Relationships
10 Bridesmaids Revealed The Most Intense Asks They've Gotten From Brides
by Korey Lane
Being a bridesmaid can be a really fun experience, but it can easily be just as stressful — not to mention, expensive. You might be asked to help with the bachelorette party, the bridal shower, and the day of the wedding might come with its own set of duties. You want to be there for your friend, but that doesn't mean you have to put up with every whim and desire they express. In fact, hearing stories of intense bride requests, straight from real bridesmaids themselves, will remind you how out of control weddings can actually get.
Viral stories about brides who get a little stressed out with wedding planning are just about everywhere these days. There's so much pressure on this one wedding day to be the "best day of their life," that it's no wonder they're so stressed out about it. And stress, as you probably already know, can cause folks to do things they otherwise wouldn't, like expecting an old friend to do your wedding makeup for free, or giving your wedding guests a long list of rules to abide by. Whatever the case, there is no shortage of stories about brides who've let wedding-planning stress get to their heads. Of course, that's not to say all brides reach this level of absurdity, but the following stories from bridesmaids who have dealt with their fair share of demanding brides take this stress to a whole new level.
01
Isn't A Toast Supposed To Be Personal?
She asked 16 girls to be bridesmaids. In the year and a half between the engagement and wedding, all but 6 dropped out (3 were her sisters). She wanted 16 separate shades of blue and 16 different styles of dresses for each bridesmaid then threw a fit when the store didn't have that many options. She demanded everyone pay for a week long bachelorette party in Vegas (including her share) and then got mad when some people opted out (I was a single mom/college student at the time). Her parents gave her a $20,000 budget and she ended up spending $100k and demanding they pay for it — they took out a loan they are still paying off. She wanted everyone to have the same shade of hair so she asked the two blonde bridesmaids to dye their hair (they declined). She paid for nothing for the bridesmaids (traditionally the brides pay for something — the hair/makeup or the dress) but demanded we purchase specific shoes, jewelry, dress, etc., plus hair and makeup. And stay the entire weekend at the hotel she was getting married at. All told, costs for the wedding — not including a gift — was well over $2k per bridesmaid. This was mostly amongst college age women in a poor/middle class area. She also had three separate engagement parties/bridal showers.
Final straw for me was when she demanded to see my toast a month prior so she could edit it. She ended up rewriting it totally.
I skipped the wedding totally and ended our friendship. They did end up getting married and 6+ years later he seems absolutely miserable.
02
A Complete Change In Appearance Should Be Required For A Wedding
Bride was blonde. All bridesmaids except for me were brunette. She asked me to dye my hair brown for the wedding because she, “wanted to be the only blonde.” I suggested that instead I just give up my bridesmaid spot. Thankful to this day since I heard the dresses and bachelorette party cost all the other girls more money than I make in a month.
03
Family First
This was my sister’s wedding so hold on tight. My sister had 10 bridesmaids. Most of them were her sorority sisters from college. They wanted to plan an elaborate weekend for the summer, while most of them were still in school without jobs. When I asked “hey, who will pay for this?” my sister got p*ssed that I even asked. When I also reminded all the bridesmaids that our father who had stage 4 cancer wasn’t doing so well and that maybe the bachelorette/bridal shower should be close by, they all flipped thinking I was being insensitive to the bride.
I was promptly asked not to be a bridesmaid to my own sister’s wedding over these two things. I was fine with this as she was a bridezilla and I spent time with our dying father. He died 2 weeks after her wedding day, that he couldn’t attend because he was in hospice care one day before her wedding. To me, she put herself before our ailing father, and it still makes me mad.
04
I Feel Like Being Able To See As You Walk Down The Aisle Is Important
My ex best friend was a trip. This story is just one of the many, many reasons i no longer speak to her.
She tried to make me and another bridesmaid walk down her outdoor, uneven, tulle-covered aisle WITHOUT GLASSES. She told us the morning of the event, so we didnt have any time to get contacts or anything. She threw a near-hysterics fit because she was convinced that we would "ruin the aesthetic of her wedding". I told her that she would have a single groomsman walking that aisle if she made me walk without them. She started bawling but her mom was able to get her calmed down enough for her to agree to let us wear our glasses so we could actually make it down the aisle in one piece. (Her mom essentially said that she's more skinny and beautiful than either of us and no one would be glancing at her bridesmaids anyways because we aren't important 🙃)
05
Forced Labor Is Never A Good Look
It was a best friend of mine who was very frugal, so I figured she was going to have a reasonable wedding and bachelorette party. I had shared my monetary concerns with her too, that I worked and went to school and couldn’t take off much time. She didn’t have that many friends so It was only me and one other girl as bridesmaids. She asked us to hand-make ALL her decorations for the wedding (I put in 15 hours a week hand making decorations, all outside of working and going to school full time). Then she planned a week long bachelorette party out of town, also asking us to foot the bill, not to mention our dresses which I wanted to find something affordable (but she picked designer matching dresses that we had to pay for... never worn It again, been trying to sell It online). I spent nearly 1k on the whole ordeal, not to mention I did her hair and makeup for free for the wedding. I just felt largely taken advantage of and unappreciated. We are no longer friends because we ended up working together (after the wedding) and she tried to screw me over at work. It all makes me very reluctant to agree to be in someone’s wedding again, even someone I thought would be considerate of everyone else’s budget and time.
