Wedding Smashers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Miyuki's glasses had fallen off during the fight, and had been stepped on at some point. Her hair ribbon had been sliced off, causing her long braid to come loose. Her bridesmaids dress was ripped and splattered with monster ichor. The crowd watched as Nanoha's sister cleaned her swords on her already beyond help dress and addressed them.
"Was there anybody else who had a reason why these two should not be wed?"

—White Devil of the Moon, Chapter 5

Heroes' lives are incredibly busy, to the point where they can hardly get anything done for all the villains popping up and blowing things to Hell. Since your average hero can't even cash his paycheck without getting caught up in a bank robbery, it's hardly any surprise when their special occasions get similarly derailed—and one of the worst victims of explosive violence is the wedding.

There's no denying it—a lot of heroes (and, being fair, villains too) have to put up with having their "special day" interrupted with a battle. They just can't catch a break.

But, hey - if this is your life, this is your life, and you might as well get on with it instead of rescheduling. Your pluckiest protagonist will persevere, and utter their vows amidst clashing swords, sprays of gunfire or falling shells. Whether that makes it more or less romantic is dependent on the viewer.

Perhaps this would happen less if heroes brought it up when delivering the It's Not You, It's My Enemies speech. "Honey, I can't keep seeing you -- we'd have to have a weapons check at the door to the church!"

May result in Skip to the End.

Can be used for either comedy or drama. Sometimes leads to a Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress. Compare Ballroom Blitz. Also compare other events that heroes can't seem to complete without disaster striking, such as taking their driving test.

Examples of Wedding Smashers include:

Anime and Manga

  • Gundam Seed Destiny has Kira performing an epic example of this trope, crashing the wedding with the Freedom and "kidnapping" the reluctant bride Cagalli, while her groom hides behind her, before running in cowardice.
  • The last chapter of the Ranma ½ manga. The wedding that Ranma was bribed into going through with turns into a battle (but what doesn't in that story?). In the end the wedding is cancelled. And there the story ends.
  • Code Geass has Xing Ke perform quite possibly the most epic Wedding Crash of all time. And then, Lelouch, true to form, upstages him fabulously.
  • An omake episode of Daiakuji had Akuji getting married to Satsu, and an all-out gun battle erupts in the church. Of course, Akuji's a crime boss, so that might have been expected.
  • The Castle of Cagliostro: Lupin and his gang crash the royal wedding, to prevent the Count from forcing Clarice to marry him. And then Inspector Zenigata busts in with a battalion of Interpol Troopers both to arrest Lupin and expose the Count's counterfeiting operation.

Comic Books

  • In the New Titans comic, Nightwing and Starfire had their wedding interrupted by supervillains frying the minister.
    • Averted in the wedding of Wonder Girl and Terry Long, however; a mysterious disturbance is teased and then revealed to be Donna's foster mother Queen Hippolyta come to give her blessing to the pair.
  • Almost every comic-book wedding ever, to the point that the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey was notable because it didn't employ this trope. Probably started in comics by Reed and Sue's wedding in FF Annual #3.
    • I'm pretty sure the Cyclops/Jean Grey example was lampshaded by somebody observing that any supervillains attacking would have to be complete idiots, given the sheer volume of super-people present- the wedding party alone had enough firepower to reduce the area to a mile-wide glassed-over crater.
      • Axe Crazy Villain Sabretooth was going to attack....but Wolverine, who did not attend the wedding, managed to keep him at bay. Sort of Wolverine's way of saying I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 just about 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. (Bear in mind that Hulk is a Marvel comic.)
    • Don't forget the attack on Rick's bachelor party by the sinister Ecdysiast! Ecdysiast is a fancy term for "stripper". She's armed with a hair dryer. Apparently, Captain America (comics) hired her under the impression she did card tricks.
    • Actually, the false invitations were sent out by Impossible Man because he wasn't invited. Mephisto just 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!")
    • The Rick/Marlo wedding arc was arguably the Crowning Moment of Funny for this particular comics trope for soooo many reasons:
  • The good guys crash the Wedding of Crusher Creel and Titania. Because of the high concentration of super criminals that attended it.
  • 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, exhibiting his typical Genre Savvy, 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 fiancee 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.
  • The wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane averts this trope (having a secret identity helps).
  • 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.

