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March 12, 2008 at 10:59 pm #678939
Ok I’m not sure how I should handle this situation that has come up. I was asked to be the maid of honor in my friends wedding. They are getting married in October but a bunch of stuff has come up. She had asked me to get my dress while I was pregnant. I told her no I would wait until after I had the baby (which I thought was a reasonable thing to do) but she has been bent out of shape because I don’t have my dress yet. She also sent me a date she wanted as her baclorette party. The date she picked is my 10th wedding anniversary and I told her we already were making plans for that day. At first she told me that was fine she would pick another day but now she is dead set on that date and will not change it. She is also having all of her other parties at the grooms mothers house. She knows we can’t go to his parents house because they smoke and will not stop even if we come over. I’m not going to subject my husband or my baby to second hand smoke so I told her whatever party she has there I will not be able to make it. So now she has sent me two emails upset because 1. I have plans for the 20th and can’t come to the bachlorette party and 2. that I won’t go to the smokers house. I wanted to talk to her on the phone about all this but she doesn’t want to talk, she just wants to send emails. I know its her day and if she wants to pick someone else as a bridesmaid thats fine with me. I’m just trying to figure out how to keep our friendship thru this since it seems she is pretty pissed off at me. Its not like I’m throwing this on her at the last second and she has known about the smoke issue for years. I just don’t know what to do. My husband is supposed to be the best man but he says if I’m not in the wedding he doesn’t want to be in it. I swear my wedding didn’t have all this drama in it.
March 12, 2008 at 10:59 pm #494674March 12, 2008 at 11:05 pm #678940Oh boy! That’s a tough one…
You need to talk to her in person and see if she can understand that you need to back out???
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmMarch 12, 2008 at 11:06 pm #678941I think that maybe she should find another maid of honor (if that doesn’t offend you or anything) if you told her that you had previous plans on those dates. My wedding didn’t have much drama either. 🙂
If you have told her that you had plans already…then she’s just gonna have to except that maybe you can’t be her maid of honor…she shouldn’t expect you to throw away your plans for your anniversary that you had in advance. That’s all my opinion.
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March 12, 2008 at 11:07 pm #678942Wow is she being childish about all of this. I agree that you need to talk to her in person about all of this. It wasn’t fair of her to ask you to order a dress while you were pregnant, especially since you gave birth before the wedding.
March 12, 2008 at 11:09 pm #678943I think she’s being unreasonable. I would back out, if she’s going to try and force you to do things you don’t want to. The way I saw it, my MOH and Bridesmades were doing me a huge favor to be in my wedding. It wasn’t my job to boss them around. Anything they did to help me was a gift.
March 12, 2008 at 11:37 pm #678944I don’t care if she picks another maid of honor. When she asked me I figured I was up to the task but obviously I didn’t know how much of a task she wanted it to be. When I got married I just wanted to maid of honor and best man to stand there. I didn’t expect anything from them (of course I got married at 19 so maybe I wasn’t mature enough to expect anything else). I’m just trying to figure out how to do this without hurting her feelings to the point that we lose our friendship. My husband has been friends with the groom for years and years. Their friendship is already stressed as it is. We had a civil war re-enacting group but it was disbanded after they said they couldn’t make any events this year. The group only consisted of the 4 of us. One weekend we planned out the events for the season and my husband contacted all the event sponsors and set everything up. The next weekend they called us up and said they couldn’t make any events this year and pretty much screwed my husband over so he is still pissed about that. Now this whole wedding thing is just making him even more angry and I don’t want to see this end the friendship he has had for so many years.
March 12, 2008 at 11:43 pm #678945Sounds like there might be something else going on that you guys don’t know about. You and your husband may need to have a sit down with both the bride and groom about the wedding and the reenactments.
March 13, 2008 at 12:00 am #678946I just sent her an email saying I want to talk about this. She is in bed now so I can’t call her. Who knows what will happen from here but I don’t feel like drama and thats what this has turned into.
March 13, 2008 at 12:02 am #678947Write her an email, since that is how she is wanting to communicate, and ask her and her future husband over for dinner this weekend, or whenever.
When they arrive don’t talk about the wedding, etc, until after dinner and everyone is relaxed a bit.
Then go ahead and bring up the wedding plans. Mention your anniversary, and point out that since you weren’t even sure Danny would be here to celebrate this one, it is doubly important to you to be able to celebrate it on that day, and that you are sorry if it messes up her plans for her Bach party, would she be willing to reconsider changing the date so you can be there? Ask her what she would do if it were her anniversary and there was a similar event scheduling conflict? Tell her she’s important to you and you want her wedding to be great, but if it is really that important to her that you be there, then it would help to change the date of the event. But if she doesn’t want to, you understand, but she needs to understand that you can’t make it.
If she brings up the dress, tell her that since you needed to fit into it for the wedding, getting fitted for it while pregnant just didn’t make any sense. However, you will get a fitting with the dressmaker scheduled as soon as possible now that Alyssa has finally made her appearance and you have reached a more or less stable body shape for the moment.
Do tell her how you feel about the friendship being compromised, that you are worried that these little conflicts could hurt your friendship and that you have no wish to hurt her feelings. This is your chance to also suggest that she can change her choice for MOH and you won’t be upset, while indicating that you would still be very honored to keep that position with her.
