Night out with friend "just come casual " then she comes dressed up...aibu to be annoyed?

[bradleyboo]

Last Saturday I had a night out with my friend.
The plan was to go into town for a few drinks.
She rang me and said "it's just casual,I'm gonna wear my big coat and boots"
So I dress down

Arrive and there she is dressed up
Skirt and bodysuit,heeled boots and no coat.
So I look like a scruff
I said "I thought it was casual"
She said "I changed my mind,dont be silly tho you look fine"

I'm still annoyed now
I felt horrible all night
We went in nice pubs (was meant to be just a spoons type pub)
I felt horrible

If one person (after consultation) is expecting to have a casual drink/meal in an ordinary pub, and dresses accordingly, and then the other decides to dress for - I don't know - Stringfellows - and insists on going somewhere flash, where everybody else is similarly dressed, and dragging the smartly but plainly dressed friend with them, then that is just nasty.

Wtf? Do people really live like this?

Yes, they do, @Mirabel. It's common courtesy to say - Look - I really fancy somewhere swish! Can't face Wetherspoons tonight. Are you up for it?"

I think OP's mistake was to agree to go somewhere different to arranged. She should have insisted on the pub and let her friend look a lemon. Peer pressure, even as an adult, is stronger than most of us realise.

@Feelinglow27 - I feel the expression "deliberately obtuse" still has legs on MN.

1 - It was the "friend" who set the parameters. If you or I go out with our friends, down the pub, we dress however.

BUT, if the person organising the shindig specifically mentions

2 - crap pubs, and that

3 - she is "only wearing her big coat and boots" (which to OP indicates a level above pjs on the sofa), THEN, the fact that

4 - the friend gets dressed up a few levels and suddenly wants to change to smarter bars... makes me think J'accuse!

Now I've written that down, I think you were winding me up, so I'll stop!

Woman throwing the bbq said to dress casual so I did… while the rest of them were dolled up to the 9s. Utter bitch

Maybe your perception of casual is at different levels? Some peoples’ everyday make up is more than I would wear when i feel like I’m wearing a tonne of the stuff, for example

This.
I really don't see it much of an issue. Why do two people have to be wearing the same standard of 'dressed up / down'

She probably put on an outfit, felt a bit frumpy and changed into something she felt more confident in. It's no biggy unless you're very insecure.

Also - people have different perceptions to casual.

To some it's a nice too, pair of jeans and trousers. IMP heeled boots are casual too unless they have a 4 inch stiletto heel.

To some people casual means trackie bottoms.

The people on this thread who say ‘But it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing’ are missing the point spectacularly. This is standard issue Mean Girls one-upmanship, pitched carefully under the radar of all outsiders and most males, to enable the victim to look foolish if she complains about something so ‘trivial’. Whether it’s deliberate or not doesn’t matter - some women operate like this unconsciously.

But @DatasCat the Mean Girl thing in this scenario only works if the woman being Meaned At decides to give a shit.
That's not based on "it doesn't matter what you are wearing" - it's based on dressing yourself in clothes you are going to feel confident/comfortable in no matter what anyone else decides to wear.

OP's job wasn't to feel 'lesser than' her gameplaying 'friend' & meekly troop into places she felt underdressed for due to 'friend's' manipulations. OP's job was to spot that she'd been manipulated & tricked, decline to go into posh places she didn't feel dressed for, & either call out her 'friend's' behaviour or decide to ditch her for Mean Girl shit.

I agree with this. Do people not have friends with different styles anyway? Or does everyone have to be matching? Weird.

OP’s beef was with her friend’s outfit.

It’s common sense to say she’d prefer somewhere low key.

You think a skirt top and boots is a ‘Stringfellows’ outfit?😁

I mean sure, you can assume the friend was dressed to the nines and that the OP had zero capacity to make a decision about what to wear herself or which pubs she went to on her night out, if that shores up your argument and your determination to paint the friend as a terrible person.

seems a bit of a stretch though.

Perhaps I just don’t spend hours analysing my friend’s clothing choices and assuming malicious intent? 🤷‍♀️

perhaps if I’d dressed for a casual evening at the pub and my friend suggested changing the goalposts when I arrived, I’d say something at the time like ‘oh no I don’t fancy that, let’s just go to Spoons’ rather than mutely going along with it in an outfit I felt ‘horrible’ in and then blaming her on the internet for my clothing choices, behaviour and emotional responses.

i wouldn’t know if a friend had ever ‘set me up’ like this because I don’t believe in holding others responsible for my personal clothing and pub choices, and blaming them for my emotional responses and inability to speak up.
I’m also not friends with people who would be petty and malicious in this way.

I guess folk who make different choices will have different experiences, but on reflection I’m very glad my friends and I manage to crack on and make independent adult choices about our own outfits and to mutually agree pub choices! it’s really not that difficult

Unless you dressed down in my daughter’s 3 year old cardboardy ASOS joggers and man’s XL vintage brown sweatshirt, YABU.

Not in my town it isn't. Weatherspoons and similar are casual but there are nicer bars where being more dressed up is the norm. You can either understand that from your own experience of going out, or you can't, and I know what the OP means. She dressed for the former.
I agree though she should have insited on the original plan if she wasn't dressed up enough for the changed one.

No, but to feel horrible is quite extreme. If I dressed for a casual venue and ended up in a fancy one, I would perhaps feel out of place or underdressed but not horrible. I dress casually most days and don't feel hideous. 🤷‍♀️

Sure being more dressed up might be the ‘norm’ but I doubt folk were pointing at staring just cos the op turned up in jeans and a t shirt (or similar)

it all sounds like a lot of drama over nothing, and was entirely avoidable if the op took some responsibility for her own clothing and pub choices rather than blaming her friend for her own emotional state.

I've had this before over the years. Why wouldn't someone just text if they were changing the plans including what they are wearing. Some people are so thoughtless.

I don't get the pile on on the Op. If you don't get this why make the Op feel bad for it? This is a thing and just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't make the Ops experience invalid.

It’s not a pile on - it’s simply pointing out that OP has the power to change how she felt in this situation - by getting more info on her friend’s outfit (boots and a big coat is only an outfit women wear in bad sexy scenarios - I assume more clothes were involved!), by choosing a more flexible outfit for herself that she’d be comfortable in in multiple locations, or by insisting on sticking to the plan to only visit very casual pubs.

it’s not fair to make the friend entirely responsible for OP’’s feelings, assuming she’s an adult, and if OP is able to take more responsibility in future, she’ll likely feel more empowered

The ‘pile-on’ appears to have been mostly directed to the ‘jealous, insecure, spiteful and malicious’ friend who committed the terrible crime of wearing what she fancied without updating her friends.
Bonkers.

...because it's pile on week-have you noticed!! A lot of posts are getting jumped on-must be 1/2 term hols!!

What pile on? Most posts are supportive and saying she's right to be pissed off. In fact, you don't usually get this many people siding with an OP in AIBU.