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A home video of the wedding in Astrakhan, southern Russia, shows a grinning friend of the groom unexpectedly pulling a pistol from his waistband, putting it to his temple and squeezing the trigger. The gun emits only a clicking sound and the smiling gunman asks who else wants to try his luck.
Another guest is shown taking up the offer, but this time the trick goes wrong.
The second man pulls the trigger and immediately collapses to the floor as the gun releases a rubber bullet into his skull at point-blank range. He is now reported to be fighting for his life.
The gunman, a 33 year-old Chechen man, insists he was sure that he had emptied the pistol's chamber of every bullet and says he only wanted to enliven the wedding. But local police do not believe him and have opened a criminal investigation into the tragic incident.
Russian weddings are notoriously drunken and sometimes violent, with fist fights not uncommon.
The origins of Russian roulette are unclear, but it is thought to have started in the nineteenth century when sadistic Russian prison guards forced inmates to play and bet on the outcome.