40 Wedding Dresses That Confused the Guests

This unusual wedding dress came about thanks to a competition to get married by Taco Bell in Las Vegas. Yes, you did read that right. Diane Nguyen (also the name of Bojack Horseman’s BFF) made this pretty impressive wedding dress out of old burrito wrappers. In her post to enter the contest, Nguyen pulled out a couple of puns, saying, “It’s time to spill the beans […] Our love for each other is as cheesy as a quesadilla.”

This dress doesn’t exactly look like a traditional wedding gown, but it was perfect for the soccer-mad couple tying the knot. Both the bride and groom for this British wedding were huge fans of soccer team Manchester City. In preparation for the big day, the bride-to-be spent six nights a week at the sewing machine, stitching together her fiancé’s old shirts. After their ceremony, this pair skipped the reception and went to watch their favorite team play a match.

This Day of the Dead inspired dress is a whole vibe. This bride must be a gothic, costume-loving individual, or else this would be a pretty shocking look. This ensemble comes with a slinky white dress, a flowing white veil, a single red rose, and a face full of spooky makeup. This look isn’t even that shocking once the makeup is removed, but we’d love to see the looks on the guest’s faces when they see this ghoulish bride coming down the aisle.

This strange wedding dress is more understated than some of the others on this list, but that doesn’t mean it looks good. Sure, gigantic dresses are easy to make fun of, but let’s not overlook the true horrors of an ill-fitting or poorly designed slim fit dress. This one seems to be decorated with feathers, and looks like a school project where students tried to make a dress from a swan. And while we’re here – those boots are not correct.

What is there to say about this dress? Longtime viewers of top-tier bridal reality show Say Yes to The Dress know that every once in a while, someone’s friend or family member will yell – “That looks like a comforter!” You know where this is going right? Well, this dress clearly looks more like a comforter than some comforters do. We wouldn’t be surprised if some confused wedding guests rested their weary heads on the train. It does look pretty cozy…

Honestly, we have to admit that we kind of like this dress. The thing is, people that like Japanese cartoon cat Hello Kitty, really like Japanese cartoon cat Hello Kitty. You can’t really like Hello Kitty a medium amount. You either don’t care for the blank-faced feline, or you want her stamped all over everything you own. So yes, this wedding dress is confusing for guests that are ignorant of the magic of Hello Kitty. But who cares?

This image raises rather a lot of questions. Of course, we’ll get to the gold foil dress, but why does this bride look so unhappy? Perhaps she’s just trying to stay totally still so that people think she’s actually a statue. Or maybe she’s not moving her face so that the light will twinkle off her dress instead. Either way, the dress is a monstrosity by most standards. It’s sharp, it’s shapely, and it’s absolutely blinding. Next, please!

When looking at a dress like this, one can only try to understand the mindset of the person wearing it. Was this bride present when she bought it? Did she look in the mirror before she left? Is she happy with this outcome? Basically, this wedding gown (if it can be called that), has a very low, drop waist with a skin-tight, geometric cut-out bodice. Underneath that, are rows and rows of tulle. Overall, it doesn’t work, at all.

Come on, admit it – this picture brought a smile to your face. And the details only make it even cuter. This sheep-loving bride is shepherdess Louise Fairburn, who gave her entire wedding a woolly twist. The bride’s dress is made from the wool of her favorite sheep, Olivia the Lincoln Longwool. Fairburn also carried a crook on her big day, and her husband-to-be wore a waistcoat made from wool. In a less sweet twist, the wedding guests dined on lamb dishes.

This look isn’t very bridal at all, but it is very committed to its bright color palette and attention to child’s play area balls. This dress is what happens when a ball pit at a soft play area arranges itself like the dress in Cinderella. The whole ball pit swirls up, cloaking its bride in small, plastic orbs, until she only needs to slip on a mermaid-esque pink bandeau and call it a (wedding) day. Even the clutch is ball-centric.

We’ve already seen one bride celebrating Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, and here we have another, but with a twist. If you look closely, every part of this ghoulish dress is actually made from paper cups, paper plates, and a whole host of cutlery. This entire dress could probably be stuffed in the recycling bin after use, so it’s definitely eco-friendly. Clearly, a lot of work and effort has gone into this creation, but we suspect the guests might still be confused.

We know that some people dream about their wedding day for their entire lives. Often, these people view their big day as a fairytale, and the beginning of their happy ending together. This couple went all-in with the fairytale theme, which meant a huge pair of white wings affixed to the bride’s back. The groom appears to be wearing an ornate cape, petals are strewn on the ground, and candles flicker in the background. Let’s hope it’s happily ever after.

This bride doesn’t just love incredibly long wedding dresses – she and her husband broke the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest wedding dress. The extremely long dress had a train that measured 219 yards, and was an homage to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The record has since been broken, but imagine the experience for a guest at this wedding. Standing far away from the couple yet still holding the bride’s dress doesn’t exactly sound like a fun time.

