To top it off, this was accompanied by a shootout where there was also an RPG and AK wielding terrorist dressed as an Orthodox priest.
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer opens with the Surfer accidentally crashing Reed and Sue's wedding, after Reed had already tried to Skip to the End because of a global crisis. It ends with a new problem popping up, and this time Sue asks to Skip to the End, while Reed did that the first time to her annoyance. Made even funnier by the fact that a quick bout of Fridge Logic on the part of the audience shows that the event (Venice is sinking) isn't actually that much of a disaster, in the fact it's happening in real life, albeit over the course of many years/decades/centuries.
• In the 1964 film Father Goose, Cary Grant and Leslie Caron marry while their Matavala shack is being shot at by Japanese fighters.
• In Fiddler on the Roof, the wedding ceremony goes ahead but the reception is halted by a "little unofficial demonstration" spearheaded by the local sheriff.
• In Flash Gordon (1980), Ming the Merciless becomes infatuated with Dale Arden and arranges a wedding ceremony in the film's climax. Flash rescues Dale by crashing the Ajax ship through Ming's fortress, which also gets Ming impaled by the rocket's bow.
• The Great Gatsby (1974): After the hotel confrontation, Gatsby and Daisy run away from a screaming Tom through the wedding going on downstairs. The book mentions the wedding for Irony but lets it go on without incident.
• The Jewel of the Nile features a wedding between Joan and Jack that is interrupted by a pirate attack. It turns out to be Joan writing her next romance novel, explaining the overly dramatic use of this trope. They have a real wedding at the end of the movie, without interruption.
• The Johnstown Flood: A wall of water, the eponymous flood, hits the church during Tom and Gloria's wedding, mere seconds after Anna showed up to warn everyone that the dam broke.
• Kill Bill centers around the revenge-seeking Bride, who is out for blood after a variation of this trope: it was her wedding rehearsal that was broken up by a squad of assassins.
• In Krull, the slayers kidnap Princess Lyssa during her wedding.
• Live and Let Die features a variation: a boat chase between James Bond and some thugs "drops by" a wedding, with the mook running over the cake.
• MacGruber through a flashback, we see that MacGruber's arch-enemy Dieter Von Cunth caused the death of his wife Casey Fitzpatrick by blowing her up during their wedding. In the ending Cunth attacks MacGruber and Vicki St. Elmo's wedding ceremony with a bazooka, but fails and gets spectacularly killed instead.
• The Master Gunfighter. The villagers recover gold from a shipwreck and try to smuggle it out on a bridal carriage. The Mexican landowner finds out and—because he wants the gold for his own purposes—has the entire village massacred. As the bride flees she's shot In the Back, a memory that still haunts the hero years later when it looks like history will repeat itself. The film is a remake of Goyokin which has a similar scene.
• The partnership of Nate and Hayes starts after Hayes' arch-enemy attacks the island where Nate's wedding is being held and steals away his bride.
• In The Nice Guys, similar to Live and Let Die, the wedding smashing is only a gag instead of being an important plot point: the main characters dispose of a corpse by accidentally dropping it in the middle of a wedding dinner party, scaring the newlyweds and their guests.
• Happens during Thomas' and Bea's wedding at the beginning of Peter Rabbit 2 The Runaway, where Peter flips out at the possibility of Thomas being his new father, so the animals start a brawl that ends with Thomas being carried away after being tangled in balloons. Subverted when it turns out Peter was actually daydreaming about this during the actual wedding, which mostly goes off without a hitch.
• The climax of Phantom of the Paradise consists in Winslow breaking into the wedding ceremony between Swan and Phoenix in order to save her, since the villain was planning to have her shot.
• At the start of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the wedding of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann is interrupted by the beginning of the plot. Inverted in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: Will and Elizabeth interrupt the battle with their wedding, after figuring that if they keep waiting until there's time to hold the wedding properly it'll never happen.
  Elizabeth: Now may not be the best time!
  Will: Now may be the only time!

Also notable as the coolest wedding ever captured on film.

Barbossa: Dearly beloved, we be gathered here today... TO NAIL YER GIZZARDS TO THE MAST, YE POXY CUR!

• Happens in [REC] 3: Génesis. Doesn't get much worse than having your wedding get crashed by a demonically-charged Zombie Apocalypse.
• In Revenge for Jolly!, Harry and Cecil crash Bachmeier's sister's wedding and kill several bystanders while questioning the guests about the name of Jolly's murderer,
• In Shredder Orpheus, Hades' goons disguise themselves as wedding caterers to murder and kidnap Eurydice during the reception.
• Silver Lode begins with Dan Ballard and Rose Evans' wedding being interrupted by McCarty and his men coming to arrest Ballard.
• The day the Elamites attack the title cities in Sodom and Gomorrah just happens to be the wedding day of Hebrew leader Lot and Sodomite ex-slave Ildith. The ceremony is already over when the Elamites show up, but Lot and Ildith barely have time to catch their breath before Lot tells Ildith to get the women and children to safety while he leads the Hebrews into battle.
• Spy Kids has a flashback to the wedding of the spy kids' parents when it is attacked by enemy aircraft out to assassinate them. The newlyweds, being themselves professional spies, successfully escape by parachuting off a cliff. With pink heart-shaped parachutes.
• At the end of the first part of 2023's The Three Musketeers, a cell of Protestant rebels infiltrate (disguised as Catholic monks and priests) and attack the wedding ceremony of Gaston de France (Louis XIII's brother) to try wiping out the French royal family. The attack is thwarted by D'Artagnan and the three Musketeers.
• Tombstone opens with outlaws attacking a Mexican wedding and horrifically slaughtering everybody there. The bride is one of the last to die and has to witness everyone else getting it, starting with her new husband, and making a very Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress. The slayers then cheerfully sit down to the wedding banquet.
• The otherwise farcical softcore porn film To the Limit has a tragic example when a gang of Malevolent Masked Men carry out a wedding massacre — and yes, there is a Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress prominently featured.
• In the TV movie Vows of Deceit (aka Deadly Matrimony), thieving con artist Leo Friedman marries women to gain control of their finances, juggling several relationships at once. Seeking revenge, the wronged women team up and confront Leo at the wedding party of his latest victim. What follows is a chaotic sequence with improvised weapons, drag-out fights, gunplay, and an unbalanced groom out for blood.
• Wild Tales: During her wedding reception, Romi becomes a Woman Scorned discovers that her new husband has been having an affair with one of his co-workers. She proceeds to go on a rampage that leaves her husband humiliated, her rival hospitalised, and the reception in a shambles.

