So I like to think of you ladies as my awesome internet friends (who I would love to meet IRL too!). And, this is going to be long, but I really need to vent, and would appreciate your thoughts on this situation. Also, I apologize for any typos or missing words in advance; I am KUI with a big glass of wine currently.
Background: My friend is getting married in September 2015. I am a bridesmaid in her wedding. She has anxiety, and she does go to therapy for it/take medications for it, but she can still go a bit crazy when she is stressed (I normally love her anyways and try to calm her down and talk to her/whatever she needs). This wedding has really been stressing her out, and most of her bridezilla ideas I have been able to talk her out of. But the bridal shower has been a PITA and she is not letting up.
In addition to the 8 bridesmaids, she has a MOH. She basically told the MOH over a year ago that she would be having a bridal shower and that the MOH would be in charge of it. I do not know how the MOH reacted to this, but the MOH has been dealing with a lot of stuff in her own life right now, and hasn't really been around for my friend. I do not mean this in a "drop everything and let's wedding plan" way. I mean this as completely ignoring my friend's texts to just hang out/grab lunch, visiting her BF who lived the next town over from where the bride went to college without visiting the bride/mentioning she was in town (bride found out through Facebook, multiple times), etc. I have since gotten much closer to the bride, with her even mentioning that she wish she had chosen me as the MOH and could kick out her current one. Of course I told her that this was a bad idea and that I didn't care about titles and would be happy to stand up with her as a bridesmaid no matter what happens with her friendship with the MOH. The bride had some anxiety attacks about the bridal shower, and I offered to throw it for her (just trying to be a good friend). She calmed down with this idea, and I thought everything was fine. She told me basically to work with her mother and coordinate with the rest of the bridesmaids. No problem.
Since that conversation, the bride and MOH have made up somewhat. They are not as close as they once were, but they are at least talking again (which is absolutely fine with me; I advised the bride to try to make up with her friend and figure out what was wrong instead of kicking her out of the WP). The groom has mentioned to me multiple times that the MOH is very flaky, and has even advised the bride to just let me take care of everything because the MOH most likely will not get her act together for this (and that's not really her responsibility as she was voluntold and I volunteered). All she seems interested in is drinking outside of work (she posted a Facebook status about drinking on a Tuesday while in the shower...and all of her pictures on Facebook are of her drinking), and hasn't shown any interest in anything related to my friend (wedding related or not). So I did my best to convince the bride to just let me handle it, and she seemed okay with this.
Since both the groom and the bride have large families, this bridal shower is going to have about 80 people. That is just female relatives and friends. It is being held at a fancy country club/popular wedding venue in May 2015, so a lot of the planning needed to be done earlier then normal, and we are in the planning stages. Bride's mom booked the venue and is contributing to the food as well. Well, bride then insisted that I reach out to MOH and have her confirm my ideas. Okay, whatever, I don't want to burn any bridges so I will go along with it. I sent the MOH a few facebook messages (I have no other form of contact), and was ignored by every single one. So when I told my friend this, she said to go ahead and message all of the bridesmaids and ask if they would like to help. I went ahead with this, and very politely asked if anyone wanted to help, but made sure to let everyone know that there was no pressure and it was completely voluntary. MOH responded to that saying she would handle everything, and then responded to my previously ignored messages telling me that she has it handled. Okay, fine. I tell the bride this, and bride says "No, that is not how this is going to work. You have done so much of the work that she should work with you if she feels that way." And then bride proceeds to talk to MOH apparently, and tell her to reach out to me again within the week and work with me. Okay, this sounds reasonable, I will wait for MOH to do that and we can go from there.
MOH never reached out to me. And it's been two weeks now. MOH also hasn't reached out to any of the bridesmaids either. So I think bride had another panic attack today and mass messaged all of us on Facebook about it today. This was the message (names, dates, location removed to protect identities):
"The official information about the Bridal Shower is as follows. We
are doing a plated lunch and there is dessert included apparently according to my mother who is paying for the food. Everything
else besides the food choices, seating chart, the date and the theme
(We're doing Breakfast at Tiffany's) is up to the 8 of you. I
would like this shower to be a collective effort among all of you, I
don't mean monetarily because i know all of you are in different
financial situations. What i mean by collective effort is i want
everyone to be able to feel like they can contribute their ideas. MOH is the coordinator, but AuroraRose41 has also
been extremely helpful in this process except for where my pinterest
addiction is concerned."
This felt like a slap in my face. I'm just the helpful bridesmaid despite offering to throw your effing extravagant shower and have to answer to the MOH who is almost always MIA because she is out drinking.
I really feel like just telling her that I'm done with it. I will show up with a gift, but she can let her "coordinator" handle everything else from now on, and there probably won't even be a theme if that happens. But I feel like a shitty friend telling her that, especially after volunteering to do it. What do you ladies think?
I'm really sorry if this came out bitchy or whiny, but I feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I really do love my friend, but this really upset me tonight.
ETA: TL;DR: I'm a bridesmaid for a good friend, MOH only cares about drinking and was voluntold to host an OTT bridal shower, I offered to host when bride panicked that MOH wasn't interested, bride accepted my offer, I did a lot of research to put it together, now bride is still telling everyone that MOH is hosting and wants me to answer to MIA MOH, I am considering rescinding my offer to host and just showing up with a gift. Can I bow out of hosting gracefully and let this shower fall apart because the bride is brainwashed about MOH duties?