My Friend Is Angry That I Won’t Buy a $15K Bridesmaid Dress

Q: I have been asked to be a bridesmaid by a longtime (over fifteen years) and very dear friend. This woman is the sister I never had, and we’re closer to each other than we are to many of our own family members. I happily said yes without realizing that her tastes and budget far, far exceed mine.

She is marrying into a great deal of money, and she’s having a huge, expensive wedding. That’s fine. The problem is that the dresses she selected for her bridesmaids START at $7,000. That’s right—$7,000 is the price of the cheapest of her choices, and that does NOT include alterations, shoes, jewelry, hair, makeup, etc. The dress that she favors comes in at $15,000 before alterations.

She did not give us any kind of warning that the dresses she is considering are so expensive. I’m working, but spending $7,000 plus on a dress that I will wear for less than one day (not even) and then never wear it again (it is beautiful, but it is bridal) is an expense I cannot justify. And if she opts for her favorite, at $15,000 before alterations…

I know that being a member of the wedding party is expensive. When she announced her engagement and when she asked me to be a bridesmaid, I immediately started trying to save, but I didn’t think that being part of her wedding would be this expensive. I am also hurt that she didn’t give me a heads-up but waited until we were at the salon and looking at her choices. I pulled her aside and told her that I would have to back out of being a bridesmaid, and I told her WHY (that I cannot afford the dress she chose, nor the shoes, the accessories, alterations, and more). I told her that I would be happy to participate in another way (perhaps do a reading), and if that wasn’t possible, then I would be content to be a guest. She was very, very upset with me, told me that I couldn’t back out, etc. The wedding is still a year from now, so I would think there is time for her to ask someone else to be a bridesmaid.

Since then, I’ve called her and emailed her and she hasn’t responded. I finally wrote her a long letter, explaining that I valued her as a person and our friendship, and that I very much wanted to be a part of her wedding, but that unfortunately a $15,000 dress and even a $7,000 dress is completely out of my budget. I have a job but after rent, insurance, loans, and other expenses, I sometimes have to skip meals in order to save even a little for emergencies.

The thing is, she grew up like me—working class poor and didn’t have much. Her fiancé is a great guy and I’m truly happy for her, but I’m hurt that she did not ask me what I could afford to spend on a bridesmaid dress, shoes, and accessories. I have enough debt as it is, and I can’t and won’t spend $20,000 just on the bridesmaid accoutrements. I’d have to borrow to do it.

But now she’s mad at me and sent me a letter in return telling me how hurt she was that I backed out, that obviously I don’t value her or our long friendship because if I did, I would be there for her wedding. She said that none of the other bridesmaids nor the maid of honor backed out (maid of honor is her sister; other bridesmaids are her fiancé’s sisters, and her fiancé’s family is paying for their dresses, etc.) so that tells her that I don’t care about her. She said that I don’t deserve her and she is never talking to me again.

Have you ever heard of anything like this? Are brides now so unreasonable that they don’t take their bridesmaid’s budgets into account when selecting dresses? Should I have told her my limits re: the cost of the dress? She also told me that I was not welcome at her wedding. I am mourning the end of a fifteen-plus-year friendship, and am hurt and bewildered.

—Unhappy ex-bridesmaid and blacklisted ex-friend

A: Dear UEABE,

Most couples honestly don’t ask their bridal party about their budget before picking out dresses or tuxes or whatever else. But most couples don’t pick a $15,000 dress, holy crap.

It’d be awfully nice for her to consider her bridal party’s financial situation (I imagine most of the readers here tried to), but at the end of the day, your budget is your own personal responsibility, not hers. It’s your obligation to keep your finances in check and be vocal if some obligation is stretching you too thin. Which is exactly what you did! You were right, is what I’m saying here. Telling her you couldn’t afford it and stepping down were the entirely right decisions.

Everyone is in a different financial situation. But fifteen grand is… a lot. Even considering the fact that we’re not all coming from the same place financially, that’s a lot of money.

It was your choice to spend that lump of cash or opt out, and she had a choice in how she responded to the news. She decided to take it personally, and frankly, I don’t know what you could’ve done to avoid that. It sucks. It’s just not your fault. You couldn’t have foreseen a $15,000 dress, and you couldn’t just dig in the couch to find that money once it was proposed. Her hurt feelings suck, but they’re unfounded and not your responsibility.

