Gun-toting guest who ruined bride’s ‘dream wedding’ blames hotel for fiasco

A guest who accidentally fired his gun during a Waldorf Astoria wedding says it’s not his fault the lavish party was canceled — the world-famous hotel is to blame.
Vladimir Gotlibovsky, whose 9mm Ruger went off at the reception in June, grazing a fellow wedding guest’s head, is now suing the hotel, claiming management overreacted in shutting down the celebration after the gunfire.
Gotlibovsky, who is being sued by bride Anna Goldshmidt for ruining her $750,000 “dream wedding,” says the Waldorf should have to fork over at least half of whatever the court awards the newlywed because the hotel “unilaterally and without justification canceled the reception.”
The Brooklyn liquor store owner “was not responsible for the cancellation of the wedding reception,” his lawyer, Christopher Chang, says in the filing.
“The fact of the matter is after the firearm discharged, the hotel was secure and the reception could have gone forward,” Chang told The Post.
A Waldorf spokesman did not return a request for comment.
Chang also said that since the couple’s parents paid for the June 13 affair, the newlyweds cannot sue to recoup the costs, just for emotional damages.
The bride would beg to differ.
She seethes in her suit that Gotlibovsky, a relative, was drunk and failed to holster his pistol even though he’d accidentally discharged it in the past.
The shooting caused her “severe embarrassment in front of all her friends, relatives and other guests.”
“Her dream wedding was canceled and can never be recaptured . . . there will never be a wedding album; [and] what was to be the happiest day of her life turned into a disaster,” the suit says.
The bride’s attorney, David Jaroslawicz, noted that Gotlibovsky’s case against the Waldorf “doesn’t talk about the fact that he handed [the gun off to his brother] and it disappeared,” meaning hotel management didn’t know it “was an accident and not a willful shooting.”
But Jaroslawicz agreed that the event shouldn’t have been called off. “I think they panicked and canceled it,” he said of the Waldorf, noting that security could have screened guests as they moved from the lobby reception to the ballroom.

Gotlibovsky had a gun permit and has not been criminally prosecuted over the incident.