Many people view being in a wedding party as something of a mixed blessing.
While it is an honor to know that you mean enough to one half of the happy couple to stand alongside them, it also means you’ll have a slew of responsibilities, and you can’t just enjoy the wedding as a guest.
Then there’s the fact that you don’t get to choose your outfit, and have to wear something chosen by the bride or groom, presumably only once in your entire life.
Though not always.
Redditor Due_Bedroom3146 was soon to be married and chose what she felt was a perfect bridesmaid’s dress.
Indeed, one of the original poster (OP)’s bridesmaids was particularly fond of the dress.
In the OP’s eyes, she was even a little too fond, leading the OP to eventually confront her.
Accused of being a “bridezilla” by this bridesmaid, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**Hole” (AITA), where she asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA I don’t want bridesmaid to wear dress to other events?”
The OP explained why she was more than a little annoyed by how much one of her bridesmaids liked the dress she chose for them:
“I’m getting married this summer and I’ve been trying hard to be a ‘chill bride’.”
“My family and myself are doing most of the planning.”
“My cousin is letting us stay at her house in Antioch, TN, just outside in Nashville so we’re saving money before the bachelorette party and another cousin has a van and we’re all driving down together so we just have to split the cost of gas.”
“None of us are exactly swimming in cash and I wanted to keep costs down as much as possible.”
“I also told my bridesmaids, if there’s anything about my wedding stressing you out, let me know.”
“I’m the only one that should be stressing, and before this little scenario, I was feeling pretty good.”
“Anyway, I found these perfect cocktail dresses at Anthropologie, inclusive sizing, great color and the holy Grail they were on sale.”
“I made a deal with the bridesmaids.”
“I buy the dresses if they covered any necessary alterations, everyone was happy.”
“I gave everyone their dresses.”
“Everyone looks fabulous and we’re all happy, who said planning a wedding was hard?”
“Enter Roxy: back in December, I saw a photo of Roxy at her work Christmas party wearing the bridesmaid’s dress.”
“I’ll admit it bugged me.”
“I wanted the big reveal at the wedding to feel special, not like a rerun of an HR office mixer, but I bit my tongue because none of our mutual friends were there, so I’m not going to stress myself out about something I felt like was kind of petty.”
“The problem is we have a mutual friend getting married in June, one month before my wedding.”
“A lot of my wedding guests will be at this wedding, and when I asked Roxy what she was wearing, she casually said, ‘Oh, I’m just wearing the bridesmaid’s dress from your wedding. I look hot in it, and it’s my favorite.”
“I paused.”
“I told her I didn’t want her to wear the bridesmaid uniform as a guest to a wedding filled with our mutual friends right before my big day.”
“Well, now Roxy thinks I’m being a bridezilla.”
“She pointed out that I did say I wanted them to have a dress that they could wear again ( I meant after the wedding, obviously). She then dropped the bombshell that she’s already worn it to several events. I might’ve snapped.”
“I told her that since I bought the dress, I didn’t want her to wear it again until after my wedding. She hit back in that since she paid for the alterations, she’s invested just as much money into the dress as I did, which, thanks to the sale, might actually be true.”
“My other bridesmaids are on my side, but Roxy thinks I’m overreacting because it’s just a dress.”
“Am I the asshole for wanting the first time our friend group sees her in the dress to be when she’s standing at the altar with me?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation, by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
The Reddit community was in agreement that the OP was not the a**hole for refusing to allow Roxy to wear her bridesmaid’s dress at a wedding before her own.
Everyone agreed that, beyond ruining the “reveal” of the dress, Roxy wearing the dress before the wedding left the potential of the dress getting damaged, justifying her displeasure in allowing her to wear it:
“NTA.”
“She really runs the risk of ruining the dress before the wedding, and repeated washing and wearing might mean ot looks shabby compared to the other bridesmaids on the day.”
“It’s really common sense that you don’t wear something like this before the event it was purchased for.”- International-Fee255
“I was all prepared to say YTA from the title, but given it’s before your wedding, I think you’re NTA.”
“It just feels weird to me that your friend is treating it as an ordinary dress when she hasn’t even worn it to the occasion it was purchased for.”- badedum
“NTA.”
