'AITA if I cut off my BFF after her wedding because of her controlling behavior?' UPDATED

"WIBTA if I cut off my bff after her wedding because of her bridezilla behavior?"

I’ll try to make this as short as possible but there’s a lot that’s gone into this. No real names were used. I (35f)have known Mary (36f)for roughly 10 years and at first I wasn’t the biggest fan of her as she comes off as overbearing and self centered but after working with her for nearly two years came to know her fairly well and became pretty close with her.

I found that her abrasive personality was more of a defense mechanism to keep people away because she’s a very big girl and is super self conscious about her appearance.

She moved to another state six years ago to live with her on and off again boyfriend, Jake(49m), and we’ve remained very close. Over the past 6 years she and her boyfriend have had more downs than ups and honestly, I blamed him for it. Always having Mary’s back and encouraging her to leave and be her bad boss self without him.

They got engaged a year and a half ago and Mary asked me to be her maid of honor and our mutual friend Jane (40f)to also be a bridesmaid. And while we weren’t thrilled she was marrying someone who we felt treats her poorly we were so happy for her and have tried to help with wedding planning as much as we can from 1600 miles away.

Jane flew out to visit Mary last summer and when she returned she confided in me that she really isn’t surprised Jake will blow up the way we had been told he does because Mary treats him super poorly. From constantly berating him about being dumb and cursing at him to just genuinely acting like she is grossed out by his presence.

I had a conversation with Mary and asked if marrying Jake is truly what she wanted to do or if she just wanted to be married, and Jake asked. I told her I was concerned that she didn’t seem happy and if he was treating her the way he was (I wasn’t trying to throw Jane under the bus for revealing it was her treating Jake that way) then why would you stay with someone you don’t even like?

She said she was in love with him and she just wanted to be married to him, so whatever, on with the wedding planning we go. Around this time is when they sent out their save the date into for their wedding this year, and some people reached out to Mary to let her know they wouldn’t be able to attend due to financial reasons as traveling out of state wasn’t realistic for them and she started to lose her mind.

Like, she would call me and complain about how “people’s true colors show” when planning a wedding and she’s disgusted she ever considered them friends and they were lucky to be invited in the first place. And I mean, she said this about everyone who let her know in advance they couldn’t attend, no matter what the reason was.

When she sent out the actual invitations she got worse, she would post on Facebook step by step instructions on how to RSVP. Seriously, she would make multiple posts about “I don’t know why this is so hard for people, we spent extra money to include postage. It’s not that hard to mark if you are attending or not and mail it.”

And if people said they weren’t attending - you guessed it, she would text our bridal party group chat and fly off the handle talking about how disrespectful it is they weren’t going to be there and how much money she’s put into the wedding and how dare they act like it’s not a big deal, etc.

Then, my grandmother passed away in December. My grandparents raised me and we were very close and I’m the person my grandparents chose to be their power of attorney and executor of their estate so when my grandmother passed, I was called by the paramedics to be there with my grandfather while they waited on the coroner to arrive.

My grandfather isn’t in great health and they were married for 60 years so it was really hard on him so I took time off and did everything, planned the funeral, made all the arrangements, took care of all her accounts and made sure someone, if not myself was there with him for the first month or so.

To this day, my husband and I go over to his house 4-5 days a week to make dinner and eat with him, help with cleaning things, take him shopping, to doctors appointments, etc. I was raised in a very family-centric environment and I am so thankful to be there for him.

Mary, on the other hand, has not been so thankful I’ve been there for my grandfather. At first she was very supportive but once my grandmother was in the ground she became very annoyed that I wasn’t paying enough attention to her and the wedding. To the point where she even asked me if I even wanted to go to the wedding.

I was blown away, and told her of course I did and I apologized for not being as available as I had been before. Fast forward to February of this year, Jane found out her aunt doesn’t have very much time left and her aunt happens to live about 30 minutes away from Mary.

So Jane brought up that after the wedding, she was hoping to find some time to go visit her aunt as she doesn’t know how much time she has left. We are flying in the Tuesday before the wedding, which is Saturday, and flying out on Monday.

