Wedding officiant makes insulting joke about groom’s looks during ceremony

A wedding guest has called out an officiant over a “rude” joke he made in the middle of a couple’s ceremony.

In a recent Reddit post shared to the “Wedding Shaming” subreddit, the guest explained that the officiant wasn’t a priest and was a 30-year-old “churchgoer” recommended by one of the groom’s friends. Throughout the ceremony, the guest wrote that he spent too much time talking about himself and “definitely didn’t sound very professional.”

As the ceremony was ending, the guest said the officiant made “a comment about how it was a good thing that the groom was, ‘definitely marrying up.’”

“Meaning that the bride was significantly better looking than the groom. I get that that could be seen as just a simple joke, but I guess if I was the bride I would be very mad if any part of the wedding ceremony speech was used to talk negatively about either of our looks.”

The guest added, “I also just felt like it was unprofessional.”

Many people in the comments section agreed with the guest and criticized the officiant for making a joke at the groom’s expense during his wedding day.

“It’s the combo of two toxic ideas - one is that it’s the bride’s day and the groom is just window dressing,” one comment began. “The second is that you need to put someone down to praise their partner. What happened to ‘he’s so lucky to be marrying such a beautiful wife’ or something? Even that I feel is a little lopsided but at least not actively trying to be mean. Idk, I grew out of this corny and unkind humor ages ago. I hope the groom didn’t internalize it too much. It would bother me.”

Another commenter agreed, writing, “Yes, it’s tacky on someone’s most important day to do ‘put down’ humor. Just be nice and save your comedy routine for another day.”

One commenter talked about her experience with a priest at her boyfriend’s little brother’s funeral after he died in a car accident. “At the funeral, the priest talked about himself and his life the entire time. I don’t think he even actually said the boy’s name. But he talked about his divorce, his mother dying, his passions in life, and his favorite Bible verses, it was getting more and more infuriating as it went on,” the commenter wrote.

“Then as he was wrapping up his autobiographical speech he turned to the deceased’s girlfriend (21 y/o mother, her son is from before the guy who died) and tells her ‘it’s truly a tragedy that you lost your partner so young, you’ll never find a third guy to raise a another man’s son’ and then just walked past!”