Florida man, brides end Boston wedding day with brawl in Tremont Street bar

UPDATE: No violation of state and city licensing regulations, the board ruled.

A wedding party up from Florida capped their festive day by attacking bouncers and customers at the Beantown Pub, 100 Tremont St., when the two brides were denied entry for being already drunk and not having any ID, since there was no place to put it in the wedding dresses they were still wearing, police and a bar attorney said today.

At a Boston Licensing Board hearing this morning, police said the two newlyweds, one of their fathers and three or four women in the wedding walked over to the bar from the neighboring Nine Zero hotel around 1:20 a.m. on Oct. 30.

Refused admittance, the brides began yelling at the doorman that he was a homophobe. Members of the wedding party told arriving police officers this was why they were forcefully turned away and attacked.

But a lawyer for the bar gave an alternate reason for the bar's refusal to let them in: He said the party was "stumbling" when they tried to enter and that three members of the party were already holding drinks - a beer bottle and a glass and a Styrofoam cup filled with alcohol. Plus, neither of the brides, still in their wedding gowns, had IDs with them.

When the doorman denied them entry, the father began getting agitated and started threatening the doorman, he said, at which point a Beantown Pub regular in a Patriots jersey grabbed dad from behind to try to restrain him. Three of the women in the party then attacked the patron, grabbing his beard and pulling on his jersey, the attorney said.

Three or four other pub patrons then joined in, at which point, he said, the doorman "calmly" made his way through the burgeoning melee to try to get dad out. As he was pushing the father out, the man "jumped on top of him" and began punching him, and the doorman and dad and other people spilled to the ground.

After police arrived, the father claimed the doorman bit him. The pub attorney denied that, saying the fresh toothmarks on his hand came from when the guy punched the doorman in the mouth - hard enough to cause impressions on his hand, but not hard enough to remove any of the doorman's teeth.

The licensing board decides Thursday whether any punishment is warranted for the incident.

One of the formal charges listed on a police citation was for failing to call police after the melee. A bar manager acknowledged he did not do so, but said that was because one of the brides loudly announced she was calling police and then kept telling bar workers and patrons that the police were on the way, and the manager said he felt it was more important to stay out front to try to keep order rather than going to his office in the back to get his phone.