A stock photo of a bride with her bridesmaids.Photo:Getty
Getty
A maid of honor is considering asking the bride if she can downgrade to a bridesmaid after realizing she can’t afford to attend the upcoming bachelorette party.
In a recentposton Reddit’s popular Wedding thread, a woman admitted she wasn’t really “looking for advice” and knew what she had to do in this situation, but said she just wanted “to vent” and share her “disappointment.”
The Reddit user, 32, explained that she’d been best friends with Sarah, the bride, also 32, since grade 2, adding that they’d been “planning” the wedding since her first date with her now-fiancé.
“To say I’m happy for her is an understatement. When she got engaged she called me right away and asked me to be her MOH and of course I said yes,” the poster — who still lives in their hometown in Ontario, Canada, while Sarah moved to British Columbia — insisted.
A stock photo of a bride with her bridesmaids.Getty
The person explained that she, the bride and the other two bridesmaids all live in different provinces, despite the bridesmaids living in western Canada like the bride.
“Of course, as MOH, it’s my responsibility to plan the bachelorette, which makes it difficult as we are all so spread out over the country — same with everyone she has on her invite list,” the user wrote, adding that she knew travel was “inevitable.”
“It was always expected that she wanted to travel for her bachelorette and do the whole three day weekend girls trip. I’ve always known this and thought I could swing it,” the maid of honor continued.
However, given that she’s a mom on a singing teacher/musician’s salary, as well as trying to buy a house, the poster admitted that she “originally (perhaps selfishly) had picked somewhere in the U.S.A. that I could drive to on a couple hundred bucks worth of gas to save myself some money.”
“Sarah makes 200K a year but is verry frugal with her money, and the other two bridesmaids both have government positions so I know they make decent money (at least more than a vocal instructor does),” she pointed out, insisting that the place in the U.S. she’d picked was somewhere the bride “had never been but always wanted to go.”
The poster then said that once she’d told the bridesmaids her plans, they both said they wouldn’t be attending the bachelorette if it was going to be held in the U.S. “because of the current state of affairs between our countries.”
“So of course I said I will talk to Sarah and see if there’s somewhere else she’d be interested in going. Sarah ended up seeing one of the other bridesmaids a few days after this happened and they were brainstorming alternate destinations and came up with the ideas of Tulum, Mexico!” the woman wrote, admitting she felt like she “couldn’t breathe” and “was stunned” when she got the text, saying she couldn’t afford it, despite wanting to “do all this for her.”
“On top of all that, I have to pay for a flight out to B.C. for the wedding itself,” the Reddit user added, pointing out that travel within Canada is expensive. Now, the maid of honor is questioning whether she should “trade roles with another bridesmaid” and “respectfully decline going to the bachelorette.”
“I guess I just feel sad that I can’t do this for her the way she wants/the way I want to. I know that I have to put my big girl pants on and just talk to her, I’m just so afraid of disappointing her,” she concluded, adding in the title that she’s “extremely stressed” and “feels guilty” about the whole thing.
A stock photo of a bride.Getty
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“People need to start just getting married without all of these crazy expensive additional events, it’s so out of hand,” another insisted.
“If this is truly your best friend of 30 years I’m shocked she doesn’t already know that you wouldn’t be able to afford this?” a third questioned.
“You definitely don’t have to step down as MOH if you can’t attend the bachelorette!” a fourth said, telling the poster “to be honest with Sarah.”
source: people.com