To be annoyed that my best friend/maid of honour won't lose weight for my wedding

[scj96]

I'm expecting to get a bit hammered for this, but here goes...

I got engaged about a year and a half ago, and we set the date for April 2023. Almost a year ago, myself and my bridesmaids had a couple of trips to go dress shopping. We saw a bridesmaid dress that we all absolutely adored, but it turned out that they only did it up to a size 16. My best friend who is my maid of honour is a bigger girl so it didn't seem like this was going to work. However she said, off her own back and unprompted, that she was going to lose weight for the wedding anyway and so we should get them. I told her she didn't need to do that but she insisted it was fine so we bought them.

Fast forward a year, and she's made almost no effort to try and get the weight off. I haven't raised it with her at all and left her to it, but having just been away for a girls weekend, it was quite obvious that she's now even bigger than when we bought the dresses (and bigger than she's ever been) and doesn't seem to be moderating her eating at all

The wedding is now basically 9 months away and I'm stressing that I'm going to end up having to find (and pay for, because I've already bought the current ones) new dresses.

I probably sound like an absolute cow, but AIBU?

It's not about the dress, it's awful seeing your friend harm herself by putting on weight which is harming her health. I'm in the same position with a few of my friends. Perhaps you hoped this would give her the motivation to change, but instead it's probably making her eat her feelings even more. I would suggest a gentle chat about how much you care about her and how you hate to see her hurting herself in this way might be more appropriate, asking if there's anything you can do to help. This weight gain is an emotional issue.

As plenty of others say, maintaining her dignity by finding an alternative dress might be best. She probably needs the pressure taken off her.

YABU

You can’t know what her real relationship with food is. And her life does not revolve around your wedding day.

it’s one day.

I think you need to have a think about your personal values if this is the way you think about someone whom you say is a good friend.

By the way her weight is NOT YOUR BUSINESS.

She knows. No need for “gentle chats”.

It was always going to be a mistake to get the dress in a smaller size.

If, as and when she loses weight, her motivation will be to do it for HER. She was never going to succeed losing weight for YOUR wedding.

You've learnt an expensive lesson - you need to now own your naivety. It'a annoying, and I'd be pissed off too, but you trusted her...

I think your best bet is to have a look for a few plain dresses that go up to her size in a style/ colour that would coordinate. Something not too expensive that you could buy off the peg nearer the wedding. You could then use the other dress to make a sash or shawl or add embellishments etc. Fortunately as she’s MOH she won’t look out of place.

No doubt with 9 months to go, she’s still telling herself that she’ll lose the weight in time so maybe wait until a couple of months before the wedding to contact all bridesmaids to discuss alterations .

YANBU at all , she is a grown up and made you a promise which she hasn’t kept . You clearly didn’t force her to do this but it’s a very sensitive subject and you obviously care a lot and need your friend to feel as fab as the others .Having a plan B should ease the stress .

Ignore the nastiness , some people on here think they can bully as much as they like behind the safety of a keyboard. I’m sure that they’re not as perfect in RL !
Good luck !

Of course you wouldnt say that. You'd say something like"do you know what girls, I'll write this dress down and order closer to the time. Let's keep looking so I have a few to choose from".

The crux of this is you got too excited, too soon. You were naive and should have waited for a variety of reasons.

Stop blaming your friend. Things change in years worth of time. Maybe she's depressed.

Stop being self centred. Also, she may well read this. Are you sure a selfish rant us worth your friendship?

We saw a bridesmaid dress that we all absolutely adored, but it turned out that they only did it up to a size 16.

Then you shouldn't have bought it because you knew it didn't come in her size so buying it would be unfair. She is +16 so let her be herself. I think she felt pressured into agreeing with something that at the time she felt she could do. As maid of honour she doesn't 'have'"to wear what everyone else is wearing. Losing weight is not easy and if she's going to lose weight, it has to be for herself, when she's ready and not because she feels pressured into it. Then it will be successful.

Well now you’ve given OP her big telling off, what’s your solution?

I wouldn't expect my friends to lose weight for my wedding. If we all liked the dress so much but it didn't come in everybody's size then how could I consider buying it? That would be wrong.

I came on as someone who has struggled with their wait due to medication expecting to think 'what a tosser' but I think you're getting an unfair drubbing from some, OP.

