Weddings are as individual as the people getting married. Not everyone does the traditional western wedding attire of fancy white dresses.
But for those who do, it’s universally accepted to be bad etiquette for anyone but the bride to wear a white dress.
So what do you do if someone ignored that unwritten rule?
A bride found herself on the wrong side of her mother-in-law for how she tackled the issue. So the newlywed turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for perspective.
The Redditor asked:
“AITA for making my mother-in-law (MIL) cover her white dress with a sweater at my wedding?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“I got married Saturday and MIL showed up in a white dress for some reasons beyond her control.”
“She is currently eight and a half months pregnant, so it isn’t like she had a bunch of options, and her foot got put in a boot for an ankle injury a few days before the wedding and said she couldn’t walk right in the floor length dress.”
“I tried not to be a bridezilla because obviously I don’t want her to trip when she is heavily pregnant, but she showed up and immediately started screaming at me that this is the only dress she has and if I don’t like it she will leave, because she is sick of ‘our sh*t’ which she didn’t elaborate on.”
“I said that was fine, but I asked her to wear a sweater that my mom had to offset the white dress. MIL started to cry and said that I was being mean to her and she doesn’t want to look like a ‘sunday school teacher’.”
“We bickered over it, and she ended up putting the sweater on while she cried, but she came up to me during the reception and threw the sweater at me, and said that her husband told her to take it off, and he is furious with me.”
“My husband told her to just leave, so MIL left and her husband posted something snarky on social media, about imagine being so insecure that you let some petty sh*t ruin your wedding and he predicts a divorce.”
“Now no one is talking.”
“I don’t know if I overreacted because she wasn’t wearing anything crazy like a wedding gown.”
Redditors weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors decided the OP was not the a**hole.
“NTA – You did not overreact. Your MIL did – possibly because she’s pregnant or possibly not.”
“While she may have had limited dress options at 8.5 months pregnant, she should know better and should have brought her own sweater or a wrap.”
“Her husband is an a**. It would have been better if your husband had handled the situation from the beginning and in the future should handle any issues with his family, and you with yours.” ~ ilp456
“I’m a little confused too how that was the ONLY dress that MIL could find.”
“There’s entire stores dedicated to maternity wear. She seriously couldn’t find anything else appropriate to wear???” ~ monkey_trumpets
“I could imagine a scenario in which she broke her foot shortly before the wedding, so close to the wedding date that she wasn’t able to buy a different dress and was forced to wear the only thing in her closet that fit.”
“But then you’d get a wrap or something, as others have noted. Borrow one from a friend if necessary.” ~ flea1400
“Or when presented with a cardigan you would accept it gratefully?”
“The way she reacted to being asked to do that shows this wasn’t about it being ‘her only option’ but was her wanting to be an a**.” ~ No_Stairway_Denied
“A dress will fit over a boot. You can put the dress on over your head, or take your boot off and step into the dress and put the boot back on.”
“She wasn’t wearing a pantsuit. I’ve worn a big ski looking boot.”
“It’s a pain, but you can make it work. Or dye it.” ~ WeeklyConversation8
“Personally, when she started creating drama from the second she arrived and did the ‘if you don’t like it, I’ll leave’ bit, my response would have been ‘Okay. Bye’ and then walked away.”
“She did it on purpose to be the centre of attention and try to spoil the wedding and OP is NTA. I think she went above and beyond letting the dramamonger stay at all.” ~ Far_Administration41
“She came in on the attack. So she knew that wearing white is not on.”
“Especially as the MIL.”
“She could have added a wrap, or a cardigan, or anything to make it look not white. Or she could have worn literally anything else.”
“Like, a pair of neat pants and long blouse. Or a skirt and shirt.”
“Heck even the white dress, with a loose blouse over the top to make it a white skirt plus coloured shirt, even if she looked less formal that the rest of the party, being super preggers AND in a moon boot is a good enough excuse for that.”
“Wearing a white dress with nothing to cover it is absolutely attention seeking and she came in screaming and making a big deal about it.”
“Coupled with her history of being a drama queen this was all about her.” ~ TheLizardsCometh
“Yeah, or treat the white as a base.”
“When my BiL got married, it was a destination wedding, not a lot of people, and one of the guests had a ‘did someone get that on video’ accident … we were having lunch before the service, all dressed up, and a waiter got knocked into by a running child and the tray…”
“Most of it missed her, but tomato sauce is always going to leave marks. Resort was horrified, her stay got comped, they were great, but the only other ‘nice’ dress she had was a white one.”
“She grabbed great blue strappy sandals from the bridesmaid, we ‘repurposed’ some super-wide blue ribbon from another wedding’s decorations (it was left over, we checked with their event planner) into a sash with long streamers, and I had a blue/turquoise/purple pashmina I used as a sunshade on my kiddo’s stroller that she turned into a stole.”
“Add in a cheap blue wide-brimed sun hat her husband found at the gift store, and she was CLEARLY a guest in blue and white.”
“If we could pull that off in 30 minutes before a wedding at a resort with no warning, how hard is it to do SOMETHING with a few weeks warning?” ~ Sashi-Dice
“I’ve actually been in this situation, bought a beautiful maternity dress for the wedding about a month out, had my pregnancy boobs come in and there was no way it was going on.”
“My choices were the dress I had with a cardigan to cover the zipper not done up and my boobs far to prominent for my liking, or a white dress with a cardigan.”
“I explained to the bride and she chose the white dress and was super nice about it. Probably helps it was my brothers wedding and i had known her for 6 years at that point.” ~ LividConcentrate91
“You were nice and asked.” ~ digital_dysthymia
“AND happily wore the cardigan!” ~ KayakerMel
White for the bride is a largely western cultural tradition. But it seems clear this bride and her family were adhering to that tradition.
While the mother-in-law may have had no options on the dress, her attitude and unwillingness to compromise set Redditors off.
For once, the bride’s dress code didn’t make her the a**hole.
