Imagine agreeing to be a groomsman in your friend’s wedding, but then you realize it wasn’t what you expected. His fiancée is demanding and nitpicking all the details of the wedding including what the groomsmen can and cannot do. Would you go along with it or take the first opportunity that presented itself to bow out as gracefully as possible?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he chose a job over his friend’s wedding. He’s wondering if that was the wrong thing to do.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for taking a job that conflicted with my best friend’s wedding after he refused to compromise on unreasonable demands?

So my best friend got engaged about a year ago and asked me to be a groomsman.

I said yes immediately because that’s what you do. We’ve known each other since like middle school and I was genuinely excited.

But then planning started and it got weird.

His friend’s fiancée made it weird.

His fiancée (who I’ve never been super close with) started making all these demands about what groomsmen needed to do.

Custom shirts, specific haircuts, mandatory bachelor party at her chosen location, contributions to things I never agreed to.

It was getting expensive and honestly kind of controlling.

His friend wasn’t very understanding.

I mentioned to my friend that some of the stuff seemed excessive. Like, I get wanting your wedding to look nice but requiring specific haircuts felt over the line.

He just said “it’s not that big a deal, come on” and shut down the conversation.

That’s when I kinda started pulling back emotionally from the whole thing.

His friend seems to think that he’s the center of the universe.

Fast forward to about three months before the wedding and I got a new job offer that required me to relocate for like two weeks of training right before the wedding.

I told him immediately and said I’d try to reschedule it or work something out.

He lost it. Started saying I was abandoning him and that real friends would just turn down the job.

I reminded him that I need to actually have a career and that I was still going to be there for the wedding.

He was not about to choose his friend’s wedding over his career.

Here’s the thing though.

I could have tried harder to reschedule. I didn’t really push back with my new employer because honestly I was kind of over the whole wedding stress at that point.

I think subconsciously I wanted an out.

His friend’s fiancée made it worse.

His fiancée apparently told him it was “suspicious timing” and that I was being selfish.

My friend basically told me I was either fully committed or not committed at all.

I ended up keeping the job training and going, but I told him I’d only make it back the day before the wedding. That meant I couldn’t go to the rehearsal dinner or the bachelor party.

That wasn’t good enough for his friend.

He said that was unacceptable and that if I couldn’t be there for everything then I shouldn’t be in the wedding at all.

So I got dropped as a groomsman like a week before the wedding.

I was upset but also kind of relieved? Which tells me something about how I was feeling about the whole thing.

His friend hasn’t gotten over it.

Now a few months later he’s still mad at me. He says I chose a job over my best friend.

I say he chose his fiancée’s demands over our friendship.

My other friends are split. Some say I should have just turned down the job. Others say the wedding demands were unreasonable and he was being controlling about it.

He’s not sure if he was in the wrong or if his friend was.

The thing is, I could have handled this better. I could have been more honest about feeling uncomfortable instead of just pulling back.

And yeah, I definitely could have tried harder with the job thing.

But he also could have been more flexible and reasonable about what he was asking of me.

Am I a jerk?

I can’t imagine anyone turning down a job to make it in time for your friend’s rehearsal dinner. He wasn’t even going to miss the wedding! His friend and his friend’s fiancée really overestimated how important their wedding was to everyone who wasn’t them.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is a good point.

His friend wasn’t a very good friend.

The friend and his wife are clearly the ones who messed up.

A job is definitely more important than a friend’s wedding.

His friend should’ve been more understanding.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.