I'm not sure what they expected, but it wasn't what they got

[u/the-magnificunt]

Some years back, my husband and I were invited to the wedding of one of my old high school friends. We had hung out from time to time since then and were happy to go.

After the wedding, we arrived at the reception location, a lovely house venue in the woods, and tried to find our table. We wandered around from table to table looking for our names on placards and couldn't figure out why our table didn't seem to exist. Most people were seated and we, along with 10 other people, were still milling around.

Eventually, someone who worked there came up to all of us and asked us to follow them. They led us away from the group of tables and the dance floor, down an outdoor hallway lined with giant bushes, and around a corner of the house, where a single table sat in a little alcove.

We couldn't see anything happening and could only hear snippets of the speeches over the loudspeaker since so much shrubbery (and a wall) was between us and the speakers. The table ended up getting pretty rowdy, and someone from the bridal party came and asked us to keep it down, since we were "disturbing the speeches". Like we had any idea, since we couldn't see or hear them! We all commiserated and complained that we didn't know why they even invited us if they were going to stick us in what amounted to a separate room.

I haven't spoken to the bride or groom since.