Literature

• The Black Arrow: When Sir Daniel tries to get Joanna married to Lord Shoreby, the archers of the Black Arrow disrupt the wedding by shooting their arrows from the church's clerestory, killing Shoreby and vanishing quickly.
• Thomas Harris's 2019 novel Cari Mora has the titular heroine's wedding turned into a bloodbath by remnants of the FARC cell she abandoned as a teenager after killing their ruthless leader.
• Discworld: In Raising Steam, a wedding between a human and a dwarf is attacked by dwarf extremists opposed to human/dwarf marriage, killing the bride.
• The Dresden Files: In the short story "Something Borrowed", Billy and Georgia's wedding was sabotaged by Jenny Greenteeth on behalf of Maeve as revenge for their part in the death of the Tigress in Summer Knight. Harry's attempts to stop Jenny Greenteeth nearly got him thrown out of the place, ironically because Georgia's stepmother assumed he was a Wedding Smasher.
• The Faerie Queene: It turns out that Busyran kidnapped Amoret at her wedding, taking advantage of how everyone was too drunk or unsuspicious to help her.
• In The Falling Kingdoms Series, Rebel Leader Jonas crashes the wedding of Prince Magnus and Princess Cleiona in an attempt to assassinate the prince and his father—with the bride's help! It doesn't work and she has to go through her Arranged Marriage anyway.
• In Fed Up by Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant, the murderer discovers that the wedding's videographer has footage of the poisoning of someone murdered at the beginning of the book, leading to a fight for the camera and its evidence, not to mention the footage of the wedding.
• Fox Demon Cultivation Manual: Rong Bai's wedding to Zhu Han is eventful to say the least. Rong Bai publicly declaring he doesn't want to marry Zhu Han is just the start of the drama. Then Song Ci reveals he's impersonating Zhu Han, Rong Bai extracts his heart's blood, a fight breaks out between Song Ci and Tu Shan Bi, the real Zhu Han is murdered by her adoptive father, and Song Ci disappears in the middle of the battle.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: At least Bill Weasley's and Fleur Delacour's wedding makes it all the way to the reception stage before the party has to be broken up in a hurry due to an invasion of Death Eaters.
• In Mermaid Moon, the mermaid/human hybrid Sanna goes on land in search of her human mother Lisabet, only to end up in an Arranged Marriage to Baron Peder. During their wedding, in a last-ditch effort to escape, Sanna uses her magic to cause the petals to fly off the courtyard roses and fly into the air, but in the process she enchants the bees, and her Power Incontinence causes them to sting Peder to death. Unbeknownst to Sanna, the other mermaids have been planning to use their song to kill the landish people, partly in a misguided effort to save Sanna and partly just to show off their voices. They carry out their plan as all the wedding guests flee the courtyard in a panic and try to escape to the other islands. When they hear the mermaids' song, most of them run into the ocean. Dozens drown before older and wiser merfolk arrive and put a stop to it.
• In The Savannah Reid Mysteries, Savannah's ready for her wedding, and then an arsonist burns the place down (it's not personal; the guy's just a creep).
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, weddings seem to have a habit of turning nasty.
  Stannis: Weddings have become more perilous than battles, it would seem.
  • "The Red Wedding" (Edmure Tully to Roslin Frey) is definitely the Blood Splattered version, as the Freys used it to stage an ambush on Robb Stark and the collected top brass of the Northern army.
  • King Joffrey's wedding leads to his own death, seemingly at the hands of the bride's family.
  • Whatever you do, don't touch Lord Manderly's pies; in revenge for the Red Wedding, Ramsay Snow's marriage to an impostor of Arya Stark is sabotaged by Manderly and some other lords still loyal to the Starks.
  • An interesting play on the trope is the wedding of Daenerys to Khal Drogo, where some wedding guests start fighting with each other. According to Illyrio, this is normal for the Dothraki.
    "A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is deemed a dull affair."
• A Sorrow Fierce and Falling: George and Henrietta's wedding is regularly delayed early in the book due to the war. At one point, they make it down the aisle, but the wedding barely gets started before R'hlem's army of Familiars attacks, forcing everyone to charge into battle.
• "Tacky", a short story set in the universe of The Southern Vampire Mysteries, focuses on a wedding between a vampire and a werewolf, which devolves into a full-fledged battle when the catering staff turn out to be gun-toting anti-supernatural fanatics.
• Star Wars Legends: Tales Of The Mos Eisley Cantina has "We Don't Do Weddings: The Band's Tale". The wedding of the two Whiphids Lady Valarian (Jabba the Hutt's main criminal competitor) and D'wopp (an up-and-coming bounty hunter) never had a chance to go forward without a disaster. Not only do Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes skip out on their contract with Jabba to play a gig at Valarian's casino for the event (prompting a score of Jabba's thugs to infiltrate the wedding party), but D'wopp triggers a nasty brawl with his bride-to-be when he accepts a bounty on Han Solo to be collected on the night of their honeymoon, and the fight between the two lovers quickly escalates - first into a proxy war by every disgruntled hoodlum in Mos Eisley against Jabba, and ultimately into a confused free-for-all with everyone throwing random punches at each other. Then Imperial stormtroopers raid the casino for illegal gambling! When the noise has finally died down and the blaster bolts finally stopped flying, D'wopp has been (literally) torn limb from limb, Wuher the bartender has been shot in the nose by an assassin droid's needle, and Figrin himself owes massive gambling debts that he and his boys can pay off only by playing indefinite gigs at Chalmun's Cantina - with Jabba's goons still hunting for them.
• Right after Barrie and Penny from The Tale Of Magic seal their vows, the Three Thirty-Three arrives trying to kill Brystal. They left such a destruction that even Brystal’s father-who has disowned his daughter for being a fairy-asked her to repair their house with magic. The couple later officiate their marriage privately.
• The Tamuli: The Dragon teleports into Sephrenia and Vanion's Wedding Finale and tries to kill Vanion in a last-ditch attempt to prevent Sephrenia, his Villainous Crush, from marrying another man. The protagonist still has 11th-Hour Superpowers and allied Physical Gods, so he's quickly and brutally neutralized. They postpone the wedding for one day to restore the good mood.

