Woman shares saga of missing bride; 'I think she was RIGHT to leave her husband at the altar.' AITA? UPDATED 2X

When this woman is shocked by a bride's decision to leave her husband at the altar, she asks the internet:

"AITA for defending a bride who left her husband at the altar?"

Okay so boom me and my husband attended a wedding. It was his kinda cousin/ niece’s wedding I’m not sure how to describe the relationship but they were close growing up.

The wedding was a bit unique. There was a brunch before the actually ceremony with bride and groom. Then for an hour the wedding party left to get ready while all the guests were still at brunch, then the actually ceremony and the real reception was supposed to happen after.

I thought everything was normal. At the brunch the couple looked happy and excited and a little nervous maybe.

My husband had told me there had been a little drama leading up to wedding because the grooms family insisted that the grooms ex should attend wedding because they have a good relationship.

The ex is an emt and she apparently saved mother in laws life once. The bride didn’t want the ex to attend but she caved in.

At the actual ceremony as you might’ve guessed from the title the bride never showed. After a few minutes of awkward silence with the music playing as we waited for the bride, the brides father came told everyone she left.

Groom was crying, mother-in-law was screaming it was such a huge mess. At the reception they basically just told people to take To go boxes of food so it didn’t go to waste.

Since a lot of family was in town for the wedding, brides side of the family was hosting a reunion.

At the reunion the bride said the reason she left groom at the alter was because at the brunch the ex told her that she slept with the groom and apparently showed the bride a sex tape she made with the groom. Bride was distraught and left because she didn’t wanna marry a cheater.

Grooms side of the family were slandering the bride on every social media platform possible. So the brides side decided to fire back and they were publicly accusing the groom of cheating on her and it was just a big shit storm.

Groom comes to brides house to try and clear things up. So the groom didn’t actually cheat on the bride. The sex tape was from years and years ago, the grooms appearance just hadn’t changed that much so bride believed the ex when she said it was recent. The ex was just trying to break them up. The ex confessed to it too.

To my surprise instead of everyone being angry at the ex everyone turned on the bride. Her family was pissed at her for wasting money, being gullible, not letting the groom defend himself first. Everyone was yelling at her, I thought it was crazy so I spoke up in her defense.

I would’ve believed it too if there was video evidence + the fact that she was practically forced into the ex attending their wedding.

Now the whole family is against me and the bride and it’s so awkward and everyone acting cold. My husband is upset because she now feels like if someone accused him of cheating on me I’d just take their word for it but I feel that’s completely unfair.

Relevant Comments: OOP replies to a YTA:

I do think it would have been better if she talked to the groom. And I understand he probably felt humiliated getting left like that but.

All of this happened so quickly I understand why the bride left his at the alter. Right after she left the brunch to get her hair and makeup on her wedding day, her emotions and anxiety were probably already running high and the grooms ex who she did not want there walks up to her and shows her a video of her having...

se% with the groom while he’s somewhere else getting ready and there a venue full of people. And it’s not like she was planning on not talking to the groom. The reunion was literally the day after all of this happened in less than 24 hours.

Relationship to bride: She’s technically his niece but because they are so close in age they just say cousin. It being from the ex: What happened to the bride was not just a random stranger saying he cheated on her.

His ex, who the whole family vouches for her character, showed the girl a literal sex tape of her and the groom like half an hour before the bride was supposed to walk down the isle.

If someone told me my husband cheated on me on a random day I would confront him and I’m sure the bride would have done the same in a different situation. But thirty minutes before you’re supposed to walk down the aisle with video proof? That’s a very unique situation.

Mini Update (Same Post): July 12, 2024 (Next Day) MINI UPDATE:

okay so my hubby came back to hotel room and I showed him post because he knows I like using Reddit. I mentioned I specific comment to him where one redditor asked me how are we sure the tape was old and that the groom and ex aren’t just covering their affair up by lying and saying it’s old.

