When one of her bridesmaids was “sacked” from the role and subsequently not invited to the wedding, Kate had a few months to test herself. “I was a bit worried about the intensity of the whole situation,” she says of the lead-up to her friend Stella’s wedding. “I think weddings are something to look forward to and to bring a sense of joy, but the stress of it all got to me. I just didn’t enjoy it at all.”
Kate was tasked with organising a hen party for around 25 of her friends. The bride made it clear she didn’t expect to pay for it. “I couldn’t quite understand the real sense of entitlement she had about how she should be treated as a bride-to-be,” Kate says. During discussions about where they could stay and where they could accommodate everyone on budget, Stella told Kate that she wasn’t doing a good enough job as a planner. “She said: ‘You’re not performing to the standard I expect.’ It sounds ridiculous in hindsight, but at the time we were stuck in the doldrums of that.”
He told me what a bad friend I was and that I should be grateful that he asked me to do this.
On the Saturday night of the weekend, they went clubbing after a long day, but the guests were tired and had had too much to drink; they were exhausted. “She wasn’t happy about it at all, because she wanted it to be an all-night, epic experience,” Kate says. “She got really upset and we ended up in the bathroom crying and saying it wasn’t good enough.”
Kate was told that it was her responsibility to make sure everyone enjoyed it even more, and that if the other singles still didn’t look like they were having a good time, they would be kicked out of the nightclub, not the rest of the weekend, so the bride-to-be wouldn’t have to see them in the morning. “I was getting really tired of it,” Kate says lightly.
For the wedding itself, Kate paid for the bridesmaid’s dress and hair and make-up artist. In total, she reckons she easily spent more than £1,000 on her friend’s wedding. But they are no longer friends. After a while, she says: “I was dumped. It was like the first bridesmaid being ostracised.”
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With wedding season at its peak, disgruntled bridesmaids may be counting the costs (financial and emotional) of attending a bridesmaid shower. A recent post on forum Reddit asking whether it’s normal to pay $300 (£240) to attend a bridal shower was the latest in a series of horror stories to go viral. On the Reddit board r/weddingshaming, bridesmaids have been sharing stories of being ordered to diet, spend a small fortune or get weekly check-ups.
Kate was one of many women who responded to a Guardian appeal asking for their harrowing experiences of being a bridesmaid. She worried her story might sound a bit misogynistic – “the bridezilla stereotype” – but knew Stella’s behaviour was “not reasonable”. Of course, the problem is not just for women, she added. “Men behave horribly too.”
Jo was asked to be a bridesmaid by a childhood friend she had almost lost touch with. Her initial surprise led her to say yes, then she tried to shake it off: “We had a really weird conversation, where she told me what a bad friend I was and that I should be grateful that she had asked me to do this.”
She said I could circumvent my pregnancy, have a premature birth, or do something else
Jo had short hair, but the bride-to-be asked her to grow it out. At the wedding five months later, “I had this really weird hairstyle that wasn’t a bob, wasn’t a pixie cut.” When the bride’s mother saw Jo, she was unimpressed, as if Jo hadn’t tried hard enough to grow her hair out. Afterwards, their friendship remained as distant as it had been before.
Other participants expressed surprise and hurt, saying the hierarchy — who gets chosen as maid of honor or maid of honor — has led them to reevaluate friendships that have sometimes lasted decades. Some discovered they were last-minute replacements. One woman was thrilled to be asked, only to find out six other people had declined. Another had to travel to two bachelorette parties, one abroad, for a single wedding: “It will be the real test to see if my friendship with the bride can last beyond the wedding.”
Others talk about the tyranny of the WhatsApp group, where everyone welcomes hen party climbs with enthusiasm and heart emojis, rather than pointing out that the agreed budget has long since been forgotten. One woman who loves being a bridesmaid – she’s had the pleasure of doing it eight times in 10 years – says it’s mainly to keep the costs of her hen parties down: “Not all of my eight experiences have been as financially ridiculous as some hen parties I’ve been invited to as a guest.” A survey last year showed the average cost of being a bridesmaid in the UK was £665.
This is nothing new. In the ’90s, Julie became so exhausted by the relentless demands placed on her as a bridesmaid that three weeks after giving birth, she was nursing her newborn baby in the bathroom, her dress around her ankles, exhausted and in pain at her friend’s wedding.
Bride Val had kept Julie’s diary open for around 18 months, and had delayed her annual leave, while she decided exactly when to organise her special day. During that time Julie had fallen pregnant. Val had chosen her due date for the wedding, but insisted Julie was there. “She said I could go around it, induce early labour or do something else,” says Julie. “And I said, ‘No, it’s not going to happen.’”
The bachelorette party when she was seven months pregnant was no fun, especially since Julie was assigned to be the chauffeur. She managed to avoid the subsequent bridal shower, where everyone was expected to bring gifts—which was a good thing, because she went into labor. Julie went into labor three weeks early.
Why didn’t she pull out of the wedding? “Because I was still trying to maintain a friendship. At that point, he made it clear: ‘If you don’t come, I’m never going to talk to you again.’ I felt like: OK, this is that important to him, I can handle this.” Their friendship finally ended a few months later when Julie refused to attend a post-honeymoon party. Val sent her a letter saying: “You clearly think this baby is more important than me,” Julie laughs. “And I said: ‘Yeah, so.'”
Wedding planner Mark Niemierko says it’s surprising how many relationships between brides and bridesmaids don’t last. This is especially true among people in their 20s, he says. “Not because they fight, but if you asked them 10 years from now, ‘Would that person still be a bridesmaid or a best man?’ they wouldn’t. That’s life; you move on.” So if you’re struggling with unreasonable demands and rising costs, it’s worth keeping in mind that you might not even be friends in a decade.
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For many people, no matter how much you want to celebrate a couple’s day, being a wedding guest can feel like a chore. “You have to pick up your outfit, take time off work, transportation, maybe childcare,” Niemierko says. For bridesmaids, the tasks—dress shopping and fittings, planning the bachelorette party, and tending to everything from caterers to playlists—can seem endless.
In the U.S., it’s normal for bridesmaids to pay for their own dresses, Niemierko says. She’s also seen the rise of parties where bridesmaids are blessed by the bride-to-be: “It’s just another excuse for an event. People are invited to a tea party or something just to be asked.” That’s where the hype can pick up, she adds. Niemierko has seen bridesmaids take on the role of keeping the bride calm on the day, while others are “reluctantly forced into the role of planner.” Then there are the politics of dating, “where someone has to be the bridesmaid because otherwise it’s going to cause a huge drama in the friendship group.”
Perhaps reflecting the uncomfortable reality that being a bridesmaid can be a bit of a drag, brides are getting fewer bridesmaids. “They’ve generally gotten past the whole ‘There’s going to be six or more women all wearing the same dress’ thing. I’d say it’s become more popular to have just one bridesmaid.” Or better yet, opt for just one child: “They’re classier — and they’re cuter.”
I couldn’t complain about the price because everyone was talking about how beautiful it was
Elena hadn’t expected to spend so much when she was asked to be her friend Ava’s bridesmaid. But Ava made a lot more than Elena, and the costs added up. The designer dress Elena wanted her to wear (and pay for) was worth two months’ rent; she could pay for another month’s rent by paying for her hair and makeup that day.
“I didn’t say anything,” Elena says. “I was too embarrassed. I didn’t know how to present it without giving the impression that I didn’t want to be part of the problem. I accept that I needed to set boundaries, I just didn’t know how.” On top of everything else, she couldn’t afford to buy her friend a gift, which caused her even more anxiety.
Relating to: Wedding wars! How photographers took over and priests returned
For Kat, being a bridesmaid three times a year was a financial drain on her. She had to put some of the expenses on her credit card and live on the sidelines all year to pay it off. She spent about a quarter of her annual salary on these weddings.
Among her group of friends, it had become commonplace for bridesmaids to pay for their own dresses and go abroad for hen parties. “Me and one of the other bridesmaids would complain together, but generally I felt like I couldn’t complain about the price because there was a kind of groupthink and everyone was saying how beautiful it was.”
At one bachelorette dinner, she ordered a bowl of soup because it was all she could afford. “I was honored to be asked, but I was upset by the cost,” she says. The following year, when her finances were starting to improve, she was asked to be a bridesmaid again.
Some names have been changed