When this bride is shocked by what her husband's ex-fiancé wears to their wedding, she asks Reddit:
Last weekend, my husband (27M) and I (30F) got married. It was a great wedding, and I had a great time leading up to it. There's been only one thing that's left a sour taste in my mouth.
Growing up, I always wanted a big princess wedding. I know some people see those as tacky and immature, but it was always my dream.
As part of this, the theme for our wedding was "ballroom," and I told everyone to wear the nicest things they owned and told the women in particular to try to "outshine" me. I even went as far as telling the married women to wear their wedding dresses.
I didn't care about being outdressed. Instead, all I wanted was to fulfill the aesthetic in my head that I had for the wedding, which included everyone else looking nothing less than extravagant.
(And no, before people ask, I don't regret my decision. It was really special to see my mom, aunts, and bridesmaids, all in their own dresses on my big day. It kind of felt like they were passing the torch onto me and I really enjoyed the experience.)
Now on to my husband's friend. My husband has this friend I'll call "Kate" (27F). Kate is my husband's childhood friend and first love. My husband comes from a small town, and the majority of his friends he's known since adolescence.
In their senior year of high school, Kate and my husband got engaged (which is kinda normal where they're from) but called off the wedding and never went through with it. It was mutual.
They felt they were growing up too fast and wanted to slow down. The calling off the wedding was the end of the relationship, but they stayed friends.
I knew this information prior to getting with my husband and never had a problem or felt jealous because I'm friends with a few exes myself. In fact, two of them were invited to our wedding. One was my bridesmaid (I'm bisexual) and the other was invited as a guest along with his current girlfriend.
I've never had a problem with Kate being my husband's ex but I have had a problem with Kate as a person as she's kind of b&chy and gossips like she's still in highschool.
A few examples of this are just a month into our relationship she confessed to my husband she still had some lingering feelings to which he responded they had already tried that and it didn't work, if she brought it up again he would to cut her off out of respect for me.
I wasn't that mad at the time, because I understood they had a long history and my relationship with him was just starting out, and she owed it to herself to see if there was anything still there before it was too late.
However after she was turned down her attitude towards me changed to fake nice and started calling me things like cougar, or asking me how I expected to make a relationship work as I want to be an anesthesiologist...
which would require long hours, or telling my husband's whole friend group how she doesn't like my "loud" personality, and when I confronted her about all of those things she would say "oh it was just a joke" or "you're so loud I felt like you would just go off". There's more shit but if I typed it all, I would never get to the point.
Kate has her own husband I'll call Jarold. Kate and Jarold both make average in terms of finances as they are both teachers. Kate kindergarten and Jarold seniors. They got married last year.
On a teachers salary Kate wasn't able to afford the most luxurious wedding dress out there, but I always had the impression she was happy with it.
Kate does have another wedding dress from when she was going to marry my husband that her dad payed for (who has unfortunately passed now) which in terms of fanciness is a bit nicer, but obviously she didn't wear that dress to her own wedding.
I was expecting Kate to wear the wedding dress she wore to her own wedding to our wedding. But when I looked and saw her she had the wedding dress she was supposed to wear when she was getting married to my husband.
When I saw her I immediately went "wtf" but decided to just drop it because I didn't want a conflict on our wedding day. My husband, however, was also confused on why she wore that one and asked her about it without me even having to tell him I was uncomfortable.
She responded "well your wife wanted such a big princess wedding I thought I'd wear this one because it follows the theme more, don't tell me she's upset about it, she's the one who said come in you're nicest clothes and this is my nicest dress"
I feel like I'm not allowed to be upset even though I am, and I know this is my fault, but the whole thing has really left a bad taste in my mouth. I would've never been okay with her wearing that one if I'd known she was going to, and I feel like she should've asked.
I keep telling myself it's not that big of a deal, and during the daytime, when I'm distracted, I don't even think about it. But I've always been a night owl, and it makes me shitty every time I think about it before I fall asleep.
So now I'm here complaining on reddit like a loser. I feel pathetic. I don't know how to link an update, but for anyone who wants it, it's on my page.
mammothbasket writes:
Many are saying to take action against her, but you've been classy. Remain classy. Ignore her - if you confront her, she will be making up some tall tales. If she confronts you to dig in, start recording on your phone and keep it in case you need to use it to refute any lies she spews.
However, I would let your husband know(and ask to keep the conversation confidental between you two) that it hurt you and a slap at him for rubbing the dress in during your sacred ceremony.
It was a low-class move it was at you and your husband's expense. Not only did it disrespect both of you, it was one big-__s insult to her husband.
