Kate Hackett
“But Kate,” you may say. “Surely there can be NO MORE WEDDING questions left. We’ve covered them all! Every single way people can be assholes during, around, near, in, before, or after a wedding, we’ve seen it!”
You’re wrong, my friend. You’re wrong. Courtesy of u/ColdAlfalfa1554, we have yet another AITA post about jerk brides and dick grooms.
This poor woman asks, “WIBTA for not attending my best friend’s wedding after she told me she doesn’t want me to be in any photos but still wants me to be MOH?”
She explains that her best friend is getting married and has turned into a real nightmare about the process.
My (F27) best friend (F27) is getting married in February. She has been planning her wedding for 2 years and I have been actively helping her the entire time as her maid of honor. I am extremely excited for her to get married, but she is slightly controlling. She’s the kind of girl that has to have everything perfect or it’s completely ruined. But her wedding, her rules.
OP found out she was pregnant and will be pretty far along during the wedding.
Well, I found out I was pregnant at the beginning of October and am due toward the end of June. This is my first baby and I have struggled heavily with fertility issues so this is a literal miracle baby. My husband and I had literally just given up hope in trying for a little while this past summer. I will be in my second trimester during the time of her wedding.
And when she told her best friend, her friend was elated! Sorry — no. Her best friend was a complete ass.
Well, I told my best friend last week and she seemed… upset. She wasn’t too happy that I was pregnant and her first question is if I would fit in my bridesmaid dress. The dress is extremely flowy and I told her that I should be just fine, and if not I’ll cover the cost of any alternations/buying another dress (I bought my dress in the first place anyways). Like literally her first question, not even congratulations.
The friend didn’t congratulate OP, just worried about how OP would fit into their dress. Ridiculous. OP kindly figured the bride was stressed, but then the bride started to double down on how OP’s pregnancy was inconvenient for her.
I tried to shrug it off and just assumed she was stressed. Her bachelorette party is next month (I’ve been exclusively planning it) so I just reached out with the final details to her to confirm everything. During the phone call she tried to make me feel bad that I wouldn’t be drinking with the rest of them and that it wouldn’t be the “bach party of her dreams” and I told her it would still be fun. That upset me even more, but I just tried to shrug it off once again.
Then OP got The Call. This absolute nightmare of a friend wanted to keep OP as the maid of honor but not let her stand in any photos.
Today she called and told me she had a “hard decision” to make but she’s been thinking about it and while she would like to keep me MOH she doesn’t want me in her pictures. She said that my bump would be too distracting, she didn’t want her pictures to turn into a “maternity photoshoot” and that she just didn’t feel comfortable with it.
Yeah, you read that right: the MOH was still on the hook to pay for a party, plan the wedding, and do everything else… but she couldn’t be in a photo. And she needed a different dress.
However, she still wanted me to pay for the bachelorette party, help her plan the wedding, and wanted me to do almost everything MOH except be in pictures and she was debating if she still wanted me to give a speech. She then sent me a bunch of bag-like dresses to choose from as my new dress since I won’t need my MOH dress.
So poor OP is left to wonder if she would be wrong to step out of the wedding.
We have been best friends since we were 10. I would have never in my wildest dreams expected her to act this way. WIBTA for dropping out of her wedding? I really don’t feel like paying for, and being supportive of, a person who treats me like a disposable mooch after years of fertility issues. But I also feel like I may be overreacting as some of my friends said that I would look odd in the pictures. Thoughts?
Reddit, fortunately, weighed in HARD on her side.
And then OP posted an update. She says she spoke very bluntly with her friend and told her how much her feelings had been hurt.
I sat down with her and had a very long and blunt talk. I even brought out the post to show her that I am not crazy about some of the points I made. I told her about how deeply my feelings were hurt by her words and actions. I told her I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be a full MOH and be included in pictures.
OP also shares that she actually ALMOST considered caving — her friend was that manipulative.
If I were to be fully honest, she almost convinced me that the whole idea of just keeping me as MOH but with no pictures was for my benefit. She told me it was to take the “stress” off of me for the day and to make sure I didn’t feel uncomfortable with my “new weight” but I knew it wasn’t true. I knew she just didn’t want me to be in her wedding party with a baby bump but wanted my money and planning expertise (I’ve withheld this information but I am a wedding planner with many connections, however, I wouldn’t cut any of them off due to a falling out. I am not planning her wedding as I felt it would be too much for me because I would want it to be to a level of perfection I couldn’t achieve, but I did hook her up with another planner friend who is incredible but she has utilized me for free a lot).
She realized that this friend was treating her as a business-partnership & not a friendship.
I think I realized all too clearly in almost an instant that the second she got engaged that our friendship became a business-partnership to her, whereas it never changed for me. For the past two years, what I thought were friendship-bonding experiences for me I realized were merely free expenses for her.
So OP left the wedding as MOH. She is passing the information on to a different friend.
In the end, I decided to step out of the wedding as MOH. I will be sending all the information I have to our joint friend who is in the wedding party and will still be paying for that friend’s portion of the bach party instead of the whole thing, as I know it will put that friend out of money which I feel awful about.
She was then uninvited to the wedding altogether and the friendship was incredibly wounded by the conversation.
I have been uninvited to the wedding as a whole, which was not unexpected. My friend was very angry and upset with the conversation and said some deeply hurtful things that will take me a long time to recover from. To say I am devastated is an understatement, as I expected this woman to be the godmother of my child. But I feel extremely relieved to have discovered this before the birth of my child. Now my baby’s life will be filled with people who love them unconditionally. and the same goes for me.
Once again, thank you all. I appreciate your assurances and help more than you will ever know!