Live-Action TV

• Lampshaded in an episode of One Life to Live, in which a character points out that "whenever we go to a wedding, no one ever gets married."
• In the Arrowverse crossover event Crisis on Earth-X, Barry and Iris's wedding is crashed by a squad of machine gun-toting Nazis from Earth-X, led by Dark Arrow (Oliver-X), Overgirl (Kara-X), and Prometheus (Tommy Merlyn from Earth-X). After the heroes manage to fight them off, Mick, who has nodded off during the ceremony, pronounces that it's the best wedding ever. Thawne later chews Oliver-X and Kara-X for diverting from their original plan, with Oliver-X justifying the actions by hoping to take out all the heroes in one place.
• Ashes of Love: Run Yu and Jin Mi's wedding is eventful to say the least. Xu Feng interrupting the ceremony is just the start of it.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Riley Finn and his bride, Sam, describe their off-screen wedding under fire in "As You Were".
  • And Xander and Anya's wedding is crashed by one of her former victims, looking for a little payback in "Hell's Bells".
• Castle: Beckett and Castle's wedding is interrupted when Castle's flaming car is found empty on the side of the road just before the start of the ceremony. They aren't found until several months later, with convenient amnesia regarding the intervening period. When a makeup ceremony does happen, it's spur-of-the-moment and involves only the bride and groom, preventing another interruption.
• Charmed:
  • In "Just Harried", Prue interrupts her sister Piper's wedding by being brainwashed and running away with a guy on a motorcycle. While still inside the manor. Piper decides that this is a sign that the wedding was a mistake and calls the whole thing off. After a pep talk from her parents she agrees to finish the ceremony.
  • In "Marry-Go-Round", Phoebe's wedding to Cole is sabotaged by the possessed groom himself. First Phoebe is turned invisible (which Paige transfers to herself so the wedding can continue), then a demon attacks the ceremony. Paige and Piper try to handle it discreetly, but the sound of the battle eventually disturbs the guests and draws Phoebe, who calls things off.
• The Season 2 finale of Chuck takes this to epic levels with Ellie's wedding. It starts with a shootout between Fulcrum agents and Bryce Larkin (with Sarah throwing cutlery scavenged from the wedding presents) and the crossfire shredding wedding paraphernalia in all directions. Then Casey parachutes through the skylight with a squad of soldiers. With Jeffster singing "Domo Arigato Mr Roboto" over the top of all of it. Needless to say, the wedding was cancelled.
• Doc Martin: Unusually, the wedding itself goes off almost seamlessly (partly due to Martin and Louisa escaping early while they're ahead); the honeymoon, on the other hand, sees their cottage rendered unusable by a blocked chimney and their luggage lost; they get lost attempting to walk home and held at gunpoint by an irascible farmer insisting they fix a chicken coop they broke, and then have to stitch him up after an unlikely accident severs an artery and carry him back to town in a wheelbarrow.
• Dynasty (1981): The Moldavian Wedding Massacre cliffhanger. Everyone in attendance got shot and the actors had no idea who was going to survive to the next season.
• Ezel: Happens no less than three times in the series.
  • In a flashback, an infuriated Ramiz interrupts Kenan and Selma's wedding after learning Kenan raped Selma, essentially forcing her to marry him. The confrontation results in a gunfight that seriously wounds Ramiz and ends in a Sadistic Choice that leaves Kenan's brother dead; Kenan himself is grievously wounded by Selma, who stabs him in the abdomen with a shard of glass during the encounter. The incident and its pretext sets a decades-long Cycle of Revenge into motion.
  • In the aptly-named "A Wedding and a Funeral", gunmen led by the hitman Temmuz storm the wedding of Azad and Ali and kill several guests, including Azad's mother Selma.
  • Downplayed in the episode "A Perfect Murder": Ezel, Ali, and Cengiz sabotage Eyşan and Kenan's wedding, with the bride playing a key role in her new husband's downfall. While a disastrously shocking occasion, only Kenan is left dead at the end of the evening.
• John Crichton and Aeryn Sun of Farscape really couldn't catch a break when it came to tying the knot – they had two or three false starts derailed by invasions or combat before finally getting hitched under siege under fire and during the Screaming Birth of their son.
  • Notably, in the third-season finale, Crichton keeps on seeing visions of returning to Earth along with Aeryn and getting married there, only for Scorpius and a platoon of mooks to crash it and kill everyone.
    Scorpius: What did you expect?
• Not only do KAOS agents crash Max's and 99's wedding on Get Smart, but the most ridiculously contrived circumstances in the world require Max to remain upright for 48 hours that overlap with their wedding night...
• The Glamorous Imperial Concubine: Events at Zhi Xiang and Fu Ya's wedding include Qi You barging in and fighting the guards who try to make him leave, and Zhi Xiang realising that two of his other wives are plotting to kill him.
• Goodbye My Princess: The celebrations after Cheng Yin and Xiao Feng's first wedding come to an abrupt halt when the camp is attacked.
