Wedding Blog
Hi weddingbee,
I just had a question:
Currently I am in situation where a lot of the girls around me are getting married, or have just gotten married. Is it common to feel some tension between brides? I’ve never really noticed it before, but now that I’m engaged, I feel like I can’t talk to any of my married or engaged girlfriends about my wedding or anything remotely wedding related.
All of the girls have very different tastes: in fashion, in food, in men, in jewelry, and in their dream wedding. However, I feel like there is constant criticism and backlash from other brides if your ideas do not conform with theirs. For example, these girls compare their rings, the sizes of their diamond, and cut and clarity- and it’s almost become vicious. Another example is, one recent bride encouraged me to purchase a dress from the place she purchased her dress because it was very very affordable. I tried it out, but I wasn’t happy with any of their dresses. I ended up buying a designer gown, but the other girls almost make me feel guilty for buying a more expensive dress (note: I bought it with my own money, not my fiance’s, or my parent’s).
Lastly, I feel reluctant to share any of my wedding ideas, because I’m afraid that other brides will steal them (some have) and use them (because their weddings are before mine). I am all about sharing ideas, some constructive criticism, and overall support of each other, but lately it feels like we’re all in competition with each other, and quite frankly, it makes me not want to be friends with them anymore. These are just a few examples, but it’s become very hostile.
Is this a common occurence among female friends who are all getting married around the same time?
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Share this post: Open Question: Competition
luckily, i’ve been spared this. but, from what i can see, if you think other brides are pushy/intrusive– wait until you have kids (or heavens forbid decide *not* to have them) and get the instructions on how to breast feed, swaddle, etc.
it sounds like your friends are either frenemies or else they’re really letting their inner-bridezillas take over. i think your instinct to keep things to yourself is a good one!
Unfortunately, it’s very coommon. I completely understand where you are coming from on the designer dress and having your ideas stolen! That’s the worst!!!
On a flip side, it adds to more incentive for you to be creative, unique and individual at your wedding 
Mr Orange has few friends engaged and their weddings are after ours. But, our wedding will be unique in its decoration and theme and so, I am not worried 
I have been a HUGE fan of WeddingBee for awhile now (I literally keep the screen minimized on my office computer ALL day long, and refresh the page every 5 minutes!) and this is the first time I felt compelled to leave a comment.
I am getting married next year, and so is my younger cousin (she’s practically like my sister). So I know how the whole competition thing feels. Fortunately for us, we haven’t gotten hostile about it. But since she’s getting married before me… the advantage there is that she gets to go thru all the “bumps” first.
And I totally know how it feels to keep all your wedding ideas a “secret” because they might steal them… It’s an honest feeling to have. And try not to think of them as “secrets” but as “little surprises!” Trust me, it makes you feel better if you think of it that way
Just try not to get caught up in the whole competition thing, and realize that this wedding is about you and your FI. No one else’s. It’s your time to shine baby!
My sis and I are very close in age and we are having our weddings within a few months of each other…soooo…to keep each other from stealing our ideas/venues ect…we just call dibs haha. We totally honor the “dibs” system!
I feel for you! It is definitely common. I am going through the same thing except my friends are already married. I typically don’t talk about my wedding planning unless someone asks because I figure no one wants to hear it since they aren’t going through it.
I have a few married friends that ask about my planning and they are very critical. For instance, when I tell them I am considering a certain restaurant, they will tell me how bad the food is there and how great the food was at their venue. Everything I do is compared to their wedding as if I’m trying to compete w/ their wedding.
I was really hurt at first at their harsh critism so I’ve learned to keep my wedding planning to myself.
Its hard because everyone wants their wedding to be the best. My wedding was in July, and it was like I was in competition with myself to have a better wedding than my friends–but now that new friends are getting engaged, I am just so thrilled for them–I am so over the competition. It is a stage.
Some peope have to believe that their wedding was the BEST EVER so they put down other weddings.
I totally know how it feels to be “reserved” in sharing your wedding ideas and plans. My fiance and I got engaged in April of this year … then in May his cousin, “D” got engaged and in June his cousin “G” got engaged. All these cousins are on the same side of the family and live in the PA, NJ area.