06
It's Like Being Hired To Be A Bridesmaid
My first job out of college, a colleague got engaged and asked three colleagues to be her bridesmaids (in addition to one friend from high school). I had only known her for a matter of months, but I didn't feel comfortable saying no because she was one of my bosses.
In addition to being in a wedding for someone I barely knew, which is sh*tty in its own right, there were so many horrible things about this nightmare bridezilla wedding. First, I ended up hosting both her bachelorette AND her shower because no one in her life planned anything, and she showed up to her own shower an hour late, hungover and wearing pajamas when she mandated that everyone dress for a luncheon. She ordered our dresses from Etsy (as opposed to any bridesmaid dress company) and they looked like seafoam green raw silk pillowcases with holes cut for the arms and head. They tied in giant bows in the back and we all looked like literal infants. She wouldn't let us wear heels with said "dresses" because the groom was kinda short and we all had to buy new flats in a specific shade of gold. She wanted us to wear our hair in a really ugly, extremely complicated updo — and said we would have to pay to have one of the hairstylists do our hair (we refused). The wedding was on a Sunday in an extremely inconvenient and faraway location, and it was not the Sunday of a long weekend. The rehearsal dinner for this SUNDAY wedding was THURSDAY and started at 4 in the afternoon, requiring everyone to leave work in the middle of the day. She forced us to stay at an expensive hotel in the area the night before the wedding for no apparent reason and refused to pay for our hotel room.
Fun times!
07
So Much Hair Drama!
My mom was the bride, she didn't have bridesmaids but I (her daughter) was going to walk her down the aisle.
I've had purple or blue hair for quite some time, and I checked almost a year in advance with my mom that it would be okay for my hair to be blue for the wedding. Checked again every few months, every time I was told to stop insinuating that she was a bridezilla, of course my hair was fine.
Two weeks before the wedding, my own mother threatened to dis-invite me from the wedding if I didn't fix my hair. So I went and got it done, came home and my mother told me I was shallow for changing my hair to keep up appearances. Sigh. Getting it re-dyed back to blonde cost me over $300.
08
From Maid Of Honor To... Usher?
I was the maid-of-honor. I helped plan the whole wedding, I went to all the awkward parties with family members I had never met. I was close with the bride and groom, not their families. The whole time we were planning she kept talking about being a bridezilla like it was an inevitable phase she would go through. Ffw all the way to the end. She suddenly decided that her sister needs to be the only one involved, but I can still be the maid of honor. She calls me the day of the bridal shower and asks why I wasn't there and insists she told me the date. She hadn't. She fires me on the spot and I don't talk to her again until a few days before the wedding. She tells me that I can still come but she had asked one of her husband's ex girlfriends, someone she didn't know to be her new maid of honor. Day before the wedding she asks me to be the usher. Says I can show people to their seats, the gift table, the bathroom. I didn't attend the wedding.
09
This Is Just... A Lot
I was in a wedding where the bride planned two separate bachelorette weekends for herself and got mad at anyone who couldn’t/wouldn’t spend two 3-day weekends at ~$500/each away from their husbands/kids/jobs.
The week leading up to the wedding the temp for the big day was forecast to be a high of 10*F (February wedding, NE US). Bride was insisting on outdoor photos without coats “because we can’t hide the dresses!” Everyone, including the photographer, tells her hell no. Day of she pitches a fit when we refused to do more than one quick photo.
Afterwards, she stopped talking to 75% of the bridal party because of their refusal to accommodate her outrageous demands. To this day, years later, she still complains about how her bridesmaids ruined her wedding.
10
No Cake For You!
There were a lot of moments. One of my favorites was her bachelorette party was the same weekend as my birthday. We weren’t allowed to do anything for my birthday at all on the trip. Not even mention it. On my actual birthday, some of my friends got some balloons and a little cake from the hotel. They tried to keep it a secret but Bridezilla came in the room, saw everything, didn’t say a word and walked out. She was p*ssed because our friends wanted to do something small for me on my actual birthday.
It was fitting that the wedding ended in huge family drama. I definitely stopped talking to her after the wedding was over.
Weddings are already stressful enough, but when you add in a bride who keeps making intense requests, it can make being a bridesmaid almost unbearable. But at least they got good stories out of it?!