• Kamen Rider Kiva has Nago and Megumi's wedding interrupted by Wataru's son from the future, informing them that there are Neo-Fangires outside and he needs Wataru's help. Luckily, the couple had already said their vows by that stage.
  • In the Crisis Crossover between Kamen Rider Double and Kamen Rider OOO, the wedding of Akiko and Ryuu was interrupted when the Pteranodon Yummy appeared. They do get married at the end of the movie.
• Lois & Clark did this twice. The first time, Lois was kidnapped and replaced by a frog-eating clone. The second time, in an episode entitled "Swear To God, This Time We're Not Kidding" (bit of a Fandom Nod there, then?), the luckless lovers have to deal with a revenge-seeking madwoman known as the Wedding Destroyer. Since they were the ones who helped put her in prison, guess what she's got in mind for them?
• Lost Love in Times:
  • Yuan Zhan's coup happens on the day of Qing Chen and Yuan Ling's wedding. His soldiers attack during the ceremony.
  • In the second timeline they get married again. This time Ding Shui attacks during the wedding.
• Love and Redemption: Min Yan and Ling Long's wedding ends in chaos when Wu Tong attacks, tries to kidnap Ling Long, and almost kills Min Yan.
• Mahou Sentai Magiranger has Hikaru and Urara's wedding cut short by Lunagel appearing, out of breath and bringing news of N. Ma's arrival.
  • Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger starts with a Car Chase (with giant robot cars) smashing right through an alien church where two Muppet-y cat aliens are getting married and moving right along. This is our introduction to Ban (Deka Red) and Don Moyaida (the first Monster of the Week).
• My Life Is Murder: In "Another Bloody Podcast", the Victim of the Week was a gay man who was the best man at his brother's wedding. The wedding was crashed by the victim's extremely drunk partner, who was upset at not being invited and created a huge scene. When the best was murdered the same night, his partner became the number one suspect.
• In the NCIS: Los Angeles episode "Till Death Do Us Part", Kensi and Deeks finally get married—and, of course, it does not go off without a few complications. Specifically, Deeks' wannabe boyfriend Anatoli Kirkin and his "associates" causing trouble, and a literal crash courtesy of the reappearance of Hetty, who'd been MIA throughout the season.
  Hetty: I can't leave you damn kids alone for one minute.
• In Once Upon a Time, the Evil Queen crashes Snow White and Prince Charming's wedding. She doesn't hurt anyone at the wedding itself, but she shows up to essentially tell them Your Days Are Numbered because she's going to cast the Dark Curse on the entire kingdom.
• Princess Agents: Yan Xun provides a rare self-inflicted version when he rebels just before his wedding to Yuan Chun.
• Princess Silver: Wu You interrupts Fu Chou and Rong Le's wedding when he learns Rong Le and Man Yao are the same person. Rong Le marries Fu Chou anyway.
• Psych: Lassiter's wedding is interrupted by armed criminals. Fortunately, most of the guests are police officers so they all just pull out their guns and take down the bad guys.
• Subverted in the final episode of Return of Ultraman, when Hideki and Rumiko are in the middle of a wedding - theirs - with the entirety of MAT as well as Rumiko's kid brother Jiro in attendance. Suddenly, duty calls, Hideki and the rest of MAT had to ditch the wedding, much to Rumiko's annoyance, when suddenly she gets abducted by Alien Bat — and wakes up realizing it's All Just a Dream.
• The Rise of Phoenixes: Zhi Wei is about to marry Jin Si Yu. Ning Yi and Helian Zheng's rescue plan involves flooding the entire city.
• In Smallville, Chloe Sullivan gets a particularly nasty one as Doomsday crashes her wedding.
• Honorable mention: In Star Trek, the legend of Kahless and Lukara—an example of this trope—became such an important part of Klingon culture that the traditional Klingon wedding ceremony involves a mock mid-ceremony attack.
  • In the original Star Trek, Kirk was officiating a wedding between two of his crew when it got interrupted by Federation business. Specifically, an invisible enemy blowing up Federation bases on the Neutral Zone. The groom didn't survive to finish the wedding, alas...
• The Warehouse 13 episode "Queen for a Day" has a collision between Pete's ex-wife's wedding and an artifact connected to the female Pharaoh Hathshepsut, putting everyone — including the fiancée — in peril from the bride's wedding party. Rental furniture gets wrecked. Pete and Myka are able to dismiss it as wild mushrooms in the salad.
• In the Whoniverse:
  • Torchwood: Gwen gets impregnated with an alien baby pre-wedding, and the mother alien shows up at the wedding to claim it.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures, "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith". The Doctor knows what will happen when the Wedding Deadline arrives and so crosses over to crash it spectacularly. Needless to say, the Trickster isn't thrilled that his third plan for world chaos is about to be foiled and one-ups his crashing with a time loop... and when all's resolved, the wedding is cancelled.
• Word of Honor: The wedding of Gu Xiang and Cao Weining turns into a massacre as soon as Mo Huaiyang shows up, and both the bride and groom are killed.

