Snarky Brides

What was your most stressful time as a BM?`

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Re: What was your most stressful time as a BM?`

  • My experience was in my junior year of high school. The bride was also a junior. 
    I had had to wear one of those Gone  with the Wind  hoop skirt dresses in yellow with a matching parparasol. Right before walking down the aisle one of the other BMs accidentally ripped some of the lace on my dress with her parasol. At the alter the groom was very pale and swaying then passed out. The father of the bride stands up and yells "you knocked her up you aren't getting out of this". That was news to everyone. 
  • debbeau said:
    My experience was in my junior year of high school. The bride was also a junior. 
    I had had to wear one of those Gone  with the Wind  hoop skirt dresses in yellow with a matching parparasol. Right before walking down the aisle one of the other BMs accidentally ripped some of the lace on my dress with her parasol. At the alter the groom was very pale and swaying then passed out. The father of the bride stands up and yells "you knocked her up you aren't getting out of this". That was news to everyone. 
    Sounds like those dresses would be a contender in a worst bridesmaids dress competition.
  • You nailed the look.
  • debbeau said:
    You nailed the look.
    Who knows, maybe a producer from 27 Dresses was at this wedding. You could be the inspiration for a movie.
  • debbeau said:
    My experience was in my junior year of high school. The bride was also a junior. 
    I had had to wear one of those Gone  with the Wind  hoop skirt dresses in yellow with a matching parparasol. Right before walking down the aisle one of the other BMs accidentally ripped some of the lace on my dress with her parasol. At the alter the groom was very pale and swaying then passed out. The father of the bride stands up and yells "you knocked her up you aren't getting out of this". That was news to everyone. 
    hahaha that is hilarious! A junior in high school is, what, 16/17 years old? And it was a shotgun wedding? And you were dressed like a buttered up little bo peep?

    Am I drunk?
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  • Well I have never been lucky enough to be a bridesmaid :-( My own sister sent me a message BY TEXT saying 'I thought about asking you to be a bridesmaid, but I didn't think you would  want to be one'...I was never given the opportunity to decline let alone give it any thought! 

    To be honest, knowing how snappy and high maintenance she can be, I'm probably better off not involved lol
  • Well I have never been lucky enough to be a bridesmaid :-( My own sister sent me a message BY TEXT saying 'I thought about asking you to be a bridesmaid, but I didn't think you would  want to be one'...I was never given the opportunity to decline let alone give it any thought! 

    To be honest, knowing how snappy and high maintenance she can be, I'm probably better off not involved lol

    Sounds like you'll have more fun just as a guest! That's pretty crappy though. :(
  • Jen4948Jen4948 member
    First Anniversary First Answer First Comment 5 Love Its
    edited January 2017
    I've told this story before, but when when my brother and SIL were married, my SIL and her mother decided that the bridesmaids would make their dresses by purchasing one bolt of material and each bridesmaid was to get herself measured, cut off the yardage she needed from that bolt and send it on to the next. (Not sure whether that applied to the pattern as well.) In any case, I was supposed to be the last one to receive the fabric, and it was supposed to come from a bridesmaid in South Africa. I never received the fabric, and my SIL and her mother had to ship me a new package of fabric along with the pattern.

    I received it on Christmas Eve that year, and my brother and SIL were scheduled to marry on the following March 14. 

    I'm a tax accountant and had to get special permission from my boss to take time off from work to travel out of town to my brother and SIL's wedding. Not only that, I had just moved from Houston, where my brother and SIL were marrying to New York, and had to locate someone to sew the dress (I can't sew) on top of tax season.

    Because it was tax season, I did not really have time to shop around and hired someone on a recommendation from an acquaintance. I was broke at the time, but my mother told me to go ahead and get the dress made. She and my dad put a lot of pressure on me to be a bridesmaid in the wedding and I did it for my family's sake. Going was not a problem, but I honestly would have preferred at that time to just be a guest, or at least not to have to have a dress made.

    The person charged me $300 more for my dress than my SIL's Houston cousins, also bridesmaids, were charged, and my mother bitched about that. She jacked up the price at the last minute by making it in a way that it required an undergarment that cost another $200 and held the dress hostage until I came up with the money. My parents provided it, but not without more bitching about how expensive the fucking dress was. After the wedding I left the dress at my parents' house and have never taken it home with me. I refuse to even touch it again.

    Also, I was wearing glasses at the time and had not had a chance to go to an eye doctor and get contact lenses. My mother bitched about me wearing glasses during the wedding and insisted that I leave them off. So I went through the wedding not being able to see properly.

    Finally, due to some planning error (I don't think it was my brother and SIL's fault, but the venue's fault) the reception was not ready to start when the ceremony ended. (They were in different rooms at the same venue.) Once the ceremony was over, the guests were crowded into a cramped little room with no chairs while photos were taken, and even after the photos were taken, the reception room wasn't ready for another 20 minutes or so.

    I love my brother and SIL, but look on their wedding as an example of how not to do it.
  • Jen4948 said:
    I've told this story before, but when when my brother and SIL were married, my SIL and her mother decided that the bridesmaids would make their dresses by purchasing one bolt of material and each bridesmaid was to get herself measured, cut off the yardage she needed from that bolt and send it on to the next. (Not sure whether that applied to the pattern as well.) In any case, I was supposed to be the last one to receive the fabric, and it was supposed to come from a bridesmaid in South Africa. I never received the fabric, and my SIL and her mother had to ship me a new package of fabric along with the pattern.

