Nothing ruins a wedding, or a friendship, quite like a bridezilla. These insane brides have the most impossible demands, which all fall on the bridesmaids. These weddings were so awful that they ruined the friendships of these brides and bridesmaids forever. Content has been edited for clarity.
No Funds, No Friend
“A friend asked me to be a bridesmaid in her sudden wedding that was to take place in a little over a month. She has us order semi-expensive dresses and they HAD to be altered to a certain length. Shoes had to be ordered. Toenails had to be painted a neutral color and fingernails had to be French manicure. We weren’t allowed to paint our own nails – we HAD to get them done at a salon. Hair HAD to be done professionally by her hairstylist. And we were not, under any circumstance, to have tan lines visible. Mind you, this was right after summer. I lived in an area where beach attire was usually the only attire and everyone had visible tan lines.
It’s not like I was planning on rolling up to this wedding dressed as a zebra with 6-day old unwashed bedhead and smeared mascara. I was more than willing to do what it takes to look the part and be part of her special day. But, having ridiculous demands and expecting your bridesmaid to pay quite a bit for it on such short notice is what got me.
I eventually had to tell her that I could not afford to have everything done professionally with such short notice. I would be happy to do my own hair and makeup. My hair was so short I couldn’t do an updo. She told me her mom could pay and then I could pay her back. That was the final straw.
I sent a very polite email to her telling her I could no longer be in her wedding because I just couldn’t afford it. She was pregnant, about to get hitched, and now I was adding to her list of problems. I valued the friendship and told her such, but just couldn’t do what she was asking.
I hadn’t heard from her in years, until one day she sent me a message, asking for me to buy from her multi-level marketing campaign. Yikes.”
Mini Tacos Were The Final Straw
“One of my best friends got married about seven years ago. I was a bridesmaid. The last word she ever said to me was ‘okay’ when I told her I was leaving the reception. It was a miserable wedding, miserable reception, and they’re divorced now. None of us are in contact with her since the wedding. She was terrible.
There were signs. I was pregnant and offered to step down and give my dress to someone else (since she seemed bothered by it). She said no, it was fine.
Then I got to haul all the wasted bridesmaids around for the bachelorette party. None of these girls eat but I was pregnant and starving and just wanted to stop somewhere, anywhere, that had food (think drive-thru, 7-11, anything). I was killing the vibe apparently. I drove them to multiple bars, they all ran off and drank and did ridiculous stuff while I just followed around with water. But I handled it gracefully and smiled and laughed and tried my hardest to keep up. I was out all night driving them around a strange city in a giant van.
Then at the wedding, she pulled the same stuff. No one could eat. There were only appetizers for the reception. I went all day not eating, someone in the bridal party passed out from standing so long, and our reward is weird mini tacos and candy shaped like seashells. So I went and got real food across the street with half the other guests. That made her so mad. So, good for her I guess. I hope it was all so very worth it. These were just the stand out events. The bridal showers were terrible, her incessant calls and planning. Don’t forget her registry! The cheapest thing on there was $200. I put up with all of it. The mini tacos broke me though.”
An Extravagant Gift Wasn’t Enough For This Bridezilla
“I overheard the bride tell a mutual friend at her wedding day that if she could do it all over again, she wouldn’t have had a mutual friend and I in her bridal party (I was the maid of honor). I planned her bachelorette party (with the mutual friend) from another country and dropped a lot of money on it personally so she would have the party she wanted.
I gifted her a pair of Jimmy Choos for her wedding day along with a beautiful ring with her wedding date engraved. I had to fly to Europe for her wedding, use a hired car to get around, and helped with loading/transporting wedding items back and forth. I was up that morning arranging for the hotel to deliver breakfast/coffee/tea for the bridal party. An old friend decided a week before the wedding she was going to fly from Australia to surprise the bride, so I had to arrange that surprise, find a hotel room for this friend, check with catering about food for her, and arrange a seat for her without the bride knowing. I stepped in to help the makeup artist as she was running behind schedule. I walked the venue to make sure things were on track. There are more things she had me do throughout the night that infuriated me. I was treated like a slave and spoken to like one. I catered to her every whim from 6 AM until midnight…and then to overhear that!