Fan Works

  • Averted in the Fan Comic Chess Piece. Giving the hectic life of the heroes, the intrincated Love Dodecahedron, and the precense of one of the adversaries it's almost sure this Trope will play up, it doesn't. The wedding goes quietly, just as plan
  • The DC Comics/ 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.
  • 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.
  • The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha/Sailor Moon crossover fic White Devil of the Moon shows that, no matter who the hell you think you are, it's a bad idea to try to crash a wedding attended to by the Takamachi family. And Fate.
  • 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.
  • In Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, when Ronan marries Sakura, Mandy and Taliana, Madara shows up at the wedding, and kills Ronan with a bazooka. Ronan manages to come back to life with the help of the tears of his brides and the attendees, and reduces Madara to pieces with a machine gun.
  • In the Supernatural/Twilight Deconstruction Fic The Wedding Crashers, the Winchester brothers plus Castiel end accompanying Leah Clearwater, whom they had befriended, to Renesmee and Jacob's wedding. They only went to give her emotional support, but after enduring the vampires offering to convert them, the Cullens' extreme snottiness and Nouveau Riche antics, and watching Leah's family abusing her emotionally, they decide enough is enough and create enough ruckus to piss off almost all the present, destroy the decorations and the cake, and call everybody out on their collective bullshit.
  • In the Harry Potter/Sailor Moon/Ranma ½ crossover fic The Girl Who Loved, Voldemort's post-Jusenkyo alter-ego Mary Riddle attempts to crash Harry and Usagi's public wedding at the Tokyo Dome. She doesn't succeed at getting inside, but does instigate a pitched battle in the line of magicals (and Magical Girls) waiting to get in.

Film

  • A villainous example occurs in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when the Sheriff of Nottingham forcibly wed Maid Marian (and tried to rape her) in the middle of total Merry Men-sponsored anarchy.
  • In the 1964 film Father Goose, Cary Grant and Leslie Caron marry while their Matavala shack is being shot at by Japanese fighters.
  • 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!

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The Jewel of the Nile features a Dream Sequence wedding interruped by a pirate attack.
  • The opening of Spy Kids.
  • 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 The Graduate, Ben Braddock causes a fight to break out at someone else's wedding.
  • The Incredibles: In a slight inversion, Mr. Incredible is late to his own wedding because he keeps intervening in a series of calamities along the way.
  • 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.
  • Monsters vs. Aliens has a rare occurrence of a wedding being crashed by the bride, when she suddenly transforms into a giant in mid-ceremony. She is then captured by government agents, who were there investigating the meteor that caused her growth spurt in the first place.
  • The movie Bubble Boy is about a guy who's lived in a bubble his whole life travelling across the country to stop the wedding of the girl he likes.
  • Beetlejuice: "Sandworms. You know I hate 'em."
  • The partnership of Nate and Hayes starts after Hayes' arch enemy attacks the island where Nate's wedding is being held.
  • In the third movie Cinderella crashes her own wedding. It Makes Sense in Context.

Literature

  • Red Wedding. Definitely the Blood Splattered version.
  • "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.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. At least Bill Weasley 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.

Live-Action TV

  • This troper loves the finale of Season 2 of the spy-comedy Chuck. It started with a shootout between Fulcrum agents, with Bryce shooting back, and Sarah throwing cutlery scavenged from Ellie's wedding presents. Then Casey parachuted through the skylight with a squad of soldiers. With Lester singing "Domo Arigato Mr Roboto" in the background. Needless to say, the wedding was cancelled.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Riley Finn and his bride, Sam, describe their off-screen wedding under fire in the sixth season episode 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".
  • 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?

  • 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...
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Lampshaded in an episode of the soap opera One Life To Live, in which a character points out that "whenever we go to a wedding, no one ever gets married."
  • Lois and 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?
  • Dynasty: The Moldavian Wedding Massacre cliffhanger. Everyone in attendance got shot and even the actors had no idea who was going to survive to the next season
  • 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.
  • Prue interrupts her sister Piper's wedding in Charmed by being brainwashed and running away with a guy on a motorcycle. While still inside the manor.

