Bride Left ‘Upset’ After She and Groom with Shared Friend Group Clash Over Wedding Party Members

NEED TO KNOW

• A bride shared in a column submission online that she and her groom were fighting over who in their shared friendship group will be in their individual wedding parties

• She said that her husband claimed all of their mutual friends to be his groomsmen and suggested that she ask her high school friends, whom she hadn’t chatted with for years, to be her bridesmaids

• A columnist responded that the fact that the couple can’t come to a mutual decision over the wedding party was “really not a great sign” for their marriage in the future

A bride and groom-to-be are feuding over their closest friends.

The bride-to-be shared in a submission to a “Dear Prudence” column on Slate that she and her fiancé were in planning mode for their wedding and agreed on “almost everything” — with the exception of who will be in their wedding party.

The bride said that she and her soon-to-be-husband had been “pretty traditional” when it came to planning until they came upon deciding on their wedding party. She said that they “share a closely knit friend group consisting mostly of guys,” which she didn’t “mind” until her beau “claimed” all of them for his groomsmen.

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A stock image of a wedding

This was a problem for the bride, as she said she didn’t have her “own group of girlfriends to be bridesmaids.” She said she “protested” against her fiancé, but he just suggested that she ask her high school or university friends to be in her bridesmaid party.

However, she noted that she hadn’t spoken to her high school friends in years, and her university friends were mostly all guys, with whom she wasn’t as close.

“I was taken aback by how unsympathetic he was because he’s normally much more caring and considerate and this felt very out of character,” she said of her fiancé. “It really upset me, and I’ve avoided talking about it since.”

She said that she felt it was also unfair that the person she planned to ask to be her “man of honor” was already chosen as one of her fiancé’s groomsmen, and that he already had a separate best man lined up.

“My position is that we either share everyone or forego the wedding party altogether, but I don’t know how to navigate such a non-traditional approach within an otherwise traditional wedding, especially in front of family members with a tendency to be judgmental,” she said.

The advice columnist noted that wedding planning is often “a great testing ground for being married” as the couple has to decide on “shared values” and “how much money you’ll spend on the ceremony.” She also noted that “the guest list is a reflection of the relationships that are most important to each of you.”

She said that there are “tons of points of potential conflict” between a couple and “many of them involve compromises” that the couple has to undertake, which reflect how they will “handle” these kinds of decisions in the future. She added that the bride and groom not being able to handle a simple conflict of their wedding party was “really not a great sign.”

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A stock image of a couple at a wedding

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“The simple solution is right there: You can simply have a mixed-gender group of people who stand up to support both of you,” she said.

“The fact that you’re locked in a dispute in which you both want to put your desires above the other person’s is a concerning sign about the mindset you have going into this marriage. A life butting heads over who gets what is going to be a miserable one,” she added.

She suggested that the bride and groom solve this problem by enacting a rule: that whoever “met a friend first gets first dibs on that friend for the wedding party.” However, she noted that this would only cover “photos and the programs” and “not how you and your husband will treat each other long after all your friends have gone back to their regular lives.”

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