Music

• Turn of the Millennium Boy Band Busted did a whole song about this trope back in 2003 called "Crashed The Wedding". In it, the protagonist crashes his ex-girlfriend's wedding. She is actually happy because she didn't want to marry the other man, but everyone else is mad at the singer.

Myths & Religion

• Books of Maccabees: In the apocryphal Book of 1st Maccabees, Judah Maccabee's brothers Jonathan and Simon along with the Jews ended up turning a very important wedding of officials from the Jambri tribe into a funeral by attacking them.

Pro Wrestling

• Every Professional Wrestling wedding ever. The most recent being A.J. Lee's recent spurning of Daniel Bryan (on the 1,000th episode of WWE RAW) to become RAW General Manager.
  • One of the WWF's earliest televised weddings depicted the marriage of Paul Vachon and a woman named Ophelia, aired during a 1984 episode of Tuesday Night Titans; the only faces invited were Vince McMahon and "Lord" Alfred Hayes (the two hosts, who were both face-leaning in their commentary). The wedding crasher was dastardly villain "Dr. D" David Schultz, who insulted Ophelia and later started a huge food fight.
  • This includes the Real Life wedding of Stan "Uncle Elmer" Frasier's wedding to Joyce Stazko during an episode of Saturday Night's Main Event(the marriage was legit, the attempted disruption by Roddy Piper wasn't).
  • Subversion, Kane waited until after Edge and Lita were married to attack.
  • Averted when Randy Savage married Miss Elizabeth (his Real Life wife, as they had been married since December 1984, but not in Kayfabe). An attempted invocation of the trope happened after the actual wedding at the backstage banquet, where Jake "The Snake" Roberts hid a snake in one of the gift packages, and then showed up to beat up Savage. Savage would eventually get his revenge, but not after Roberts kept raising the bar of despicability (allowing another live snake to bite Savage's arm; slapping Elizabeth in the face during a live pay-per-view match).
  • One of the more infamous angles – one that earned a "Gooker" award (for worst angle of the year) by the wrestling website WrestleCrap – involved a wedding. During the feud of Torrie Wilson and Dawn Marie, Dawn Marie began seducing Torrie's father, Al Wilson (her legit father); after several weeks of promos playing up the relationship and Torrie's growing disapproval of the relationship, Al and Dawn were engaged to be married, and were wed on a January 2003 episode of Smackdown!. During the honeymoon, Dawn Marie and Al had sex until Al suffered a massive heart attack that killed him. This led to Torrie blaming Dawn, and naturally the two confronted each other during the "visitation," with the two getting into a huge fight that resulted in the coffin being knocked over (before the two could be separated).
  • McMahon and Paul "Triple H" Levesque are a real-life couple now, but twice they were involved together in wedding angles. The first was Stephanie's late 1999 engagement to Test (Andrew Martin), and it was meant as just a sweetheart relationship ... until Triple H became involved; at Steph's bachelorette party, she was drugged, and Triple H (who was supposed to be taking her home) instead drove her to a drive-through wedding chapel to get married, even though she was unconscious. Footage of the "drive-through" wedding was shown on WWE RAW during the Test-McMahon in-ring ceremony, just as the vows were being given. It was a conspiracy all along, as Stephanie later revealed. In early 2002, as the kayfabe marriage was on the rocks, Stephanie wanted to renew her vows with Triple H, vowing to be a better wife, but Triple H learned that her pregnancy was a sham and exposed her on TV (during their vow renewal ceremony).
    • Less than 18 months after the kayfabe marriage ended, Stephanie and Triple H were married in real life, although this marriage did not take place on TV or in a wrestling ring. The couple have three daughters: Aurora, Murphy, and Vaughn. After repeatedly teasing the existence of his marriage, Triple H finally admitted on-camera that he and Stephanie were actually married, outright calling it "the worst-kept secret in the wrestling business".
    • Prior to the Stephanie-Triple H alliance, Stephanie was the unwilling bride-to-be of The Undertaker. In 1999, The Undertaker was the leader of the Ministry of Darkness, and the storyline reached its peak when he and his cohorts kidnapped Stephanie (after the "In Your House" pay-per-view event) and arranged a Satanic wedding ... all to get at Vince McMahon. Just before Paul Bearer was able to confirm Undie and Stephanie as "man and wife," Ken Shamrock, and later The Big Show, both ran in to interrupt the proceedings. When they were promptly beaten down, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin ran in and finally ran The Undertaker off ... after everyone else collected their "stunner."
• The WWF/WWE is not the only organization that has gone to the wedding well as an inspiration for storylines. In TNA, for instance, there was the Jay Lethal/So-Cal Val wedding at TNA Slammiversary 08. (Sonjay Dutt, doing a Face–Heel Turn, was the culprit)
• Typically, the reason every pro wrestling wedding ends in disaster is one of two, depending on whether or not the couple are getting married in real life.
  • If the marriage is kayfabe only, then the only reason to have it is for it to be ruined by a rival, setting up a new feud or intensifying an existing one. A wedding that goes perfectly well simply doesn't foster the sort of conflict that a storyline based on bodyslams needs. It can also serve as a convenient excuse as to why the two, after being so in love as to marry one another, drift apart and act as though they were merely coworkers.
  • If the marriage is real, it gives the couple time to be together on a honeymoon as their characters are recovering from injuries sustained in the wedding. Of course, it's rare such an event doesn't lead to a storyline when the couple DOES return to wrestling, but the honeymoon is the differential factor. Typically, these are the weddings in which both members of the couple are attacked, but everyone else in attendance miraculously escapes unharmed and are itching to throw down with whoever ruined their friends big day.

Tabletop Games

• In the Champions supplement Villainy Amok, one of the scenarios is "My Big Fat Caped Wedding". How much can possibly go wrong when two superheroes get married?
• Claim the Sky: The wedding of Whisper and Valor was attacked by Dagger in an attempt to take out a large number of heroes at once.
• The Gothic Horror setting of Ravenloft was created as part of the curse Strahd von Zarovich invited upon himself, after he murdered his brother on the latter's wedding day, in hope of claiming the bride for himself. She flung herself from the castle walls rather than let Strahd touch her, and he turned upon the wedding guests in a rage, killing everyone in the chapel.
  • Ironically, this subverted another example of this trope, as an enemy of the Von Zaroviches had sneaked archers into the castle, intending to massacre Strahd and all of his relatives at the ceremony, Game of Thrones-style.

Theatre

• Artus - Excalibur: King Loth's men crash Artus and Guinevere's wedding and kill Artus' foster father Ector.
• Fiddler on the Roof has Motel and Tzeitel's wedding cut short by an anti-Semitic pogrom. (Of course, the bride's family was already well on the way to derailing the event anyway.)
• The Mario Opera has Bowser and his troops interrupt Mario's wedding and abduct Peach.

