A bridesmaid is ready to call it quits on her role in her friend’s wedding, which is costing her a small fortune.
On Reddit‘s popular “Wedding Shaming” forum, the 32-year-old explained that her friend was notoriously bad at planning. So she decided to offer to help out after learning of her engagement.
Despite her best efforts, it’s not enough to have stopped the wedding from going completely off the rails and get very expensive.
After learning about three last-minute expenses, the bridesmaid is wondering if she can simply bow out.
Keep reading to find out more…
In her post, she described the process of planning her friend’s big day as “a complete mess.”
The burnt-out bridesmaid said that she organized planning sessions with the bride and her future mother in law and urged her pal to put together a group chat for her 10 bridesmaids. However, the entire process moved very slowly.
“Now we are one week away from the wedding and only four out of the ten bridesmaids even have their dresses,” she wrote, adding that a portion of the group hadn’t received the information about their dresses until late in February.
The bridesmaid was also not expecting some last-minute expenses that are falling on the wedding party.
She wrote that she was asked to “donate money and attend” a last-minute bachelorette party, which would keep her busy the whole weekend.
Then, she was informed that the bride would no longer be paying for the wedding party’s hair and makeup. That’s another $400 price tag. As for the “extremely questionable” dresses, the bride wants her friend to “buy a backup dress just in case the original does not arrive in time.”
“I would not have minded contributing if we had known earlier, but it is frustrating to find out about another large cost at the last minute,” she said, adding, “At this point it feels like I am hemorrhaging money for someone else’s event. This is not my wedding, my child, or my life event.”
In the replies, many fellow Redditors urged the bridesmaid to jump ship.
“Unless this is a ‘I would donate a kidney for her’ level of friendship, I say get out now,” one person wrote, advising, “Donate the dress you have back to the wedding if someone else can use it. Cite last-minute work or family conflict, whatever you like. Or just tell her the truth: this has become prohibitively expensive and difficult to participate in, sorry!”
Another person provided a script for what to tell the bride: “Dear friend, I have to apologize. I had not allocated a four figure sum in our family budget for your wedding. I must have misunderstood what you wanted. So I’m afraid that I will only be able to attend the wedding on Sunday and will have to bow out as a bridesmaid. I wish you all the best.”
One person had another popular proposal.
“This definitely sounds like a time to catch Covid…” they wrote, receiving more than 100 upvotes.
However, one user wondered if it would be super effective, writing, “Does that still work as an excuse? Bad brides will tell you to come and kill their grandma, they need the photos.”
