Every wedding dress has a story. How it was purchased, where, who you were with. Some stories are about how cheap the dress ended up being, others are about how someone drove to Wyoming to pick up their perfect gown.
On Reddit, one woman managed to get her dream dress on Craigslist for a deep discount. Later, when her friend asked to borrow it for her wedding, she said yes. But then she discovered the plans her friend had for the dress and took it back.
“I had a designer dress that I got at a ridiculous discount. I paid slightly less than 10% of the original cost for the dress because the last bride never made it to the altar. She was rich and didn’t care about money, and I was discount shopping on Craigslist: It was a perfect match. I made the dress my own, took out the zipper and put in a corset back, added a bustle, etc. I got married in it, hurray, so all was well,” the OP writes.
“Fast forward a bit and a friend asks to borrow the dress. The friend is financially struggling and dealing with health problems. They’re pushing up their wedding to get on their future husband’s federal employee insurance. They want to look pretty for their wedding so they ask me to borrow the dress. I tell them of course they can borrow the dress, and I’ll take care of cleaning costs afterwards. I only ask that they keep it from being irreparably stained or damaged.”
“Two weeks later I start getting a bunch of messages with color swatches. I think ‘oh wedding theme colors, nice.’ She was actually shopping around to get fabric dye to dye my dress some version of a sage/pea/puke green color. There was much concerned back-and-forth that ensued as I realized her intention to drop my very-expensive-got-at-a-bargain-handsewn-to-be-perfect-for-me dress into a vat of sadness in a shade of green nope. At one point in the conversation I politely, but firmly, informed her that I agreed to the dress being borrowed, but would not consent to the dress being dyed.”
The OP ended up getting her dress back, and was cast as the “bad guy” in the whole scenario for denying her sick friend “a day to feel beautiful.”
Is she?
“NTA. BORROW not GIVE. She doesn’t own the dress. You still do! And if you don’t want it dyed, you don’t want it dyed,” said babybella92.
“NTA. I’m so sorry this friend has you messed up enough that you’re doubting yourself. She did not have the right to ask this of you. Borrowing means you take care of that piece of property and return it in better shape than when you got it. NOT destroy it. This friend goes too far. The sickness was no excuse for this level of rudeness and entitlement,” noted Decent_Ad6389.
“NTA but your friend sure is. She’s so sick she needs to borrow your dress but not sick enough to fight you AND ALSO LIE about dyeing a dress she doesn’t own? Lots of us have health problems, we don’t use it as an excuse for shitty behavior. I’d pass on that friendship, like hard pass. HARD,” pointed out Lacroix24601.
“I’m betting her line of thinking was actually, ‘if I irreparably alter this designer dress then OP would no longer want it back and I can keep it forever as “my” wedding dress.’ She may not have even been planning to dye it at all and was just trying to manipulate OP into saying she could keep it,” said RedoftheEvilDead.
“NTA it is general practice when you borrow someone’s clothes that you shouldn’t alter them to your tastes. It was weird and rude of her to expect you to let her dye it (especially by herself not professionally which probably would have turned out terribly). She ruined her own day,” said Pristine-Rhubarb7294.
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