    I received it on Christmas Eve that year, and my brother and SIL were scheduled to marry on the following March 14. 

    I'm a tax accountant and had to get special permission from my boss to take time off from work to travel out of town to my brother and SIL's wedding. Not only that, I had just moved from Houston, where my brother and SIL were marrying to New York, and had to locate someone to sew the dress (I can't sew) on top of tax season.

    Because it was tax season, I did not really have time to shop around and hired someone on a recommendation from an acquaintance. I was broke at the time, but my mother told me to go ahead and get the dress made. She and my dad put a lot of pressure on me to be a bridesmaid in the wedding and I did it for my family's sake. Going was not a problem, but I honestly would have preferred at that time to just be a guest, or at least not to have to have a dress made.

    The person charged me $300 more for my dress than my SIL's Houston cousins, also bridesmaids, were charged, and my mother bitched about that. She jacked up the price at the last minute by making it in a way that it required an undergarment that cost another $200 and held the dress hostage until I came up with the money. My parents provided it, but not without more bitching about how expensive the fucking dress was. After the wedding I left the dress at my parents' house and have never taken it home with me. I refuse to even touch it again.

    Also, I was wearing glasses at the time and had not had a chance to go to an eye doctor and get contact lenses. My mother bitched about me wearing glasses during the wedding and insisted that I leave them off. So I went through the wedding not being able to see properly.

    Finally, due to some planning error (I don't think it was my brother and SIL's fault, but the venue's fault) the reception was not ready to start when the ceremony ended. (They were in different rooms at the same venue.) Once the ceremony was over, the guests were crowded into a cramped little room with no chairs while photos were taken, and even after the photos were taken, the reception room wasn't ready for another 20 minutes or so.

    I love my brother and SIL, but look on their wedding as an example of how not to do it.

    This is worse than my experience for sure. I'm sorry you went through the stress of all of that. The bridesmaid dress idea of sharing fabric and having a seamstress make the dress seems really over the top and tedious.
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  • My most unpleasant BM experience definitely wasn't the most typical stressful wedding. We were work friends at a law firm, both assistants to the same lawyer; she got engaged first and asked me to be MoH. I got engaged a month later, and asked her to be a BM because I sort of felt obligated to (and it balanced out my wedding party numbers on each side. Shallow, but that's the truth). My wedding was about a year before hers. My wedding went off without a hitch.

    The bride was actually really chill through the whole process of her wedding. I helped plan as much as I could, and she was appreciative. The only thing she cared about regarding my dress was that it was short (Georgia in July, no arguments there) and blue. She didn't even care about the shade of blue. I ended up just using a dress that I already owned. She didn't care about shoes, hair, makeup, anything. I used a pair of old heels and did my own hair and makeup. Cheapest bridesmaid experience ever; I think the only thing I spent was gas money to and from the rehearsal and venue. The thing that made it so awful? The groom.

    This person is the single greatest man-child I have ever met. The bride was a future lawyer, and she came from a trust fund family. Groom had obviously been relying on this, as he planned the most five-star, gold-plated wedding he could imagine (without contributing to it at all, of course).  He went to nursing school on the bride's dime (while they were still just dating), and decided right after graduating that he didn't want to be a nurse because it wasn't a "manly" enough profession. I'm not kidding. I made several slightly too obvious attempts to talk her out of marrying him, but alas...

    They also bought a house, on her dime, a few months before the wedding, just because me and my fiance had recently bought a house (I've been told the quote "But [my husband's name] gets a house!!!" was used by her fiance, repeatedly). I tried to talk her out of that one, too, for months, but she gave the Groom whatever he wanted. So a house it was.

    Anyway, wedding planning. While the bride was modest and grateful throughout the planning process, groom was demanding and petty. Champagne toasts, upgrades on the plated dinner, the works! I somehow made it through the day without punching him, though I did sneak in some biting comments that I wouldn't have DARED say if we hadn't all been slightly tipsy. Honestly, it was the first and only time I've attended a wedding and thought to myself "I'll give them a year."

    Two weeks later, bride hits me with a curve-ball. She had been compulsively cheating for the past three years. Groom found out. They were divorced within three months of their wedding day. I'd say I called it, but I expected them it to end because she got tired of the groom's childishness.

    A few months later, due to some inner-office conflicts that I, fortunately, was not involved with, Bride got fired from the job we both held. She ended up blaming me for the entire thing (even though I tried, every day, to convince her to let the various office conflicts go instead of instigating them further), and in a series of dramatic texts in which she blamed me for every misfortune in her entire life (including an impending foreclosure on the aforementioned house), she declared that she wasn't my friend anymore.

    It's upsetting because I don't like to end conflicts things on such dramatic terms, but I pegged her pretty early on as an unstable friend. As I mentioned, being her MoH wasn't the most unpleasant experience, but that entire year of my life feels tainted by the entire thing, especially because I remember it every time I see her in pictures from my wedding day.

    tl;dr, don't feel obligated to pick bridesmaids based on who you are/have/are going to be a bridesmaid for.
  • simplylaurel  .... holy shit. That really sucks. 
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