Because I am nosy and love mess, I asked BuzzFeed readers who've been bridesmaids to share their absolute worst, most unhinged "bridezilla" stories. More specifically, I asked them for the wildest, most out-of-pocket requests brides asked of them. Here are 23 stories of brides who were so entitled, some of them literally lost friendships over their demands:
Note: Submissions have also been sourced from this similar r/AskReddit thread.
1. "She had her bridal shower at the medical spa she frequented. The shower turned into consultations for myself and the other bridesmaids. Turns out the bride wanted us to get filler and Botox to make sure we looked our best for her wedding."
2. "She was having her wedding during the beginning of the pandemic. The dress company we ordered our bridesmaid dresses from went out of business, so while I was moving out of my childhood home — which I explained to the bride — I was forced to spend $160+ on a dress that I wasn’t sure would even be arriving to my house. It didn’t matter anyway because when I expressed my COVID concerns to the bride, I was kicked out of the wedding party. I was initially fine with it, but then the bride went on about how she was spending $40,000 on her wedding and that masks would 'ruin her day.' We were in the middle of a fucking pandemic where people were dying and losing their jobs...and you’re gonna complain about spending what could be someone’s yearly salary on a one-day event? Fuck off."
—Anonymous
3. "It was one of my best friend's weddings. She's always been very frugal, so I figured she was going to have a reasonable wedding and bachelorette party. I shared my monetary concerns with her, too (that I worked, went to school, and couldn’t take off much time). She didn’t have that many friends, so it was only me and one other girl as bridesmaids. She asked us to hand-make ALL her decorations for the wedding. I put in 15 hours a week making decorations. Then, she planned a weeklong bachelorette party out of town and asked us to foot the bill. This doesn't even include the cost of our outfits. She picked matching designer dresses and asked us to pay for them. I spent nearly $1,000 on the whole ordeal, not to mention doing her hair and makeup for free."
"I just felt largely taken advantage of and unappreciated. We are no longer friends because we ended up working together (after the wedding), and she tried to screw me over at work. It all makes me very reluctant to agree to be in someone’s wedding again."
4. "My sister-in-law asked my sister and I, along with her own sisters and her two daughters from a previous marriage, to be her bridesmaids. We said yes. I am plus-size and 6 feet tall, so the bride took me dress shopping. She said she wanted me to find a dress I liked since I'd probably be the hardest to shop for, and then she'd tell her sisters/my sister to just get that style, too. The bride said all the bridesmaids could just wear flats as well. The ceremony was on grass, so that made sense. The dress wasn't great, but it fit/was long enough, so I went with it."
"The day of the wedding, my sister and I were getting dressed, and I saw that she was wearing a strapless bodycon cocktail dress with five-inch heels. The bride's sisters were also wearing cocktail dresses and heels. My sister told me that, apparently, the bride's sisters complained that the original dresses were frumpy and didn't show off their bodies. So, all the skinny women were dressed alike, and I was dressed in the same dresses as her young daughters."
5. "I was a bridesmaid for a friend from college. We spent three months planning her bridal shower — she was not at all involved. When she finally looked at the plans a week before the party, she said it 'wasn’t what she’d had in mind.' She then delayed the wedding — for which every one of her 400 guests had already made travel accommodations — so she could have her dream bridal shower. She planned a $25,000 weekend in Vegas. She booked the presidential suite for herself and economy rooms for us, which she expected us to double up in. She wanted us to split the cost of the trip evenly (25,000/7 = $3,570 per person), excluding her. She said. 'You’re my bridesmaids; you’re kind of supposed to pay for my bridal shower!'"
"I didn’t have that kind of money at the time and told her so. Same with five of the other bridesmaids (the other two were her sisters). So, she and her sisters had the bridal party on their own. On the day of the wedding, she informed me that I needed to dye my hair (and pay for it myself) because my hair color was too similar to hers, and it would be distracting. She told me there weren't enough redheads, so she was thinking I could be a redhead. To top it all off, she informed us after the ceremony that to save money, we wouldn’t be served a meal along with the rest of the guests because we already had the privilege of being in her wedding. I didn’t contact her again after that. She reached out to me to ask how to return my gift for store credit. I never replied."
