Last week, one group of wedding guests heard a toast they’d certainly never forget.
One man recently caught Reddit’s attention after confessing that he’d mentioned divorce in a wedding toast for his best friend. According to him, the bride’s demands for him and his wife caused him to feel “annoyed” before the wedding, but a comment made by the mother of the bride was the “final straw.” Still, he wanted to know: was he in the wrong for insulting the bride in his speech as best man?
The anonymous best man posted the story in the Reddit forum r/AmItheA**Hole under username u/CaregiverHuge1686 on Wednesday. In his post, he asked Redditors, “AITA [Am I the a**hole] for telling the truth in the wedding toast?” Before discussing his toast, he detailed the events that led him to re-write the speech.
According to the best man, he and his wife recently purchased a home and are also expecting their son in November, so money for his best friend’s wedding was tight. Wanting to do whatever he could, he explained that he attended the bachelor party, rented a tux, paid for his and his wife’s food at the rehearsal dinner and set aside $300 in cash as the wedding gift. He’d hoped this would be enough of a contribution, but allegedly, the bride was asking for much more.
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In the post, he listed out a series of demands the bride sent to him in the weeks leading up to the wedding. He alleges that, per the bride, his wife was “NOT allowed to talk about the pregnancy,” as she “didn’t want anyone to focus on that more than her, the bride.” She also demanded that his wife wear a dress that “downplayed” her pregnancy and to ask his wife not to make a “pregnancy scene” at the wedding, among other things.
In addition to all the demands the bride made of his wife, he alleges that the bride told him that he wasn’t doing enough as the best man and that if he was a “true best man,” he’d offer to pay the bar bill. Also, he said, she needed final approval of his speech before the rehearsal dinner; a speech that was not allowed to include inside jokes or stories about the groom that did not include the bride.
Annoyed, he said he approached his best friend to “reason” with his bride. In response, his best friend argued that it was his soon-to-be wife’s day and to just capitulate to her demands. After all, he said, it would be him that had to deal with her “nonsense” for the rest of his life.
But while this calmed the best man down, he said the final straw came on the wedding day when, as he was getting a drink at the bar—after a long day of being “berated” by the bride and groom—the mother of the bride told him not to get drunk, as he’d already ruined the day. Angry, he gave a toast not approved by the bride in which he said: “I used my friend’s exact wording about having to deal with her nonsense for the rest of his life. I wished them the best and told him I’d always be there for him, especially during the divorce.” He also didn’t give his best friend their cash gift.
So, he wanted to know: was he wrong for doing this?
Many Redditors debated, but thousands agreed with one user, whose argument was simple: “everyone sucks here.”
“Look dude, you were totally justified, but you also had ample opportunity to jump off the crazy train before it got this far,” u/CuriousTsukihime said. “Being a good friend means having the comfortability and latitude to say no when your friends are off the rails. You waited until the last min[ute] and let your emotions get the better of you. Your wife deserved better from these people and from you in this moment.”
More than 23,000 people liked the comment in agreement.
Newsweek was unable to independently verify the claims made on the Reddit post.
This man’s story isn’t the first bridezilla tale to make rounds on Reddit recently. Last month, a Redditor claimed that one bride demanded that neighbors not camp in a public use area the weekend of her wedding. And last week, one Redditor shared that a bride demanded her bridesmaids lose weight and not “get pregnant” before her wedding.
