It’s always nice when one of your good friends asks you to commit to spending a bunch of time and money to make her wedding day a special one. I kid, I kid (mostly). Being asked to be a bridesmaid is an honor and a responsibility that most women happily accept if a bestie is the one doing the asking…but, what happens if the girl you thought you knew turns into an absolute monster once that engagement ring is on her finger?
Here’s hoping you never have to find out for yourself. Unfortunately these 15 ladies weren’t so lucky.
#15. I haven’t spoken to her since
“I was almost in a bridezilla wedding… I had an ectopic pregnancy (baby attached to my tube, which then burst, and I almost bleed to death).. She got engaged shortly following my ectopic. When she asked me to be her bridesmaid , she told me that I would be required to wait to try to have another baby until after her wedding in 1.5 years… not because there would be a small child at the wedding, not even because she didn’t want me fat at her wedding.. but because if I lost another child, it would take away from her engagement and wedding.. I was so shocked I just declined and have never spoken to her since.”
#14. I put in 15 hours a week
“It was a best friend of mine who was very frugal, so I figured she was going to have a reasonable wedding and bachelorette party. I had shared my monetary concerns with her too, that I worked and went to school and couldn’t take off much time. She didn’t have that many friends so It was only me and one other girl as bridesmaids. She asked us to hand-make ALL her decorations for the wedding (I put in 15 hours a week hand making decorations, all outside of working and going to school full time). Then she planned a week long bachelorette party out of town, also asking us to foot the bill, not to mention our dresses which I wanted to find something affordable (but she picked designer matching dresses that we had to pay for…never worn It again, been trying to sell It online). I spent nearly 1k on the whole ordeal, not to mention I did her hair and makeup for free for the wedding. I just felt largely taken advantage of and unappreciated. We are no longer friends because we ended up working together (after the wedding) and she tried to screw me over at work. It all makes me very reluctant to agree to be in someone’s wedding again, even someone I thought would be considerate of everyone else’s budget and time.”
#13. I told her to shut up
“Bride had 2 weddings. Pretty different financial backgrounds between us and I was friend of the groom that became a friend during their engagement. She had one wedding in the local state she grew up and one destination wedding a month later. She couldn’t decide which dress to get, so she bought three. I was maid of honor at the local event and supposed to be in the destination wedding. Had to overdraw my bank account to attend and cover expenses so I was really a bit in awe at all the extravagances. It was a 3 hour ceremony with 2 venue changes “I want what I want!”and “it’s my day!” “I gave people for that!” Still ringing in my ears just thinking of it. She spent 60k in credit card debt on her perfect day (s) which she told me the day before she had not informed the groom. The best part was when she was in her second wedding dress change, she started to scream about how things weren’t exactly what she wanted. Standing there half dressed and drunk yelling about how the cake wasn’t perfect. (3k cake that was transported from another state was slightly smushed on the back side from hours of travel) The whole bridal party was just standing there in the hallway waiting to take pictures again I told her to shut up, said i wasn’t going to come to wedding in Ireland, reminded her that her hundreds of guests could hear her drunk ass, and fixed her bustle. She was such a little tantrum throwing shit. At the end of the irish dancing groups, the toasts, and her wedding dance (that was choreographed) her PAID wedding planner offered to give me cocaine for putting up with such a spoiled shit. The lady did it loudly in front the an aunt who later told the bride. Yeah, it sucked. She is a great girl too, just a terrible bride and drunk. Tl:dr wedding planner offered me drugs for putting up with the bride.”
#12. I didn’t attend the wedding
“I was the maid of honor. I helped plan the whole wedding, I went to all the awkward parties with family members I had never met. I was close with the bride and groom, not their families. The whole time we were planning she kept talking about being a bridezilla like it was an inevitable phase she would go through. Ffw all the way to the end. She suddenly decided that her sister needs to be the only one involved, but I can still be the maid of honor. She calls me the day of the bridal shower and asks why I wasn’t there and insists she told me the date. She hadn’t. She fires me on the spot and I don’t talk to her again until a few days before the wedding. She tells me that I can still come but she had asked one of her husband’s ex girlfriends, someone she didn’t know to be her new maid of honor. Day before the wedding she asks me to be the usher. Says I can show people to their seats, the gift table, the bathroom. I didn’t attend the wedding.
This last year I was my friends “Best Lady” which means I stood on the man’s side. Everyone helped set the wedding up, it was a blast. I declared myself his shield maiden and spent the entire time protecting him from everything, even a few birds in a bush.”
