Bride Says She Felt ‘Humiliated’ After Groom’s Wedding Speech Turned Into a Roast

A woman turned to Reddit for advice after her husband’s wedding speech—on a night she hoped would be full of warmth and gratitude—left her feeling small and heartbroken.

In her post, she said the speech quickly shifted from sentiment to jokes at her expense. He riffed on her pre-wedding fitness routine, saying she’d been walking 40,000 steps a day to lose weight, which made her feel mocked rather than praised. She’d trained for months to look and feel her best, she wrote, only to have her efforts “diminished” without a single kind word about how she looked.

The jokes continued. He described her as “a sheltered girl from the shire who only went to two shopping centres before him,” a line she found demeaning. She emphasized that any growth she’s experienced came from her own work and life experience—not because he “taught [her] how to live.” Hearing guests laugh along left her feeling belittled.

He also turned their detailed wedding planning—what she considered a “labour of love”—into another punchline, saying they kept “countless spreadsheets” and “fed each other’s insanity and obsessiveness,” which, to her, reduced a meaningful project to a caricature.

What hurt most, she said, was when he pivoted to praising his sister, calling her “the person who inspires him to be better.” The bride noted that his sister has long been dismissive and rude toward her. As the groom and his sister locked eyes and cried, the bride said she felt invisible: “All I wanted was for my groom to call me beautiful and say the kind things he did about his sister for me.”

A week into their marriage and on the eve of their honeymoon, the bride admitted she couldn’t bring herself to speak to him: “I feel like I became the butt of his joke on the only night I was supposed to be celebrated.” She asked readers whether she was overreacting by avoiding him.

Many commenters reassured her that her feelings were valid. One wrote, “The speech wasn’t for you, it was for him. To show everyone how he ‘fixed’ you and how great his relationship with his sister is. You were just a prop in his story.” Another added, “Think long and hard if you want this for the rest of your life. Someone who humiliated you on the supposed best day of your lives… He revealed himself.”