Professional Wrestling

  • Every Professional Wrestling wedding ever. The most recent being the Jay Lethal/So-Cal Val wedding at TNA Slammiversary 08. (Sonjay Dutt, doing a Face Heel Turn, was the culprit)
    • This includes the Worked Shoot 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). An attempted invocation of the trope happened after the actual wedding at the backstage banquet, where Jake "The Snake" Roberts tried to attack Savage with a steel chair. Fortunately, The Undertaker was there to make the save with an urn.

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?

Video Games

  • In the game Castle Crashers, the players at one point, unsuprisingly, crash a castle. This doubles as a wedding crash, between a princess and a Big Bad. Hell, the level itself is called "Wedding Crash".
  • In Lufia 2, Maxim and Selan happily took off the minute after they said their vows to respond to a sudden report of monsters at the castle. It was noted that they'd both been wearing armor under the other stuff.
  • 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.
  • Many players who have attempted in-game weddings in MMOs have been disrupted by obnoxious griefers. This troper recalls hearing of one disrupted in Northshire Abbey of World of Warcraft, where "friendly" dwarves pummeled the bride with snowballs during the ceremony. (Note: Tailors in WoW can create wedding dresses and tuxedos, suggesting that Blizzard tacitly approves of these ceremonies)
    • Northshire Abbey? Are you serious? Given that it's the starting zone for humans, it's almost a given that any RP event will be ruined there. If you're afraid of an RP event being ruined, host it in an obscure place (I attended a wedding held at the Stonewrought Dam), or at least somewhere where the players are more mature in general (such as the Cathedral of Light, for weddings specifically).
    • 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. Of course, one could hardly have a dwarven wedding without a proper brawl, now could 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. Evidenced'here.
  • 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.
  • Used in Grand Theft Auto IV to dramatic effect.
  • Subverted in King's Quest II where even the villains show up to the wedding and behave themselves. Averted in King's Quest VI where the Big Bad is sitting it out in the dungeon. But it's played brutally straight in The Silver Lining.
  • Beatrice crashes Battler and Erika's wedding awesomely in Umineko no Naku Koro ni.
  • Justin crashes Feena's wedding to Pakon in Grandia. Of course, 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.
  • 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.
  • In the opening of the fifth Heroes of Might and Magic game, some demons crash in on a royal wedding.

Web Comics

  • The Order of the Stick: Kazumi and Daigo's wedding reception is assaulted by sea trolls.
  • 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. Of course, pie fights are a traditional part of dragon weddings, which was why they had so many pies lying around in the first place.
  • In Kevin and Kell, a spider crashed the wedding of Tammy and Ray. Nothing personal; he just wanted to eat a lot of insects.

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.

Western Animation

  • Happens in Aladdin And The King Of Thieves, when the Forty Thieves raid Aladdin's wedding. (Semi-justified in that they were there to steal a wedding gift.)
  • 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.
  • 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 second season finale of The Venture Brothers, the Monarch's wedding to Dr. Girlfriend is interrupted by the Phantom Limb and his Guild army.
  • In the second season of Justice League, Wonder Woman throws a tank into the wedding of Vandal Savage and Princess Audrey. She claims it was because he was evil, but it's easy to think it has something to do with the Les Yay between the two. Savage's response is to zap her with a concealed electric gun.

Savage: Anyone else have any objections?

  • 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 DuckTales (1987), Glittering Goldie crashes Scrooge's wedding epically, by popping out of the wedding cake and blasting away with a shotgun. It turns out the nephews invited the old flame specifically to keep Scrooge from marrying a Gold Digger after his money.

Goldie: You no good varmint! I'll teach ya' to lay eyes on another woman!
Triplets: Ya-hoo! Let's hear it for Goldie!

  • ReBoot does this twice with the same wedding. Bob portals in right at the "speak now or forever hold you peace" moment to stop Dot from marrying Clone-Bob. Dot convinces Real-Bob to leave but then Glitch reveals that Clone-Bob is Megabyte, who then crashes the wedding in a more literal sense.
  • In Inhumanoids, when the Earth Corps are at the wedding of Derek and Sandra, Tendril emerges from the ground and start smashing the chapel.

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!". (Allegedly, this is where the position of "Best Man" originally came from.)
    • Indeed - 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). To do this 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.
  • 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 breech 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.
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