#11. I was thinking you could be a redhead
“Friend from college. We spent three months planning her bridal shower. She was not at all involved.
When she finally looked at the plans 1 week before the party, she said it “wasn’t what she’d had in mind.”
She then delays the wedding, which every one of her 400 guests had already made travel accommodations for, so that she can have her dream bridal shower.
Plans $25,000 weekend in Vegas. Booked presidential suite for herself and economy rooms for us, which she expected us to double up in. Wanted us to pay for the trip between us all evenly (25,000/7=3570 per person). And this isn’t even including her!! She said “You’re my bridesmaids, you’re kind of supposed to pay for my bridal shower.”
I didn’t have that kind of money at the time and told her so. Same with five other bridesmaids (the other two were her sisters.)
So she and her sisters have the bridal party on their own.
Day of the wedding, she informs me I need to dye my hair (and pay for it myself), because my hair color is too similar to hers and it would be distracting. “There aren’t enough red heads so I was thinking you could be a red head.”
To top it all off, she informed us after the ceremony that to save money, we wouldn’t be served a meal along with the rest of the guests. “You already had the privilege of being in my wedding, so, what more can you ask for?”
I didn’t contact her again after the wedding. She reached out to me to ask how to return my gift for store credit. I never replied.
tl;dr Pay $3750 each for my bridal shower, dye your hair, and oh by the way, I didn’t get you food because you’re not a ‘normal’ guest. Can you let me know how to return your gift for store credit?””
#10. The final straw
“She asked 16 girls to be bridesmaids. In the year and a half between the engagement and wedding, all but 6 dropped out (3 were her sisters). She wanted 16 separate shades of blue and 16 different styles of dresses for each bridesmaid then threw a fit when the store didn’t have that many options. She demanded everyone pay for a week long bachelorette party in Vegas (including her share) and then got mad when some people opted out (I was a single mom/college student at the time). Her parents gave her a $20,000 budget and she ended up spending $100k and demanding they pay for it- they took out a loan they are still paying off. She wanted everyone to have the same shade of hair so she asked the two blonde bridesmaids to dye their hair (they declined). She paid for nothing for the bridesmaids (traditionally the brides pay for something- the hair/makeup or the dress) but demanded we purchase specific shoes, jewelry, dress, etc plus hair and makeup. And stay the entire weekend at the hotel she was getting married at. All told, costs for the wedding- not including a gift- was well over $2k per bridesmaid. This was mostly amongst college age women in a poor/middle class area. She also had three separate engagement parties/bridal showers.
Final straw for me was when she demanded to see my toast a month prior so she could edit it. She ended up rewriting it totally.
I skipped the wedding totally and ended our friendship. They did end up getting married and 6+ years later he seems absolutely miserable.”
#9. It still makes me mad
“This was my sister’s wedding so hold on tight. My sister had 10 bridesmaids. Most of them were her sorority sister’s from college. They wanted to plan an elaborate weekend for the summer, while most of them were still in school without jobs. When I asked “hey, who will pay for this?” my sister got pissed that I even asked. When I also reminded all the bridesmaids them that our father who had stage 4 cancer wasn’t doing so well and that maybe the bachelorette/bridal shower should be close by, they all flipped thinking I was being insensitive to the bride.
I was promptly asked not to be a bridesmaid to my own sister’s wedding over these two things. I was fine with this as she was a bridezilla and I spent time with our dying father. He died 2 weeks after her wedding day, that he couldn’t attend because he was in hospice care one day before her wedding. To me, she put herself before our ailing father, and it still makes me mad.”
#8. She lied
“The short story is that she lied.
She lied to the venue about the number of guests that were attending. Effectively packing us like sardines.
She lied about having a “day of” staff. That meant that all the dates of the bridesmaids spent the day hanging flowers, running to get kegs and waters, pouring the champagne for guests, setting up the entire venue the day before.
She lied to the hair and make up personnel about the number of people who were obtaining services in order to get them to come to the site. This forced guests to get hair and make up done in order for “the bride not to have to be charged extra”.
She lied to the catering about the number of guests, this caused them to run out of food and alcohol.
All in all, I think her lies saved her $1500, but cost her close friendships as her attitude toward the whole situation was indignation instead of being apologetic.”
#7. Like literal infants
“My first job out of college, a colleague got engaged and asked three colleagues to be her bridesmaids (in addition to one friend from high school). I had only known her for a matter of months, but I didn’t feel comfortable saying no because she was one of my bosses.
