'My fiancés friend wants to wear an almost white dress to our wedding. WIBTA to withdraw the invite?' UPDATED
"My fiancés friend wants to wear an almost white dress to our wedding. WIBTA to withdraw the invite?"
Essentially, my fiancé has a friend from college that I’ve only met once. I was never a huge fan of her as she’s been snarky with me in the past, but he wanted to invite her and her boyfriend because her boyfriend is a fun guy & his friends still like her and I was fine with it.
My fiancé and her aren’t close anymore, so we were loosely considering inviting them and decided it couldn’t hurt. I really didn’t think much of it until yesterday, when she posted a clothing haul on Instagram and pulled out this very almost-white gown and claimed she would be wearing it to a wedding in June…. Our wedding is in June.
I replied to her post and said exactly the following:
“I loveee that white set you showed, I might have to snag it myself. For the dress though, is that what you planned to wear to our wedding?”
She replied “Yep.” Nothing else, just “yep”. I asked my bridal party what their thoughts were and every single person said this was outrageous. None of us are particularly conservative, but the cut feels a little bit much for a wedding, but I could easily overlook that in exchange for it not being so close to white.
On camera especially it looked VERY white, so I am sure this will photograph white. I responded and asked if she would be able to find it in another color and she said “No, I will be wearing this or I just won’t come. It’s a yellow dress sweetie, calm down😘 “
I haven’t replied yet and my fiancé doesn’t know any of this is happening, but I am very strongly considering withdrawing their invite with my fiancés blessing, which I am sure I will have as we were on the fence about inviting them in the first place.
It’s not even just the dress color, but the fact she is trying to call shots on our day and continues to be so snarky to me that rubs me the wrong way. WIBTA if we decide to cancel their invite? Photo of the dress attached, I can sort of see how it could be deemed yellow, but it still just seems way to close for my liking...
Here's what people had to say to OP:
[****] no, [****] that, and [****] her.
You NEED to uninvited her
NTA
The dress is one thing, the being condescending and downright rude to you is another. I'd uninivite this person and not give it a further thought. If her boyfriend is cool he can come on his own, problem solved.
I told my husband if he ever wants to make a woman very angry just tell them to "calm down". He was like "oh that's why you go so mad that one time." He genuinely did not know, he doesn't say it anymore. She knew that would irk her, all women know.
Yea, withdrawal the invite. Its your wedding and this girl sounds like a attention seeking b%$^%
The color is the least of the issue. The dress is so tacky
It is an ugly dress. Even the model in the picture couldn't pull it off. This woman has terrible taste.
The next day OP posted this update:
It was heavily requested that I update my post from yesterday and truly who am I to disappoint. I got tons of feedback from people giving me ideas of how to spite her to people calling me a raging control freak for wanting people to follow a dress code for a wedding my fiancé and I am spending… a lot.. of money on for it to be a good experience for us AND all of our adorned guests.
I know I don’t have to, but I do want to defend myself to a point. Skip ahead if you don’t care of course!
While I can see the side of people having autonomy over their dress, I standby my thought that it is reasonable to have a standard of dress for your guests. Should a guest be unable to afford something suitable for the dress code, a majority of our guests know that they can contact me and we can work something out and/or help them get something they’re comfortable in that fits the vibe.
Additionally, we were advised by our venue to enforce a dress code, which they said protects their reputation. Take that how you will. I’ve never been referred to as a control freak, but if not wanting a guest to wear a white-ish dress to my wedding makes me one, so be it.
My upset comes more from a place of lack of respect for myself AND our event than the concern of being “upstaged”. Intentionally wearing something revealing and white to a wedding is a show of disrespect in my opinion. I have absolutely zero concerns about being upstaged regardless of what anyone wears.
There was someone that said I needed a better designer if that was a concern, but I love my dress and that’s all that matters. I showed my fiancé the original post and he said “it’s like if someone wears muddy sneakers into your brand new Ferrari.
You’re not worried about them getting more attention because they’re wearing muddy sneakers, you’re upset because they don’t respect your Ferrari AND are taking away from what makes it “nice”.
