Ready or Not & 7 Movie & TV Weddings Gone REALLY Wrong

In Ready or Not, new bride Grace gets a very untraditional wedding night. Rather than spending it alone with her husband, she is instead greeted by her very rich in-laws. Her new family wants to play a game with Grace, which sounds a little strange, but harmless enough. However, after Grace draws the Hide and Seek card, she finds herself in a barbaric battle for survival. Rather than the traditional rules of the game, the family intend to hunt and kill Grace as a sacrifice to their pact with the devil. Should they fail and Grace survive until dawn, their entire fortune will be stripped from them. 

A super high-concept horror comedy, Ready or Not features a Scream Queen-worthy turn from Samara Weaving, a lot of laughs, and bucket loads of blood. Part of the new wave of ‘eat the rich’ movies, Ready or Not is wickedly entertaining, balancing laughs with inventive ways to kill off the deplorable elite. An instant horror hit, Ready or Not spawned a sequel, which finds Grace once more fighting for her life and also gave the world new Halloween costume inspiration and a way to use that wedding dress for more than just the big day. 

Based on the short film of the same name, The Stylist joins hair stylist Claire as she is drafted in at the last minute to do the wedding hair of Olivia. What no one knows is that Claire has murderous tendencies. She latches onto some of her clients, fixating on them, dreaming of what life in their shoes – or more specifically, in this instance, scalps – before her obsession drives her to kill. Olivia remains oblivious to Claire’s intense adoration, but comes to reject her negligence when it comes time to walk down the aisle. The Stylist features one heck of a kicker during its final moments, the kind that will have you nervous about attending your next wedding ceremony. 

Directed by Jill Gevargizian, who incidentally works as a hair stylist around movie gigs, The Stylist is equal parts Single White Female, American Psycho, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, just with extra shine, volume, and scalpings. 

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill opens in black and white with Uma Thurman’s bride being shot, before jumping ahead four years as she awakens from a coma. Intent on killing those that wronged her, Beatrix ‘the Bride’ Kiddo spends the first half of the two movies hacking down her enemies with only that opening tease for the audience to go on. Then, as Kill Bill: Vol 2 begins, the viewer is shown the whole bloody affair, which sees Beatrix’s former accomplice arrive at her wedding chapel, brutally murder her husband-to-be, and leave her for dead.  

Although the audience is already on the Bride’s side after film one, this brutal opening to the second part cements just how awful Bill and his team are. Tarantino’s movie takes inspiration from some of the greatest films in Asian cinema, such as Lady Snowblood, The Street Fighter, and Game of Death, and is a must-see for fans of action-revenge movies. 

There is nothing more dramatic than a soap wedding. A day meant to be full of bliss is almost always ruined in the name of grabbing ratings, and through soap opera history, there have been some great moments. From cheaters exposed on the altar, to extreme weather threatening the ceremony, every scenario you can think of has likely happened in one or more soap. Ramsey Street in Neighbours was especially good at throwing together a wedding, with the union of Scott and Charlene attracting 20 million UK viewers back in 1988. Their ceremony went off without too much drama, but the same can not be said of that of Jared ‘Toadie’ Rebecchi and Dion ‘Dee’ Bliss. 

Shortly after exchanging their vows, the pair drove off into the sunset together, headed for their honeymoon, but some faulty brakes saw Toadie unable to maintain control of the car, and they flew off a cliff. Whilst Toadie was found, Dee was lost to the sea below, emotionally crippling the new groom. Years later, Toadie found happiness with Sonya, only to have Dee’s long-lost and unknown twin sister, Andrea, pose as his dead former wife, causing all kinds of mischief, before original Dee returned to complicate the situation even further. 

Cold feet are a common occurrence in movie weddings, and whilst most times it provides the set-up for a sweeping romantic comedy, love is most definitely not in the air in 2023’s Til Death Do Us Part. The action thriller sees a bride hunted down after leaving her groom at the altar. Her reasons for abandoning him are quickly revealed as the men hunting her are her former flame and his groomsmen. 

Toxic masculinity runs rife in Til Death Do Us Part, but it is also packed full of fight sequences, making this one for action fans. 

Alanis Morissette once sang about how terrible rain was on a wedding day, but that is far more preferable to what happens at the wedding in Melancholia. The day in question is the start of the end of the world, making it a far from joyous occasion for anyone. The bride, Justine, has far more on her mind than the apocalypse; however, struggling with depression and clearly unhappy with her life and choice of partner, Justine decides that her wedding day is the perfect day to start again. She quits her job and announces her separation from her new husband, but rather than get to live her new normal, Justine has to face the end of times instead.

The perfect antidote for a good mood, Melancholia is director Lars von Trier on top form. 

Spanish language horror [Rec] is one of the best found-footage horrors going. The story follows a journalist shadowing a fire crew for the night. Initially, it starts fairly boring, but a callout to an apartment building changes everything. It becomes clear that the residents have been stricken by a virus with resurrective properties. After the success of the first [Rec], several more films in the franchise were made, including [Rec]³ Genesis, for which the story runs parallel to that of the original.

Opening with wedding preparations, the bride and groom have to place their nuptials on hold after the zombie virus rips through the wedding party. Separated from one another, [Rec]³ Genesis follows bride Clara and groom Koldo as they desperately try to reunite.

When it comes to on-screen weddings going horrifically wrong, Game of Thrones’ Red Wedding takes some topping. The ninth episode of the third season, ‘The Rains of Castamere,’ has gone down in TV history for its bloodbath ending. In a bid to smooth over relations with the Frey family, King of the North, Rob Stark, apologises to Walder Frey for breaking his promise to marry his daughter, offering his Uncle, Edmure Tully, in his stead. Walder agrees to the union, but during the wedding reception, he shows his true colours as his men slaughter all of Stark’s, before murdering his pregnant bride, his mother, and Rob himself. 

The internet came close to breaking when the episode first aired, with fans unable to believe that the show would kill off the heir to House Stark. Not only is the sequence shocking, but it is also extremely gruesome and overwhelmingly tragic. Thankfully, the next wedding on the show, in Season 4’s second episode, ‘The Lion and the Rose’, resulted in the irritating Joffrey Baratheon being poisoned during the wedding breakfast, which pleased fans a great deal. It quickly became apparent that almost every union in Game of Thrones ended in some kind of disaster, with Sansa’s wedding night with Ramey Bolton also best forgotten.