6. "A friend asked me to be a bridesmaid in her shotgun wedding, which was to take place in a little over a month. She had 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 manicured. 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 bikini 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. 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 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 an email to her telling her I could no longer be in her wedding. 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 I just couldn’t do what she was asking. After that I didn't hear from her for YEARS. Until one day, she sent me a message asking for me to buy from her MLM campaign."
7. "A bride got really angry at me for cutting my hair; she expected all the bridesmaids to have long, fancy updos. She never told us this beforehand, so I didn't know to wait to cut my hair. It's my hair anyway, and it was really starting to become uncomfortable at that length, so I shouldn't have been obligated to keep it for her, but had she mentioned it before, I would have at least waited."
8. "At 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 didn't feel comfortable saying no because she was one of my bosses. In addition to being in a wedding for someone I barely knew — which is shitty 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, and 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 sea-foam green raw silk pillowcases with holes cut for the arms and head. They tied in giant bows in the back, and 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 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!"
9. "I had an ectopic pregnancy, which meant that the baby was attached to my Fallopian tube, which then burst, and I almost bled to death. The soon-to-be bride 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. This was not because there would be a small child at the wedding and not even because she didn’t want me fat at her wedding...but because if I lost another child, it would take away from her engagement and wedding. I was so shocked I just declined and have never spoken to her since."
10. "One of my best friends from high school asked me to be in her wedding, and understood that as a trans man, I would want to wear a suit to the event. This was something we discussed multiple times. At the last minute, she messaged me saying that it would look too 'weird' for me to be the only person not in a dress and asked me if I would mind wearing one for the wedding. Needless to say, I did not attend."
11. "I was a junior bridesmaid for my cousin's wedding. She told my mom that I had to wear pearl earrings for the ceremony, but I didn’t have pierced ears. My mom told her I could wear clip-ons, but she insisted that I wear actual earrings or I couldn’t be at the wedding. So, my mom got my ears pierced. The wedding came around, and my hair was styled down, so you couldn’t see my ears anyway. I was a few weeks shy of when I could safely change my earrings, but we tried anyway. Unfortunately, mom couldn’t get them out, and my ears started bleeding. So, I walked down the aisle with my diamond starter studs, and my cousin never even noticed. In the end, it didn't really matter — she cheated on her husband and was divorced within six months."
12. "For my (former) friend’s bridal shower, she booked an expensive restaurant’s banquet room and invited more than 80 people, then expected the bridesmaids to pay for it. The food alone was going to be almost $2,500, and alcohol was priced per drink, like a tab to be run up, so who knows?! There were only five of us, and we were in our mid-20s, just starting out in jobs, so it would have been a huge financial burden. On top of this, she demanded that each of us create a basket to be raffled, each with a different theme, like spas or wine. We were told the baskets had to have $100 of items in them, preferably half of which should be a gift card."
"These were to be raffled off, guests were to buy tickets for them, and, of course, she got to keep the money from it. Plus, she had already chosen a cake that cost $476.00! I offered a few alternatives, like having it at a fire hall (which was actually lovely) and getting cheaper catering, but she wasn’t flexible at all. I had to bow out as gracefully as possible, but yeah, I was subsequently disinvited from the wedding and ghosted."
—Anonymous
13. "My best friend from high school was getting married and asked me to be a bridesmaid. Everything was going well until we had to pick out bridesmaid dresses. I was the only plus-sized person out of the four bridesmaids. We spent two days traveling around to dress places looking at options, but the bride and other bridesmaids only picked dresses that didn’t have plus-sized options (there wasn’t even an option to order additional sizes online). The bride just waved off my concerns, saying that I could get a dress made. I felt so shitty after that. To really dig it in, two weeks later, she dropped me from being a bridesmaid and asked me to be the photographer instead. I spent the wedding dashing about, getting photos, and she didn’t even thank me. Instead, she complained that I didn’t get any good family ones because she had refused to do after-wedding ceremony photos. Needless to say, I haven’t talked to her in years now."