You say your friend had the same financial background as you before meeting this guy, but I’m wondering if she just cannot relate to “not being able to afford it.” Even folks who consider themselves on the same financial page are usually in very different places. In trying very hard (so very hard) to give the benefit of the doubt here, I’m thinking maybe she just cannot fathom how you can’t afford this dress, and assumes that means you’re prioritizing other things above her wedding (which you are—rent and food and electricity). But on the other, wide-eyed judgey hand—this girl has lost her mind. Fifteen thousand dollars for a dress? That’s crazy talk, and her accusatory response was out of line. Maybe after the wedding is over, she’ll find her common sense again. But till then, you’ve done what you can, and I would try not to give it another blessed thought.

THE TWO YEARS LATER UPDATE:

Hello Liz,

Nice to hear from you. Your advice, and those of the readers, helped confirm my decision, so I thank you for publishing my letter and for answering my question.

I did not buy the dress; she ultimately decided on the $15,000 dress (with considerable pressure/arm-twisting from her MIL-to-be), which was waaaay out of my budget for a bridesmaid dress. I’m told the costs were closer to $20,000 for the bridesmaid dresses when alterations, accessories, and shoes were included.

As the only non-family member of the original wedding party, her in-laws did not offer to pay for my dress, so I bowed out. The bride pitched a fit, told me that I was “uninvited” to her wedding since I obviously didn’t love her, and that was that. She had her big, bashy royal wedding, and I stayed home.

She has not called me, messaged me, or written to me. I gave her time, thinking that after the wedding insanity and hoopla died down she would come to her senses. I sent her a card several months after her wedding, telling her that I was sorry that I could not afford to be part of her, that we were friends for a long time, and that I wished her well. The card was returned to me with her handwriting on it, telling me that she could never forgive me and to stay out of her life, so that’s what I’ve done.

I do miss her and her friendship, but I miss the old her, the person I grew up with and who was kind, funny, caring. I don’t miss the Bride she turned into, and have decided that if she has come so far that she forgot her old life and what it was like to grow up working class poor and to have work for a living and holds it against me, then she’s not the person I thought she was. I suppose that marrying into that kind and amount of money and wealth (her husband’s family own too many McMansions to count, racehorses, businesses, and more, so it isn’t just a matter of someone having a great job and earning lots of money–there’s a great deal of inherited wealth, the kind that isn’t taxed and/or qualifies for all kinds of tax shelters and loopholes). It is a completely different lifestyle and worldview. And that’s fine, but I have no place in it because I don’t come from inherited wealth and could never work enough to even earn what they spend on trifles. It is a difference of the .0001% vs. everyone else.

Weddings have become expensive enough as it is, even for ordinary couples. I guess I’m more pragmatic—even if I had had the $15K, I couldn’t justify spending it on a dress that I would wear for not even one day. That kind of money could pay down some debt (hello student loans), set aside some for emergencies (hello expensive car repairs and medical expenses that aren’t covered by insurance), or just trying to put some aside for future retirement (I’ll be working until they plant me).

Keep up the good work, and help keep the bridal insanity down!

Best,

MB

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This post originally ran (Sans Update) on APW in November 2015.

Here’s What to Do with Your Wedding Photos When You’re Lazy and on a Budget

hardcover wedding album with solid black spine and photo cover next to a vase of flowers that reads enjoy the little things

When I was getting married, one of the things that baffled me the most was the wedding album. As someone getting married on a relatively tight budget, the thought of dropping a few grand on an album of our photos was kind of… hilarious? I mean, several thousand dollars was what we had to pay our photographer for the photos themselves, thank you very much. In the year after our wedding, I started trying to figure out the album situation. In short, albums were expensive because there were a limited number of companies making them, and those companies’ prices directly to photographers were expensive. Then, add on the tremendous amount of time it takes a photographer to design an album, time that they had to charge the clients for on top of the base album price. The result? Hella pricey albums.

triptych of album photos: first of the cover of a navy album with photo inlay, debossed with gold lettering that reads McKenzie and Russell September 26, 2015; the second is an album open to a center spread with a photo of the bride holding a bouquet; the third is of an album standing on its end with a photo-wrap hard cover that reads Alex & Jessica on the spine

But that was then. Nowadays it seems like there’s a new photo book company popping up every week, if you want to design one yourself. The reason we ultimately could afford a wedding album is that I talked my lovely photographers into letting me design it so they could give it to me at cost. This took months. Something like six months, to be exact. First I had to narrow down 1,000 pictures to 150. Then, I had to put them in order: Which photo should go on the facing page with each other photo? What was the exact order of the ceremony again? After a zillion emails, my photographers finally just let me log into the album design software, and do the final arranging. It was… not the most fun I’ve ever had. And I was just doing one photo a page, mostly because I’d totally given up on more complicated photo layouts, because I had a job. (Did I mention I was doing most of this AT my job?) ANYWAY! All of this is to say, of course you can design your own wedding album. But you might not really want to.

