AIBU to not lend a dress to a family member?

Your mind will be even more blown when you realise that it was for year 11 prom so OPs daughter would have been 16. Why are you making judgy comments? Why can’t parents buy their kids nice things? Unlike the cheeky relatives, OP didn’t expect anyone else to buy a dress for her daughter, she did it herself.

Yes but sometimes people don't want to and don't have to. I'm sure if I looked at all your expenditures, I could find a few things you could have got cheaper versions of elsewhere but presumably you bought stuff you wanted and could afford as opposed to the very cheapest thing that would suffice.

Vinted and charity shops are cheaper than Zara anyway, you spendthrift. Why do you need new stuff? Second hand not good enough for you?

I probably wouldn't lend such an expensive dress unless it was a really close friend. I have in the past lent clothes and I've been burned a few times. One time I gave a friend 3 dresses to try on and never saw any of them again. Another time I was living with housemates and a designer dress of mine went missing. It showed up in a place I know I looked once I told everyone it was my late mothers dress and I was absolutely frantic.

why do you get to judge what other people spend their money on and how is this relevant?

Never a lender or borrower be

You can demand it be replaced all you want, but 10p says they either minimise the damage/value of the dress, outright ignore your demands or just refuse to pay because family.

Can you not just buy a normal glam dress from eg zara 😅

it's not unusual. 500 is not expensive as I noticed recently looking at an advert for a retailer of prom dresses

Mind blown at buying an 18 year old a 500 quid designer dress for "prom"

Ha, yeah. I too am hugely generous with other people's expensive belongings.

yes, a stonker of a triple virtue signal....MN should frame this one.

This is so pious, it actually made me laugh. This isn't OP's dress to lend. It's her 17-year old daughter's special dress and she doesn't want to lend it. These relatives are careless with money and other things so the likelihood is that the dress will get ruined at an 18th birthday party where lots of teenagers are drinking to excess.

If someone is cheeky and entitled enough not to accept your daughter's "no", they're unlikely to be the person who takes great care of the dress either.

Anyone can ask to borrow but you have to accept the decline. I'm with you and your DD on this, OP. There are other ways to get nice dresses, Vinted is full of them.

Because her daughter loves her dress, continues to wear it on suitable occasions and it was a present from her parents. The relative can't afford to replace the dress if it gets ruined.

OP's daughter has said that she doesn't want to lend her dress and that should be the end of it.

It’s not your duty to provide another child with a dress never mind an expensive one . The parents have a duty to provide for their child not you .

I've noticed this pattern in almost every thread where someone shares a CF dilemma.

Without fail, there are posters who proudly wang on and brag about how generous and compassionate they are, despite knowing full well that they're not the ones actually expected to make the sacrifice.

It's an easy and lazy way to signal virtue and promote the whole "#BeKind" image when someone else is footing the bill.

It's always easier to be generous with other people's time, money, and effort than with your own 🙄

OP has very reasonably assumed that they wouldn't/couldn't replace the dress if it got ruined because they have told her that they can't afford to buy this girl any sort of dress at all.

They would probably agree to replace the dress if OP made this a condition of lending the dress but they wouldn't mean it. The fact that they persist in harassing OP, even after she has said no, makes them sound pushy and entitled.

It's not you helping though, is it? It wouldn't be your expensive item going out on loan. The dress belongs to OP's daughter, irrespective of who bought it, and if the daughter is uncomfortable with someone else wearing it and potentially damaging it then that should be respected.

The equivalent would be your husband buying you an expensive dress then saying his sister needs a posh frock for an event so he's said she can borrow yours, whether you like it or not.

What comes out of this is that the be nice crew really do look for external validation, even to the detriment of themselves i will give you everything as long as you say Im nice
Boy when they dont get it, they become instantly nasty , accusing people who disagree with them of being on the sauce
They throw out insults- SELFISH in their attempts to get their own way

It makes me chuckle
The answer is still NO

She has already said she doesnt want to

Also you can already tell by their CF attitude that they wouldn’t come good and replace it the dress something happened to it.

The decent friends that would accept this boundary are also the ones who would dry clean the dress properly and offer to replace. CFs like this are the people who would say “what hole? You can’t see anything” etc

Fuck off

Are you joking? women are taught this to their own detriment by society their entire lives.

Ever notice how it's always women caring for elderly relatives or women being pressured into "being the village" and never men?

If there is one lesson women NEED help with learning its to protect their own boundaries, not to give more than they already do

This is about a £500 dress, its not like this person is starving for food FFS

I would lend it to her!

Nope. If they can’t afford to replace it, they can’t afford to borrow it. It’s an expensive and special dress and it belongs to your daughter and she doesn’t want to lend it to anyone so she doesn’t have to.