This a long one about one of my bridesmaids and how much better her wedding was going to be than mine. We were sorority sisters and roommates, so you can imagine we were pretty close. After graduation, I moved to the city to live with my now-husband, and she moved one town over to be closer to family. It's about an 1.5h drive, so while it's a little inconvenient, we made time to see each other plenty.
That's until she met her now-fiancé, and he acted like it was the other side of the world. He made a problem out of it even when we were the ones driving to meet them. I was a little sad, but I'm not one to push my welcome, and I chalked it up to them being very in love and wanting to spend as much time together as possible.
In spite of this, I asked her to be my bridesmaid, and she happily agreed. We sent out the invitations a month after asking our bridal party, which was about two years away from the actual wedding. This is when all the trouble started: we'd listed him as an evening guest, while she, of course, was a day guest. Note: we did this for all(!) of the bridal party's partners.
For our ceremony, we were limited to about 35 guests, and we decided to reserve this for close family and friends. At this point, we had met my friend’s fiancé about four times, and we didn’t exactly look back at those memories fondly. That is to say, we thought they would understand, but we were very wrong.
My friend called us in tears to tell us that we had ‘misled’ her to think that her then-boyfriend would be there the whole day, and that she was ‘heartbroken’ we had ‘ruined their special day.’ We tried to explain our reasoning: we’d only invited close friends and family, and we simply couldn’t stretch the budget beyond this.
We also explained that we had purposely picked a venue that is within driving distance of all our evening guests (about an hour) and, since none of the guests worked nights at that time, this meant no one would be forced to take time off or book a hotel just to attend the party.
In case it matters, we had an open bar and plenty of food throughout the evening, so we really tried to treat everyone as much as we could. She understood, but told us that her then-boyfriend needed some time to cool off as he was so furious and couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t ‘get physical’ if he saw us in the near future.
She told us that, from his point-of-view, we had been close friends. Again, we had only met him a handful of times, most of which in group settings. He had not even been to our home yet (on account of him cancelling last minute every time).
My friend and I patched things up as good as we could, but, to be fair, it did sour the relationship. From then on, she kept negatively comparing our wedding to their ‘future wedding.’ She told everyone that they wouldn’t bother to have such a small wedding, they would have at least a 100 day guests, they’d pay for everyone’s hotel, they’d have multiple musical acts, more food, more decorations, etc.
It did bother me that she seemed to be actively trying to take our wedding down, even though she was supposed to be one of the people organising it, but I just ignored it. We loved our wedding, even if it was ‘small’ and didn’t have a festival line-up.
Her now-fiancé ended up proposing to her mere weeks before our wedding, so we had a suspicion why he was so eager to attend, but we don’t know this for sure, of course. We were sent an RSVP for the whole wedding day, and we thought this was the sign that the hatchet had been buried.
Fastforward to now: my friend’s getting married in half year, and there have been no ‘proper’ invitations outside of the RSVP’s. I was chatting to her, and tried to bring it up as casual as possible. Turns out, they didn’t keep track of whom they invited, and sent out well over 200 RSVP’s before even looking at prices for catering or a venue. They are now scrambling to prune back the list (she assured me we made the cut).
In addition, they’ve come back from ‘everyone’s invited for the whole day AND gets a free hotel stay,’ and are only inviting a handful of day guests (significantly fewer than our wedding) who are responsible for the pot luck buffet. Obviously, there’s no hotel reservations, and there will likely be no open bar.
When I asked if we were the lucky few to make the cut as day guests, she told me that of course we hadn’t BUT at least they had communicated this clearly beforehand. I showed her the RSVP and she went white, when she realised she’d sent over 200 people a save the date for the entire day, meaning that she had ‘misled’ all these people for over two years that they would be day guests.
I can only imagine how many of them have already taken time off (like me!). We hugged it out, and she moved sending out rectification invitations to the top of her to-do list. We’re still friends, even if I can’t stand her soon-to-be-husband, but boy was it nice to see them eat crow like this.
Ridiculouslyrampant said:
Props if yall actually go to the wedding because I for sure wouldn’t. He might “get physical”? I’d be close to her as much as possible without ever interacting with him.
rofosho said:
Yup it's so easy to plan A wedding until you have to plan a wedding. It's why it's an industry.
uniqueme1 said:
The threat of violence from the then BF of this girl would have made me drop them both completely. Who does that?
Lawyer_Lady3080 said:
This whole story is hilarious. Yeah, it’s easy to talk a big game and much harder and much more expensive to deliver. Hopefully they didn’t bruise the ego of anyone as delicate as her husband to be or things might “get physical.”
Ok_Paramedic93 said:
What is a day guest and a night guest. Why would a day guest need a hotel? If you invite someone to your wedding, you wouldn't feed them? The ceremony is usually open to everyone. I would love to be educated on this type of wedding...Please explain..
OP responded:
Where we're from [the UK] it's quite common to host the ceremony and reception for close relatives during the day, and a party for extended family in the evening.
I'm sure you can imagine that people might have to travel to get there and won't be able to drive home after the party, so they'll book a place to stay afterwards
THOUGHTCOPS said:
After he gets physical at the wedding and hurts some people you can just "hug it out"! WTF is wrong with you? Is your husband divorcing you yet? You care more about these assholes than his safety.
And OP's husband responded:
I am husband. No physical altercations were had, just alluded to. My safety was never in question, and neither of us would let it get to that.
What do you think?