It’s a question you’ve probably never asked yourself before, and we don’t blame you – why would you? It’s not like it’s something that would ever happen, right?
That’s what a woman in the US thought, after working hard to buy a roughly $5,500 ($US3,700) wedding gown for her upcoming nuptials. Not once did the anonymous Redditor think that she would find herself in such a bizarre situation – but here we are.
The reason this story made it to Reddit, is because the bride’s fiance and mother were “appalled” at the bride-to-be’s response upon seeing her mother-in-law standing there in her wedding gown, so she took to Reddit to sense-check whether or not her reaction was over the top, or completely justified.
Here are the details, for context:
She began the story by explaining that she bought her wedding dress weeks ago, and ever since then, her future mother-in-law has been begging her to try it on, which the bride-to-be “firmly refused.” I mean, that part seems weird in itself, right?
The groom’s mother apparently even offered to pay the future bride over $100 to see how the dress looks on her. “Her reasoning for persisting so much?” the poster wrote. “She says it’s because of her ‘love’ for wedding dresses and her obsession with them.”
The story then fast-forwards to yesterday.
“Fast forward to yesterday, I came home from work early and I found my fiancé at home,” she writes. “He freaked out after seeing me and tried to prevent me from going into my room while trying to text somebody on his phone.”
(Okay – massive alarm bells here! The guy literally stood in front of the door, trying to prevent his wife-to-be from entering her bedroom. I would have thought there was another woman in the room!)
“I opened the door and was shocked to see his mum standing there wearing my dress. I instantly pulled out my phone and took a photo of her in it.”
The incident was understandably shocking for the bride-to-be, but it’s her actions that followed that have us wondering whether she may or may not have overreacted.
The Redditor noted in her post that the incident ‘tainted the garment’s appeal’, so she demanded that her fiancé’s mum buy her a new gown in three days or she would show everyone the photo she took. “She started crying and then left and my fiancé blew up at me saying I can’t be serious and that I overreacted because his mum just wanted to try the dress on, no harm done,” the Redditor continued. “But I refused to listen to him because in my opinion, the dress should only be worn by the bride and the bride only.”
The argument has obviously left an impact, as ever since the fight between the future spouses, the groom-to-be has been staying with his mother.
However, remorse has not escaped the bride-to-be; after witnessing her fiancé and his mother’s reactions, the bride said she feels “awful.” She even shared that her own family thinks she’s “risking my relationship with not only my future mother-in-law but my fiancé as well.” To determine whether or not she was acting out of line, the bride-to-be asked Reddit for the community’s opinion on the situation.
In unsurprising results, the bulk of the commenters found while the bride was justified in her reaction, it was the groom-to-be that most people took issue with.
“NTA, but are you sure you want to marry this guy?” someone asked. “He stood guard outside your bedroom so that his mother could try on your wedding dress. Do you think he will ever stand up for you against her?” Another person commented, “He knowingly went behind your back to help his mum try on your dress. He knew it was wrong, he knew you would be upset and yet he did it anyway. Then he doubled down and defended his mother when you caught him.”
13,000 comments later – we have an ending… sort of.
The bride recently posted an update, saying her fiancé offered to pay for the dress to “end the conflict,” but only if she meets a set of criteria first: “Hand him my phone so he can delete the photo himself, swear that I don’t have any copies to ‘use’ against his mum later, apologise to his mum, and lastly, he asked that I quit his family group chat and log out of Facebook for at least a month.” At the time of the update, the bride said she hadn’t responded because she wants her future mother-in-law to be held accountable.
