Her Friend’s Destination Wedding Was Too Expensive To Attend, But She Isn’t Keen On Wearing The Secondhand Dress The Bride Offered In Order To Cut Costs

Melissa Triebwasser

5 months ago

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/Scott Webb

Weddings are supposed to be a time to bring people together, but the drama around them can certainly tear friendships apart.

In this story from Reddit, the author wrestles with her feelings when her friend’s second wedding costs add up.

And things get weird when the friend wants the author to wear her old wedding dress to the big day.

AITA For Refusing To Wear My Friend’s Old Wedding Dress From Her First Wedding To Her Second One?

My (32F) friend (32F) from college is getting married later this year. The save the date sent last year didn’t mention where the wedding would be.

My friend and I live in neighboring states. However, when my husband (33M) and I were sent the wedding invitations three weeks ago, it turned out that it was going to be a destination wedding.

Oh. Those can get expensive, and fast.

After looking into it, it would cost over $4000 for the both of us.

That’s a big ask, even for a good friend.

My husband and I can’t afford to spend that much money without going into credit card debt.

So last week, I told my friend on the phone that we couldn’t attend but conveyed our best wishes and said that we would send them a wedding gift off the registry.

She asked me why we couldn’t come and I said that it wasn’t in our budget, mentioning the costs of plane tickets, the resort (3 nights), and wedding outfits.

She offered to lend me a dress to wear so I wouldn’t have to spend money to buy one.

A nice offer, but not exactly solving the root of the issue.

I told her that it was really kind of her to offer but the main costs for attending her wedding were the plane tickets and the resort.

Then, she followed up by offering for me to wear her old wedding dress from her first wedding. And she added that she didn’t care about other people wearing white to her wedding.

Well, that’s a weird “solution”.

Context: My friend got married in 2017 and divorced in 2020. My then-boyfriend (now husband) and I attended that wedding and it was held locally.

The wedding dress she wore was beautiful and minimalist/simple in design.

I don’t have any details into their divorce though I do know that it was not amicable.

I was pretty shocked by her offer, I didn’t (and still don’t) understand the logic behind it.

Again, she’s offering a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist while ignoring the actual issue.

I basically repeated what I said in respond to her first offer to loan me a dress.

She got a bit upset at my rejection and said that she was trying to do everything she could to help us attend.

Again, I thanked her for being so generous with her offers to help but at this point, I was trying to end the phone call as quickly as possible.

Tbh there’s something very off-putting to me about the idea of wearing the bride’s wedding dress from her previous wedding to her current one.

And a lot of people who attended her first wedding will be at this one so I think at least some will recognize the dress. I would just feel so embarrassed the entire time.

I think the author is correct if feeling like that might be a little weird.

So even if we could afford to go to the wedding, I would have turned down this offer anyways. But I didn’t tell my friend any of this on the phone.

Just yesterday, my friend sent me a long text which basically said that she thought my husband and I were being inconsiderate and ungrateful and that we should have made a bigger effort to attend her wedding considering we had been friends for almost 15 years.

And that clearly I didn’t value our friendship as much as she did.

$4000 for a destination second wedding… who is deciding value around here?

I haven’t responded to this message yet and I’ve only discussed the situation with my husband who is on my side.

AITA did I do something wrong or should I have responded differently?

Let’s see what the people of Reddit think of this one.

Top comment says the friend is “wildly out of touch.”