by When one of her married colleagues successfully “retired” from the role, and was then uninvited from the wedding, Kate thought she was in for a few months. “I was a bit scared about the intensity of the whole situation,” she says of the run-up to her friend Stella’s wedding. “I feel that weddings are something you should look forward to and that should inspire joy, but the stress of it all got to me. It didn’t seem to me that she enjoyed it at all.”
Kate was tasked with organizing a hen weekend for around 25 friends. The bride made it clear that she did not expect to pay anything for it. “I didn’t quite understand her real sense of entitlement when she thought she should be treated like a woman to be a wife,” says Kate. During conversations about where they could stay that could accommodate everyone, within the budget, Stella told Kate that she wasn’t doing her job as an organizer well enough. “She said: ‘You are not performing to the standard I would expect.’ In retrospect, it seems ridiculous, but we were stuck at the time.”
She told me that I was a bad friend and that I should be grateful that she asked me to do it
On the Saturday night of the weekend, after a few long days, they went to a night club, but the guests were tired and had drunk too much; they were flagging. “She wasn’t happy about that, because she wanted it to be an all-night, fairytale experience,” says Kate. “She got upset and we went to the toilet crying and saying it wasn’t good enough.”
Cáit was told that it was her duty to make everyone more happy and if the other hens failed to still look like they were having a good time, they would be kicked out – not from the nightclub, but from the rest of the club . weekend, so that the wife would not have to see them in the morning. “I was really tired of it,” says Cáit, resorting to understatement.
For the wedding itself, Kate paid for her bridesmaid dress and for the hair and makeup artist. In total, she reckons she comfortably spent more than £1,000 on her friend’s wedding. Except they’re not friends anymore. Some time later, she says, “I gave up. It was like the excommunication of the first bridesmaid.”
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With the wedding season at its peak, there may be unhappy mornings counting the cost – financially and emotionally – of being in a wedding party. A recent post on the Reddit forum, asking if it was normal to be charged $300 (£240) for a bridal shower, is the latest of many horror stories posted there to go viral. On the Reddit r/weddingshaming forum, brides share stories of being ordered to go on a diet, spend a small fortune or have weekly checks.
Kate was one of the many women who answered the call of a Guardian wanting to have a serious experience of being a wife. She worried that her story might be a bit misogynistic – “the bridezilla stereotype” – but she knows that “Stella’s behavior was not reasonable”. Of course, the problem is not exclusive to women, she says. “Men behave terribly, too.”
Jo was asked to be her bridesmaid by a childhood friend she had almost lost touch with. She was initially surprised that it was, then she tried to get out of it: “We had the most awkward conversation, with her telling me what a bad friend I was and that I would be grateful to her for asking me to do it. it.”
She suggested I could work around my pregnancy; I was able to induce early, or something
Jo had short hair, but the wife demanded that she grow it. At the wedding, five months later, “I had this not-a-bob, not-a-pixie-cut hairstyle, which was really awkward”. When the mother of the bride saw Jo, she was not impressed, as if Jo hadn’t tried hard enough to grow her hair. After that, their friendship became as long as before.
Other respondents described being shocked and hurt by the hierarchy – being chosen to be a bridesmaid or maid of honor – causing them to re-evaluate sometimes years of friendship. Some found that they were last-minute backup options. One woman was excited to be asked, only to find that six others had declined the request. Another has to go on two hen weekends, one abroad, for a single wedding: “It will be a real test to see if my friendship with the bride will last beyond the wedding.”
Others talk about the tyranny of the WhatsApp group, where everyone else greets the tightening of the hens with enthusiasm and heart emojis, instead of pointing out that the agreed budget has long been forgotten. One woman who loves being a wife – she’s had the pleasure eight times in 10 years – says it’s mainly so she can be instrumental in keeping the cost of the hen party down: “The eight experiences weren’t I’m so ridiculous in terms of money. some of the hen parties I was invited to as a guest.” A survey last year revealed that the average cost of getting married in the UK was £665.
