We all know just how spectacularly expensive weddings can be.
Whether you’re throwing a backyard bash or have booked the most lavish venue your city has to offer, there’s almost always a moment during wedding planning where things have inevitably started getting a little more expensive than originally anticipated, and a couple finds themselves wondering, “Is this really worth the cost?”
For most of us, those moments of financial uncertainty would be all we need to realize it’s time to cut back a little.
It may hurt, but there are just some things on our wedding “want” lists that aren’t necessarily “needs.”
When things start getting too tight, that’s when we have to start trimming, whether we like it or not. Goodbye horse-drawn carriage that was supposed to escort you to the ceremony in style. Hello dad’s Volkswagen.
After all, what else can you do when your wedding fund starts drying up?
You could see if you could scrape some more money together somehow, perhaps by imploring a wealthy relative or picking up more shifts at work. Or maybe you could ditch the big ceremony altogether and simply decide to get hitched in Las Vegas.
That’s always a pretty budget-friendly option.
Or, if you’re this bride, you could always just rip off your best friends in order to get everything you want but can’t necessarily afford for your big day.
Who needs friends, right? When it comes to your wedding, nothing is off the table, including ruining all your friendships for the sake of being able to pay for your own pricey gown.
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At least, we can only assume that was this bride’s thought process.
One of her bridesmaids shared the incredible story of learning she and several of her friends had been used to fund the bride’s wedding.
In a Facebook post that was later shared to the subreddit r/bridezillas , the unnamed bridesmaid begins by explaining she was asked by her friend to be in her wedding along with six other women, including the maid of honor.
By that point, the bride had already picked out her own dress, the maid of honor’s dress, and a dress for each of her bridesmaids.
The dress was certainly not cheap with a price tag of $400.
And, as per tradition, each bridesmaid was expected to cover that cost herself.
With some of the women only just fresh out of college and others still paying to complete their education, that triple-digit cost certainly seemed daunting.
The maid of honor (MOH) came up with what she claimed would be a solution to everyone’s problems.
“The MOH decided she would pay for all of the dresses on her credit card because she wanted the air miles and we would pay her pay directly,” the bridesmaid wrote in her post . “None of us minded, especially since she was going to let us pay her back in installments if we needed.”
So the problem of the expensive bridesmaid dresses seemed to be solved, for now at least.
While everyone else in the wedding party went together to pick up their outfits, this particular bridesmaid was unable to get hers until the following week. But the MOH assured her that her dress would also be paid for on her credit card — all she needed to do was pick it up.
Easy enough, right? Well, keep reading.
On the day she retrieved her dress, the bridesmaid attempted to leave the shop with it in her arms, believing it had already been paid for.
“As I’m walking out the door, a person working there yells out ‘Hey, that will be $200!’ she recalled in her post . “I was stunned and totally mortified.”
The bridesmaid explained that she was under the impression that the MOH had already paid for the dress, as she promised she would. And after some investigating, the shop clerk realized that yes, the dress had in fact been paid for.
But rather than leave feeling a little embarrassed but otherwise unscathed by the mix up, the bridesmaid hesitated.
The shop clerk had said the dress cost $200 when she had tried to leave with it. But hadn’t the bride and MOH told everyone the dresses were $400?
Something was not adding up.
Eventually, the unbelievable truth came out.
The dress did , in fact, only cost $200.
“When I confronted the MOH about it, she spilled the beans,” the bridesmaid explained. “Apparently, the bride and MOH plotted together to charge us double to help pay for the bride’s dress.”
So, let’s do some quick math here.
There were six bridesmaids total, and this scheming duo tried to get $200 from each of them, which adds up to an incredible $1,200 in lies .
Yup, you read that right. Despite each member of the bridal party already dealing with their own money concerns, the MOH and bride-to-be decided they would scam more than $1,000 from the lot of them, just to pay for the wedding dress.
Of course, this bridesmaid wasn’t about to keep that shocking information to herself.
She told every other member of the bridal party what happened. Not so surprisingly, four of them dropped out of the wedding completely. But perhaps a bit more surprising is the fact that after all that, two women still decided to stand by this bride’s side on her wedding day.
Whether they would be standing in $200 dresses that cost them $400 is unclear, but still.
Reddit certainly had a field day with this one.
“That’s not a bridezilla,” one stunned user pointed out. “That’s a criminal.”
“Who uses their friends as an ATM to help pay for their wedding dress?” another implored.
“Besides being a slime-ball, this illustrates something wrong with people that weddings seem to really highlight: She. Couldn’t. Afford. That. Dress,” this person expressed. “Just another example of people thinking it’s okay to have all of these things that they can’t afford.”
Some users even shared similar stories of a greedy couple doing whatever they can to pay for their wedding.
“I once had a bride pull something even better on us, the groomsmen,” one person wrote. “We all had to get fitted tux’s with all these accessories, including matching black shoes, even though we were all white-collar executives who already owned higher quality black dress shoes. Come to find out at tux measuring, the grossly inflated price all the groomsmen were paying, provided free [tuxes] and accessories to both the groom and father of the bride.”
What do you think of this story? Have you ever had a similar experience when you were in a wedding party? Let us know!
h/t: Reddit