In regard to me seeing her post in the first place, I follow the entire friend group on Instagram and followed her the day I met her and never unfollowed. Honestly, even though I don’t like HER, I do enjoy her shopping content. Obviously this ended that, but I did enjoy watching some of her content.
I definitely do not go out of my way to “stalk” her as some have claimed. It showed up on my feed and I watched casually, I just got lucky to have the post that she mentioned our wedding in on my feed I guess, but we were told by someone else in the friend group that is friends with her that they planned to tell us what she was going to wear since it, again, showed up very white on camera.
We would’ve found out about this eventually because she was pretty obvious about it. A complete stranger even commented on the post and said “You’re wearing a white gown to a wedding? That’s… a choice”.
Lastly, A lot of people attacked me for not immediately alerting my fiance about the situation. For context, my fiancé works night shift and this began while he was at work. He came home from work at 6 AM and went straight to sleep.
I didn’t want to interrupt him working (what he does is important and him being distracted can be dangerous for others and I didn’t want that) and I definitely didn’t want to prevent him from getting his sleep once he was home. I thought that this wasn’t a big enough deal to affect his job/health and that it could wait until tonight and honestly stand by that.
Now for the real update:
Friday night I showed him the messages and explained what happened. He said “absolutely not” and agreed that it was 1) not following the dress code expressed on our invitation and 2) way too white for comfort.
He was beyond pissed at the way that she talked to me and said he’d handle it. I wanted to be involved, but as many of you pointed out, it could very easily be spun that I’m some crazy Bridezilla should I be the one to pull the plug on her coming. He called her on speaker, and she immediately asked if it was about me “making a big deal about a dress”.
He said “no, it’s about ME making a big deal about the dress, you’re not wearing that to our wedding.” You could tell she was already escalated and went off about how she won’t allow anyone to say what she can and can’t put on her body.
He stayed quiet while she ranted for at least a couple of minutes (took all I had in me to not chime in “calm downnn”) and waited for her to go silent. As soon as she did, he said something to the effect of “You are no longer invited.” And hung up. It only took about 10 minutes before we had someone reaching out to us asking for the full story.
She told one of my fiancé’s friends that I freaked out about her “dressing like a whore” (mind you, I said NOTHING about the style to her and I haven’t said anything about her “looking like a whore” ANYWHERE, including online, the post blew up and she may have seen it at some point, but I know I never said anything like that. A lot of commenters did though.)
We explained our stance and that her behavior surrounding everything was unacceptable and we did not want problems on our big day and everyone seemed to just let it go.
People that know her are still reaching out and probably will continue to as she makes her rounds freaking out to people. I wanted to see if she was going to blast us on social media, but we both have been blocked, which is fine honestly.
All in all, I stand by the fact that having a dress code at a wedding is fine. She is no longer coming. No word on if her boyfriend is coming but I suspect not. I plan to just move on and alert security that she is not to be let in.
Thankfully we will have security AND a day of coordinator to hide behind should she try to pull anything crazy since she does know the venue and date. If anything crazy happens, I’ll update in June lol.
If you come across an Instagram Reel or TikTok of a girl upset that she was unvited to a wedding because of her dress choice, just know that it could be my wedding and the dress was only part of it lol. Thanks to everyone for the helpful advicelink to original
Here's what people had to say to OP after the update:
LOOOOOOOVE your fiancé’s support and the way he said it’s HIM** making a big deal about it. That was my favorite part 🤭 but also good on you for standing your ground!
dumpsterfire_x OP:
My jaw dropped when he said that honestly. It was such a smooth response LOL
Definitely NTA, and good on your partner for putting their foot down and having your back.
Whoever is attacking you for this is foolish. Of course you have every right to be angry about wearing white to your wedding!! Reddit can be so weird sometimes.
dumpsterfire_x OP:
Yeah even here I am getting people calling me crazy. It doesn’t feel crazy to me at all and I have my future spouse and friends backing me which I’m grateful for, but I feel bad for anyone that doesn’t have my support system that comes here for advise. Some people here are really out of touch imo. That said, it IS the internet so I get it lol