A wedding guest was defended online after she accidentally mistook someone dressed in white for the bride.
In a recent post shared on the popular “Am I the Asshole?” On the subreddit, one woman asked if she was wrong for making the mistake at the wedding, noting that the confusion had made her bride cry. She explained that the incident occurred while she was attending her boyfriend's distant cousin's wedding.
She expressed that she had “never met the bride” before the wedding, since her boyfriend only sees these relatives once or twice a year. The woman commented that they had been in a relationship for three years and her boyfriend thought it was a good time for her to meet her family.
“My boyfriend told me he wanted to introduce me to them before the actual ceremony started so we were going to meet them, but my boyfriend got a call and told me to wait a moment and walked away a little so he wouldn't have to. been interrupted,” he wrote.
The woman explained that two minutes after her boyfriend walked away, she mistook another woman for the girlfriend. “I saw a woman in a beautiful wedding dress. “I greeted her and then congratulated her on her wedding and that’s when things went wrong,” she continued. “The woman she was talking to was not the girlfriend.”
According to the wedding guest, the bride heard what he said, as she was in a nearby room, but the Reddit poster didn't notice her. The bride “got upset and started crying” and when the woman spoke to her boyfriend about her situation, “he called the bridesmaid and the mother” of her girlfriend to help “calm her down.”
While her friends and family defended her, the woman explained that other people at the wedding were not so easy to forgive her for the mistake. “My boyfriend and his family reassured me that it wasn't my fault, but the girlfriend, her mother and the boyfriend are upset with me and say it's all my fault,” she wrote. “I never saw her face, so when I saw a woman in a wedding dress, I immediately thought she was the bride.”
In a follow-up comment to the post, she added that it was the groom's sister who wore a white dress during the wedding, which is why the Reddit user thought she was the bride.
The Reddit post quickly went viral with over 6,300 upvotes as of February 19. In the comments, many people came to the woman's defense, stating that wedding guests should not wear outfits that resemble the bride's look.
“In any case, the fault lies with the woman in the wedding dress,” wrote one. “There must be some kind of agreed-upon dress code to avoid this kind of confusion, right? I know it doesn't have to be like this everywhere or in every culture, but where the custom is for the bride to wear white, no other woman should wear white to her wedding.”
“In Western society, you do NOT wear a dress that looks like a wedding dress, you don't even wear white, hell, not even ivory, to a wedding if you're not the bride. “It’s very rude,” another agreed.
Many people wondered why the bride was upset with the Reddit poster for making the mistake, instead of the guest who was wearing a white suit.
“I don't understand why they're mad at you. They should be mad at the lady who wore a wedding dress to someone else's wedding. What was going on with that? one wrote.
“I wonder if she's really mad at you. “It seems so strange that she is angry at a person she has never met before and is confused because someone else decided to wear white to her wedding,” added another. “Chances are that a) she was actually angry at the groom's sister for wearing white and trying to get attention, but she shifted her anger onto you as a less threatening target, b) she was just overwhelmed and very emotional in the moment.” great day and it just exploded at that moment.”
According to Diane Gottsman, national etiquette expert and founder of The Protocol School of Texas, who previously spoke with The independent – The rule is still valid for most weddings. He pointed out that “white is still reserved for the bride” and that guests “should choose another color” when choosing a dress. Gottsman also stated that guests of all genders must follow the non-white rule.
