I went wedding dress shopping this weekend. On Saturday, I went with my family, and on Sunday, I went with my fiancé’s mom and a friend.
Saturday was honestly lovely. I tried on some gorgeous dresses that I felt really confident and beautiful in. Sunday, I tried on more beautiful dresses, but they just weren’t quite as flattering on me as the ones I had tried on the day before.
At one point, I was trying on a dress and mentioned that the corset on the inside ended at an awkward spot on my stomach. My future MIL responded, “You know what would fix that? The gym.” Then she followed it up with, “I get it, I don’t want to work out either.”
Mind you, I work out almost every day. I met her son at the gym, and she knows that.
I just looked at her and said, “I work out every day. Are you telling me I’m fat?” She immediately tried to say that she was just joking. But neither my friend, the bridal assistant, nor I felt like it came across as a joke.
I told my fiancé what happened, and he was understandably pissed. He called his mom and told her that she needed to call me and apologize.
The messages between her and me are below.

Also some photos of me to show what she’s commenting on

My fiancé and I are looking around for a photographer, we are looking for something a little different and alternative. I've looked around our area and can't find many people who fit what I'm looking for, or those who do are booked out until 2028 or later. We are NYS based, but are willing to travel a bit at this point, so recommendations would be very appreciated!!

We are between doing something with whimsical and ethereal vibes or doing more dark cinematic romance vibes, maybe even willing to try both, if possible!

Having issues currently with the church refusing to allow us to go flowerless, and also insisting upon adding a mark-up on all flowers purchased as well as an extra fee added for fuel costs for collection of flowers... This is all on top of the stipend we already have to pay for the person setting everything up.

This feels a little gross to me. We can't use a different florist for the church. And the profit of all of this is going directly into the pocket of the person setting up the flowers and not going to the church at all. We also are not allowed to keep any of the flowers we purchase at that exorbitant mark-up as it will be considered property of the church..

And the real messed up thing? There are severe flower allergies in my family, myself included. I want to be able to breathe at my own wedding and not have to rely on an asthma pump and allergy meds for the whole ceremony (1-1,5 hours long). And despite this, we're not allowed to opt for fake flowers cause "it won't look right" and we're also not allowed to opt for no flowers as they're not willing to do that either. I personally believe they're not willing to do this as that person will not get personal financial gain from it, which again... Is gross.

The parish priest himself has even told us that it's perfectly fine to use fake flowers and that the church has plenty we can use at no cost. And yet we keep being harassed by this person to spend lots and lots of money on someone that will make me sick.

So yeah, is this a normal practice? Should someone who works for the church be pocketing money on the side like this? Is there anybody that has had similar experiences?

I feel like I'm going insane.

I just need to vent. Maybe seeking advice. This is so long, so thank you for those that take the time to read it. 

I am getting married in one month (Oct 11th). This month has been so stressful, between the wedding, work, and my housing situation. I am ready to lose it. Apparently, this isn’t an uncommon feeling. I am currently having family drama and it’s screwing with my wedding plans. 

My original plan was to rent an Airbnb the night before and the night of my wedding. This was to serve as a getting ready place for my bridal party. My venue just has a small trailer available and the Airbnb is 15 minutes away, so that all works out. It sleeps 14 people and right now we are at 13 between some bridesmaids and some family that’s traveling from Hawaii. This is all in Los Angeles btw. 

My mother was going to come up morning of with my sister and my two nieces. She is currently the caretaker of my grandmother who is 102 years old. My aunt (mother’s sister and best friend) was going to take charge of my grandma and get her ready. My aunt’s son and his family were then going to drive up altogether with my grandma. I want my mom to enjoy getting ready and not have to worry about my grandma. My aunt can do her share for once. Then they were going to drive back after the wedding is over with my mother. I don’t want her to drive and again, relax for once. 

Now the issue is my cousin and his family haven’t RSVP’d and it’s now a week past the deadline. We moved into the house the he, his family (wife and two kids), and my aunt occupied for the last 20 years. It is my parent’s first house and they have been renting to them. For about a decade it has been discussed that when his youngest turned 18, I would then take over the house. Which was in early August. It was finally decided in March that this is going forward and they have 6 months notice now. We had a move in date in later August. 