Despite this being a list of confusing wedding dresses, this one takes the cake. It’s hard to make sense out of this image, but a little more context does thankfully fill in some blanks. You see, this couple are fans of cacti, so this wedding dress is actually an homage to the prickly plants. While the context explains things, it doesn’t make this dress any less confusing. We have to assume this was a temporary costume because the bride can’t use her arms at all!

We feel like this unusual wedding dress is a little more predictable than some of the others on this list. After all, there are always proud Americans who want to show off their patriotism to their nearest and dearest. And what better way than with a red, white and blue wedding gown? This dress is basically an American flag in gown shape, and leaves no mystery as to where this bride hails from. Now we want to see the groom!

Now, this dress is confusing, but it’s not cactus confusing, or Day of the Dead mixed with recyclables confusing. This one has more of a pageant-Carnival vibe, complete with a glittery, multi-colored ruffled skirt, and a bejeweled corset. Clearly this bride is full of life, and wants her personality to be reflected in her dress. Overall, this dress might be more at home in a Samba-led street parade, but we bet it looked great sashaying down the aisle.

We think it’s only right to stop and applaud this couple. This British couple are obviously big fans of green swamp-dweller Shrek, and his damsel turned ogre wife, Princess Fiona. The groom told a local newspaper, “I’ve always said I’d give her the fairytale wedding if she married me and she said, in our fairytale, we’d be Shrek and Princess Fiona.” The couple’s guests also wore fun costumes, so they tied the knot in front of Captain Jack Sparrow, Snow White, and Mr. T.

While we’re applauding people, let’s stay on our feet for this excellent human. This creative individual didn’t commit to just one gender presentation for their big day, instead choosing to go half and half. On one side we have the feminine presenting bride with a floor-length white gown, long hair, and a bunch of flowers. On the other, we have a tuxedo with a bowtie, and half a mustache. The guests may have been confused, but we say bravo!

We could argue that this bride’s wedding dress isn’t that strange. We could say that, sure, it has a strange, colored, patterned, breastplate, but ultimately, it’s a long white dress. However, as this picture shows, this wedding dress is not just a wedding dress. It’s also the template for what looks like a life-size wedding cake depicting the bride in her dress. If the wedding guests weren’t confused already, this is sure to tip them over the edge. The bride doesn’t look too happy about it, either.

You might be most familiar with Bo Peep from the Toy Story franchise, which sees the crook wielding character embrace her feminist side as the story progresses. Not so for this dress wearer, who’s sticking to the Little Bo Beep that lost her sheep, and doesn’t know where to find them. This hideous wedding creation is lacy, sparkly, pink, and ill-fitting all at once. It’s like a popsicle that’s come to life and stolen the frilly hat from a nursery rhyme character.

Ten years ago, British TV came out with a controversial and highly popular docuseries, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. The show traveled to the US, where it was known as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Understandably, people from the communities depicted complained about the show, arguing that it didn’t fully represent their lives. Aside from the poor representation, the show did give us some gigantic dresses, like this one, emblazoned with a cat’s silhouette. Somehow we suspect that tiara has a cat on it as well.

What to say about this picture? Frankly, it has left us just as confused as the wedding guests must have been. Is this actually a wedding outfit, or some sort of confusing Halloween costume? And why, tell us why, is there a glittery blue wig perched on top of this lady’s brown bob? This outfit is the combination of a frilly, lace, full-length wedding dress, and a 1980s blue taffeta, puffy sleeve, lace-trimmed short party dress. Does. Not. Compute.

This orange extravaganza looks like it has also come from reality show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. While these shows were often patronizing and sensationalist towards the communities involved, they also gave us some seriously dramatic bridal looks. In particular, brides on this show tend to love an oversized tiara or crown. This orange-loving duo has gone with a huge orange swirl in the bride’s meringue skirt, an orange rosette on the bust, and of course, a full-length orange veil.

This unusual wedding dress makes a little more sense with some context, but still remains quite confusing. This dress was for a vow renewal to celebrate 10 years of marriage. The man in question? A fire-fighter of course. As a way of paying respect to her man’s profession, this creative bride got her wedding dress airbrushed to look like roaring flames. Presumably, flames are the last thing a fireman would want to see creeping up his bride’s dress, but hey – what do we know?

We’ve seen colorful wedding dresses on this list, but we haven’t seen anything quite like this. This colorful ensemble is paired with a black base, rather than the traditional white one, making the whole look seem almost religious. Don’t these two look like rainbow priests? Or the heads of their own alternative religion? However, let’s not over-focus on this bizarre dress to the detriment of pointing out the groom’s flip-flops. Paneled rainbow stripes we can take, but flip-flops, we cannot.

