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A woman has sparked a debate after leaving a dry wedding early with the bride's friends to go to the bars.
In a recent post shared on the popular Reddit forum “Am I The I**hole?”, a woman recalled how she went to an out-of-town wedding for a college friend. She also noted that she attended the event with her husband, while her children stayed with their grandparents.
“We got a Vrbo [vacation rental home] “I went to college with another couple for a few days,” she wrote. “My husband and I don’t get a lot of time to ourselves away from the kids, so we were excited to relax.”
She explained that the invitation said the wedding would last until 11pm, with “an after-party” at the venue. She also described the venue as “a beautiful mansion” where the bride and groom would stay that night, before leaving for their honeymoon the following morning.
The woman said it wasn't until she arrived at the event that she and her husband found out it was an alcohol-free wedding, meaning no alcohol was served, as the groom had been sober for two years. However, she confessed that she wasn't too happy about the alcohol-free wedding, so she mentioned to some other guests that she was leaving early.
“We were really disappointed,” she continued. “When we found out there was no alcohol, we told people we were going to bars afterwards and we weren’t going to the after-party. We left the wedding at 9.30pm because we were really looking forward to going out and the wedding was boring.”
According to the Redditor, her college friends also left around 9:30 and “went out.” Additionally, the bride’s “group of friends didn’t stay” for the after-party, while the groom’s friend did, so “the image of the event was very uneven.” She acknowledged that she heard the details of the after-party from the bride, who was angry at her friends for leaving the wedding early.
“[The bride] She said she didn't feel supported and felt like we were [shaming] “I told her that she was making too much of a big deal out of this, that we just wanted to get out. She is especially angry with me because she sees me as the ringleader of this outing,” he concluded.
The post quickly went viral, receiving over 6,200 upvotes. There were mixed reactions in the comments, with several people criticizing the Reddit user for not only leaving the wedding early to hit the bars, but also for seemingly encouraging the bride's friends to do the same.
“I understand you don’t have much time, just the two of you away from the kids, but you should be able to have fun without alcohol. You were with all your college friends. Can’t you have fun together without drinking?” one person asked.
“That’s a pretty rude way to treat a ‘friend,’” another added. “Basically, you all bailed on the wedding celebration, and I’m assuming she was looking forward to celebrating her wedding with her ‘friends.’ That’s why you invited them. And it was a reasonable expectation from her that you would actually want to celebrate her marriage, since you went.”
“I’m going to be downvoted because people seem to hate alcohol-free weddings, but as someone who has a partner in recovery, I will never understand why people can’t go without something for a night to support someone you supposedly care about,” wrote a third. “You chose getting drunk instead of spending time with your friends as the main reason you went out.”
However, others came to the woman's defence, claiming that she left the event at a “reasonable time” and that the couple should have mentioned on the invitation that it was a dry wedding.
“10pm is a perfectly reasonable time to leave a wedding. Some guests started leaving my wedding around 8pm and I didn’t cry about it, I just hugged them and genuinely thanked them for coming,” one wrote.
“At my wedding, I had people leave early for various reasons, and that’s perfectly fine,” added another. “If you’re planning something that will last late into the night, it’s your job as the host to entertain your guests. If they’re not entertained and leave before the service is over, then that’s your responsibility.”
“They definitely should have added this information to the invitation. Not that you wouldn’t have gone to their wedding, but I’m assuming you would have gone without the expectation of drinking,” one Reddit user wrote. “Alcohol-free weddings are successful when guests know what they’re getting into. In a way, they created the failure of their party.”