—Anonymous
14. "I was in my early twenties and definitely wasn't thinking when my close friend at the time asked me to be her MOH. I was delighted at first. I was and am very organized, so I took my assignment seriously and with enjoyment. I had us all meet at the mall to buy the same jewelry, shoes, etc., as requested by my friend. To make a long story short, the rehearsal day came, and I found myself walking down the aisle with a groomsman who was not the best man. To my knowledge, the MOH and best man are supposed to walk together, so I asked my friend. She proceeded to tell me that she felt like I was taking over the whole wedding arrangement, so I was basically demoted. I was clueless and speechless – I thought a MOH was supposed to help organize. She and the groom have long since divorced."
—Anonymous
15. "I was in a wedding where the bride planned two separate bachelorette weekends for herself and got mad at anyone who couldn’t spend two three-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 forecasted to be a high of 10ºF (February wedding, Northeast US). The bride still insisted on outdoor photos without coats 'because we can’t hide the dresses!' Everyone, including the photographer, told her hell no. She pitched a fit when we refused to do more than one quick photo. Afterward, she stopped talking to 75% of the bridal party because they refused to accommodate her outrageous demands. To this day, she still complains about how her bridesmaids ruined her wedding."
16. "An acquaintance from high school was getting married, and most of her bridesmaids had dropped out besides her sister and best friend. That should have been a giant red flag in itself. At that point, we hadn't talked in quite a while, but she asked me because she was at the bottom of the barrel. I didn't exactly agree 100%, but we arranged to meet up and talk. She took one look at me and said, 'Oh wow, if you're going to be a bridesmaid, we have to cover those tattoos, take out those piercings, dye your hair, and get you some contacts! How much is tattoo removal?' My jaw hit the floor. I didn't think she was serious, but she was adamant that I look 'normal.' I asked if she was going to pay the thousands of dollars for all this, and she was shocked and said no. I left. The wedding didn't even happen — she had been cheating on the groom for about a year."
17. "A friend asked me to be her maid of honor, then guilted me into throwing her a bridal shower and paying for the whole thing. It was not her first marriage, so no one else would do it. I coordinated her bachelorette party, too. Then, during the rehearsal, I found out that she had asked her sister to be her maid of honor, too, so I wasn’t anymore. She never talked to me about it or explained anything; she just acted like nothing happened at all. I was shocked and left right after all the pictures were done."
—Anonymous
18. "I was the maid of honor for my friend a few years ago. She had asked me to plan a bachelorette weekend for 16(!) people already but initially said she didn't want a bridal shower. I mentioned a few of us would still like to do this for her, but we could keep it small — maybe 10 people at most, including the bridesmaids, her mom, and her grandmother. A couple of weeks later, she sent me a list of 35 people to invite. I had to enlist the help of a friend to co-host, as I knew I wouldn't be able to afford the cost of hosting that many people, along with renting a space, catering, etc."
"We all live in Chicago in tiny apartments with minimal outdoor space, so it's not like this could be easily hosted in someone's backyard. I couldn't believe that she heard 'let's keep it small' and translated that to 35 people. At the end of the day, her entire family (except her mom) didn't even RSVP, so the total number of people at the event was only 12. She was sad that no one was willing to drive her grandmother in for the event, and I was frustrated that I could have planned something much nicer and cozier if I knew it was only 12 people to begin with."
—Anonymous
19. "My friend was getting married for the fourth time. She'd never had a big wedding with her previous husbands, and this was the groom's first wedding, so she wanted it to be grand. However, they didn't have the money for that. She didn't hire anyone for her wedding — we bridesmaids did it all. We had to help make the floral arrangements, centerpieces, and favors, and we had to set up the entire venue for the ceremony and reception. We also had to help cook, pan, and set up all serving stations for the food. They didn't hire a photographer, so she wanted everyone to take photos all night and share them on their virtual wedding album. When I mentioned how absurd it was that she had us doing EVERYTHING for her wedding, she said I hurt her feelings because it was her day, and she shouldn't apologize for wanting it her way. Well...if you can't afford to have it your way, you probably shouldn't."
—Anonymous
20. "The bride (and groom) thought it would be hilarious to partner me with my ex, who was a groomsman. Except that by that point, I was happily married to my husband and attending the wedding with our toddler. It was horribly uncomfortable for many of us in the bridal party, since the breakup was kind of messy. Walking down the aisle in front of mutual friends and family was not an option. Fortunately, they switched our partnering the day before the wedding."
