So my best mate got married some years ago, and his wife is a lovely, lovely, lovely lady. I say lovely three times because she has one eye due to an accident involving her mother being a massive bitch, and wears an eyepatch with the "Eye of Horus" on it. She could not be more beautiful, or dignified in her bearing. My best mate seriously "married up".

I'm standing as Best Man, only one standing for him as his sisters refused to stand at his side because "lolTradition", and he has no other male relatives that he's close to. The bride has four sisters, all standing with her, all beaming and happy and sunshine and rainbows.

The officiant is doing the preamble and commenting on how wonderful it is that we're all gathered here in love and friendship, and how pleased he is to see the unrepentant grin on my Mate's face as if he can't believe his luck, and how the bride is trying (and failing) to not cry tears of joy because she knows how deeply she's loved.

And then my best mate hits the ground like someone cancelled "brain.sh" with admin privs.

I see this dart sticking out of his back, hear a scream, and jump over to stand between the bride and crowd as four guys are running down the aisle towards her. The lady's ma brought some fucking hooligans to kidnap her, because (and this is a quote from the daft bitch) "She doesn't deserve to be happy after killing her husband."

The bride's father was dumbstruck, being: 1. Alive, B. Sitting in the front row, III. Now entangled with one of the idiots that were trying to kidnap the bride.

Thankfully, my best mate's sisters (the aforementioned Chekov's Gun here) weren't the "wilting lily" style and as I was busy holding off the presumed abductors three-to-one (I'm a big dude, but three on one is still me getting my ass kicked most days) they jumped in and began beating ass.

The bride's sisters moved around the outside of the chapel and performed what is euphemistically referred to as a curbstomp fight on their mother.

I ended up being able to subdue and restrain the remaining people with the help of my little cohort of Valkyrie, and tied their hands and legs with the garlands (strung with high-tension metal wire). Some of the guests helped me stack them like cord wood outside the chapel, another had made a bee-line for the Rectory which held the only phone and called the police during the fight, and the mother was trussed and gagged with several of the arm shawls the maids were wearing.

During all of this, the officiant (who was also a trained EMT) and the bride were tending to the husband, who was recovering but still groggy. I walked over, told the bride that I would be standing guard over the interruption and was met with her looking at me calmly, and saying, "No. You shall take your place right there, help (my best mate) stand up steady, and we will continue with the ceremony."

I mentioned that the police may need to interview everyone, and was met with, "They can wait, in the back rows, and observe the wedding. This is happening. Please go re-escort my sisters up here, and get the guests back to their seats. Tell my uncle to stand outside with whatever blunt object he prefers to watch over our unexpected guests." I blinked once and got a, "Now."

After herding everyone back to their places, helping move the furniture back to where it belonged, taking down the decorations that were now unpaired and unmatched, my mate was "ok" enough to stand with me holding him up. The officiant then continued like nothing had happened, my best mate got hitched to the strongest lady I've ever known, and the cops quietly took statements and got information from everyone during the reception on the grounds outside the building. The officiant hovered unobtrusively near the groom to monitor him, the EMTs tended to the scrapes and bruises (including mine, as I had a bloodied eye and ear from the fracas) and took blood samples for needed screenings from everyone.

I spent the evening dancing with the sisters from both sides of the family, and being lauded with tales of my "heroism" for not being a dick and letting someone near the bride. Several hours later, the bride and groom left to go to the honeymoon, I went to the police station with the sisters and others who were directly involved to fill out the paperwork and whatnot that the police requested we do, and that, dear Reddit, is the worst thing I've ever witnessed at a wedding.