To refuse to pay for bridesmaid dress

[bridezilla1]

I am to be one of 5 bridesmaids for my friends wedding summer 2019.

I am the only one of the 5 who has young children, I am also a single parent with very little money.

Already the "honour" of being her bridesmaid is being very costly. There has been a few dinners to talk over her wedding plans, of which I have had to pay babysitters. The dinners have been of the brides choosing and expensive restaurants with bottles of wine etc.

There is a hen do before the wedding that I cannot make as it is a long weekend away (not possible for me) and the bride was quite unfair about it saying she was upset that not all of her bridesmaids would come.

We went to the bridesmaid dress fittings and selected our sizes from the pre selected dresses of her choice. the dresses were £250. Yesterday the bride messaged saying she was going to order them so can we all transfer the cash by the end of the day. I don't have that kind of money and I am just really shocked, surely if we were paying for our own it should be a dress of our own choice. I would never spend £250 on an item of clothing especially one that I will never wear again but what choice do I really have now? All the other bridesmaids have responded that they have transferred (it's a group Facebook chat) I have no idea what to say!

I’ve definitely read quite a few threads over the years on MN where bridesmaids paid for their own dresses, so I don’t think it’s that uncommon.

It seems to be the thing now as weddings have got so expensive bridezillas think that it is okay to 'socialise' that cost. Like a lot of shitty practices I see creeping in to modern weddings (like only invite one half of a longterm couple) I think it is pretty crap tbh.

Well, it does seem to be getting more common, but as the replies on this thread show, it's still not that common. I've certainly never known anyone having to pay for their own BM dress, it never used to be done in the past.

Mind you, hen weekends abroad never used to be done either. If you had a hen night, it was maybe a meal out, and some drinks at a club or pub afterwards.
We seem to be importing a lot of traditions from the US, due to reality shows. Baby showers are another new phenomenon in the UK.

It's a bit naive to assume that just because you or your friends/family/aquaintances haven't done something, nobody does it. I don't know anyone who flies a plane but people clearly do. It's been said by multiple people that they have paid for their own dresses in the past, it's not unheard of.

It is occasionally seen in the UK, but is still universally viewed as déclassé - you're basically asking your friends to subsidise your wedding. Not acceptable and very cringy.

Similarly, it's a bit naive to assume that just because you think it's ok for someone to bill their friends for expensive dresses, that doesn't mean that everyone shares the same view.

In this instance, OP hasn't done anything wrong, wasn't BU to assume that B2B was paying and B2B has brought embarrassment all round. In no way is it ok to spend someone else's money on your wedding without them offering.

Nobody is saying the OP has done anything wrong. I think @bluntness100 was purely trying to correct you in saying that absolutely nobody ever pays for their own.

Maybe it's a recent thing. I'm not aware of anyone having to pay for their bridesmaid dress and find the concept bizarre (I wouldn't have dreamt of asking my bridesmaids to pay for their dresses) but my wedding and those of my friends were around 15-20 years ago.