Apparently, her wedding day was ruined because the calla lilies in her centerpieces wouldn’t stay suspended in the water vase like she wanted. And it was all my fault because they slowly floated to the top.
Next day she is all hugs and kisses saying it was the best night ever and she couldn’t have done it without me, I have never wanted to punch someone so hard in the face.
I will never EVER be a bridesmaid again. Forget! That!”
The Silent Bridezilla
“I had a silent bridezilla. She was my best friend of 15 years and didn’t ask for much at all through the wedding planning. There were only two months between engagement and the wedding day. No bachelorette party, no dress shopping, no gift giving, no meeting up in person to do anything (we lived two hours drive away from each other). She didn’t want my input. She just wanted me to be there and go find my own dress and look pretty. Ok, whatever you want, you’re my bestie and I’m excited that you’re getting married.
On the day I wasn’t allowed to help with hair and makeup, just had to focus on my own. Apparently, I couldn’t be trusted to do it well enough as I have short hair. Ok fine, it’s your day, whatever.
Things went down afterward. She got her sister (the maid of honor and also my close friend for 15 years) to call me up in a 2-hour phone call and criticize my every little move throughout the entire wedding. She said that I should never have accepted the offer to be a bridesmaid if I didn’t want to participate. She had gone through my Facebook page and noted down expenses I’d posted about (e.g. look at my new bowling ball, I’ve joined a bowling league for fun) and said how I should have spent that money on the wedding instead.
The wedding was set two days after Christmas. Her family didn’t even celebrate Christmas that year because of the wedding. I was criticised for not spending more time with her, even though the day after Christmas I took a three-hour train trip just to hang with her the night before her wedding. Apparently, I should have stayed the night of the wedding to hang with the other two bridesmaids, but I opted to drive home with my boyfriend as I needed to go to work.
She said from the start she was going to pay for makeup to be done on the day. Then two weeks before the wedding, she decided that I needed to drive two hours to go buy a specific brand for myself to wear that was really expensive. I did, even though I was broke from Christmas shopping, but apparently, I had some attitude about it. Then I was criticized for not giving a gift, despite being told ‘being a bridesmaid was gift enough.’
The bride herself just stopped talking to me, blocked me on Facebook, everything. After months of craziness, I just cut them both out of my life. I haven’t seen either of them since the wedding day which was now 5 years ago, never even got to see the wedding photos. It’s sad that a long-term friendship ended over nothing. If she had expectations, say something! Don’t expect me to guess then judge me for failing your expectations and be too chicken to talk to me about it directly!”
Dad Doesn’t Matter
“This was my sister’s wedding so hold on tight. My sister had 10 bridesmaids. Most of them were her sorority sisters from college. They wanted to plan an elaborate weekend for the summer, while most of them were still in school without jobs. When I asked ‘hey, who will pay for this?’ my sister got mad that I even asked. When I also reminded all the bridesmaids that our father, who had stage 4 cancer, wasn’t doing so well and that maybe the bachelorette/bridal shower should be close by, they all flipped thinking I was being insensitive to the bride.
I was promptly asked not to be a bridesmaid at my own sister’s wedding over these two things. I was fine with this as she was a bridezilla and I spent time with our dying father. He died 2 weeks after her wedding day, that he couldn’t attend because he was in hospice care one day before her wedding. To me, she put herself before our ailing father, and it still makes me mad.”
There’s Only Room For One Celebration
“There were a lot of moments where my friend was a total bridezilla. One of my favorites was her bachelorette party. It was the same weekend as my birthday. We weren’t allowed to do anything for my birthday at all on the trip. Not even mention it. On my actual birthday, some of my friends got some balloons and a little cake from the hotel. They tried to keep it a secret but Bridezilla came into the room, saw everything, didn’t say a word and walked out. She was super mad because our friends wanted to do something small for me on my actual birthday. I wanted to say something about how ridiculous I thought all this was but at that point, we were a month away from the wedding. I knew I just had to grit my teeth, get through it, then distance myself from that friendship.