Speaking of flip-flops, we can’t help but notice that this groom is wearing open-toed sandals on his big day, along with shorts and the top half of a tuxedo. Incredibly, that isn’t the weirdest thing going on in this photo, because the bride is dressed from head to toe in balloons. Thank goodness this bride is laughing, because there’s nothing else to be done in this situation. Let’s hope none of the guests came with a vendetta and a pin.

We’ll hazard a guess that this bridal image also came from a reality TV show. Either that, or this crew has some outlandish taste all on their own. What we have here is a winter wonderland wedding, complete with a fur-trimmed wedding dress that also lights up. This bride looks like Jack Frost’s sister (Jacqueline Frost?) with her sequined bustier, fluted sleeves, and snowflake embroidered ruffled skirt. And what winter bride would waltz down the aisle not wearing a white Santa Clause hat?

Here’s yet another colorful bride who has abandoned the traditional white in favor of every color of the rainbow. This bride doesn’t even have a white bodice, instead opting for a hot pink, bejeweled corset. Listen – there’s no reason at all to wear white on your wedding day just because that’s what has always been done. This outgoing bride shows us that layers of rainbow tulle can be just as celebratory as a classic white dress and veil.

This is certainly a confusing wedding dress design, but it all makes sense to this happy bride. Michelle is an art student, and had a street art theme for her big day. This meant that she spray painted her wedding dress with her and her groom’s initials, and proudly wore the graffitied gown on her special day. We assume that guests weren’t too confused if they were invited to a graffiti-themed wedding, but who could predict a spray-painted white wedding gown?

We’ll bet our sparkly tiara and matching scepter that this image is from a bridal reality show. Where else would we see a hapless groom being shunted out of his bridal carriage by the poufy skirts of his soon-to-be bride? Fitting a puffy meringue dress into your wedding vehicle of choice is never an easy task, but it’s way harder when the meringue skirts are bigger than the mode of transport. At least this guy knows what he’s getting into, right?

Again, we are momentarily left speechless. And after composing ourselves, where do we begin? Is it with the red and white feather boas that make up the bottom of this “dress?” Is it with the matching parasol, so carefully plonked upside down on the ground? Perhaps it’s the elbow-length “gloves” that don’t actually go over this lady’s hands? We suppose we could start with the red straps, or the feather trim, or the bare feet, but taking it all in at once? Not possible.

Camouflage wedding dresses are actually pretty popular, so it’s a wonder we haven’t seen one on this list yet. Famously worn by Mama June, mother of reality child star Alana, aka Honey Boo Boo, the camo wedding gown is a bold bridal move. Usually worn by hunting aficionados or people with military connections, the camo gown certainly makes a statement. This bride posed against a tree in her green and white dress, which is a risky move. Can you guys even see her?

It looks like we have another themed wedding on our hands – and this time, it’s pirates ahoy! Again, we have to assume that wedding guests to these sorts of events aren’t confused, because surely you can’t surprise an entire guest list by rocking up in a pirate costume? On the other hand, these guests might have expected some sand, and some themed table settings, but not that the bride would pull out her buckled boots and hitch up her dress. Regardless, ahoy matey!

If anyone had the pleasure of watching Ari Aster’s 2019 horror movie Midsommar, this bridal look will be rather familiar. In the movie, a couple take a trip to Sweden in order to experience the rural festival of Midsommar, but things take a bizarre and violent turn. Towards the end of the movie, we see the main character dressed from head to toe in a wall of flowers. The moment is frightening, yet freeing. This look may be confusing, but it’s also fabulously dramatic.

Clearly, behind this picture, is a story that explains why this bride is dressed in row after row of cream puff pastries. And luckily for you – we’re going to tell you that story. This is pastry chef Valentyn Shtefano, and his lucky bride Viktoriya, who are both from Ukraine. Apparently, Valentyn informed Viktoriya that he would be making her wedding dress from eggs, sugar and caramel. In the end, Viktoriya loved it, and never wanted to take it off. Surely this would be sticky, right?

It’s not uncommon to sit down on the couch after a long day and turn on the TV to watch the news, so you can catch up on all the current events. After all, you need to know what’s going on in the world, right? Still, we don’t know that people expect or want to read up on the news when they’re attending someone’s wedding. Unfortunately, the guests at this woman’s affair are really going to get a taste of the real world, as her dress seems to be made from newspaper scraps.

This woman truly looks like she’s living her best life — even if she is wrapped in a bunch of tape and gauze bandages. We’re not entirely sure what she was trying to achieve by wearing this particular wedding gown but we do know that she looks like she’s in absolute bliss. Not only does she get to spend the rest of her life with her best friend but she’s also wearing a safeguard dress that has all the proper materials for any sort of disaster (although we hope she never had to use it under those circumstances).