Video Games

• The 3rd Birthday has Aya Brea constantly dreaming of a bloodstained wedding. Turns out her wedding was crashed by a SWAT team who killed just about everyone but Aya's "sister" Eve, who switched consciousness with Aya to save her - unwillingly creating the monsters that attack through the game, which originated from Aya's broken consciousness.
• In City of Heroes, Lord Recluse crashed Manticore and Sister Psyche's wedding on Valentine's Day of 2008, triggering a battle between Recluse's Arachnos thugs and the many player characters in attendance.
• The City Elf origin to Dragon Age: Origins involves the scumbag son of the local Arl and his men crashing a wedding at the Denerim Alienage because they want to have "a good time" with the bride and the other women of the wedding party.
• In Final Fantasy Legend II, Venus exiles Flora's fiancee Leon from Venus City because an accident he had left him with a limp walk, and then orders Flora to marry another suitor, Nils. Cue Leon gatecrashing the wedding and it all goes downhill from there.
• In Final Fantasy X there is a wedding crashing that involves a dragon, heavy gunfire, and heroes surfing down giant cables from an airship to save the bride, who is also trying to kill the groom. And the marriage still goes through nevertheless, and is followed up by the bride jumping off a building. Evidencedhere.
• Justin crashes Feena's wedding to Pakon in Grandia. Since Feena was bound and gagged for most of the ceremony, it was pretty clear that she had no objections to the wedding getting derailed.
• At the end of Grand Theft Auto IV, Roman is set to marry his love Mallorie. Unfortunately, Jimmy Pegorino drags Niko into a heroin deal with Dimitri Rascalov a mission prior, and whether Niko goes through with it or not the wedding ends disastrously. If he chooses to exact revenge on Dimitri for his previous betrayal, an enraged Jimmy attacks in a drive-by and kills Niko's girlfriend Kate. If he chooses to go through with the deal, Dimitri pulls a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on Niko and Roman is shot dead in the ensuing struggle.
• Harmful Park has a boss fight set in a church, where a wedding is taking place in the background. Said wedding is interrupted when the bride's ex suddenly barges in, causing the bride to run off and smooch her ex, much to the groom's dismay - in fact, the groom's Ocular Gushers ''can hurt you'"!
• In the opening of the fifth Heroes of Might and Magic game, some demons crash in on a royal wedding.
• Subverted in King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne where even the villains show up to the wedding and behave themselves. Averted in King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow where the Big Bad is sitting it out in the dungeon. But it's played straight in The Silver Lining.
• In Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, Maxim and Selan happily took off the minute after they said their vows to respond to a sudden report of monsters at the castle. They'd both been wearing armor under the other stuff.
• In NieR this happens when the wolves take revenge over Facade by killing the bride when she's about to wed the king.
• Pump It Up: The background animation/music video SHK's "Wedding Crashers" is about the wedding is ambushed by a dragon and the bride gets kidnapped by it, before the wedding couple manage to place their wedding rings.
• This Roblox place, Crash a Wedding for Fun, where you can literally crash a wedding and destroy the chapel and everyone^note Don't worry, no one gets killed actually.
• In Sleeping Dogs (2012), Winston Chu's wedding is violently interrupted by assassins sent to kill all the attendees, including Uncle Po. Sadly, neither the bride nor groom get out alive, but Wei acting quickly to rescue Uncle Po greatly improves his standing in the Sun On Yee.
• In Sunrider Mask of Arcadius, the titular ship’s crew launch Operation Wedding Crash—in which the Sunrider comes out of warp right above the space station in which the wedding is taking place—in order to rescue their friend and co-pilot Asaga, who is being married against her will to Veniczar Arcadius. They also try to assassinate the groom for good measure, but unfortunately Arcadius is one step ahead of them and the assassination fails.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Super Mario RPG, the party has to stop the forced wedding between Princess Toadstool/Peach and Booster, which involves helping breaking down a few doors and gathering the princess' dropped accessories. The real difficulty comes when the caterers attack and the wedding cake comes to life...
  • The story of Super Mario Odyssey revolves around Bowser kidnapping Peach, intending to marry her, and Mario has to stop him. When Mario finally catches up to Bowser in the wedding hall, the Koopa King and the Princess are seen endlessly tugging on the huge wedding ring, but they both stop, and the Final Boss fight begins shortly thereafter.
  Bowser: Crashing the wedding, Mario? That's tacky, even for you! Also, your outfit isn't halfway fancy enough for the occasion!^note This line can change based on what costume Mario's wearing Not that it matters, since you WEREN'T INVITED! So now it's time for you to make like a bouquet and get thrown out. Get ready, Mario! Here's your happily ever after!
• One of the opening credits of Tekken 6 involves bomber jets from the Mishima Zaibatsu under Jin Kazama turning a wedding chapel into rubble. In response, the older brother of the bride, Miguel Caballero Rojo, vows revenge on Jin as he holds his dead sister, Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress and all.
• Time and Eternity's player character Zack and royal princess Toki Chronowind having their wedding crashed by the Assassin's Guild. Zack takes a knife for Toki and relishes in having died to protect his bride... only for Toki's Superpowered Alter Ego to start kicking ass and showing him up entirely. The two (three?) then proceed to travel back in time and undo it. No, that's not a spoiler; that's the start of the game, with the cutscene bridging the community tutorial and the combat tutorial. The spoiler is the fact that it happens three more times, involving a possessed friend of the princess, an odd-jobber jealous of her having a love life, and the spirit inside the princess's pocket hourglass. The game ends with the wedding proper.
• Beatrice crashes Battler and Erika's wedding awesomely in Umineko: When They Cry.
  • One of the few times the player welcomes her memetic ahahaha .wav
• In the backstory of Varicella, General Wehrkeit had soldiers attack the wedding of the hero's brother Terzio Varicella to Princess Charlotte, killing him and causing the bride to go mad from the trauma.
• In the prologue to Vay, a group of Danek mechanized battle suits opens fire on Lorath Castle just as Prince Sandor is about to exchange vows with Princess Elin, kidnapping her in the process.
• Wild ARMs has Zed crash the wedding between Cecilia and Captain Bartholomew to get to the Guardian statue the heroes are supposed to be protecting. Downplayed as the wedding was fake so Bartholomew could win a drunken bet against his rival.
• Many players who have attempted in-game weddings in MMOs have been disrupted by obnoxious griefers. Popular in-game venues, such as Northshire Abbey of World of Warcraft, are accordingly popular targets. The more obscure a locale though, the less likely a virtual wedding is to suffer from this trope.
  • There's also... a rather fun alliance quest involving a wedding... the "priest" promptly turns into a faceless and you have to then kick its (his) ass. One could hardly have a dwarven wedding without a proper brawl, now could there?
  • A unique twist on the theme occurs during the Cataclysm storyline in World of Warcraft. The wedding of Keegan Firebeard and Fanny Thundermar is supposed to be one of convenience to unite their rival clans, and as such, Grundy McGraff (who officiates it) tells the player to watch for attempts to disrupt it by the Dragonmaw cultists. However, the one who actually disrupts it is Grundy himself, who has been corrupted by the Maw of Madness. (Ironically, this turns out to be a case of Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, as the assault convinces the two clans that they have a common enemy they must unite against.)