It was fitting that the wedding ended in huge family drama. Buckle up for this one. Day of the wedding, everything went well, beautiful ceremony, no drama… which was weird. We were all in the limo, driving the five miles back from the ceremony to the house where all our cars were. The groom’s cousin was WASTED. I mean, totally gone. In his wasted stupor, he decided to call the bride’s sister a See-You-Next-Tuesday. Ok, obviously not cool to call her that (even though she was one of the worst people I’ve ever met – Very self-centered, combative, prideful, just not someone I would want to ever associate with) but the dude was wasted. The sister goes berserk. Loses her cool, starts getting in the guy’s face. The sister’s boyfriend obviously had to defend her honor (very prideful people) and starts getting in the cousin’s face. The cousin, being trashed, punches the boyfriend in the face and breaks his nose.
Bride’s family calls cops, loses their mind. Groom’s family gets the cousin out of the limo, tell him to hide and run to his car. They don’t want his arrested cause he has kids, say they’ll pay the medical bills and whatever is associated with it. Just don’t want this on his record. Bride’s family refuses, want him arrested.
So, we’re stuck in a limo, two miles away from our cars, waiting for the cops to show up for over an hour. We finally get back to our cars, cousin wasn’t found that night.
This caused the bride to refuse to see the groom’s family for years (don’t know if they talk now, don’t talk to either family anymore) because groom’s family tried to keep their cousin out of jail.
Good times.
I definitely stopped talking to her after the wedding was over.”
Bossy Bride
“My first job out of college, a colleague got engaged and asked three colleagues to be her bridesmaids (in addition to one friend from high school). I had only known her for a matter of months, but I felt uncomfortable saying no because she was one of my bosses.
In addition to being in a wedding for someone I barely knew, which is bad in its own right, there were so many horrible things about this nightmare bridezilla wedding. First, I ended up hosting both her bachelorette AND her shower because no one in her life planned anything. She showed up to her own shower an hour late, hungover and wearing pajamas when she mandated that everyone dress for a luncheon. She ordered our dresses from Etsy (as opposed to any bridesmaid dress company) and they looked like seafoam green silk pillowcases with holes cut for the arms and head. They tied in giant bows in the back. We all looked like literal infants. She wouldn’t let us wear heels with said ‘dresses’ because the groom was kinda short. So, we all had to buy new flats in a specific shade of gold. She wanted us to wear our hair in a really ugly, extremely complicated updo — and said we would have to pay to have one of the hairstylists do our hair (we refused). The wedding was on a Sunday (they were both very Catholic, so this wasn’t for religious reasons) in an extremely inconvenient and faraway location, and it was not the Sunday of a long weekend. The rehearsal dinner for this Sunday wedding was THURSDAY and started at 4 in the afternoon, requiring everyone to leave work in the middle of the day. She forced us to stay at an expensive hotel in the area the night before the wedding for no apparent reason and refused to pay for our hotel room.
Fun times!
It could not have been more awkward when we all returned back to work. I quit as soon as I could, took another job and have not seen or spoken to her since.”
Evil Stepmother
“I was a bridesmaid at my father and stepmother’s wedding. I was 16. It wasn’t so much the wedding day that was a problem, but rather the prep and planning.
She spent 8 months before the wedding trying to bully me into losing weight for the wedding pictures. The closer we got to it, the more aggressive she was. Eventually, my dad got on the bandwagon too. I started dieting for the wedding but I was angry and miserable the whole time. Everything I ate was commented on. If she was bringing home dinner, she would always ask what I wanted and then reply with, ‘you shouldn’t eat that before the wedding.’
