Groom-to-be sparks debate over request that fiancée remove friend as bridesmaid

A groom-to-be has been criticised over his reasoning for asking his fiancée to take one of her friend’s out of the bridal party.

In a post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole?” Reddit forum, a man asked if he was in the wrong for wanting his partner to remove “someone as a bridesmaid because of something she said while inebriated”. After noting that he’s “engaged to the woman of [his] dreams,” he explained that in addition to her, he’s living with “a very close friend”.

He then described his relationship with the pal, explaining that, months ago, she and her now-ex found out they were having a child, after she was “told her entire life it was impossible for her to have kids”. Although she was “ecstatic” about it, her then-boyfriend wasn’t, as they were “not in any position to raise a kid”, and their relationship “got very strained”.

According to the Reddit poster, his friend ended up having a miscarriage, one week before she found out her boyfriend “had an emotional affair with a coworker”. He then added that when the couple broke up, he quickly moved his friend in with him, noting that while she’s been struggling, she now “seems to be slowly healing”.

The groom-to-be then explained that when his fiancée had her bridesmaids over, his friend joined them and everyone got “pretty drunk”. He noted that when his partner fell asleep, he “carried her up to [their] room”, before taking care of “everyone else”, including the friend who was staying with him.

“My friend at that point had started drinking really heavily and looked kind of sick so I walked her up to her bathroom and held her hair for about 20 minutes while she puked,” he wrote. “When I figured she had enough out of her system I left her to go check on the other girls and get them home.”

However, according to the Reddit user, he then overheard one of the bridesmaids claim that he was helping his friend because he wanted to “get in [her] pants,” which upset him.

“The other girls around her immediately told her off (they’re all aware of my friend’s situation btw) and I just stood obstructed on the stairway trembling in anger,” he wrote. “ I managed to calm down temporarily, come down and send them all home in Ubers (I had offered to drive them before but in all honesty I felt so angry I did not want to be in that position).”

He added that days after the incident, he was “still angry” about the bridemaid’s comment, noting that he “doesn’t ever want to be in the same room as this woman ever again, let alone have her eight feet away as [he says his] vows”. He then expressed how he wanted to speak to his bride-to-be about the situation.

“I haven’t told my fiancée any of this yet, but I was planning to do so tomorrow as well as request her friend at least be removed from having a role if not flat out be uninvited to the wedding,” he wrote.

The Reddit post has quickly gone viral, with more than 2,100 upvotes as of 27 February. In the comments, many people understood why the groom-to-be was upset about the bridesmaid’s remark. However, they still criticised the idea of taking her out of the wedding party just because of the incident.

“If my fiancé said he wanted to ban a close friend from attending the wedding over a drunken comment like this, it would set off alarm bells immediately. It comes off as really defensive regarding you and your friends’ relationship,” one wrote. “I think if you talked to your fiancée about how that comment hurt you it would be fine (because those feelings are totally valid!), but to go so far and say you want the friend removed is extreme.”

“It’s your wedding invite whoever you want,” another wrote. “But if you remove her over this, it’ll lend a lot more credibility to her drunk thoughts since why else would you get so defensive over a silly comment that could have been laughed off.”

“She made a crass comment while drunk and the other friends had a normal reaction to correct her, and that should have been the end of it. Yet you were ‘trembling in anger’ and days later are still stewing about it?” one wrote.

As other people encouraged the groom-to-be to let the comment from the bridesmaid go, they also gave him advice on other ways to handle the situation, rather than asking for the bridesmaid to be removed.

“If they were drinking to the point of your friend puking and your fiancée passing out, maybe this bridesmaid wasn’t in top form herself, and I think you should at least talk to your fiancée and her about it before demanding she be removed,” one wrote.

“I don’t really get why you’re so angry about it three days later. Has it hit a nerve or something? Have other people hinted at this before and you’ve had enough?” another wrote. “Chat to your fiancée, get her to speak to her friend and leave it at that, unless this friend has a history of being rude to you, but I would presume you’d have mentioned this in your original post if it was the case.”

In an edit to his post, the groom-to-be clarified that he was never going to ask for the bridesmaid to be removed before talking to his future wife about it. He also acknowledged that he now “intends to talk to the bridesmaid as well before [he] requests anything”.