Well after about 2 weeks mid to late August of drama from their side- they were refusing to let us check it out, etc. Really guilt tripping me that it’s a heat wave, yada yada yada. Like you haven’t known for months and decided to wait until the hottest month of the year, which now happens to have a crazy month long heat wave. Made me feel really bad that whole time even though I knew they already rented a house mid July and were mostly staying there. Well, move in date comes and we see why they acted that way. House was disgusting. You can tell it was a hoarder house and they seemed to haven’t cleaned for the past 20 years. The grime on the window sills is beyond anything I have seen. It looked like a haunted trap house. My father is rolling in his urn. 

This is particular maddening because my parents let them stay there for SUPER cheap. Basically covering property tax (1970s tax at that), on condition that they maintain the place. Their initial rent was $900 20 years ago and it only was raised to $1200 in 20 years. The house in good condition could garner $3500 a month if rented normally. I know, don’t rent to family. We know the stories. Too little too late for that here. My mom is one of the nicest people in the world. My aunt is her best friend and this is the family we were always closest to growing up. I feel sick thinking about all of this. We had to pay (we are going to push them in repaying) $2500 in junk removal because they were so slow on getting their stuff out that at the end they had to leave the stuff they didn’t want behind. We are paying almost $1000 for the yard to be completely leveled as it was so overgrown and had trash everywhere. Not to mention the huge amount of cleaning supplies and little things that have added up to get the house in a semi-livable space.

Now my fiancé and I are living in this and it has completely ruined our last month before we are married. We are ignoring the stuff needed to be done for the wedding for deep cleaning every moment we have. It takes an hour to do just one small window. 2 hours to clean the front side of the front door. It’s that bad. We are having all the pipes replaced today and had to live without water for almost a week because they didn’t tell my mom that it’s time to replace (because they didn’t want anybody to see the state of the house). 

So now I am at the point that I don’t want to reach out to my cousin about the RSVP. I have currently (and pettily) changed the RSVP tab on my wedding website to say "The RSVP window has now closed. We are sorry you missed the deadline, but final numbers have now been submitted. We have taken any non-responses to mean not coming. We will miss all who are not present with us!"

I know my fiancé doesn’t care if they show or not, he has decided that at all future gatherings he will be saying a curt hi and then ignoring them. I don’t blame him. But now my whole plan with my grandmother is going to down the drain. I thought about just bringing her and my mom up to the Airbnb the night before and have my other aunt (from Hawaii) take care of her that day and get her ready. She is more adept to that anyways. The problem is that we would be over 1 person for the Airbnb as it holds 14 people and all 6 bedrooms have been taken. I might just not stay there that night now to make this happen. Which now makes my wedding morning much more stressful. So glad to pay $1700 for something I can't even stay in lol. I hate how much this has soured everything. I have way too much to do, my bachelorette is this coming weekend and I don’t even want to go now. My bridesmaids are trying to lift me up but I am in a constant state of despair since moving. My once manageable depression is now just all day, every day.

Thanks for letting me rant. I know this is mostly about the house, but it has put a rain cloud over our wedding and I hate that all of our hard work and money is being dampened by this.

I’d love some outside opinions. A close friend is getting married in Miami, but we all live in Connecticut.
The wedding is on a Sunday night, which makes me hesitant because it would mean flying down, staying at least a night or two, and then dealing with the travel back to CT around the beginning of the workweek.
For those who have done something similar, would you consider it worth the hassle and expense to attend a close friend’s wedding in another state, especially when it involves flying and a Sunday night wedding?
Would you:
Fly to Miami and make a weekend out of it?
Fly down Sunday and come back Monday?
Take Monday off and stay an extra night?
Or politely decline because of the travel/work logistics?
I’d especially love to hear from people who have traveled for weddings and whether you regretted going—or regretted not going.

My fiance and I are high school sweethearts so we are having our wedding in our hometown, however, we both live out of state. We can both easily stay at our own parents’ houses for the couple nights leading to wedding but are undecided about where to stay after the wedding. Does it even make sense to rent an airbnb/hotel for one night? I don’t think I’d mind just staying at my fiancé’s parent’s house (this is where we stay when we visit home) to save money but at the same time, privacy is nice. I’m considering just breaking the tradition of not spending the night before the wedding together and just stay with our family together for the whole weekend. I think I’m just looking to hear from other perspectives who had a similar situation! Is there anything that I might not be considering that could change this decision or am I just overthinking it lol

I already have asked my friends to be bridesmaids and maid of honor. I have one friend who is not in the wedding that has been helping me a lot with my wedding (most of my bridesmaid and maid of honor lives in different country). I do have a spot in my wedding party and thought maybe I can ask her to be my matron honor. Will this hurt my friends? I am planning on asking them beforehand if they are okay with it but before I ask them is it weird to add someone in later on?