In addition to being in a wedding for someone I barely knew, which is shitty in its own right, there were so many horrible things about this nightmare bridezilla wedding. First, I ended up hosting both her bachelorette AND her shower because no one in her life planned anything, and she showed up to her own shower an hour late, hungover and wearing pajamas when she mandated that everyone dress for a luncheon. She ordered our dresses from Etsy (as opposed to any bridesmaid dress company) and they looked like seafoam green raw silk pillowcases with holes cut for the arms and head. They tied in giant bows in the back and we all looked like literal infants. She wouldn’t let us wear heels with said “dresses” because the groom was kinda short and we all had to buy new flats in a specific shade of gold. She wanted us to wear our hair in a really ugly, extremely complicated updo — and said we would have to pay to have one of the hairstylists do our hair (we refused). The wedding was on a Sunday in an extremely inconvenient and faraway location, and it was not the Sunday of a long weekend. The rehearsal dinner for this SUNDAY wedding was THURSDAY and started at 4 in the afternoon, requiring everyone to leave work in the middle of the day. She forced us to stay at an expensive hotel in the area the night before the wedding for no apparent reason and refused to pay for our hotel room.
Fun times!”
#6. She still complains
“I was in a wedding where the bride planned two separate bachelorette weekends for herself and got mad at anyone who couldn’t/wouldn’t spend two 3-day weekends at ~$500/each away from their husbands/kids/jobs.
The week leading up to the wedding the temp for the big day was forecast to be a high of 10*F (February wedding, NE US). Bride was insisting on outdoor photos without coats “because we can’t hide the dresses!” Everyone, including the photographer, tells her hell no. Day of she pitches a fit when we refused to do more than one quick photo.
Afterwards, she stopped talking to 75% of the bridal party because of their refusal to accommodate her outrageous demands. To this day, years later, she still complains about how her bridesmaids ruined her wedding.”
#5. Thankful to this day
“Bride was blonde. All bridesmaids except for me were brunette. She asked me to dye my hair brown for the wedding because she, “wanted to be the only blonde.” I suggested that instead I just give up my bridesmaid spot. Thankful to this day since I heard the dresses and bachelorette party cost all the other girls more money than I make in a month.”
#4. Oh well
“A friend of mine in college was getting married at 19 because she was super conservative christian and she wanted to have sex.
Between the time I agreed to be a bridesmaid and a couple of months before the wedding I lost some weight. She got super pissed at me because she wanted to be the skinny one on the stage and threw me out of the wedding party.
Oh well.”
#3. Dodged a bullet
“I didn’t make it to the wedding. I was best friends with the woman, literally we did everything together. She assembled her wedding party and didn’t invite me. She threw me my bachelorette, witnessed my marriage, etc. I found out later I wasn’t invited because I was overweight and her mother thought that would limit bridesmaid dress choices and throw the wedding photos ‘off’. At least I know, dodged a bullet.”
#2. Cherry on the cake
“Was a bridesmaid for my sister in law. Total bridezilla. Spent an extra 10K without my brothers knowledge and only told him a couple weeks before the wedding. Threw tantrums and fits about the smallest things like shoes and accessories. Basically expected everyone to bend to her every whim. I moved away to a different part of my country a while ago now and ever since then she hasnt talked to me once. Our relationship became quite hostile after the wedding because of how much of a bitch I realised she was so I distanced myself from her. Cherry on the cake was when she bitched about my mum to the hairdressers in front of me whilst the bridal party was getting ready.”
#1. The nerve
“Loads of little things adding up, two things I remember standing out.
She started with the turbo crazy at her hen do, it cost over 400 pounds to spend a 3 day weekend away. That’s not unreasonable in itself, but rather than appreciate the effort everyone made she came back from night 2 screaming her head off that one of the girls was a “miserable bitch” for coming back from a club an hour earlier than the rest of the hens because she wasn’t feeling comfortable in the big crowd. She said she would make her pay… And then gloated on the eve of the wedding that she had put her on a table with a very attractive girl because she knew she was insecure about her looks and wanted her to feel self conscious as punishment for the early dart 3 months earlier?
Spoke to me like absolute shit the whole run up to the wedding. Then pitched a fit at me in front of the whole bridal party because I had the nerve to bring a bag with my purse /car keys in it after she had mandated we were all to leave our stuff at her house…with no way of picking it up as she and the groom were staying in a hotel that night. I was the only bridesmaid with no significant other to give that stuff to so would have been stranded at the venue without it. Made me see how vile a person she is and our friendship is now over following her pulling some even more crazy shit a few months later. Just a shame I wasted so much energy on her over the years.”
Don’t be that bride, ladies. Just don’t.