With luck she is just stressing with all the planning and these little glitches are being thrown out of porportion and she’s just panicking because she’s worried that things will go wrong. Remind her to breathe, that people get married all the time and that little problems don’t mean the end of the world, her wedding day will still be wonderful and special no matter what!
I hope you guys can work it out, I am sure you can, just stay calm and try to show her your side without being confrontational.
Good luck!
Kyrin
March 13, 2008 at 3:47 am #678948Kyrin wrote:Write her an email, since that is how she is wanting to communicate, and ask her and her future husband over for dinner this weekend, or whenever.
When they arrive don’t talk about the wedding, etc, until after dinner and everyone is relaxed a bit.
Then go ahead and bring up the wedding plans. Mention your anniversary, and point out that since you weren’t even sure Danny would be here to celebrate this one, it is doubly important to you to be able to celebrate it on that day, and that you are sorry if it messes up her plans for her Bach party, would she be willing to reconsider changing the date so you can be there? Ask her what she would do if it were her anniversary and there was a similar event scheduling conflict? Tell her she’s important to you and you want her wedding to be great, but if it is really that important to her that you be there, then it would help to change the date of the event. But if she doesn’t want to, you understand, but she needs to understand that you can’t make it.
If she brings up the dress, tell her that since you needed to fit into it for the wedding, getting fitted for it while pregnant just didn’t make any sense. However, you will get a fitting with the dressmaker scheduled as soon as possible now that Alyssa has finally made her appearance and you have reached a more or less stable body shape for the moment.
Do tell her how you feel about the friendship being compromised, that you are worried that these little conflicts could hurt your friendship and that you have no wish to hurt her feelings. This is your chance to also suggest that she can change her choice for MOH and you won’t be upset, while indicating that you would still be very honored to keep that position with her.
With luck she is just stressing with all the planning and these little glitches are being thrown out of porportion and she’s just panicking because she’s worried that things will go wrong. Remind her to breathe, that people get married all the time and that little problems don’t mean the end of the world, her wedding day will still be wonderful and special no matter what!
I hope you guys can work it out, I am sure you can, just stay calm and try to show her your side without being confrontational.
Good luck!
Kyrin
That is wonderful advice! If it is said this way, then hopefully they won’t get defensive. I hope that your friendship will continue! 🙂
March 13, 2008 at 3:48 am #678949*nods* Kyrin gives the best advice.
March 13, 2008 at 4:49 am #678950Sounds to me like someone is turning into a Bridezilla. If she doesn’t want to talk to you in person, tell her about this site:
http://www.etiquettehell.com/index.shtml
And that you would hate to have to nominate her for any of those categories. 😈
March 13, 2008 at 5:10 am #678951Kyrin’s advice is excellent. Give the dinner idea a try. If she won’t even meet you halfway by coming to dinner, then it might be best to simply bow out of involvement in the bachelorette party (your reasons to not attend are perfectly good ones) and if she prefers it, the MOH role as well. The wedding is in October; her fretting about the dress is pretty darned silly IMO, you’ve got plenty of time to get that arranged or else the tailor is a complete idiot. Hopefully she will come to dinner, and give you a chance to talk these things over in person. E-mail simply won’t do for an emotionally-charged subject like this one: you need at least voice contact, and face-to-face is better. If she won’t grant you even telephone contact, shame on her. She needs to be sensible and recognize that getting married does not mean that her entire world will pivot around her. Everyone has their own lives to deal with.
March 13, 2008 at 6:00 am #678952purpledoggy wrote:Ok I’m not sure how I should handle this situation that has come up. I was asked to be the maid of honor in my friends wedding. They are getting married in October but a bunch of stuff has come up. She had asked me to get my dress while I was pregnant. I told her no I would wait until after I had the baby (which I thought was a reasonable thing to do) but she has been bent out of shape because I don’t have my dress yet. She also sent me a date she wanted as her baclorette party. The date she picked is my 10th wedding anniversary and I told her we already were making plans for that day. At first she told me that was fine she would pick another day but now she is dead set on that date and will not change it. She is also having all of her other parties at the grooms mothers house. She knows we can’t go to his parents house because they smoke and will not stop even if we come over. I’m not going to subject my husband or my baby to second hand smoke so I told her whatever party she has there I will not be able to make it. So now she has sent me two emails upset because 1. I have plans for the 20th and can’t come to the bachlorette party and 2. that I won’t go to the smokers house. I wanted to talk to her on the phone about all this but she doesn’t want to talk, she just wants to send emails. I know its her day and if she wants to pick someone else as a bridesmaid thats fine with me. I’m just trying to figure out how to keep our friendship thru this since it seems she is pretty pissed off at me. Its not like I’m throwing this on her at the last second and she has known about the smoke issue for years. I just don’t know what to do. My husband is supposed to be the best man but he says if I’m not in the wedding he doesn’t want to be in it. I swear my wedding didn’t have all this drama in it.
It seems that brides tend to get a little selfish at weddings. What I would tell her is that she is important to you, but once she is married 10 years, she will see how important an aniversary is and your family comes first in your life…unless there is no reason why you cant do both…dinner w/the hubby and party later. If you are good friends, it should be no hardship for her to accept that. I think maybe you can give a little on the other partys. If they start smoking, then just leave. You can at least show up and give your support or whatever. Show your face, as we say here. As for the dress, hopfully that is settled now. I know how she feels… its just one more thing to worry about and she wants it done! Been there, felt that. I hope you get some good advice.
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