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Reddit user kicked out of wedding reception for ordering pizza when bride's family devours buffet
Entire buffet at reception was devoured by bride's relatives, said Reddit user
By Christine Rousselle
Published August 4, 2024 5:00am EDT
A Reddit user who was kicked out of a wedding after he ordered pizza when the reception ran out of food should have been more discreet and behaved himself better, an etiquette expert told Fox News Digital — although the story does have a happy ending.
"AITA for ordering pizza at my friend's wedding because there was no food?" asked user "Adorable_Distance_15" in a recent post on the "Am I the A--hole" subreddit, an advice forum.
In the post, the man said he and his wife recently attended his friend's wedding, which had about 70 guests, "mostly family."
"When we got there, we were seated at a table with some other people. Nice people, and we mingled well and had a good time chatting," he wrote.
"The wedding was also quite nice. Both my friend and his new wife were very happy," Adorable_Distance_15 said.
After the wedding ceremony, the tables were all given two bottles of wine, bread and butter, and the bar was opened, he said.
"Then the food came out — it looked really good," he said, noting that the wedding reception was buffet style.
"I was half-buzzed and looking forward to getting some food in my belly," he added.
When dinner began, tables were then called up to the buffet a few at a time, he said. "The first few tables that were called were understandably the family of both sides," Adorable_Distance_15 wrote.
This, however, was when the problems began.
"Now I don't shame people for how much they eat, but I noticed the helpings of food they had while I was patiently waiting for us to be called," he said.
"I also noticed that they went for seconds before all the tables were called and no one stopped them."
At the time, Adorable_Distance_15 said that while he thought that behavior was rude, he "assumed there was just a lot of food."
He added, "To my surprise, by the time we were called, there was nothing left."
After grabbing the "scraps" that were left, "we were all still pretty hungry, and a bit [angry]," he said. "So we kinda bash-talked that the first few tables ate all the food."
After someone suggested getting pizza, Adorable_Distance_15 "had the drunken idea of ordering some."
So "we all pitched in and ordered four large pizzas and some chicken wings from a local pizza joint close to the venue so it didn't take long to be delivered," he said.
"I met the guy outside and brought the food to our table, and we started to eat."
Other tables of hungry people noticed the pizza — "so we shared with them," Adorable_Distance_15 said.
"This caused some commotion," apparently, and people began asking the wedding party if there were more pizzas available.
"My friend came to talk to me about why I ordered the food. His bride was not happy about it," the Reddit writer said. "So I told him that we didn't get to eat and that the food ran out long before our table was called, and we were really hungry."
"What were we supposed to do, starve?" he said.
But the wedding's dramatics continued when the bride's father noticed the leftover pizzas.
"This is where I maybe was the [a--hole]," Adorable_Distance_15 wrote. "There were two slices left, [and] I knew he was eyeing them."
"I asked the other people at my table if they wanted one. Everyone declined. This guy then said he'd have one," he said.
"I then took the two slices, I put them on my plate and started to eat them, then looked at him and said something like, 'No, you and everyone at your tables had way more than your fare share of the buffet and ate all of it. This is the reason we ordered food in the first place. And now you have the nerve to ask us to share.'"
At the time, he did not know it was the bride's father.
The man's "face went red, and he returned to his table," where there "was a lot of discussion going on there," the Reddit user wrote.
"The bride looked even more ticked off at us. She had a bit of an argument with my friend. He eventually came back to tell us we had to leave," he said.
"I didn't mean to start any problems, so me and my wife called a cab and left."
A few days after the wedding, Adorable_Distance_15's friend called and shared his side of the story.
"He agreed that his in-laws were really rude for eating all the food and leaving most of the other guests with very little," he said — mentioning that about half the guests left the wedding reception once there was no food left.
"He was upset with his in-laws, because he told them how many guests there would be and to order the food for that many people," Adorable_Distance_15 said.
The Reddit writer continued, "He brought this up with his wife, and she said that apparently, because the in-laws paid for the alcohol and the food, they felt entitled to eat what they wanted. She was really mad at them and reamed them out for tainting her special day."
In an update to the post, Adorable_Distance_15 wrote that his friend's wife "was more upset than he initially said," but not at him. She was angry with her family.
"He also said that she wanted to apologize for booting me," Adorable_Distance_15 wrote.
To make up for the wedding reception issues, the father-in-law was planning to throw an "after-wedding shindig" for everyone who was at the original wedding, plus other people.
"[The father-in-law] also promised there will be an assortment of food," he said. "He also wanted to personally let me know that there will be 50 large pizzas from the same joint I ordered from; that is his way of adding some humor to the situation."
Fox News Digital reached out to Adorable_Distance_15 for any further updates.
Lisa Gaché, founder and CEO of the California-based Beverly Hills Manners, told Fox News Digital that "this was not the right move" and that Adorable_Distance_15 should have been better prepared ahead of time.
"No matter how you slice it (pun intended), ordering pizza to be delivered and devoured at a friend's wedding is clearly sticking it to the bride, the groom and their families," she said.
Ordering pizza after the bride's family ate all the buffet food was "not the right move," Lisa Gauché, a manners expert, told Fox News Digital. (iStock)
If the group of friends felt that they had to order extra food, "a more discreet move would have been for the table to take turns going out to the parking lot to consume the pizza and return quickly to celebrate the happy couple," she said.
Aside from ordering food, there was, however, a much better option that Adorable_Distance_15 could have taken: He could have asked one of the waitstaff if they could go up to the buffet when they saw other tables getting seconds, Gaché said.
"Having manners doesn't mean you can't communicate your needs," Gaché said. "Perhaps it was just an oversight on the hosts’ part and if the friends simply spoke up sooner, they would have had plenty of food at the buffet."
Gaché advised that, in the future, Adorable_Distance_15 "have a more substantial meal during the day" and bring a protein bar in case the food runs out again.
"Showing up as a guest at a friend's wedding means you grin and bear the elements whatever they may be," she said.
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