So she was hoping to visit her aunt on Sunday and Mary came UNGLUED and told her there simply wouldn’t be time for that and then began blowing up my phone talking about how selfish it was of Jane to want to take time away from the wedding (which again, would be over at that point).

I told her to back off because she can’t expect anyone to put a wedding over a dying family member and she dropped it but then took to Facebook to make multiple posts again about how “weddings really bring out people’s true colors” and she’s so “glad she knows who’s actually there for her”.

I’m so over it, there’s been more small things but these are the big things that I don’t know I can ever look at her the same and I’m questioning if she really is just the inherently selfish and self centered person she initially came off as.

I’ve debated on going to the wedding at all and with it a month away I am actually beginning to dread going. I have decided though that I don’t want to leave Jane alone in this and unless another big things unfolds in the next few weeks that I’m going to try and just stick it through the wedding. I feel so guilty for even thinking this but I don’t know that I can continue to even be her friend after all of this.

WIBTA if I just cut contact after the wedding?

TLDR- Friend is acting like a total bridezilla and disrespecting everyone around her.

What do you think? WIBTA? This is what commenters had to say:

Cascadeis said:

It doesn’t sound like you’ve ever been “bff” with Mary… If you want to handle it in a nice way, maybe let the friendship “naturally” die off after the wedding? (“Oh, we’re living so far apart” “grandfather needs more help than he used to” “it’s okay that we don’t talk that much anymore, you’re a married woman now!”)

OP responded:

That’s fair, I didn’t really include a lot of information about how our friendship grew over the years but she really was someone I considered my best friend up until the last 6 months of wedding planning and her behavior seemingly doing a 180.

When I’ve tried broaching the topic with her she says I’m taking things the wrong way and runs to facebook to make passive aggressive posts. Letting things just die off might just be the right thing to do.

TNTmom4 said:

Talk to Jane. She may be staying in the wedding for you. If that’s the case she can not waste her time at the wedddjng to spend it with her love ones.

OP responded:

Honestly that is such a good idea.

yesterdayschild92 said:

NTA. I was alwaaaaayyys the girl with A LOT of "friends"... or so I thought... it took me a long time to accept that I was the girl everyone called but never the girl who had people to answer hers... I cut off like 95% of the people in my life. I ghosted everyone. Anyone I ever felt some type of way about when I needed help.. out my life they went and I have a veryyyy smalllllll circle now..

(including our families, we had less than 50 people at our wedding and a lot of people were angry.. but where were they when my life was falling apart?? Oh, right.. unreachable..)

I'm significantly happier, significantly more stable mentally, I'm less foggy brained.. people like that are draining physically and mentally. They're taxing on you in so many ways.. I wouldn't even be going to the wedding with an attitude like that. 🤷‍♀️

And Stray1_cat said:

NTA. Her behavior is disgusting.

A few days later, she shared this update:

I’m not going to the wedding.

Another person backed out of attending as they are going through some pretty serious concerns with their daughter and Mary lost it.

She flew into a rage, texting the gc a 37 text long rant that can be summed up with- people are ungrateful, just want to find excuses not to go, no one is taking the wedding seriously.

She went as far as to post the lyrics to Burning Down by Alex Warren (which is about being backstabbed by a friend) to Facebook. She then went on to tell them that they owe her money for the expenses she incurred for the wedding, broken down into food cost, a venue charge, and even the cost of mailing the save the date and invitation.

I told her that it’s incredibly out of touch to expect someone, who’s simply a guest, to put a wedding above their family. She began shrugging it off and saying their daughter was just attention seeking and it wouldn’t be a big deal to be out of state for a weekend leaving their daughter behind.

I told her that was completely out of line and that if my daughter was in a similar situation I wouldn’t consider being 1600 miles away from her for any reason.

She then began telling me that she’s so sick of people not being accommodating to her and her wishes and she’s about to say “eff it” because she’s so tired of people acting entitled. So I said, “you know what. You’re right. Eff it. I won’t be coming either.”

I blocked her social media and phone number, although I’m getting updates from people about it still. My flight is cancelled and I’m trying to work out if I can get the dress returned or if that’s just a loss.

I thought I’d be stressed out or sad about it but honestly, I’m so relieved.