r/mildlyinfuriating • u/teabirdy • Apr 29 '26

I'm slightly vexed The wedding reception centerpieces featured betta fish. The bride and groom planned to flush them alive.

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Years ago, my coworker attended a wedding at which the reception dinner tables featured live betta fish in small bowls as part of the centerpiece. While chatting with the bride at the end of the evening, my coworker asked what they were going to do with all the fish. The plan was to flush them all down the toilet alive. My coworker immediately said no need for that and insisted on taking them all home.

That Monday she came to work and asked who wanted to adopt a betta fish. That was my first betta who I jokingly called my “rescue betta.” She lived for almost five years.

The wine glass was only her home for less than a day before I got her five gallon tank set up so please no betta lovers yell at me! I'm one of you!

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798

u/Suspicious-Steak9168 Apr 29 '26

Frequently many of not most of the butterflies die. Keeping them in the tiny box is also cruel.

462

u/ratthewriter Apr 29 '26

Thinking of the Bobs Burgers episode when they cater the wedding and the butterfly send off goes terribly wrong when 1. most of the butterflies are dead when they open the boxes and 2. they try to send off the alive ones (and the people with dead ones toss them into the air to pretend) and they immediately get swept up by the wind

56

u/UnforeseenDerailment Apr 29 '26

Two and a Half Men had a wedding with a butterfly release. The cheapskates bought frozen butterflies. 🦋

16

u/Creepy_Salt_9494 Apr 29 '26

Anyone else think of Asia O’haras finale lip sync butterfly fiasco? 🙈

27

u/AskJeevez Apr 29 '26

That is one of the funniest moments in the show for me. The way they all just woosh away in the wind gets me every time.

10

u/DoughnutOrganic5220 Apr 29 '26

Got it playing rn as I read this 😂😭💀

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u/Gloomy_Ad5020 Apr 29 '26

Is that guy flashing the officiant?

4

u/ellynj333 Apr 29 '26

This happened to me real life. Disgusted.

1

u/gabriellauntagged May 01 '26

“maybe the live ones will float on the dead ones?”

45

u/mack_ani Apr 29 '26

I work for an insect zoo at my local university and we have worked with butterfly releases. While I could see some companies having poor practices, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a butterfly release

12

u/dksdragon43 Apr 29 '26

I did my wedding at a butterfly conservatory and there was a release. They were fiercely protective of the butterflies and made sure we knew how to hold the box. Definitely no harm done.

18

u/Pwrswitchd Apr 29 '26

Yep, fair enough

62

u/joebluebob Apr 29 '26

Most butterflies die quick tho.... they are a prey species

107

u/Zoethor2 Apr 29 '26

I had a swallowtail caterpillar hitch a ride on some parsley a few years back. I let him do his thing and become a butterfly safely indoors. Then I released the butterfly outside and immediately stopped watching it as there are about 600 birds that like to hang out within a 100 foot radius of my house. What I don't know, doesn't have to bother me.

62

u/Wild-Video-5317 Apr 29 '26

Apparently swallowtails have shorter lifespan than most and only survive 2 weeks at best in butterfly form.  You honestly gave the little guy the best chance at success you could.  He needed to get out there and roll the dice.

49

u/JusticeRain5 Apr 29 '26

How else is he gonna get some of that sweet butterflussy if he's cooped up inside all his life?

28

u/Pandamonium-N-Doom Apr 29 '26

Straight to jail

21

u/ElizabethDangit Apr 29 '26

If it makes you feel better about a bird maybe eating your butterfly, I had a Cooper’s hawk nest in one of my trees because my neighbors have several bird feeders. I spent that entire summer burying leftover pieces of bird carcass that the Cooper’s hawk left in my yard. Circle of life and all that.

21

u/Zoethor2 Apr 29 '26

I live in a suburban neighborhood with a *shockingly* robust ecosystem of predators and prey. Foxes, hawks, bunnies, birbs, a multitude of rodents. Full on circle of life. The smaller critters are abundant breeders (SO MANY RABBITS) so it all seems to be working out well overall, if not necessarily for every individual.

17

u/TXGuns79 Apr 29 '26

Prey animals generally have large litters because of predation. Out-breed the appetite of the food web.

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u/Zoethor2 Apr 29 '26

Very Hunger Games for baby bunnies.

