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Being a bridesmaid is costly.
By Izzy Casey
Last updated on Dec 05, 2023
While being a bridesmaid is an honor, it's often costly. Bridesmaids are typically responsible for buying their dresses, paying for hair and makeup and funding bachelorette parties and bridal showers. In fact, according to a 2017 WeddingWire study, bridesmaids can expect to spend an average of $1200 to participate in their friend's wedding.
This is exactly why one bridesmaid decided to take her friend to court after she was kicked out of her bridal party for cutting her hair.
An ex-bridesmaid sued a bride for wedding costs after being kicked out of the bridal party.
In a Reddit post, a former bridesmaid explained that for a three-day wedding, she was required to buy three dresses. Including dress alterations and shoes to match, the outfit expenses totaled $700. In addition, the bride asked that each bridesmaid wear a specific hairstyle for each day.
“Unfortunately starting in March my hair started to deteriorate,” the ex-bridesmaid wrote in the Reddit post. “Due to health reasons my hair was falling out in chunks and in May i made the difficult decision to cut my hair.”
While at first, the bride didn't have an issue with her bridesmaid's haircut, a week before the wedding, she changed her mind.
“She came over to my house and when she was about to leave,” the anonymous poster wrote, “She brought up that she was concerned about my haircut and I told her it would look good even though I wouldn’t be uniform with the other bridesmaids.”
Three days before the wedding, the bride kicked the bridesmaid out of the bridal party.
“After our recent conversations, I’d like to remind you of my boundaries: I’ve been very accommodating and graceful, but I can’t allow you to disrespect me,” the bride texted.
Another day, another person misunderstanding the concept of setting boundaries. Because if anyone in this situation is overstepping their boundaries, it’s the bride. You can’t force someone to get a haircut they don’t want to get and call that a boundary. Setting a boundary means saying, “Please don’t tell me what haircut to get. It’s my body, so I get to do what I want with it. Love you!”
However, the bride stood her ground.
“Since I asked each of you to be bridesmaid in 2019, I’ve been very clearly and very communicative in my request,” the bride went on in her text. “The timing of your decision to cut your hair and not income in advance is very upsetting to me.”
“I would have felt respected if you had communicated with me more than a week prior to the wedding,” she allegedly continued, “So we could have worked together to find a collaborative solution. Your inconsistencies have concerned me and while I sympathise with your health concerns, I’m not willing to compromise my vision to accommodate you (or anyone else) when you have informed me in advance and we could have found a better solution.”
Instead of forcing her to not get the haircut, she asks her to “please step down from participating in [her] wedding.”
After being kicked out of the wedding, the ex-bridesmaid sent the bride and groom an invoice for the money she spent on the dresses and shoes.
“Neither of them replied,” the ex-bridesmaid wrote, “and so I decided to take it the court.”
There's no information about the bride's response to being sued. In addition, there are no pictures of the text messages in the thread. However, the former bridesmaid asked Reddit whether or not she was in the wrong for expecting to be reimbursed.
There's a growing sense of dread around being a bridesmaid, in large part thanks to issues like this one.
Though it is the bride's big day (or in this case, big three days), asking someone to be your bridesmaid likely means they are a close friend — and good friends are sympathetic to and understanding of the fact that people have lives outside of the wedding.
"Ignoring your bridesmaids' health concerns, expecting them to spend exorbitant amounts of money or disinviting them to your wedding if they won't comply with your demands are all big no-nos," Shelley Brown, the senior fashion and beauty editor for The Knot, told Newsweek.
There have been countless examples of brides overstepping boundaries and destroying friendships in order to create what they believe will be the perfect wedding, and it seems people are starting to grow tired of the traditions.
Weddings can bring the worst out in people, but if your worst is that obscene, maybe you need to do some reevaluating. And by maybe, we do mean definitely.
Izzy Casey is a freelance writer, former YourTango writer and associate editor, and copy editor who received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has been published in Corriere della Sera, The Iowa Review, Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, BOATT, NY Tyrant, and elsewhere.