Web Animation

• Etra chan saw it!:
  • Yuzuriha crashes Kuroki and Yuri's wedding and claims to be pregnant with the former's baby; however, this does not fool everyone because they immediately noticed that she stuffed a watermelon under her dress.
  • Akane wears a wedding dress to ruin Yuri and Katsura's wedding in an attempt to steal the latter for herself.
  • Akane crashes her brother Kuroki and Tsutsuji's wedding by wearing a wedding dress to make him stop his marriage with the latter.
  • Hiiragi crashes Karin and Kuroki's wedding by kidnapping the former to realize his fantasy.
  • Hiiragi interrupts Kuroki and Akane's wedding to "save" the latter from marrying the former. As expected, Akane agrees to leave with him and considers him her "true love" while leaving Kuroki alone in the altar.
• Helluva Boss: In "Exes and Ooh", Moxxie's Abusive mafioso father, Crimson, tries to forcibly marry him off to a new-rich sleazebag. Upon realizing this, Blitzo pulls Moxxie's wife, Millie, with him into a car, switches the radio station to "Wrath's #1 'F*ck You Up' Hits" and declares that "We're doing a Shrek!" What Millie then proceeds to do to Crimson's Loan Sharks/wedding guests is perhaps a bit too graphic to describe in detail here without using the word "sushi" so let's just say that the wedding was indeed thoroughly smashed.
• MoniRobo:
  • In this story, Tristan and a team of police officers crash into Annabel's wedding to arrest her for stealing her sister-in-law Yelena's dress. When the groom found out, he refuses to marry her.
  • The Professor snuck her mother into her sister Rika's wedding in retaliation for her ungrateful behavior. When everyone finds out her mother works at a club, her groom left her, and Rika became unable to find herself a rich husband.
• Otakebi: A woman crashes Sojiro's wedding reception and claims to be pregnant with his child, this causes her to be escorted out of the hall and she was perceived as crazy by Shinjiro. It's later revealed she was really telling the truth and Sojiro really had an affair with her behind his wife's back before their wedding.

Webcomics

• Averted in the fan comic Chess Piece. Given the hectic life of the heroes, the intricate Love Dodecahedron, and the presence of one of the adversaries, it's almost guaranteed that this trope will appear... but it doesn't. The wedding goes quietly, just as planned.
• As briefly shown in Homestuck's credits, Calliope brings a Spiral Sucker to Rose and Kanaya's wedding and somehow gets all the guests drugged with it. Chaos ensues.
• Joyce and Walky!'s wedding gets crashed by the Head Alien (possessing Dorothy), Monkey Master, and all the potential kids from the future Head Alien brainwashed in order to seek revenge on the former SEMME members.
  Robin: 'Kay, so, before Monkey Master gets back up or someone else turns out to be a robot...by the power vested in me by the state of, what, Colorado? I pronounce you husband and wife already!
• In Kevin & Kell, a spider crashed the wedding of Tammy and Ray. Nothing personal; he just wanted to eat a lot of insects. Unfortunately for them, one of Tammy's bridesmaids is the insectivore Lindesfarne, who eats him instead.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Kazumi and Daigo's wedding reception is assaulted by sea trolls.
  • Lampshaded by Tarquin here.
• Ozy and Millie: Llewelyn and Millicent's wedding is interrupted by Captain Locke, the father of Millicent's daughter. After asking the groom if he loves his ex-girlfriend and getting a positive response, Locke starts a pie fight. Pie fights are a traditional part of dragon weddings, which was why they had so many pies lying around in the first place.
• Questionable Content: Discussed but ultimately averted: Veronica and Henry joke about how she should make a Bitter Wedding Speech while their son Marten and Henry's new husband Maurice choreograph the fight they plan to have. In the end, though, Veronica ends up giving a heartfelt speech about loving one's ex, learning to let go, and her happiness for Henry and Maurice.
  Maurice, with tears in his eyes: Do...do I still get to flip the table?
• In Schlock Mercenary, Bunni and Theo's third wedding (long story) is planned to the nines by Petey, with minor corrections on the fly. Being part of a perfect wedding makes Ennesby overwhelmingly paranoid, and so he tries to coerce Schlock into helping him ruin it in some way. It doesn't work, but not for lack of trying.

Web Original

• The main plot of Episode 2 of Season 3 of Arby 'n' the Chief. Jon CJG used this plot again, in EPIC proportions, to make season 5 and also the reason for the Big Bad's reason to commit crimes in season 6.
• Noob has a variation in which an in-game wedding isn't interrupted by enemies, but two of the groom's guildmates in the middle of a duel. The scene is Played for Laughs as the final strike of the duel happens inside the chapel. Following that, the Dead Character Walking form of the Sore Loser notices his surroundings and basically says "Oh no, this place is full of people who know me!" then runs out, apparently not noticing a wedding is going on. The reaction of the winner? "That audience makes the victory even greater!"
• The Season 1 finale of Meme House has Jill and Nemesis' wedding get interrupted by an armed robber! ...He fails to do anything of note and is shot by Jerma and Johnny Zest.
• Oxventure: In the Dungeons & Dragons campaign, the wedding of Dob, their half-orc bard, and Katie Pearlhead, a thief who keeps trying to poison him, does not go smoothly because after a demon of doubt shows up and forces Dob to "play from the heart" or be decapitated, Dob plays a love song...to Lady Liliana, the show's Big Bad, and Katie does not take it well. Then the entire bride's side draws knives. Bombs and eldritch magic are swiftly deployed.
  Jane: (on the aftereffects of combining Moonbeam and Hunger of Hadar) The soft tissue has basically deteriorated into a kind of fleshy soup, and the bones-
  Luke: The wedding of the season!
• Viral Texts: Kasia along with her mother tried to steal Heidi's fiancee, but they ended up going to the wrong chapel and busted the wrong wedding. As a result they were forced to pay for the damages.

Western Animation

• The Animals of Farthing Wood unintentionally do this before they reach White Deer Park. The church they sheltered in turns out to be hosting a wedding when the animals wake up. Pandemonium ensues as they scramble to escape and the guests freak out. Fortunately, the animals get out unharmed and the wedding goes ahead as planned.
• Ben 10: Apparently, Ben Tennyson can't even be in someone else's wedding without being caught in the crossfire between the bride's family of sludge aliens and the groom's family of Plumbers.
• In The Crumpets episode "Cheep Shot", Grownboy and Ms. McBrisk agree to marry after a short time from meeting and set up a wedding ceremony in McBrisk's house and surrounded by the birds they take care of. Grownboy's best friend Steve (whose relationship is on the brink of failure) shows up to offer a ring to Grownboy, who accepts the offer and marries him. After the newlywed same-sex couple departed, a downhearted McBrisk (still in her wedding dress) becomes irritated with the birds and eliminates them with a flamethrower.
• King K. Rool does this in one episode of Donkey Kong Country where Donkey Kong gets roped into almost marrying Candy. In a variation, he's not doing it because they're his enemies, he's just angry that he wasn't invited... or so he thought. Funny enough, he actually WAS invited. His invitation just got lost in the mail.
• DuckTales (1987): In the episode "Till Nephews Do Us Part", what do the triplets and Webby do when Scrooge is set to marry a child-hating Gold Digger? They call up his old flame Glittering Goldie, and she proceeds to burst out of the wedding cake and chase him down with a shotgun.
• In Inhumanoids, when the Earth Corps are at the wedding of Derek and Sandra, Tendril emerges from the ground and start smashing the chapel.
• In Episode 60 of Kaeloo, Pretty and Quack Quack are about to get married. Neither one actually wants to marry the other, as Quack Quack is in love with Pretty's sister Eugly and Pretty has a crush on Mr. Cat (which is far from mutual). In the end, Quack Quack, Pretty, Eugly, and Stumpy all get into a huge fight at the wedding, and an oblivious Kaeloo gets them married anyway.
• In The Smurfs special "Smurfily Ever After", Gargamel invades the wedding of Laconia and Woody by hiding himself within his magical musical creation, the Ghoulliope, and using its Magic Music to seduce the Smurfs and all their wedding guests into a suicidal walk into a boiling hot cauldron. Laconia, who is deaf in this special, is immune and thus with the help of Smurfette (whose ears were stopped with the use of two small pillows tied around her head with a ribbon) work together to cause Gargamel's evil music machine to explode and send him and his cat flying into the muck pond outside his own house.
• Happens in the the '90s animated Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Harry Osborn as the Goblin crashes Peter and Mary Jane's wedding with the intent of taking Mary Jane for himself.
  • Notably averted in the original comics version of their wedding, which was surprisingly mundane.
• Steven Universe: In "Reunited", Garnet's wedding reception is interrupted by the arrival of Blue and Yellow Diamond in their spaceships, there to wake the Cluster and get revenge on "Rose Quartz". Notably, the wedding crashing happens by coincidence, as the unexpected arrivals were aiming for an adjacent area, were unaware that the wedding was happening, and probably don't know what a wedding even is.
• In The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! episode "Do You Princess Take This Koopa...?", King Koopa coerces Princess Toadstool into marriage by promising to turn the Mushroom people back from stone. Naturally, the minute Toadstool isn't looking and he goes back on his word and re-curses them. It's up to the Mario Bros. to disrupt the wedding and expose Koopa's lies.
• Shredder and the Foot Clan attack everyone at April and Casey's wedding in TMNT: Back To The Sewer. Everybody Lives (except Cyber Shredder, who's most likely Deader than Dead now), but a truly epic showdown nonetheless.
• In the second-season finale of The Venture Brothers, the Monarch's wedding to Dr. Girlfriend is interrupted by the Phantom Limb and his Guild army.
  Savage: Anyone else have any objections?
• Young Justice: One Season 2 episode opened with Captain Cold inadvertently interrupting Rocket's bridal shower when he was robbing a nearby armored car. Finding himself suddenly facing seven extremely powerful and extremely pissed female superheroes, he uttered a morose "I'm completely doomed, aren't I?".

Real Life

• At one Society for Creative Anachronism-themed wedding, the priest's ceremony included the line: "If anyone present has any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony... they must defeat the Best Man in hand-to-hand combat!".
• This is also why, despite the church traditionally being in the bride's home parish, it's controlled by the groomsmen for the duration of the ceremony. Back in the day, the groom stood a reasonable risk of having to ride deep into the territory of people with whom relations were, at best, shaky to seal a diplomatic marriage (to say nothing of the guys who effectively kidnapped their brides). During the ceremony, he needed to kneel, with his back to the door, only a few feet away from men who had been trying to kill him until very recently. Small wonder, then, that he would be expected to take a retinue with him, that they would control the church and its grounds, and that his 'best man' would be standing within a sword's length of him. This is also why the bride always stands to the left of the groom, in case things really went to hell and he needed his sword arm free.
• Unfortunately, this sometimes does happen in modern society; often, someone who is not invited to a wedding ceremony – most often, but not always, the ex-significant other of either the bride or groom – will come to disrupt the ceremony and cause trouble. As a result, the wedding party may hire security to ensure that unwanted guests – not necessarily those who weren't invited, but specific uninvited guests – stay away.
• The War of the Sicilian Vespers started with a French soldier pawing at the fiancé of a Sicilian. Naturally, the boyfriend considered that It's Personal, so he stabbed the Frenchman, and a riot started, which eventually became a fifteen-year-long war and led to the foundation of The Mafia as we know it today, due to increased nationalism and a distrust/hatred of the French government.
  • Which proves that you should never go up against a Sicilian when a wedding is on the line.
• One Haganah officer in Jerusalem in 1948 was planning a wedding when a breach was opened and he had to go plug up the defenses. After becoming a great hero, he got together an ad-hoc Minyan, got married, and then presumably went off with the bride for some Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex.
• In one Venetian legend, there were several weddings being held on the same day. Some pirates interrupted and kidnapped all the brides, whereupon the men all went home, got their cutlasses, and got in a galley to chase down, rescued their wives, and then enacted a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• This is one of the reasons why brides have bridesmaids. Whether it was evil spirits or regular human kidnappers, the bride in a wedding is an open target, so many traditions had a group of women dressing up like the bride to confuse any ne'er-do-wells.
• A more recent phenomenon that haas occurred in the Middle East has been the interruption of weddings by Hellfire missiles fired from drones. Usually because someone in the wedding party was tagged as an Islamic terrorist.

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