She has, most likely, mentioned she wore that dress to the wedding. All of your friends, if they are TRUE friends, already think it was a weirdly insulting move on her part.
lostappetite writes:
Wow, that is amazing. She found exactly the weak spot to stick the knife in and give it a good twist. She saved the wedding dress all those years just so she could bring it out at the perfect moment. True artistry there.
I’m not good at relationships do I might be really misinterpreting things. I really think anybody who reads your post has got to come to the conclusion that she was purposefully malicious and had been purposefully malicious for a long time.
Of course you are not at fault for not telling her not to wear that dress. She did it on purpose. If you truly don’t trust your own instincts (hey, I myself have rotten instincts) then maybe you could check with your husb—-oh look, your husband too had an instinctive knee-jerk reaction of “shock”.
Or maybe you could try writing out your past history with her in chronological form to see whether malice or mistake seems like the more likely driver of her actions… and, oh look, here is your last history with her conveniently assembled in this very post, and just dripping with malice.
You’re not wrong when you say “it’s my fault”. But it’s not your wedding idea that was at fault: it was a lovely idea which came off splendidly and you were rightly delighted with it. You are not at fault for making a big deal of somebody being deliberately malicious to you.
Should you have taken the high road and ignored it? Well, basically that’s what you had been doing for sone time, which allowed the little spite artist the chance to keep on varying her attacks until she finally found one that hit home.
No, your fault is that you were generous and let someone with a history of malice towards you come to your wedding and gave her an opportunity to hurt you, because you wanted your husband to have all his friends with him on his important day. There are really worse faults to have.
The problem is, what are you going to do in the future? She has escalated her attacks on you. There is no reason to think she won’t continue to do so, dripping poison in everyone’s ears, refining the attacks until she chances upon the one that works. You know, the o e where the entire friendship group turns on you. The one where you husband doubts you.
The event at the wedding is a gift to you. It shows absolutely that your policy to just be polite until she runs out of steam is not correct. Now you know. You have to take action. Have you never read Othello???
alexdrop writes:
Oh sweetheart, you are looking at this from the wrong direction. She meant it as some private dig - showing up to your SO's wedding in the dress SHE would have worn... as if she was the bride. lol ohhh that did not go as she hoped it would.
What others saw was her pathetic attempt at wearing her I-coulda-been dress to YOUR wedding... with her poor husband who now feels like the biggest second-place loser of all.
Everyone - including your SO and hers - looked at her like she lost her damn mind and they all half expected her to try and pretend she was the bride.
And she got to sit there allllll night, in her woulda-coulda-daydreamed-I-did dress watching your SO marry the love of his life (not... her....)...
in your gorgeous gown and your 'loud personality' (ie. bubbly and effervescent and draws others towards you like moths to a flame) while she sat there sulking and pretending she somehow had the last laugh. That woman straight-up looked like an absolute fool.
And that was 'the nicest thing she owned' to wear *side eye* which would have been a lovely moment for you to gasp and go, "Oh honey, you should have told me, I would have lent you something! You poor dear..."
She wants the narrative that you were jealous that she showed up in what would have been her wedding dress had your husband gotten amnesia and forgotten her actual personality and married her.
So when she brings it up as an attack (and she will, repeatedly) your husband needs to say, "No, neither of us was upset. Why would we be? We were just surprised because your actual wedding dress was nicer.
But you said this old one fit better so that explained it and we shrugged and said 'oh, okay' and it was over." And stick to that.
Hello guys, here's the update. So I talked to my husband about it this morning, and when I brought it up, he immediately let out a sigh of relief.
Also, a little history about Kate. Most of the stuff she did was at the beginning of our relationship (we've been together 5 years), which did leave to my husband having a talk with her about not being friends anymore.
She said she was sorry she offended me and didn't realize I didn't have "their" (referring to his friend group) sense of humor. He said that maybe the things she says just aren't funny.
And once she said that, it only reinforced his decision to cut her off because he said, "Even now you can't just say sorry." It's always I'm sorry, but..." which shows you aren't sincere. It was really awkward because she was friends with all his friends and we still saw her around but he would just hold my hand and ignore her.
That lasted about a year until she got with "jarold" and she finally gave a sincere (or atleast what I thought was sincere) apology and said that she realized after getting with jarold who "is the love of her life" how upset she would've been if our roles were reversed and asked for another chance of us all being friends.
Despite my better judgement, I agreed, and while the comments aren't so directly rude anymore, sometimes her tone towards me sounds like she thinks I'm dumb or I feel like there's a double meaning to her words.
