'My bridesmaid tried to take down my wedding – but the karma I got was sweet'

Organising a wedding can be very stressful.

Trying to find the perfect venue, getting a photographer, choosing the right food and drinks and generally making sure everything is covered forcan become very tiresome. And that’s even before everyone starts chipping in with their opinions and thoughts on how things should be.

But one who decided she wanted to have a small ceremony to keep costs down was left stunned when her friend and bridesmaid decided to cause tension before her over her plus one.

Taking to social media to open up about the situation, she explained how she and her friend had shared a room at university and were very close. She wrote: "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 a 1.5h drive, so while it's a little inconvenient, we made time to see each other plenty."

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However, all of that changed when her friend got into a new relationship. She said of her friend's new boyfriend: "He acted like it was the other side of the . 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.”

Despite the boyfriend causing issues between the two friends, when the woman got engaged she asked her uni pal to be a bridesmaid, which she happily agreed to. She continued: "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. 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."

The bride-to-be was stunned then when she received a call from her friend accusing her of “misleading” her boyfriend to think that he would be at the whole wedding. She wrote: "[She said] she was ‘heartbroken’ that 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 which meant no one would be forced to take time off or book a hotel just to attend the party."

The bride also explained that to make things even better for the evening guests, they were having a free bar. She added: "My friend said 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 at the last minute every time)."

The two women managed to patch things up but the bride admitted it had soured their friendship. She continued: "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."

The bride admitted that although it bothered her that her supposed friend seemed to be trying to "take their wedding down", she ignored it and had the best day. However, a twist came just a few weeks later when her friend and her boyfriend got engaged.

She continued: "We were sent an RSVP for the whole wedding day, and we thought this was the sign that the hatchet had been buried. Fast forward to now: my friend’s getting married in half a 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 casually 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. 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 potluck 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 ‘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."

People reading the Reddit post couldn’t believe the gall of the other couple and complimented the bride and her husband for being such good sports about it. One person commented: "Props if y'all 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."

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