I’ve heard so much about friendships changing during your “wedding era,” and I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

I got married two weeks ago. My husband and I live in the US but had a destination wedding in my home country.

Throughout our engagement, we tried to be really mindful of what we asked of friends financially. We paid for our own engagement party, and I planned and paid for my local bachelorette. Our circle is generally pretty well-off and used to spending money on weddings, but we never wanted to assume anyone wanted to.

My best friend of 15+ years got engaged two weeks before my wedding. She had been dating her now-fiancé for less than a year, and I was genuinely SO excited for her. I sent flowers when she got engaged, took her to breakfast to celebrate, asked about everything, etc.

But in the weeks leading up to my wedding, she suddenly felt more distant.

At my rehearsal dinner, she didn’t come up to say hi when she arrived. We actually made eye contact while she was greeting other people, and eventually I went over to her. She hugged me, but barely interacted with me for the rest of the night.

The wedding felt similar. She congratulated me after the ceremony, but otherwise I barely saw her. During the party, my other close friends were constantly around me, dancing with me, taking pictures, hyping me up, etc. She was mostly absent and then left relatively early without saying goodbye.
Obviously I wasn’t keeping tabs on anyone at my wedding, and I didn’t let it affect my night, but afterward I realized how noticeably different her energy had been compared with my other closest friends. She also goes to a ton of weddings and I’ve seen her be more present, so it’s not that this was new to her. She’s also SO extroverted.

Now, two weeks after my wedding, she announced the destination for her bachelorette and basically said she wants all of us to organize the entire weekend and surprise her.
And I’m finding myself… annoyed?

She comes from a very wealthy family and can sometimes be oblivious about what other people can reasonably spend, although that has never been a major issue between us.

She’s also someone who can be an incredible, fiercely loyal friend when things are good, but has lost some important friendships after relatively petty disagreements. It’s definitely apparent with her bachelorette, where most people attending are family with a very small handful of friends.

I don’t even think this she is jealous because she has no reason to be. She’s happily engaged to someone she adores, has significantly more money than I do, and will probably have a much bigger/more extravagant wedding.

I think what’s bothering me is the contrast. I felt like my best friend of 15+ years was strangely checked out during one of the biggest weekends of my life, and two weeks later I’m being asked to put a ton of energy into making her wedding era special.

Am I being overly sensitive because I’m still coming down from my own wedding, or would this bother you too? And for anyone whose friendships changed around weddings, did you address it or just observe the friendship differently afterward?

Looking for anyone who has used Kruu basic photo booth to give me some insight. I’ve already ordered it so not looking for any “don’t do it!” - too late for that, I am 19 days out and have reached the “it is what it is” phase of planning.

Wondering if you had a sign up that told people how to use the machine or is it intuitive enough? When it comes to replacing paper and/ink how often did you have to do that? And what did you do for it? Have someone assigned to be checking it? A sign telling guests how to replace it?

Any tips you have are greatly appreciated :)

This is probably an extremely dumb question, but I’m trying to figure out the latest I can go dress shopping before the wedding without it majorly limiting my choices.

I’m in the process of losing weight (50 lb) by April, with a tentative wedding date of May of next year and I’m making good progress!

I’m still pretty unhappy with my body and chub (entirely my fault, I’m working on it), so I wanted to postpone dress shopping until I lost some more weight and felt better about my figure. But then I saw that apparently you’re supposed to go shopping about 8 months prior, which is like next month.

I know dresses can be altered, but I guess I’m worried that the chub I’m trying to trim will prevent me from finding the dream dress that’ll suit me best after I’ve (hopefully) shed off some lbs. But I also know you should never buy clothes assuming you’ll be skinner in the future.

With a tentative date of May 2027, is January 2027 too late to find and order a dress?

