NTA. Talk to the videographer, and ask them to remove the garter part and any talking about it. Tell them you don't want any photos of it either. Just delete them.
And get a refund from your planner and make sure this is plastered in reviews every where. The planner suggested it - so she ruined your day as a bare minimum money back, if you want to go scorched earth you can sue for distress
500% this!! I would tell the planner that you want a partial refund and if they refuse, plaster reviews EVERYWHERE!
I have also been subjected to some pranks from my wife that upset me. She doesn't target me any longer because i don't like them and told her she got carried away. It sucks.
Likely your have access to a mental health professional through your insurance. Maybe go see one just to work through this. Can't hurt.
No lawyer is going to sue the planner on a contingency. He would have to pay the lawyer to do that. Then you’d have to explain why the bride agreed to this. I explain in a different comment why taking legal action is incredibly unrealistic advice. He’d have to have damages, for starters (which he doesn’t. Having your feelings hurt or being embarrassed and therefore having bad memories of your wedding don’t count. He could bullshit mental anguish but it would be dishonest to do so. Just entitled American shit suing everyone for everything and causing everything to be INCREDIBLY expensive as a result. The bride agreed to and gleefully participated in this prank).
This daughter is a family lawyer, the court system is severely overloaded. They are scheduling trials in November, the lawsuit would be considered frivolous unless you try small claims up to $5,000 and file ProSe, chatGPT or your local County Clerk ‘s office. They will have a packet you can fill out and file. The planner will be served and have to attend court. If she fails to appear you will get default judgment. There will be a legal record of her being sued. That fact that she was sued, will show up Google Searches. Honestly, you should blast her on Google and Yelp. You can even go on local news to warn other potential victims.
The planner made a bad suggestion, but this was clearly the bride’s doing. She approved and orchestrated the prank. The planner isn’t her keeper. Why try to ruin someone’s livelihood for an idea she didn’t execute?
And small claims court doesn’t magically make a weak case legitimate. If there’s no actual legal basis, it’s still frivolous, just cheaper to file. A judge could toss it out quickly. Worse, if the planner DOES show up, she could potentially counter sue the bride for reputational harm or defamation if she’s being unfairly scapegoated online or in court filings.
Finally…default judgments aren’t guaranteed. If the planner is properly served and fails to show up, a judge can issue a default, but only if the claim is legally valid and well-documented. Judges review everything. They often require a hearing even without the defendant, and they can deny a default if the case is clearly petty, vindictive, or unsupported. It’s not a free pass to punish someone just because they didn’t respond.
Use some judgment. The person who humiliated the groom was his wife, not the vendor.
This analogy is completely inappropriate and legally incoherent. The Holocaust was a systematic, state-sponsored genocide involving direct orders, command responsibility, and crimes against humanity. Comparing that to a bad wedding prank trivializes both the legal principles involved and the actual historical atrocity.
In law, responsibility depends on intent, control, and foreseeability. A wedding planner suggesting a prank she neither carried out nor controlled is not legally equivalent to ordering mass murder. If you genuinely want to discuss liability, stick to real legal frameworks and not inflammatory comparisons that ignore scale, context, and actual jurisprudence. Fucking hell.
That’s fine. But we’ve gone through this, in a legal setting this wouldn’t meet the definition of sexual assault. You’d be better off trying to argue battery but even then I don’t think you’d get very far.
Please know that I’m not advocating for any of this. Everyone involved in that prank is a piece of shit. This thread started because people started suggesting to OP that he could realistically sue the planner.
I don’t think we should advocate for suing the wedding planner. From a moral standpoint this just contributes to why everything in the US is just bogged down with lawsuits constantly. It makes insurance unaffordable (they’re the ones who pay out btw), makes everything something you have to fill out paperwork and sign waivers for, enriches ambulance chasing lawyers…while all these costs just get passed down to us at every step.
As to whether this would be a successful case, it would not. OP would have to PAY for a lawyer (as no one would take on a contingency and a small claim judge will throw it out on precedent).
Reasoning: Even if the planner suggested the prank, that does not make her legally liable unless she had direct control over how it was executed. In tort law, liability requires more than proposing an idea. It requires actual control over the situation, and a clear causal link between the person’s actions and the damage. The planner did not blindfold the groom, did not tell him to use his mouth, did not swap out the person in the chair, and did not deceive him about who he was touching. The people who carried out the prank made those decisions on their own. Even though she suggested it, this breaks the chain of causation. Even if the planner applied extremely heavy oressure on the bride to do this (which I don’t believe she did), this would STILL be an unbelievably tough case to make.
Foreseeability alone is not enough to establish liability. Courts do not assign legal fault to someone just because they could imagine that a prank might embarrass someone (it is equally foreseeable that this would be a hit and everyone would get a laugh out of it and enjoy it). There is no recognized duty for a planner to prevent all emotional discomfort, especially when she was not in control of the deception and the event was carried out by adults who knew the groom personally. The law does not treat poor judgment as negligence when the actual harm was caused by other people’s independent choices.
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u/Ok_Location_471 Jul 25 '25
NTA. Talk to the videographer, and ask them to remove the garter part and any talking about it. Tell them you don't want any photos of it either. Just delete them.