You sound thoughtful and a nice person who has made the wrong decision and got into a sticky wicket around a touchy subject. There's a lot of projection going on.

Could you have handled this better? Well yes, I think you could have found out the styles available larger and 'fallen in love' with your favourite of those, offering to have it taken in if your friend lost weight. Making a dress smaller is a lot easier than making it bigger in most cases.

However, here we are. I can see why you were talked round- a size 22 to 16 is doable in 2 years. However size 24-26 to 16 in 9 months is getting less realistic, unfortunately it just doesn't sound like your friend is motivated to make a start and is probably feeling like crap.

Seeing as she's been talking about doing things that haven't materialised, and is such a close friend, I think it would be kind to have a gentle conversation with her now to take the pressure off. Say that regarding the dress, you have decided you do not want her feeling any pressure about the wedding so if she loses the weight, fine, that's up to her. However if not, can you agree that say, 6 weeks (or whatever's realistic for bridesmaids dresses) before the wedding you will both look for a complementary MOH dress to the others in whatever her size is at the time.

That way you're not doubting her, or committing to another dress yet but you've agreed a timescale to sort this out by if the dress isn't well on the way to fitting by that time. It will take the pressure off for you both.

Keep an eye out in the meantime for gorgeous dresses in her size (no need to discuss this with her, just so you have some suggestions if and when the time comes).

She may offer to pay but if I'm honest the subject of weight is so fraught and she's been a good friend for so long that I would plan to take the hit and recoup what you can from selling the dress. As others have mentioned, she probably over compensated at the time for feeling like the problem in front of 3 slim women when the dress didn't fit. Yes, this is annoying from your POV as you tried so hard to persuade her it wasn't a problem but I don't think worth spoiling a friendship over. And believe me, the potential is there.

Why not go to the gym together, and when she feels ready for slimming world you go as encouragement. She may lack the confidence to do these things in her own.

Speaking as a bigger person I would have said yes if I was with smaller people. It's like talking about the elephant that's in the room.

I think I'd have gone with something along the lines of wanting her to be comfortable on my wedding day and that I didn't want her to stress about losing weight. That's really beside the point though, you can't change it. I think your thread title really isn't accurate and didn't do you any favours either.

YANBU to be upset about this. YWBU if you took those feelings out on your friend, but it really doesn't sound like you'd do that. It was unrealistic for both of you to think she could lose enough to go from a 22 to a 16 in the time frame, but it sounds like you were both coming at it from the point of supporting the other. You wanted to show you believed in her and maybe she wanted you to be able to have those beautiful dresses for your wedding. As someone whose very overweight I've had unrealistic beliefs in the past about how much I could lose and how quickly. I wouldn't commit to losing it in this situation, but I can understand how she'd fall into that trap. It sounds like there were good intentions from both sides with an unfortunate outcome.

If you can afford it I'd go shopping together for a new dress on the weekend. Tell you MOH you want her to be comfortable and wear a dress that suits her on your wedding day.

Sorry just reread the OP, I thought it was 9 weeks not 9 months away ☺️. Going from a 24 to a 16 in that time frame is still very unlikely. I'd still be taking the pressure off by finding a dress that already fits soonish, it's usually easier to take in then out.

I thought this was a DM poke post. However I don't uabu but definitely don't think you should feel she's doing this on purpose. The thing about saying you must lose weight your body might go the opposite way.
It's not going to be the end of the world if you and her chose or hire a bigger dress. Your friendship is worth more than that
Have a lovely day

I think there's some really patronising attitudes on here towards overweight women from those apparantly on the friend's side.
The woman is overweight, not a child or of limited intelligence. She doesn't need encouraging or coaxing, taken to the gym or a gentle chat to point out the obvious fact that a size 24 won't fit a size 16.
All the OP can do with any modicum of respect, is leave her alone until a correctly fitting dress becomes time critical, then work with her on deciding on an alternative.
The friend was in the wrong to insist on the dress ( and I disagree the OP was responsible for that. Telling her no, I don't think you'll lose weight, would have been pretty offensive and patronising too) and I do feel has caused stress for the OP.
Weight issues are difficult and sensitivity is called for, but there's a balance between that and acting like an overweight woman is a child, with no responsibility for her actions in insisting on an unsuitable dress.