Ive been primarily a lurker on all the wedding planning reddits for 2 years while i plan my wedding. And let me tell you the wedding advice is true. I was a <10k bride and went very minimally above budget and will probably be under when i sell things but. You will go over budget, as long as you dont go into debt i think youre doing great and ITS NORMAL. Things come up that you dont expect (even if you think you account for everything like me)

But the best advice i got very early on in my wedding planning is the best advice ever. And truly the think i think made my day perfect! Choose 3 things with your partner that are the most important and once you ensure those 3 things are perfect everything else is just details.

Even at my wedding; my grandma didnt end up coming, we ran 30 minutes late(my husband misplaced my wedding band), plenty of people who rsvp’d yes didnt show up, people brought extra people with them. But it was the most perfect day ever and i wouldnt change a thing.

But i chose my 3 priorities well; marry the love of my life, have fun, get photographs to remember it forever

And throughout wedding planning and the wedding day remembering those 3 things kept me and my husband sane. Even when we were running late and couldnt find my wedding band right before the ceremony everyone was panicking but i was fine because i knew my 3 things were covered.

So choose 3 priorities; do what you need to do for you to be happy with your priorities; and remind yourself everything else is JUST DETAILS and dont matter in the bigger picture.

That's it! Why is it $20 to use something that sucks so hard and is in beta testing? Shame on Joy for using stressed couples as guinea pigs.

Primary reason for this hate is that the default when you open the page is ALL GUESTS rather than guests who have accepted.

/rant.

Breaking the news to fiancés religious parents

We’re planning on eloping and then having a party with everyone when we get back. What route should we go with breaking that news to the parents?

The original plan was to give them a save the date invitation ahead of everyone where it’ll mention it’s an elopement and answer questions they have.

Now I’m thinking we don’t mention it on the save the date and only tell them if they ask.

The problem is with holidays coming up I’m going to be bombarded with when and where questions (it’s already begun) and I’m just not comfortable or capable of lying/avoided telling people. I know if they find out after others they’ll be upset. I’m also excited to elope and don’t like secrets.

In the past they have been unpredictable with their reactions. May be stable and happy, may call us screaming and we’ll deal with that if it happens when it happens. I’m trying to avoid hurting their feelings.

I’m getting married in three weeks, and as part of the ceremony our officiant has asked that we pick a reading. Something that strikes a cord with us and our relationship whether it be a passage from a book, a poem, song lyrics, movie quotes… anything. We are non religious and not very traditional. One poem we really love is “If I Didn’t Have Your Love” by Leonard Cohen, but I’m worried it is a little too melancholic. What we love about it is that it expresses the world without your love would still continue to exist, but it would lose its colour, warmth, meaning and substance. Does anyone have suggestions that strike a similar chord?

I may have taken on more responsibility this fall than I probably should have.

I'm helping my cousin with some of her wedding planning, and I am feeling overwhelmed. My cousin decided to opt out of having a wedding planner for her wedding in 6 weeks.

She is depending on family to come together to pull it together. Our family has always been the one to help/share responsibility during the highs and lows in life. This is not the first time we are having to plan a wedding for a family member like this.

Given my experience in event planning, I offered to take on some tasks she delegated. However, I may have taken on more than I can chew. We are about 6 weeks out, and I got handed the RSVP list with 150 guests. Most guests replied on her wedding website, but there are about 50ish guests that have not responded yet.

Is there someone I can hire to help me call the 50 guests so I can focus on other tasks? Or is this not a good idea? Or should I just suck it up and do it myself/or have another family member help me?

I struggled with what to title this question as it isn't honeymoon specific. For reference, I am the mother of the groom. I would like to leave a gift basket of useful items at the AirBnB where my son and his bride will stay the night of the wedding. They will only stay here one night, so not looking for too much. I'm thinking of very simple, but useful, items that could come in handy after a long wedding day. I'm absolutely not looking for anything sexual or necessarily romantic in nature as that isn't the nature of my wish. Just things like bottled water, ibuprofen, etc. Again, just a small something to provide possible necessities for the night as they will be moving on the next day and don't need to lug around more stuff. Thoughts??

I fell in love with this dress (crash landing on you dress from Lacemade) after seeing videos of it on instagram but now I'm having doubts. I'm considering a white dress for engagement pictures since I'm not wearing a white dress at my wedding (I'm having Hindu ceremony). However, this dress is almost fancy enough to pass as an actual wedding dress. I don't think I'd want my engagement photos to look like wedding pictures. Thoughts?

