Is friend a CF? Wedding Edition!

Has she ordered her dress yet, or just found one she likes? You could ask did she realize it is like yours?
I know in real life it would be overly dramatic...but you could uninvite her!

Has she seen your flowers or menu?

Tell her your budget for the wedding stuff factored in the fact you’d planned to sell some of it after to recoup costs, therefore you’d be happy to offer her first pick of it all and a bit of a discount but not all of it for free. CF.

I know that it's not quite the same, OP, but I had a bizarre situation where an in-law copied aspects of my husband's funeral.

Yes, there's a basic structure which is the same, I know. However, said person already had experience of organising both her parents' funerals, so it wasn't the case that she was trying to follow a template.

She also wanted me to leave a message from my husband to her relative on the memorial page set up by the funeral home. The two had a shared hobby, but they'd never met or interacted in any way.

Even now, I find it a bit strange.

ETA I guess that she admired the funeral, so copied it.

Don cry. As PP says, don’t let it spoil your day. You’re getting married first and your dress is going to wow people. Her wearing near-as-damn-it the same thing will take the shine off her on her day, but it won’t impact the way people see you.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to tell her you aren’t happy about her copying your wedding but for your sake you are probably better off just cooling things with your friend, stop sharing what you’re doing with her and stop looking at her wedding stuff if she sends it. Leave the friendship on the back burner citing busyness and overwhelm until after her wedding. Then you can decide what you want to do about it all.

So you showed her your dress!?!

You have to let this drift over you now because you are in danger of this all spoiling your special day. Don’t let that happen. Try and get a grip.

Make no more comment to her, tell her you are having a quiet two weeks now on your own. Or you have a bit of a summer cold ……anything to get her off your back. Don’t see her again until the day. She isn’t good for you fur now, And by then your mind will be on the more important things. This is about your wedding, nobody else’s.

Your wedding will be all your own efforts OP. It will be just lovely. So enjoy it and let nothing spoil it for you. Very best wishes.

That would really annoy me. You’re under no obligation to give her anything! Perhaps tell her you’ll be selling most of it to recoup some of the funds to go towards the honeymoon etc. If she wanted to share wedding bits she should be going halves with you. The absolute cheek!

You need to just distance yourself from her, stop telling her anything, take longer each time to message her back, and keep messages short and sweet. Don’t let her steal your joy, so if need be have a frank conversation and just tell her to not bank on having anything from your wedding.

That's what I was thinking too. If the CF was sitting with the OP week in week out making all these whatnots together so they could be used at both weddings, that would be great.
As it is, it appears that CF is sitting back and expecting to get all the stuff she needs without any effort or expense.

Just enjoy your wedding op! Stop sharing information. Relax

On the plus side, your wedding is first, so people will know that she's copied you if they notice the similarity.

They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this is getting ridiculous. However, wedding dresses can be pretty similar and most people will probably assume it’s the current trend for dresses.

This sounds perfect to me!

How strange of her! Why is she organising her wedding in such a hurry do you know?

FWIW please don’t worry - if anyone notices they’ll just think she’s been weird. But wedding dresses are largely pretty alike.

Absolutely this

She hasn’t allowed herself anywhere near enough time, so she is looking for short cuts!

I totally get you OP. You have done all the thinking, planning, crafting.. only for your friend to then want to scoop up all your hard work instead of doing her own research, planning etc. I wouldn't be happy with this either.

Don't tell her anything, be vague with things, tell her you're undecided on some things if she is pushing you for info.

Similarly, my friend used to ask me what I was getting my DD for Xmas. Our DDs were the same age. I would spend hours looking up ideas, thinking, researching etc. ..and my friend wanted the ideas to steal. These were not necessarily the main gift but all the smaller gifts. I don't mind our DDs having the same things but I had literally spent hours rattling my brain, googling etc and doing all the donkey work to try to think of ideas.

Actually, that's a good point. Our table decorations went to my mother and her sisters.

I get this, but just a fortnight later? Plus floral decorations look rather more individual than bunting.

I admit to being biased. It's not quite the same, but my mum was guilted into loaning her SIL her wedding outfit a year after her own wedding.

Mum told me that she sat at the reception, telepathically begging her SIL to remove it all when she saw her smoking at the top table.

The dress came back with sweat stains in the armpits and the veil had a cigarette burn. Mum was so disenchanted that when the SIL later asked to borrow the veil and headdress for another wedding on her side of the family, Mum handed them over. They were never returned.

Had they come back to Mum, I could have at least used the headdress for my wedding.

If you're very close, could you tell her how you're feeling and ask her to take the pressure off a bit?

Having said that, I wouldn't worry too much - her wedding is unlikely to be exactly the same as yours even if she has some similar stuff.

Can you honestly say you have never seen a tight, opportunistic, CF side of her before?

Because this is so cheeky it seems highly unlikely to come out of nowhere.

CF's are always on the lookout to make hay!

She's freeloading off the OP. If she were at least offering to contribute financially or help with the prep, it might be more acceptable.

The OP hasn’t done anything wrong. She hasn’t retaliated or caused drama. All she’s done is post on mn to ask if she’s being unreasonable for feeling used. Noone can be made to feel unreasonable for feeling off about something, surely?
She's trying to process an uncomfortable situation with a bit of outside perspective.

How would you feel if you spent time, effort and money carefully choosing flowers, table decor, planning everything to reflect your personal taste - only for someone to come along afterwards and act like they’re entitled to help themselves to it all, no discussion, no gratitude?

Sometimes when people defend this kind of behaviour, it makes me wonder if it’s because they’ve done something similar in the past and want to justify it.
The OP is being taken advantage of, plain and simple.