It used to be that you asked people to be in your wedding because you loved them and they meant so much to you that you wanted them at your side on what is supposed to be the biggest day of your life. Now it seems that more often than not, bridesmaids are just part of the aesthetic, chosen for how they’ll look in the eventual wedding photos.
For one bridesmaid on Reddit, this unsettling trend resulted in a “gift” from the bride that was downright offensive, and made even more so by the fact that the bride immediately lied about it to smooth things over, even while insisting it was “no big deal.”
For a brief moment there, we as a society seemed to have been finally moving on from the insane body standards inflicted by the ’90s and 2000s. Add it to the long list of retrograde notions currently making a major comeback: Thin is back in, and calling normal-sized women “whales” because you aren’t able to count their ribs through their clothes is back in, too.
This bride didn’t quite go THAT far, but she might as well have. “I was recently asked to be a bridesmaid for my college best friend’s wedding,” the bridesmaid wrote in her Reddit post. “I was genuinely touched… until she sent us our ‘wedding prep kits.'”
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She expected this to be the usual swag bag of fun little gifts. Instead, she received “a diet plan, a ‘motivational’ water bottle, and a note that said, ‘let’s all look snatched for the big day!! You got this .'”
Understandably, she was “floored,” especially since she’s a size 12, which is smaller than the average woman. “I’m healthy, active, and not at all interested in losing weight for anyone, much less to fit into her aesthetic,” she wrote.
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Even if the bridesmaid WAS interested in losing weight, to give an unsolicited diet plan as part of what is supposed to be a gift is egregiously out of line. It’s like the grown-up version of the time the mean girls at my middle school broke into another girl’s locker and filled it with cans of Slim-Fast. Which is a long-winded way of saying this is bullying. Who do you think you are?
Accordingly, the bridesmaid wasn’t having it. She texted the bride privately, one-on-one, and calmly but pointedly told her she was uncomfortable with “being handed a diet plan” and that she’d rather drop out if her appearance is an “issue.”
oliviabrown8888 | pixabay | Canva Pro
The response she received could not have been more telling. “She responded, ‘Oh my god, don’t be so sensitive. I gave one to ALL the girls. It’s about looking cohesive, not shaming anyone.'”
Unfortunately, it turned out that was a stone-cold lie. The bridesmaid asked the rest of the bridal party, and none but her and one other non-waifish bridesmaid received a diet plan. So she did what any self-respecting person would and “bowed out” of the wedding. “Now I’m being labeled the ‘dramatic one’ in our group chat,” she wrote. “She even told mutual friends I ‘quit over a water bottle.'”
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As vile and absurd as this is, the bridesmaid was still worried she was doing the wrong thing. Which is understandable to a point. She is one of the bride’s best friends, and it’s her wedding, not something simple like a birthday.
Be that as it may, there is nothing okay about what this bride did, and she knows it, or she wouldn’t be lying about it to everyone who will listen. To then blame shift and pin the whole situation on the bridesmaid supposedly being too sensitive is the icing on the cake, and a classic manipulation tactic. The bride may be her “college best friend,” but she needs to become an ex-friend if she’s not willing to be even remotely decent about this.
On Reddit, people urged her to call the bride out even more strongly by posting the diet plan in the group chat to push back on the narrative that she “quit over a water bottle” and beat her at her own game.
Whether that’s worth the trouble or not is in the eye of the beholder, but what’s not is that this seems to be part of a troubling trend of what one Reddit commenter called “this Instagram/TikTok era of brides who [expletive] on their family and friends.”
“I feel like a member of the bridal party is just going to snap one day at these bridezilla demands for vanity and expectations of time and endless resources, with all hell breaking loose,” they went on to write. Hear hear. Today’s brides are so brainwormed by social media narcissism that they’re willing to be audaciously cruel to the people who are supposedly the most important in their lives in service of having the perfect aesthetic for their wedding TikToks.
It’s vile, weird, and disturbing, and if the internet is any indication, it’s turning an entire generation of brides into monsters. May the perfect wedding content be a comfort to them when they suddenly find they no longer have any friends once the wedding is over.
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