I think I WAS a bit harsh, for which I apologize. But your title was misleading. If instead of 'To be annoyed that my best friend/maid of honour won't lose weight for my wedding' you had said 'To be annoyed that my best friend/maid of honour stubbornly insisted on a dress that she probably won't be able to wear for the wedding, and it may cost me a lot of money', i think almost everyone would have thought you were reasonable.

Get her a similar dress in a different colour then use some of the dress fabric, perhaps by shortening it? To make a bow or sash and depending on the style use some fabric the same colour as the new dress to do the same for the other bridesmaids so tying the colour schemes together.

And actually, depending on where she carries the weight, it's entirely possible she could fit into the dress in 9 months. She needs to lose roughly 40lb to drop 4 dress sizes, so about 1lb a week, which is a slow steady loss. Perhaps she thought it better to wait rather than lose it early and risk gaining it again, or needs the deadline as motivation.

Well now you’ve given OP her big telling off, what’s your solution?

A dress that fits the OP’s bridesmaid as she is.

If she’s the “Maid of Honour” then the difference isn’t so important. She’s the MoH and so has a different role.

Or go to a local dressmaker and have a dress made to match which fits.

But I find all this matchy matchy stuff a bit naff, to be honest. I just told my sisters the colour I was wearing and then we had our usual dressmaker make all our dresses in styles we liked - and which fitted us. Much easier than buying off the peg and far better quality.

Nooo! Please don't go down the dressmaker/alteration route
Given the size difference it will be very apparent that she is wearing an altered version of the dress the others are wearing, which will only draw attention to the fact that she is bigger and the whole process of going for the fittings etc is going to be humiliating and you'll have to to it way more in advance

Instead, leave it a bit and then a bit closer to the time (maybe towards the end of this year) mentuon to her that you've been thinking about it and you really think that as MOH she should have a special dress different from the other bridesmaids..and anyway, the bridesmaid one might not fit anyway (don't dwell on this). Make a nice day of it shopping for a special MOH dress that matches the tone of the others.
If you focus on the weight issue, then so will she and everybody else. You're making it a big issue which is okay going to make her feel worse.

I had a similar situation but didn't know about it at the time.

Went bridesmaid shopping and all bridesmaids chose their dresses and sizes and I then paid.
When the dresses arrived about 2 months later (2 weeks before the wedding)
2 of them didn't fit 2 of my bridesmaids. They were far too small!
I couldn't understand why as I could see they fit perfectly in the shop!

My bridesmaids then told me they had purposefully chosen dresses that were 2 dress sizes too small because they 'hoped' they'd lose weight by then!
But they hadn't. They hadn't even attempted to so I don't know what they were thinking!

It cost me a fortune to have the dresses taken out so that they fit, as there was no time to order new ones. It was stressful, the last thing I needed to be sorting, and it really pissed me off.

Do you have a date booked for closer to the time for a dress fitting to ensure all bridesmaids dresses still fit as it is 9 months away?
Maybe that could be the starter for the conversation.

It was your decision to have bridesmaids, you could have had a more simple event

The issue is that she was about a size 22 when we bought them, and I know from last weekend that she's now a 24 (and on the big side of that being honest) so it feels like that would be such a big alteration to try and do.

I wouldn't even attempt that.
I posted a few mins ago about my bridesmaids purposefully ordering dresses that were too small without my knowledge. They ordered size 10 dresses when they were both a size 14 and it cost me hundreds to have them both altered.

Losing weight can be as much a mental issue as a physical one - I'm sure she genuinely wanted to lost the weight when she committed to it - im also sure she would have felt under pressure being the only one who couldn't fit into the dress that everyone wanted so she probably felt peer pressure even if that wasnt anyones intention. You have every right to be a bit peeved that you're in this situation but if you can think about your friend for a moment too - she's probably annoyed with herself, annoyed that she hasn't been able to do it, worried about what she's going to do (even if she isn't showing it) and embarrassed probably too. The best way forward, rather than being angry and trying to assign blame is to work out the best solution to stop everyone worrying.
Moh often wears a different dress to the rest of the party or you could go halves with her on an extra dress for the fabric and get a seamstress to use that to take it out. (Check they can do it first but should be possible). Whatever you do don't bank on her being able to make good on her promise to lose weight because it's just not that simple and it's the most unreliable option no matter how much your friend would like to do it for you. Also she might need reassurance that you want her in the wedding no matter what size and shape she is.