This is not a recent phenomenon. In the 90s, Julie was so overwhelmed by the endless demands of marriage that she ended up at her friend’s wedding three weeks after giving birth, exhausted and in pain, breastfeeding her newborn in the loos with her dress around her ankles.
The wife, Val, made Julie keep her diary open for about 18 months – and withhold annual leave – and decided exactly when her special day would take place. At that time, Julie became pregnant. Val chose her due date for the wedding, but Julie insisted on being there. “She suggested I could work around it; I could induce early, or something,” says Julie. “I said: ‘No, that’s not going to work.'”
The hen party wasn’t fun when she was seven months pregnant, but Julie was the designated driver. She managed to get out of the bridal shower afterwards, where everyone was expected to bring gifts – which was just as well, because she went into labour. Julie gave birth three weeks early.
Why hadn’t she just pulled out of the wedding? “Because I still wanted to keep a friendship. At that point, she made it clear: ‘If you don’t come, I’ll never speak to you again.’ It felt like: OK, that’s important to her, I can pull it up.” The friendship finally ended a few months later, when Julie refused to attend a post-honeymoon party. Val sent her a letter saying: “You obviously think this child is more important than me.” Julie is laughing. “I’m like: well, yes.”
It’s surprising, says wedding planner Mark Niemierko, how many relationships between brides and bridesmaids don’t last. He says it happens especially among people in their 20s. “Not that they will fall out, but if you ask them 10 years ahead: ‘Would that person still be married or best man?’ they wouldn’t. That’s just life; you move on.” So, if you’re dealing with the elimination of unreasonable requests and mounting costs, it’s worth remembering that you might not even be friends ten years from now.
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For many people, no matter how much you want to celebrate a couple’s day, being a wedding guest is a big chore. “You have to get your outfit, maybe time off work, transportation, maybe to sort out childcare,” says Niemierko. For wives, the tasks can seem endless – dress and outfit shopping, planning the hen party, showing interest in everything from caterers to playlists.
In the United States, bridesmaids usually pay for their own dresses, Niemierko says. He also saw the rise of the party where the bridesmaids are anointed by the bride-to-be: “It’s another excuse for an event. People are invited to tea or something, just ask.” It can come on here, he says. Niemierko has seen women take on the role of keeping the bride calm on the day, while others have been reluctantly forced to take on the role of planner. Then there’s the politics of friendship, “where someone has to be married because otherwise it’s going to cause a whole lot of drama in the friendship group”.
Perhaps as a reflection of the uncomfortable truth that being a bridesmaid can be a bit of pain, brides suffer less. “Generally, they’re all ‘I’ll have six or more women all in the same dress’. I would say monogamy is more popular now.” Or, even better, just choose children: “It’s better – and they’re cute.”
I couldn’t complain about the price, because everyone was saying how beautiful it was
When Elena was asked to be her friend Ava’s bridesmaid, she didn’t expect to spend so much. But Ava earned much more money than Elena and the expenses increased. The designer dress she wanted Elena to wear (and pay for) was the equivalent of two months’ rent; she could have paid the rent for another month paying for her hair and makeup on the day.
“I didn’t say anything,” says Elena. “I was too embarrassed. I didn’t know how to present the question without looking like I didn’t want to be a part of it. I admit I should have set boundaries, I just didn’t know how.” She couldn’t afford to buy a gift for her friend on top of everything else, which made her worry even more.
Related: Wedding wars! As photographers took over – and the vicars fought back
For Kat, being a woman put her finances on hold three times a year. She had to put part of the cost on a credit card and live carefully throughout the year to pay it off. She ended up spending about a quarter of her annual salary on these weddings.
Among her friendship group, wives used to pay for their own dresses and go on hen weekends abroad. “Me and one of the other wives used to complain together, but generally I felt like I couldn’t complain about the price, because there was a kind of groupthink going on, where everyone saying how nice he was.”
At the hen party dinner alone, she ordered a bowl of soup, because she couldn’t afford it. “I was honored to be asked, but I was frustrated by how much it cost,” she says. Just as her finances were getting back on track the following year, she was asked to become a wife again.
Some names have been changed