Enter Albums Remembered, the answers to a #lazygirl’s prayers. They are changing the game on albums by providing professional quality flush-mount wedding photo albums with free one-on-one custom design services and unlimited revisions at a price that won’t make you cry. Bam. Here are three reasons why you should finally get “album” checked off that to do list thanks to the lovely folks of Albums Remembered:

Interior 3-image spread of wedding album next to vase of flowers

1. one-on-one custom design services and unlimited REVISIONS

You know how I said designing an album was, um, miserable? Well lucky for you, Albums Remembered takes that right off your plate, while still giving you super affordable prices. (Seriously, their prices are what I paid going through my photographer at cost, doing my OWN design.) And they don’t just take your photos, throw them into some design template, and tell you your album is done. Instead, they describe their design process this way: “As designers we immerse ourselves in all of the photos and try to design the most perfect layout for each client, so no two albums are ever the same. We also offer unlimited revisions because we believe in a hundred percent client satisfaction. Just because we’ve spent hours on a design and love it, doesn’t mean you’re going to love it. We alter designs until you are completely in love with it, so that you can have the design be done professionally while still having control over your finished album.”

Photo collage of album with photo wrap hardcover of Chicago wedding, with interior spread of detail shots

2. PROFESSIONAL ARCHIVAL QUALITY THAT WILL STAND THE TEST OF TIME

The number one difference between a professional wedding album and the kind you can make yourself on the Internet is archival quality. I am a huge fan of photo books—we even made our parents’ albums that way (not to mention countless family photo books). But they’re a different product than an archival print or an archival album. Think of them as a nice-for-now product, rather than a something-to-pass-down-to-future-generations product. Your average online album company produces their product totally differently: they’re printed on pre-made books, non-archival paper, with lower-quality inks. Archival wedding albums, like the ones that Albums Remembered creates, all have high-quality photographic prints on archival board and are hand-bound into a book after the printing process is complete. (Extreme close-ups of those high quality details are all right here).

Plus Albums Remembered offers one of the largest varieties of cover styles under the sun, from acrylic covers to photo wrap covers to fabric covers to leather covers, along with eight different sizes and over twenty cover materials. Basically, if you can dream it, you can have it.

Dark blue square hardcover album with photo inlay and debossed gold type reading Sloane and Robert April 8, 2017

3. Affordable Prices

Albums Remembered’s books cost $350 to $1150, and all of their prices are disclosed right on the website, so you can figure out what you might want, and what trade-offs you might want to make, without having to make all of those decisions in the middle of some uncomfortable up-selling conversation. Instead the process is more like what this customer wrote:

I really wanted an album for my wedding, and the price my photographer quoted me was so high I had to sit down. I heard about Albums Remembered on A Practical Wedding, and for the price my photographer quoted me for one 8×8 10-spread album, I got a 30-spread, 10×10 album, plus two parent albums. I can’t speak enough about how high quality these albums are. I went with leather covers, and it really feels thick and each of the pages is simply stunning—really crisp, clear, and the colors are stunning. I love all the layouts; they make the whole album feel like a story.

BONUS: Albums Remembered is having their biggest sale of the year from October 15th to October 30th with discounts up to 25%, so you can get your album in time for the holidays for even less. You’re welcome.

interior album spread with three images on left and photo that spans the gutter next to a collection of cover swatch options

So whether you’ve been sitting on your wedding photos for three months or three years, it’s time to let Albums Remembered take designing an album off your plate and finally get those photos off your hard drive. Go get started right here.

Plus? Your mama really wants a parent album for the holidays. And luckily for you—and your mom—you can enter to win one right here. Go do it now, and it might be just be you who gets to make your mom cry happy tears on Christmas for zero dollars.

ALBUMS REMEMBERED IS GIVING AWAY A FREE PARENT ALBUM WITH PURCHASE OF A MAIN ALBUM.
CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AND SIGN UP here BEFORE THE GIVEAWAY ENDS ON NOVEMBER 1, 2017.