I told my husband and at first he laughed but he started to think about the whole situation I guess. While hubby was still at the brides house trying to help with situation after I left (the environment was getting too much for me so I went back to hotel).

The groom had been groveling to the bride. Even tho he was exonerated by ex admitting it was fake he was still being very apologetic which threw my husband off a bit. Like even tho he maintained he didn’t cheat. Instead of husband being angry about being left at the altar and publicly humiliated he seemed to just want wife to forgive him.

I thought this would be normal because groom probably feels horrible about allowing the ex to ruin the day and hurt the wife like that but my husband said it was unusual behavior for the groom.

Apparently the groom is the highhorse type and he would “never apologize for a mistake that wasn’t his”. Husband knows the groom better than me so my husband thinks it’s plausible that the groom did cheat by the way he’s acting but he’s not gonna bring it up because of how high tensions are and it might just make things worse.

I also explained how and why I felt like my husband was being unfair to me by saying he thinks I’d believe anyone who accused him of cheating on me. He apologized and told me he was just stressed out earlier and he feels like we wasted money in this trip and went seen our kid for days over this wedding that got blown up over a lie.

Bride texted me thanking me for defending her. Most of the slandering social media posts were taken down. The ex posted on social media playing victim. Well not really but she’s posting like heartbreak stuff and those fg depressed Bart simpson memes, at her big age…

The grooms mother pulled up the brides house after I left and was threatening to “burn the place down” because she was mad the bride humiliated her son over a lie because it was such a huge wedding he had many coworkers and stuff there.

I feel like I’m missing something but I’m tired and it’s been a long ass day. EDIT + question:

A few people are saying I should show this post to the bride but I’m a bit scared she won’t react well to me putting her business online because I don’t know her that well, but at the same time I feel like she might appreciate that most people are on her side?

But also I don’t really want her to see my “conspiracy theory” about how the husband actually cheated on her because there’s no actual proof. Should I?

Relevant Comments:

Commenter: Coming in after the mini update... groom's behaviour is sus. Does the se% tape show any defining features that the groom does have now, but didn't have during the time bride and groom were together?

Say, a tattoo he's gotten a year into bride & groom's relationship. Or a scar from not knowing how to handle power tools correctly. Something that's distinctive and can help date the video?

OP: No one’s really seen tape except bride I think and it was only for a short period of time.

Update: (2 days later, 3 from Original Post) Okay so I decided to send this to bride, I also told my mother in law who I’m super close with what was going on. I’ll start with bride first.

So as I predicted she was a little mad I put her buisness online. I called her and we made small talk for a couple on minutes avoiding the elephant but then I told her I posted about this on Reddit. I sent her the link while we were in call.

She didn’t yell or anything but she told me I shouldn’t have done that. I assured her I didn’t use any names or defining descriptions and she hung up the phone. A few minutes later she called me back and told me she scrolled through the comments and stuff and it made her feel a bit better. Then she apologized for “snapping” at me but I don’t feel like she did.

She told me that she felt like a lot of the comments were “blowing things out of proportion” when it comes to how you guys speak of the mother in law and groom.

She said MIL isn’t evil like the post made her out to be, she also said she understands why MIL insisted on ex being bc at wedding and that when MIL threatened to burn down the house she wasn’t being serious and it was taken out of context.

When I asked stuff like are you still gonna get married to groom she just kept saying idk and she sounded sad so I dropped it.

She also told me she doesn’t think groom cheated on her and that my husband just has a bad perception of groom because he has a “hard shell to crack.”

After we hung up me and my husband called his mother to update her on what’s happening because she couldn’t make it to the wedding.

My husbands mother told us that the ex never really saved MILs life, basically all she did was inject her with an epi pen for a mild allergy. My Mil feels like saying “she saved her life” was just for dramatics to guilt the bride into letting ex attend wedding.

My MIL also feels like the brides MIL had nothing to do with the ex sabotaging the wedding. She said that the brides mil isn’t an idiot and even if she did love the ex that much she would never purposely ruin her son’s wedding cuz she’s one of those boy moms.