Oh, no. What’s happening here and how do we unsee this image? Considering that this lady’s wedding gown is purely made out of balloons, we can only assume that she had a wardrobe malfunction and was forced to turn to the balloon guy she hired for the reception. Our only worry is that she may have another gown mishap on the dance floor if she busts too hard of a move. Ah, well — to each their own, we guess.

It looks like the roles are reversed for these two lovebirds — ya know, because she’s wearing black and he’s wearing white. In any event, while we can appreciate wanting to be different and unique from others, there’s no harm in being a little traditional when it comes to your wedding ceremony. We hate to say it this vampire-esque style really gives us the creeps. Still, it’s not our wedding and not our say. If this is how they want to tie the knot, who are we to stop them?

Okay — this definitely isn’t the worst dress to have made the list. Still, we don’t necessarily understand the concept of this dress and why someone would actually choose to wear it on their wedding day. Although it has some wedding gown-esque accents throughout, the dress is pretty much a skin-colored bodysuit. And while it may be a fun piece to wear to — let’s say — a costume party, we don’t know that we’d really want to recite our vows in this little number.

Call us crazy but this dress looks like it’d be more appropriate for the flower girl than for the bride herself. Still, we guess this woman wanted to channel her inner girl one last time before exchanging vows with her husband-to-be. And while we can accept that, we’re having trouble getting used to the swan-esque bonnet on top of her head. It’s really quite distracting, after all. Also — we can’t help but wonder whether or not the flower girl was in the same, matching attire as the wife-to-be.

Why carry around a bouquet of flowers on your wedding day when you have a bouquet-esque gown such as this one? Actually, we take that back. This isn’t so much a gown as it is some vintage girdle from the ’30s or ’40s. What we really can’t get over, though, is the fact that this “dress” comes with a set of matching bracelets. We hate to say it but we think this might be our least favorite of all the confusing gowns to make the list.

There’s a lot going on here, and that includes the discomfort we feel just from looking at this catwalk catastrophe. We’re not sure what the designer was thinking when they created this dress but we’re thankful that it only ended up on the runway rather than on a bride-to-be — at least we hope no bride ever wore this eyesore. We’re all about the fast fashion and trends but this is definitely taking things too far. Even the model looks highly uncomfortable…

Let’s be real — this definitely isn’t the worst idea for a wedding gown. After all, who doesn’t love cake? Anyone who says that they don’t eat cake is totally lying. In any case, while we’re not totally sure how this dress technically works, we have to admit that we’re quite impressed. We mean, look at all those colors and layers of cake! Plus, this bride seems to really be enjoying herself. And why wouldn’t she? She can literally eat her wedding gown!

Hmm, a wedding gown made out of toilet paper rolls. Ya know, just in case you accidentally get too excited while you’re on the alter exchanging your vows. Although this isn’t the first time we’ve ever heard about a wedding dress being made out of toilet paper — after all, TLC does have The Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Challenge — we can’t help but feel like seeing the rolls themselves as the train of the dress is just a bit too much to wrap our heads around.

So far, we haven’t seen many images of couples getting hitched in churches. Perhaps that’s because the confusing and outlandish wedding dresses we’ve seen wouldn’t be very welcome in a more spiritual setting. However, it’s not like the bridal gown shown in this image looks totally appropriate for a religious ceremony. Isn’t a wedding dress worn in a church usually long-sleeved, high-necked and opaque? Rather than this, which is long-sleeved, high-necked, and see-through. Seriously, we can see panties, people!

We’ve already seen a Chinese couple break the record for the world’s longest wedding dress. And here we have another Chinese couple going all out for their love. In this case, groom-to-be Xiao Fan had this dress made for his partner, a former Miss Bikini in China. The stunning dress is made from 9,999 red roses, which is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Fan proposed to his other half on Valentine’s Day. We can’t wait to see what she wears to the wedding!

Of all the confusing dresses on this list, this one takes the crown – or should that be the tiara? This dress is a high fashion creation, but that doesn’t mean it was never worn down the aisle or used to terrify and confuse well-meaning guests. The Cocoon dress was designed by Yves Saint Laurent in 1965, and took its inspiration from Russian nesting dolls. We can’t help but point out that it looks rather like a female hygiene product.

When it comes to themed weddings, this couple has gone all out. There are no cheap costumes or ugly props for this pair – instead, they’ve managed to get their hands on an actual real-life owl. Lest we get distracted by the owl, let’s not forget that this groom is wearing antlers, and the bride has a very large pair of wings. In fact, the more we look, the more feathers we see sewn into these outfits. Consider us confused.

Finally, we have a seasonal dress for all those holiday lovers out there. After all, why just celebrate Christmas, when you could wear Christmas? Why just look at a large pine tree when you could wear one? Why decorate your large pine tree when you could decorate yourself? And why not just throw some peacock feathers in the mix just because you can? We can only imagine how confused the wedding guests at this event must have been.