“My concern would be that something happens to the dress before the wedding.”
“What if she gets a stain that won’t come out, or the repeated washings cause the color to fade so it doesn’t match the others?”
“It’s great she loves the dress, but she should understand why she should wait until the wedding to start wearing it.”- ghenghy26
“NTA.”
“She’s going to wear the dress you bought her to wear as a bridesmaid for your wedding to a wedding where everyone who knows you all is a guest before your wedding?”
“Yikes.”
“That’s super tacky, and I would be upset by that, for sure.”- IcePrincess_Not_Sk8r
“NTA.”
“I have never in my life heard of bridesmaids wearing their dresses to multiple events before the wedding, even if they purchased them themselves.”
“That is nuts.”- Grouchy_Button_2101
The OP later returned with an update, sharing where things currently stood between her and Roxy after they met for dinner following the confrontation:
“She’s not wearing the dress to the June wedding, and she even apologized.”
“Yay!”
“I walk in, she stands up and gives me a hug and apologizes.”
“So of course, I immediately start to tear up, which makes her tear up, and we’re just standing there hugging and crying in the middle of the restaurant.”
“When we finally sit down, she tells me what’s going on.”
“Apparently, she’s been a little depressed for the past few months.”
“She feels like she’s the only single person in our friend group, and I hadn’t thought about it, but she kind of is.”
“She said even our friend who is asexual has a partner.”
“Again true.”
“But it’s not like Roxy doesn’t date, and I’m not going to say she’s picky.”
“She just feels like she can tell that she and the guy aren’t compatible, there’s no reason to waste time. I’ll tell you why it hasn’t worked out with the last 3 guys she’s gone out.
“So anyway (I’m going to say that a lot, that’s how I get back on subject), she had been in a funk, and I’m sure my talking about my upcoming wedding constantly didn’t help.”
“She picked up the dress from the seamstress and tried it on to see how it fit, and she said she felt so pretty.”
“She hadn’t felt pretty in a long time.”
“So anyway, when her holiday office party came along, she so didn’t want to go and procrastinated until the last minute to find something to wear.”
“She went shopping and couldn’t find anything she liked.”
“She even went to Anthropologie and couldn’t find anything in the store she liked, and because she waited so long, she didn’t have time to wait for an online order.”
“And she knew it was wrong, but she wore the dress, and everyone loved it.”
“She got so many compliments.”
“Her work crush flirted and danced with her.”
“Even the women there liked it.”
“She hit it off with one of her work colleagues, ‘Aja’ and they’ve hung out a lot since the party.”
“They didn’t talk much before that night because they’re in completely different departments.”
“But now they’ve gone to dinner several times and movies.”
“They even hung out at Aja’s apartment and watched Bridgerton with their dogs, who are also good friends now.”
“She also feels like upper management noticed her, too, because since the office party, they’ve put her on bigger projects.”
“So anyway, life’s been pretty good since she wore ‘the dress’.”
“And this past weekend, when we were hanging out, and I’m of course droning on and on about my wedding and then bringing up what to wear to another friend’s wedding, that funk came back, and she snapped a little bit.”
“She said it really started off as a joke when she said she was going to wear the bridesmaid’s dress, but my reaction pissed her off.”
“Looking back at my original post, I didn’t elaborate on my reaction.”
“I was hopping mad y’all.”
“And I didn’t ask her not to wear it.”
“I TOLD her she wasn’t wearing it because I paid for it.”
“She said I made her feel like a child, and I was her mother, and she had to do what I told her to do because I said so.”
“Therefore she acted like a child and threw a tantrum.”
“She also hasn’t worn it anywhere else.”
“Again she just said that to piss me off.”
“After the party, she did take it to the dry cleaners, but it’s been hanging in her closet since.”
“Even though I come off looking like an a**, I’m so happy.”
It seems like Roxy didn’t factor in any potential damage that wearing her bridesmaid’s dress before the wedding might inflict.
Thankfully, that all seems water under the bridge now, as it’s clear the OP and Roxy have a friendship that can withstand a little conflict.
Similarly, the OP should also be somewhat flattered, as not all bridesmaids ever feel the urge to wear their dresses on a second occasion.
Something of a testament to the OP’s taste.