—Anonymous
21. "I was around 18 when a co-worker I had become fast friends with asked me to be in her wedding. She had been engaged for about a year, and at the time (1979), it wasn't unusual for most young women to marry right after high school. The bride picked out some lovely dresses that could be worn again, we were fitted, and we moved on...or so I thought. Apparently, there was some drama regarding her future mother-in-law, who seemed to think she was 'upper class' and so her family must be better represented (meaning she wanted more bridesmaids from the groom's side) so there wouldn't be any 'tackiness' at her baby's wedding. Sure, lady, whatever that means. The bride called and asked me to bow out. I was fine with it, but she asked me to pay for the dress I had been fitted for AND paid a deposit on."
"I told my mom about this, and she said there was no way I was paying for a dress I wouldn't be wearing, subject closed. The bride understood and it wasn't brought up again. A month later, she called and told me the groom's sister-in-law dropped out of the wedding (the one I had been dropped from the bridal party for), and she asked me to reconsider being a bridesmaid. The catch was that the dress was far too big for me, so I'd have to pay for the dress and for it to be re-altered.
I brought this up to my mom while I had the bride on the phone, my mom blew her stack and told me the bride had a lot of nerve. We decided the bride would have to find someone else to take her crap because it wasn't going to be me. I didn't speak to her after that, nor did I want to. I still wonder who wound up paying for that dress. It certainly wasn't me."
—Anonymous
22. "A few years ago, I was asked to be the maid of honor in my best friend's wedding. She lived out of state (the next state over — it was a four-hour drive at most), but she wanted to have her wedding in our hometown, where I still lived. No stress, I thought. During the wedding planning, she would make frequent trips to our hometown to plan, and it was all super convenient. At the same time, I took a new job and didn't want to miss any time from work during my probationary period. One week, she wanted to get a 'head start' on some planning, so she made the trip on a Friday morning. Prior to this, I told her that I could meet up after I got off work at 5 p.m. Again, no stress — she understood. That was until that particular Friday when she wanted to start planning at 3 p.m."
"There was no real reason — 3 p.m. just sounded better to her. She started messaging me as she got closer to town, saying what time to meet up and what the plans were. I reminded her that I didn't get off work till 5 p.m. and that I would meet her then. She blew up! How dare I put my job in front of her wedding?! Why didn't I tell her this beforehand? I totally did, and I had the text messages to prove it. She tried really hard to get me to leave and even told me to fake being sick. I told her that wasn't the point — I hadn't arranged for time off prior, and I didn't want to 'just leave' unexpectedly. At 5 p.m., I left work and rushed to her planning site, only to find out no one else had been there at 3 p.m. either because, again, everyone got off work at 5 p.m. I was the only one she was mad at, though. Apparently, somehow, I had managed to prevent her entire wedding party from leaving work early with no notice. I don't miss that friendship."
—Anonymous
23. And finally, "I was asked to be the maid of honor at my sister's wedding. I thought it was an honor until I received my to-do list. I was not only supposed to throw her a wedding shower but also to foot the entire bill myself. There were a total of 10 bridesmaids — five of which were sisters of the groom — so I was not to ask them for money toward the shower to avoid appearing 'tacky.' Mind you, I was barely out of my teens, so money was a little bit of an issue. I rented a hall (she had a large family and was having a large wedding, so there would be over 200 people at the shower) and somehow pulled it off. I didn't even get a thank you, and she received some very nice gifts. Anyway, the next task on my list was to buy all the wedding essentials she did not receive as part of her shower."
"For example, the wedding candle that they lit together on the altar, a nice candle holder for it, the wedding guest book, the ring bearer pillow, and anything else she deemed necessary as part of my 'duties.' After the wedding, I was to bring her dress to the dry cleaners to have it cleaned (she picked it up after the honeymoon) and then bring her bouquet to a florist to have it 'preserved' and duplicated in silk flowers (which she tossed in a box when she saw it)...all at my expense. I did it because I didn't know any better, and I thought it was the norm for being a MOH. I then had to stay at her house and housesit while she went off on a two-month honeymoon across the country with her new husband."
—Anonymous
Have you ever been a bridesmaid for a bride who made a wild request like these? If so, spill the beans about it in the comments below or via this anonymous form.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.