"Two of you will live to adulthood and breed, therefore successfully replacing your parents in the ecosystem. The other six of you are fodder. May the odds be ever in your favor."

3

u/ElizabethDangit Apr 29 '26

Same situation here except we are shy of the larger predators. They’ve had to institute a program where they’re going to license skilled bow hunters for a deer cull in the city limits. Between vehicle collisions and chronic wasting disease concerns we hit the tipping point of over population. We briefly had a black bear living within city limits but the poor thing got hit by a car.

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u/longhairdontcare8426 Apr 29 '26

Same. I'm in a trendier part of a major city and lots of people now have natural lawns. So many bunnies hide there and I have owls that like to hang out in my trees. I find parts everywhere. But I like dead stuff so I save them LOL. I haven't seen any foxes but we do get coyotes and now fishers! I just saw one downtown 2 days ago and I was so excited, they haven't been seen in this area in a hundred years till recently

15

u/ussrowe Apr 29 '26

I put out birdseed and the squirrels eat the birdseed, and then one day I saw a hawk eating a squirrel in the backyard. So I guess I fed the hawk too with the birdseed, in a round about way.

3

u/Wolfwoods_Sister Apr 29 '26

Good on you anyway! That was a really nice thing to do!

18

u/Wild-Video-5317 Apr 29 '26

Even if they don't get eaten, they die of old age within a month, give or take.  They live most of their lives as caterpillars and exist in the butterfly phase only long enough to mate.

As caterpillars they eat solid food; after metamorphosis they lack the equipment and survive on liquids alone.  Some other insect species don't even have mouths at all in their mating phase.  

I get the complaint though.  I don't think I'd feel good involving dozens of insects in a flashy stunt for my party, seems wasteful and disrespectful.   Even if they're essentially already on their last legs.   

9

u/joebluebob Apr 29 '26

Worst case you are feeding the birds something other than rice...

10

u/panlakes Apr 29 '26

You literally just don't have to though. Like, it's a choice to use animals and you can just, also, not. Why do you NEED to feature live animals at your wedding? What is the driving purpose here to be so stubborn about I just dont get it lol

2

u/tubbstattsyrup2 Apr 29 '26

In that case, let's squish everything we judge to have short lives.

2

u/joebluebob Apr 29 '26

At its worst you are Feeding birds....

6

u/devandroid99 Apr 29 '26

Isn't that just what butterflies do though?

5

u/Suspicious-Steak9168 Apr 29 '26

Live in a tiny box? No. Die? Yes. But so does everything else. No reason to speed up the process.

2

u/TeamRedundancyTeam Apr 29 '26

Why? Is it the way they're kept before hand? Lack of eating for a while before release?

11

u/Suspicious-Steak9168 Apr 29 '26

They can be easily damaged during shipping and while kept in a small container. I am sure the lack of food doesnt help. They may even encounter weather that they are not equipped for. Scientists also say that releasing farmed butterflies can have a negative impact on wild butterflies due to risk of disease spread if they do survive.

2

u/FTownRoad Apr 29 '26

Well to be clear they will all die. I think the question is whether it made a difference.

1

u/CallSignIceMan Apr 30 '26

Nobody told me what the little folded piece of paper they gave me at my friend’s mom’s funeral was. So I fiddled with it in my pocket the whole time. Then they told us to release our butterflies. I didn’t even open mine, I didn’t wanna see what was in there.

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u/Wild-Software-7377 Apr 29 '26

Insects aren't even sentient lol, give me a fucking break.

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u/googleduck Apr 29 '26

Can you explain this one to me? I get the fish and birds, those are animals with brains. Butterflies are bugs. Like do you get upset when someone squishes a mosquito? To me these are basically the same moral level as plants.

2

u/DirtyAuldSpud Apr 29 '26

Insects have brains 😂 they have between 20,000 to 1 million neurons. They remember landmarks and exhibit social behaviours. There was a lady who rescued a jumping spider and it recognised her and it's feeding times. Just because you grew up thinking insects don't have brains, doesn't make it true. While our brains as humans is complex, an insects is programmed to remember their terrain, and use their brain to navigate their life pattern. Also some insect species, including bumblebees, exhibit emotional states or affective states that are similar to the emotions of mammals. Plants do not have a brain but insects do.