I’m getting married this summer and I’ve been trying hard to be a “chill bride.” My family and myself are doing most of the planning. My cousin is letting us stay at her house in Antioch, TN, just outside in Nashville so we’re saving money before the bachelorette party and another cousin has a van and we’re all driving down together so we just have to split the cost of gas. None of us are exactly swimming in cash and I wanted to keep costs down as much as possible. I also told my bridesmaids, if there’s anything about my wedding stressing you out, let me know. I’m the only one that should be stressing and before this little scenario, I was feeling pretty good.
Anyway, I found these perfect cocktail dresses at Anthropologie, inclusive sizing, great color and the holy Grail they were on sale. I made a deal with the bridesmaids. I buy the dresses if they covered any necessary alterations, everyone was happy. I gave everyone their dresses. Everyone looks fabulous and we’re all happy, who said planning a wedding was hard?
Enter Roxy: back in December I saw a photo of Roxy at her work Christmas party wearing the bridesmaids dress. I’ll admit it bugged me. I wanted the big reveal at the wedding to feel special not like a rerun of an HR office mixer, but I bit my tongue because none of our mutual friends were there so I’m not going to stress myself out about something I felt like was kind of petty. The problem is we have a mutual friend getting married in June, one month before my wedding. A lot of my wedding guests will be at this wedding, and when I asked Roxy what she was wearing she casually said “Oh I’m just wearing the bridesmaids dress from your wedding. I look hot in it and it’s my favorite.” I paused . I told her I didn’t want her wear the bridesmaid uniform as a guest to a wedding filled with our mutual friends right before my big day
Well, now Roxy thinks I’m being a bridezilla. She pointed out that I did say I wanted them to have a dress that they could wear again ( I meant after the wedding obviously) she then dropped the bombshell that she’s already worn it to several events. I might’ve snapped. I told her that since I bought the dress, I didn’t want her to wear it again until after my wedding she hit back in that since she paid for the alterations, she’s invested just as much money into the dress as I did which thanks to the sale might actually be true. My other bridesmaids are on my side, but Roxy thinks I’m overreacting because it’s just a dress. Am I the asshole for wanting the first time our friend group sees her in the dress to be when she’s standing at the altar with me.
I was all prepared to say Y T A from the title, but given it’s before your wedding I think you’re NTA. It just feels weird to me that your friend is treating it as an ordinary dress when she hasn’t even worn it to the occasion it was purchased for.
Right?! Who repurposes the bridesmaid dress BEFORE the wedding?!
I’ve seen others point out it could get ruined or dirty which is something I hadn’t even thought of! Like why are you even taking that risk?
Yeah. The PREpurposing is SO bad. OP literally got reusable bridesmaid dresses and this one BM pre-using it… SMDH
NTA
She really rns the risk of ruining the dress before the wedding and repeated washing and wearing might mean ot looks shabby compared to the other bridesmaids on the day. It’s really common sense that you don’t wear something like this before the event it was purchased for.
Seems that Roxy is lacking in common sense, with an extra measure of entitlement and selfishness. NTA
The repeated washing and wearing is what I thought of too – when I started my first real job where I had to dress up, my dad gifted me a very nice pant suit for work. One of the things he told me was that even if I find myself wearing the pants more than the jacket, to always take them both in to be cleaned at the same time so that they wear evenly and stay matching. If this girl is wearing this dress to multiple events and getting it cleaned every time, it might not look quite as nice when standing next to the others, which will all be brand new.
NTA – She’s going to wear the dress you bought her to wear as a bridesmaid *for your wedding* to a wedding where everyone who knows you all are guests *before* your wedding? Yikes. That’s super tacky, and I would be upset by that, for sure.
NTA. Wearing the bridesmaid dress to an HR office mixer was one thing, but wearing it to another wedding with the same friend group right before yours is basically just a spoiler alert nobody asked for. It’s like releasing the movie trailer as the full film a month early.
NTA. I have never in my life heard of bridesmaids wearing their dresses to multiple events before the wedding even if they purchased it themselves. That is nuts.
NTA. My concern would be that something happens to the dress before the wedding. What if she gets a stain that won’t come out or the repeated washings cause the color to fade so it doesn’t match the others? It’s great she loves the dress, but she should understand why she should wait until the wedding to start wearing it.
If I were OP, I’d tell Roxy, “I can’t tell you what to do. But if you do anything to the dress that makes it look different from the others before the wedding, including rips, stains, or fading, you’re out of the wedding party.”
NTA.
People generally understand NOT to wear the bridesmaid dress BEFORE the wedding. The fact you paid for the dress adds to the “my rules, my way” factor.
What if she tears the dress? Or stains it? She can’t replicate it again (most likely the sale price was because it was going out of season and unless she were to get lucky and find it on a reseller like Poshmark).
She can do whatever she wants AFTER, not before. Every bridesmaid in the world has understood this simple guideline. Roxy is not being helpful.
Who wears a bridesmaid dress before the wedding?! NTA. After I know it fits I keep that thing in the bag until the second I have to put it on.