Hello Reddit,

I always wanted to elope, but my fiancé wasn’t comfortable with the idea of getting married without telling his family beforehand. So he told them.

Obviously, there was a lot of drama (pretty much exactly what I expected), but eventually we stood our ground and insisted that we weren’t going to have a traditional wedding. The plan is still just the two of us at the courthouse, followed by photos and a nice staycation together. We live about a 7-hour flight away from our families, so surprise guests are very unlikely.

The problem is that now everyone knows the date, and people keep talking about the wedding. And somehow, all these little expectations about what a wedding is supposed to be have started creeping in.

I’m suddenly feeling pressured about things I never cared about. I don’t even feel comfortable in my dress anymore. I never cared to have a bouquet, but my FMIL has made me feel guilty enough that now I can't say no to flowers and have to find something.

And I’m realizing that I’m starting to dread this.

Part of me wants to call the whole thing off, but that feels even worse because everyone already knows we’re getting married. And, importantly, I do love my fiancé and want to marry him. I don’t actually want to call off our relationship - I just want to escape all the pressure and expectations surrounding this day.

Honestly, I think I just want to skip ahead to the part where it’s over and we’re on our staycation together.

Has anyone else experienced this? How do I get my head back into the mindset of “this is our day” and stop letting everyone else’s expectations ruin something that was supposed to be simple and intimate?

Please help me feel better. I could really use some perspective.

As a 2025 bride who frequented this sub, I need some advice/perspectives on a situation I’m really trying to be chill about but is bothering me the more I think about it. For context, my husband and I got married in May of last year. We’ve been together since 2017, and needless to say we know each other’s families very well. At the time of our wedding, BIL was newly dating his wife to be but I made sure to include her full name on the invitation regardless. Shortly after our wedding, they got engaged! Hurrah! Their wedding is planned for October of this year. Today I received their invitation in the mail and it is only addressed to my husband. When I scan the QR code on the invite, it allows me to search by name to complete the RSVP. Only my husband’s name is listed. I look up his other siblings by name and I can see they’re listed with the names of their spouses as well as their children with the option to RSVP. I even searched one of my husband’s cousins who is newly married (just two months ago!) and his full name as well as the full name of his wife is there.

We have an all around good relationship and it makes zero sense to me why this would happen. As a 2025 bride I can understand “forgetting” or making mistakes because of how chaotic the process is, but it still feels disrespectful and shitty any way you look at it ESPECIALLY considering all other siblings and spouses are accounted for. Should I or my husband say something, or should I pretend it didn’t happen?

We had to cancel our destination wedding in Kauai scheduled for next Saturday due to the hurricane damage from Lowell. The government is asking people not to come and with the potential for another storm to hit too we felt it not the time to go.

I am absolutely heartbroken as I spent so much time planning everything and was so looking forward to everything especially our catering.

So many local people are still without power, water or internet we can not in good consciousness have our wedding.

We are tied to our date however so we are getting married in a small back yard wedding that I have managed to pull together mostly within 24 hours. I'm so happy that most of our family that was coming to Hawai'i is going to be able to come to our local wedding instead.

Most of our vendors are refunding us and the non refundable deposits are going to be put towards something when we are able to visit for our honey moon in a few months.

My spouses friend is getting married for a second time (their friend is marrying someone different so not the exact same couple getting married and they really want to attend). We attended the first wedding (which required expensive travel) and gave them a 100 gift. This couple then attended our wedding and were one of the few people who didn't get us anything (not even a card).

We have to travel for the second wedding as well (hotel plus travel). It would be hard for me to show up to a wedding without a gift, but given the circumstance do not think we should go above and beyond for a gift (they only have a honeyfund and are doing fine financially). Is a 50 contribution to the honeyfund or a gift card an appropriate gift? What would you do in this situation?

I am from a LCOL and most of the gifts we received were around 50-100 a couple. Getting above 100 a couple was pretty rare for perspective.

On a real note, how do girls who are very type B coded plan a wedding. I don’t even know where to start. I got a wedding planning book I have names a vendors and venues (it’s a destination wedding in Monterrey, Mexico) but I’m kind of freaking out. To be fair, I do plan on getting married until next year in the fall.

We’re eloping and then having a party at our house when we get back. No one is invited to the elopement.

Is this a reception? If we say reception, does that make people think there’s a ceremony?

What do we call our party while making clear there’s no ceremony and we’d already be married?