Ive noticed shes kind of a b&tch to all their friends tho and they've just accepted it as a part of her personality. I've been feeling like I'm going crazy for a while because she hasn't said anything directly rude, but after reading these comments, I'm going to have a conversation with my husband about it tomorrow.
He said, "I didn't know how to bring it up because you didn't seem bothered, but when I saw her in that dress, I thought it was very weird she wore that one."
He went on to say that he even considered asking her to leave because he thought it was rude but because I had no reaction to the dress he thought I either didn't care or didn't recognize it but either way if I wasn't bothered he didn't want to disturb my peace of mind by kicking her out.
We discussed and he's going to have a talk with her, not just about the dress, but her treatment of me in general and explain that going forward she will not be a friend in our lives.
After this talk, I've decided to let it go and focus on my new marriage. This was a small thing, and now, after I've talked it out with my husband, I feel kind of silly I let it bother me this much.
Im at peace she will no longer be in our lives and that's enough for me. Someone said you gave her the chance to wear the dress her dad got her and gave her a gift. That was kind of a "huh" moment for me because no matter what her intentions were, that is true, and I'm glad she got to have that moment.
End of update the rest of this is just answering questions and explaining what the wedding looked like.
A common asked question is how did we even know what the dress looked like. I said it a few times in comments, but I've seen it a couple of times before in her closet.
Usually, when my husband's friend group hangs out, the guys all get ready at one of their places, and the girls get ready at one of our places.
Then we all meet up to wherever we're going, whether that's a pub crawl, or a concert, or music festival, etc. Kate hosts pretty regularly, and It's during those times I've seen it in her closet while she looks for something to wear.
And when she got married to Jarold she put her other wedding dress right next to the high school one.
As for my husband, I asked him about that today, and he said when they broke up, Kate asked if he wanted to see the dress since there was no point in hiding it anymore and he said yes. And then when they told their friends the news the friends also wanted to see the dress so she put it on for them too.
Hi, so I don't know if anyone even cares or still remembers my post, but I thought I'd make another update.
Before I go in I would just like to make a disclaimer that these are all things my husband and I heard through mutual connections/friends so who knows how much of this information has been dramatized for gossip.
When my husband talked to (I think I called her Kate in this post) she reacted as expected and started calling me a jealous and controlling wife to anyone who would listen. We didn't let her bother us, though.
Neither I nor my husband knew this, but apparently Her and Jarold have been struggling for quite some time and have been going to couples therapy. When my husband cut her off, Jarold sat down and asked him if he really thought that Kate wore that dress out of spite, and my husband answered truthfully and said yes.
We thought Jarold asked because he thought we were being ridiculous, but I guess he was wondering the same himself because he brought up the whole wedding dress thing up in their therapy.
In their most recent session they had it's being said that Kate finally admitted that she's always thought of my husband as the one who got away, and that she wore the dress out of spite and not just because it was her "fanciest" or because of sentimental value.
Jarold then asked her if she would go back to my husband if he decided to divorce me. She said no, but apparently, she hesitated, and Jarold knew she was lying. Again that is what my husband and I have been told so I don't know how much of that is accurate.
But it's being said from multiple people that that is what Jarold is telling anyone who asks. What I do know for sure is that Jarold is filing for divorce. He's already served her and is taking her to court in a few months as she is trying to fight to have ownership of some of his assets.
Since this came out I've had a load of apologies from people who said rude things about me or stopped being friends with me after I my husband and I agreed to cut off Kate.
Most people who had known her for a while believed what she was saying about me and no longer wanted to assort themselves with me after "causing unnecessary high school drama."
Their tunes have obviously changed, but I'm not interested in forming relationships with anyone who gossiped or didn't believe me, the whole thing was so dramatic for no reason. Yeah, anyways I just thought I'd write this for any (if any) of you were still curious for more info.
On to pictures, I'm not going to post any, but I will explain how it looked for those of you who wanted to know.
So firstly lots of people showed up in wedding dresses and that was absolutely beautiful. One thing my friends from college did was do a fifties Marilyn Monroe type glam, and it was killer.
One of the staff was able to find a red carpet and we took a bunch of black and white photos of them. I had about five girls wear their Quince dresses, which was GORGEOUS.
Finally, some parents dressed their little girls up in actual princess costumes, which I thought was really cute. The guys also dressed really well too. One guy did a sequin tux. Quite a few went for a Rockstar type suit.
My husband's best man went for this really gorgeous red velvet tux. And my dress was this really shimmery really poofy ballgown type dress with a flower design on the veil that I got custom made for me and then...
I had it designed where I could actually unattach the poofy part of the dress (for the reception) and then by doing that it turned into this long sleek white shimmery dress with a leg slit.