I had been wanting to get a haircut for months before the planning even started. She insisted I didn’t ‘just in case it went wrong.’ You know, for the wedding photos. I ended up getting a haircut and re-dying my very faded hair a week before the wedding. She had a full on meltdown and was screaming at me. Why? Because my hair was red, and her bouquet had red accent flowers in it. Her overall color scheme was black, silver, and red. She was furious because she thought my having red hair would draw more attention to me than it would to her color scheme.
When we went to get bridesmaid dresses, she brought her friends and very much ignored me the whole time. She had one of the employees bring me a dress and when I peaked out to ask for a bigger size, she lost her mind again. We got home and she screamed at my dad about it, who in turn went off on me for breaking my promise about losing weight. I was/am pretty overweight (so is she) but it did a lot of damage to my 16-year-old self’s esteem. I had trouble with eating for a long time, not an eating disorder but…trouble. Toxicity does that.
Finally the wedding happened. I am only in two pictures. A few months ago she commented that she didn’t know why our photographer didn’t take more pictures of me…Okay.
It’s been nearly six years, the damage has been done and that’s not easily fixed. Our relationship has improved, but it’s not nearly 100%, but it’s better.”
Even The Wedding Planner Couldn’t Cope
“The bride had 2 weddings. We had pretty different financial backgrounds between us. She had one wedding in the state where she grew up and one destination wedding a month later. She couldn’t decide which dress to get, so she bought three. I was the maid of honor at the local event and I was supposed to be in the destination wedding. I had to overdraw my bank account to attend and cover expenses so I was really in a bit in awe at all the extravagances. It was a 3-hour ceremony with 2 venue changes. The phrases ‘I want what I want!’ and ‘it’s my day!’ and ‘I have people for that!’ are still ringing in my ears just thinking of it.
She racked up 60k in credit card debt on her perfect days. She told me the day before she had not informed the groom of their new debt. The best part was when she was in her second wedding dress change, she started to scream about how things weren’t exactly what she wanted. Standing there half dressed and wasted, yelling about how the cake wasn’t perfect. It was a $3,000 cake that was transported from another state that was slightly smashed on the back side from hours of travel. The whole bridal party was just standing there in the hallway waiting to take pictures. I told her to shut up, said I wasn’t going to come to the wedding in Ireland, reminded her that her hundreds of guests could hear her, and fixed her dress.
She was such a little tantrum throwing jerk. At the end of the Irish dancing groups, the toasts, and her wedding dance (that was choreographed), her PAID wedding planner offered to give me coke just for putting up with such a spoiled brat. The lady did it loudly in front of an aunt who later told the bride… Yeah, it sucked.”
Center Of Attention To The Extreme
“I was almost in a bridezilla wedding. I had an ectopic pregnancy (baby attached to my tube, which then burst, and I almost bleed to death). She got engaged shortly following my ectopic. When she asked me to be her bridesmaid, she told me that I would be required to wait to try to have another baby until after her wedding in 1.5 years. Not because there would be a small child at the wedding, not even because she didn’t want me to be fat at her wedding… but because if I lost another child, it would take away from her engagement and wedding.
She said that since it was her second wedding so she needed it to be special this time around. I was so shocked I just declined to be in the wedding and have never spoken to her since. She’s my baby cousin so I always assumed she was just a little immature, but after this, I realized I was letting too much slide. It wasn’t hard to cut ties. The hard part was when my Grandma asked me to put it behind me and just go to the wedding.”
It’s Not THAT Cold
“I was in a wedding where the bride planned two separate bachelorette weekends for herself. She got mad at anyone who couldn’t/wouldn’t spend two 3-day weekends at $500/each away from their husbands/kids/jobs.
The week leading up to the wedding, the temperature for the big day was forecast to be a high of 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a February wedding in the Northeastern US. The bride was insisting on outdoor photos without coats ‘because we can’t hide the dresses!’ Everyone, including the photographer, tells her no. The day of she pitches a fit when we refused to do more than one quick photo.
Afterward, she stopped talking to 75% of the bridal party because of their refusal to accommodate her outrageous demands. To this day, years later, she still complains about how her bridesmaids ruined her wedding.”