Bride Accused Of Being 'Boring' For Choosing To Only Serve Water To Drink At Her Wedding Reception

The wedding guests couldn't even have a soda but the bride is sticking to her reasons.

bride and groom smiling at wedding, hands toasting with champagne glasses at wedding reception Jonathan Borba / Pexels / Bogdan Sonjachnyj / Shutterstock
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While some couples choose to have a dry wedding, where no alcoholic beverages are served, one bride decided to take it one step further and ban all drinks from her wedding reception.

Posting to the subreddit "r/AmItheA--hole" (AITA) — a forum where users try to figure out if they were wrong or not in an argument that has been bothering them — the bride explained that she and her fiancé don't drink alcohol and therefore didn't want to serve it at their wedding.

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While that's not an uncommon practice, the bride is being criticized for choosing to only serve one kind of beverage.

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She is being accused of being 'boring' for choosing to only serve water to drink at her wedding reception.

In her Reddit post, she wrote both her and her fiancé's families are fairly big, with around 100-150 of their family members attending their ceremony in total. They both decided to pay for the wedding themselves, with help from her grandmother.

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"We have a lot of kids in our family so we decided against making it child-free but we did decide to make it dry. So there will be no alcohol of any kind at our wedding," she explained.

She acknowledged that she doesn't have anything against people who drink, but she and her fiancé have just never had an interest in it. 

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In a 2021 study by Hitched, it was revealed that only 11% of couples are having or considering having a dry wedding. Apart from religious reasons, some couples were making the choice out of respect for sober family members, while others don't drink and don't want to pay for others to get drunk on their day.

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In those cases, couples will usually supplement alcohol with soft drinks including soda, juice, tea, coffee, or even mocktails. However, that wasn't the case for this bride.

"We only really drink water. We rarely, if ever, drink soda so most of the time it's only water with the occasional juice and milk. We don't even drink coffee."

For the food, which is not being paid for by her grandma, she and her fiancé decided to go all out for the options, but will only be providing water for their guests to drink.

"We don't want to have to pay for alcohol or soda, it is just a large added expense when we can just do filtered water for a MUCH cheaper cost."

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When their family and friends found out about the water-only policy, they were understandably upset. While some of them didn't care, others accused her of being "boring" and having an equally boring ceremony.

"I didn't think this would be a problem! It's only water. I mean, don't most people drink water every day anyway? Should we pay the extra to have sodas to make the family happy?" she concluded.

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Most Reddit users agreed that the bride was in the wrong for choosing to only serve water at her wedding reception.

"I know that technically you could be in the right, but here’s the thing about weddings, the marriage ceremony is for you and your fiancé," one Reddit user wrote.

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"The wedding is for everyone you’ve invited, it’s an event you’re hosting, and not providing any drinks other than water makes you a bad host/hostess."

Another user added, "I don't have anything against dry weddings but surely you can offer something other than just water. Iced Tea? Lemonade? Something with flavor?"

"As someone who only drinks water and the occasional tea. Not about making the wedding dry. That's perfectly fine. But damn, give people some options to drink. Some carbonated water if anything," a third user chimed in.

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Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics.