Bride Dumps Fat Bridesmaid Who Will “Ruin The Pictures”
So the first part of this story isn’t so much Feel Good Friday fodder. A bride has apparently dropped one of her bridesmaids for being too fat, according to a letter sent to advice columnist Carolyn Hax.
The feel good part is that the letter-writer is one of the other bridesmaids, who is so appalled by this that she’s considering dropping out of the wedding party. Here’s the Q and A (bolding mine):
Bridezilla: So I just learned today that my college friend, A, disinvited another college friend, B, to be in her wedding in two months because B is fat (she’s about 5’3″, 200lbs) and would ruin the pictures and how everyone looks at her on her big day. She did tell me that if B lost some weight, she’d let her back in the wedding party. I can’t communicate in polite enough terms how offended and appalled and disgusted I am by A’s behavior. Her rationale is that B promised to lose the weight by the wedding but didn’t, and that whenever there is a big bridesmaid everyone is looking at her and not the bride. I am so angry about her nastyness that I can’t even think straight. Is it kosher for me to drop out in solidarity with B (with whom I am actually not that close)? What is the best way for me to communicate back to A that she is a gigantic [beyotch]? I am stunned. I don’t know if I even want to be friends anymore. FWIW, B hosted a bridal shower, has come to all the food tasting/clothes fittings/other assorted crap. She’s a good egg – we don’t click personally, but I am really at a loss for how someone does this. I heard from mutual friend C that B spent the morning crying her eyes out. I would too! What can I say to B that will help her?
Carolyn Hax: Everything you hope to accomplish, you can accomplish in one move: End your friendship with A (which obviously includes dropping out of the wedding). When A asks, tell her exactly why. B doesn’t even need to hear it from you; it’ll make its way around. I hope C follows your lead.
Good answer, Carolyn, and good for you, offended bridesmaid! (Via Snarkfest)
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Fat Positive, Fatism, Feel Good Friday, Tidbit
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That is a vicious piece of fat hatred. Someone who has such appearance standards really needs to examine themselves. I would be forced to drop out of the wedding myself. No one should be supporting her fat hatred.
I love Carolyn Hax!!!
I am sure those things do happen in real life. However, it could also be marketing, since phony stories are becoming the norm. And real or not, it is no coincidence it ran in January. The rag the Chicago Trib where I live has run an obesity story on its web page EVERY single day since the beginning of the month. Got to make the sponsors happy!
It’s probably real – it was during a live discussion rather than her regular column. Carolyn also had a good answer a while back to a person who wrote in about her annoyance about people who ride the elevator one floor. The person basically said she couldn’t help thinking all such people were fat and/or lazy. Carolyn really smacked her down and said mind your own business – you have no idea if that person is ill, has a bad knee or is just tired that day.
Oh, I hope Offended Bridesmaid takes Carolyn’s advice!!!! This is one of the WORST cases of Bridezilla-dom I’ve ever heard. (The absolute worst was the bride who didn’t want her husband’s sister in the wedding party because the sister had a club foot, and the boot she had to wear would ruin the line of her bridesmaid’s gown. Seriously, wtf is wrong with some people?!?!?!)
I would be in disbelief, but last year I was on a bridal forum and I have heard SO MANY similar stories. It’s appalling.
I got married in June, and the bride, and 2 bridesmaids were all big girls. The very slim maid-of-honour was the odd one out at our shindig! (The groom is a big guy too). My girls wore outfits that went together but weren’t identical, and we all looked fabulous!
How shallow can someone be that their bridesmaids would be based on how they look?! I would be glad to be rid of a “friend” like that.
I was in a friend’s wedding, and was the biggest girl in the party, but I still felt okay about myself and at the reception afterwards, someone asked me if I had done all the bride’s homework in high school since I obviously wasn’t hot enough to be her friend. I haven’t been in a bridal party since then.
My best friend gets married this june. Her sister and I are the bridesmaids. She’s 21, I’m 32, she’s skinny, I’m fat, she’s 5’10″ and I’m 5’2″. We plan to wear aqua and we will look like a comedy duo.
And guess what, no-one cares. not me, not her, not the bride. because she loves us and we love her.
And you know what else, we went bridesmaids dress shopping (oh boy did we ever) and it was the best shopping experience ever. Every shop we went to had lots of dresses that fit me, not just one or two frumpy hideous things in the back. I was like a kid in a candystore. Colors, and fabrics, and cuts, and oh my, they had it all, and I was able to try on everything that the bride wanted to see us in.
So the entire mall can’t stock four things I want to buy that fit – but the bridal shop is full of pretty fat girl dresses. You know what that tells me: this b***h is the exception, most women just want the important people in their life to be part of their celebrations.
AND it tells me that when a store knows it will lose business if doesn’t cater to everyone (and their fat sister, cousin or friend) then suddenly they ARE in the plus size business. Something to think about.
I was a bridesmaid once. Only once. We are no longer friends. She said, in front of myself and one of the other bridesmaids, both fat women, to another bride “You’re so lucky having a slim bridesmaid.”
You can see why we’re no longer friends.
One of the hardest conversations I ever had was telling a dear friend who had just walked away from her own 3-month-old marriage that, if that was what she thought of marriage then I no longer wanted her standing up for me at mine.
11 years later and facebook is helping us reconcile.
That anyone would go to that dark and painful place over body size just confuses and hurts me.
That’s insane. If anything, usually the bride is more concerned about her bridesmaids looking BETTER than her. I’ve heard stories of brides purpose not inviting a friend to the wedding at all based upon the fact that they believe that the friend will outshine them. But I’ve never heard the opposite.
Well, 50% of marriages end in divorce. And if the way this woman treats her friends is any indication of how she’ll treat her husband, it seems she’ll be leaning on the wrong side of that statistic soon enough.
Wow that’s pretty ridiculous. In addition to the obvious cruelty and ignorance, I wonder why she invited the bridesmaid to begin with. She already knew what her size was.
I meant that last comments as a means of why did she invite her to be the bridesmaid knowing her size and then all of a sudden decide that she was too fat. I didn’t mean it like it sounded.
Ooh!Ooh! Ashley, I’ll take a guess as to why the Bridezilla invited the girl to begin with: To keep the bridesmaid number even with the groomsmen. Because, you know, it would ruin the photos if the numbers were uneven.
Yuck. The older I get the more enchanted I am with a Justice-of-the-Peace ceremony.
I am delighted that Carolyn Hax has become such an ally to us. We need that kind of public voice, succinct and well stated, to counter the fools out there like the new “Dear Abby” who’ve bought into all of the fat-hating bullshit. Go Carolyn, go!
I wouldn’t invite a fattie to be in my wedding!
I wasn’t invited to be part of the wedding party for either my brother’s wedding or my sister’s. Each wedding was organized by the family of their spouse-to-be, because our Mom had health issues and couldn’t be involved. Both of those families were from the deep South and appeared highly appearance conscious (you know, the Texan bias toward $400 of makeup on the face at all times, enough hairspray to make your hair brittle to the touch “just in case” you end up in a tornado, and just the right pair of rhinestone-bedecked blue jeans and expensive leather boots), and neither of the weddings featured a woman larger than a size 10 in the wedding party. My sister even picked the sister-in-law she’d known for all of 3 years to be her matron-of-honor to avoid the disaster of having a size 18 maid-of-honor whose presence in the wedding photos would have disappointed hubby-to-be’s family. And she was cowardly about it, too: she got our mother to break the news to me so that she didn’t have to do it. My brother simply never even broached the issue with me, and I only found out my sister was in his wedding when she brought home her dress.
And no, I’m not on speaking terms with either sibling today. It’s been 20 years, and I haven’t forgotten. That wasn’t the only act of pettiness I saw from either, but it was the first really horrendous one in both cases.
Yeah, perhaps it’s petty of me to care. But if your own family doesn’t stick up for ya, whaddya got?
Oh my! That is a completely disgusting way for the bride to act! How selfish and insensitive!
If I ever get married (and I hope to, someday), the relative hotness of my bridesmaids will be the last thing on my mind. And I won’t force any of my bridesmaids to wear a dress they don’t freakin’ love.
Am gobsmacked at what I have just read. My bestfriend (of 15 years) is currently planning her wedding and has chosen me as her Maid of honour. I am 5ft5 and nearly 300lbs. Out of her six bridesmaids three of us are ‘plus sized’ to use the politically correct term and the other three (well if you blew on them they’d fly away) our weight has never been an issue for her. I had already started losing weight before the engagement this has has simply given me the insentive to step up my game. My decision, nobody elses.
I think Carolyn Hax was very right in her advice anybody that would do this to you is no friend of yours.
And Barb i don’t believe you’re being petty at all you’re right family’s suppossed to have your back, in your position I wouldn’t be talking to them either.
This happens quite a lot – and worse!
http://www.etiquettehell.com/ has several wedding related categories. There’s actually one in there where the bride deliberately surrounded herself with the biggest bridesmaids she could get (mostly women she didn’t even know that well) and had them wearing ghastly, skin tight dresses, because she felt they’d be so ugly, she’d look so much better…
??
Weddings seem to bring out the worst in some people!
I would like to say that I don’t believe this, but I do. Some people are crazy mean. Good on the other bridesmaid for being so appalled.
One thing I also hate is people saying that you shouldn’t be a fat bride. WTF? I was a fat bride and I looke great. I wore a beautiful size 30(UK) dress and rocked it next to my (very) skinny bridesmaid (sis-in-law).
This reminds me of an episode of Intervention I just watched, where the bride fired her sister as a bridesmaid because she had debilitating arthritis, and the bride did not want anyone to see her “hobbling down the aisle.” Just atrocious.
are girls really like on the show on television or is that made up? because I cannot believe how many horrible people are out there if there are enough who act like that….how can you be such a jerk…
I don’t think it is petty of you Barb. For your family to let you down like that must hurt really bad, it isn’t just something that will go away.
I’d be totally blatant in showing my anger and disgust about the situation. I’d end the friendship and move on. Can’t be with people who are like that.
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For those who doubted whether this story could be real, the same thing happened to me. It was some time ago – in the 90s, but the story was very similar. The bride, me and another girl had been best friends. The bride told the other friend, who would also have been a bridesmaid, that she didn’t want me in her wedding because I would ruin the pictures. The friend told me, and after confronting the bride, we both ended our friendships with her. (The break was made a lot easier by the fact that she was marrying a complete and total douchebag.) She got married without the the people who had once been her two best friends in attendance. Years later, she apologized to me, and I accepted her apology, although we really don’t keep in touch. At the time it happened, it was one of the most emotionally devastating experiences of my life.
Wow! I couldnt even finish reading all the messages that were posted because i was so disgusted with the Bride, that i couldnt wait to give her a peice of my mind! Im getting married this september, and I could never imagine treating my bridesmaides like that. Two of my bridesmaides outta four are on the heavy side, and I did my best to not only find a color that complimented each of there skin tones but to find a dress that flattered all their unique shapes and sizes! The dress I picked out, when I found it in the bridal mag, actually was being modeled by a size 6 woman, and a PLUS size woman! all in one PICTURE!!!!!!!!! I just cant belive that brides can be that self centered! And let me add this, the wedding shudnt be just about YOU sweetheart, what about the man ur going to marry!? You sound really conceited and I am truly sorry for the man your marrying and what hes getting himself into! oh and kudos to the bridesmaids or shud I say former bridesmaides, who are taking there stand and not putting up with this womans crap! LIke i said, I couldnt imagine treating anybody in my bridal party like that, and I couldnt imgaine bein that self obsorbed that Id be willing to loose my relationships with others for my own advantage and to gain attention. Wow. Just when u think u have heard it all!
Hi! This story is probably true.My best friend got married back in 1988 & I thought I was to be her matron of honor. I was wrong. The guy she married said I was fat & he didn’t want me in the wedding.Needless to say , she is no longer married to him , as the friend he wanted for the maid of honor , he was caught cheating with.I’m 5ft. 7 inches tall & weighed around 185 -200 then. We have not been in touch much since & can’t believe she did this to me, as we were closer than sisters. It still hurts me to this day.
Oh my god Lisa, that’s unbelievable! Like the maid of honor had to be someone who was his physical type because he knew even then he was shopping around for a Plan B. Man. I can’t believe she’d give into that in any scenario.
“I’d like you to be a bridesmaid in my wedding!”
“ZOMG really?!?!”
*hugs hugs, cry cry*
“But…only if you lose 25 pounds first.”
Um what? Yeah that person would no longer be my friend. I would not wait until 2 months before the wedding for the friend to THEN tell me that my unsuccessful attempts at weight loss were not adequate for me to continue to be her bridesmaid. I would have told her to shove it when she told me it was “required” in the first place.
But I must be crazy…pictures are so much more important than the people you supposedly care about’s feelings! When my best friend got married, I was the maid of honor in a size 24 bridesmaids dress. 2 other bridesmaids were in size 12 and size 4, and the last one was 7 months pregnant and had to wear a different dress because of it. OH THE HORROR! But my friend cared more about having her dear friends at her side instead of her wedding pictures, that you will look at how many times in your life?
This exact thing happened to me but it is my brothers wedding.
You’re kidding, right? Everybody has the right to decide how their wedding pictures and scene would look. It only happens once for christs sake. B knows she’s fat, and even agreed to lose weight. If you didn’t want your 80 lb 5’9 friend to be in your wedding party and pictures you have a choice to say so. And why are you looking into such domestic problems? Is this site a pity party?
Also to your other entry, the public knows most fat people are not gluttons. But they also know there is NO WAY you can exersize 2-3 times a week (as recomended by doctors!) and eat the right amount of calories. You may seem healthy now but it will catch up and you may even die from a horrible preventable death.
Broanna, you have a point – everyone does have the right to decide how their wedding pictures look. But if you care more about that than your personal relationships, then there is a problem. And if you look at your wedding pictures and instead of feeling content that you shared that day with the people you love all you care about is so-and-so’s tummy pudge in her dress? If you’re that supericial? Yeah, dude, sorry, but you’re the one with the issues.
Here’s another bride who is considering excluding her future sister-in-law for being fat:
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/a-wedding-planner-and-a-fat-bridesmaid
Also here is a really vain question: All of my friends are gorgeous, but my future SIL has already stated her expetancy of being in the wedding party. My bridesmaids are sizes 4, 6, 10,10 and I’m an 8. My future SIL is about a size 18-22. I’m afraid she will mess up my photos. Is this too vain and should I just get over it and put her in the wedding?
Some people tell her she’s being selfish and stick up for fat people, others (some who are sadly self-loathing) tell her she’s right, and fat people are ugly and unhealthy. So read the comments with caution!
I just really don’t get it. Is it worth ruining your relationship with a MEMBER OF YOUR FAMILY and hurting feelings just out of misplaced vanity? About your WEDDING PICTURES?