The first issue we had was the 60 overlapping guests because they are from the same side of the family. The second, our weddings will all take place between May and November of 2007. Third, cousin “D” is a bridesmaid of mine. The similarity ends where “D” and I ended up picking the same exact wedding dress! When we figured it out I was actually going to buy the dress the next day and “D” hadn’t yet decided.
Overall the small stuff I won’t sweat but I think the 3 weddings will be different enough because of where they’re taking place that people won’t notice.
i meant … they won’t notice if anything is the same or similar.
I totally understand the competition thing. One of my roommates is also engaged, and there have been two weddings in my church this past year. A friend of mine was engaged, and everytime I talked about my wedding plans to her, or discussed rings, she made comments in a way that made me feel like my wedding wasn’t going to be as good as hers or that my ideas were completely wrong.
Now, I don’t really feel much competition per say, I just feel more pressure to make sure my wedding isn’t like the last two in my church, or that my wedding plans aren’t exactly the same as my roommate’s wedding plans.
i completely understand. i have a friend who just got married and has since “cattily” criticized every wedding she’s been to, comparing it to hers. before i got engaged, i let her borrow my collection of wedding magazines for ideas. when i got engaged, i nicely asked for them back…on return, some of the pages had been torn out and for some reason this upset me more than i could imagine. our weddings will be completely different styles, but i try not to think about how she’ll be sitting there at mine judging everything about it.
oh, how awful! i feel terrible that you are going through this.
mercifully, i have been spared. there are four of us at work who are all planning, and we lean on each other for support, share ideas, magazines and samples.
we are all planning very different weddings (destination, long distance, compressed schedule and just started), so we already know that our plans will be in all shapes and sizes!
the other thing that keeps me in perspective — i am among the last of my friends to get married. other brides — my beautiful, glorious friends — have gotten married before me, and i know that more will follow with their own memorable, magnificent weddings. my wedding will be important to me, just like all my friends have had weddings that were important to them.
Ooh that is so awful! As if planning a wedding isn’t stressful enough without adding high school like behavior…..I’m the first among my group of friends to plan my wedding, but it does already seem like everyone has an opinion.
Miss Daisy - I totally know what you mean about the kids thing though - I don’t have any, but a few of my friends do, and it seems like EVERYONE has something to say about what you HAVE or absolutely SHOULD NOT do with your kids. Puh-lease!
I had a friend who constantly brought up the fact that her e-ring was .08 carats larger than mine and how it was so obvious that her’s was larger and the color was so much better. (Her color is only one letter up from mine.) She got engaged last summer, and I got engaged last October. After the bragging about her ring, she changed e-rings *twice* and the one she ended up with looks suspiciously like mine… The original one looked completely different!
The rest of my bride friends were awesome and encouraging of hearing and sharing ideas. I tried to talk as little wedding talk as possible with the e-ring friend.
are these women or high school girls? comparing the size of the rings? give me a break
I know how you feel! My best friend and I got engaged within a week of each other and we I think her initial reaction to finding out I got engaged was dissapointment (she got engaged first but didn’t get a ring with her proposal, and I did) Then we civilly decided that I would get married in March in Palm Springs and she would do June in Catalina– then she pushed her wedding to January in Palm Springs! I really didn’t want to be standing next to her as her bridesmaid seething with anger feeling like my destination had been stolen, so I opted to change my plans and now do San Diego in June. We’re both in each others wedding and we wanted to spread it out (also cause we have the same friends)
We’re having fun planning our weddings together, we can talk about it for hours and never get sick of it, but we both want to have unique things and we do have the same tastes, so it’s a little hard. You just really have to keep to yourself the special surprises and smile and nod whenever someone gives you back-handed compliements or suggestions! I think women in general are very competitive with their friends!
I totally relate to you! A good friend of mine got engaged a month and a half after I did. That night she sent me a text saying that she had ‘dibs’ on a date during the two week period that I had told her we had been thinking about for our wedding. I felt that she had stepped on my toes a bit and told her. She didn’t budge on her date, so I changed mine to a month earlier. I didn’t want to tell her anything else I was planning because I thought she would take that too. I got busy with life and didn’t see her for a few months. The last time I saw her she accused me of not being happy enough for her and her engagement, all because I hadn’t been happy that she set her date when I had been wanting to set mine. Now we aren’t friends at all.
It wasn’t just this instance that ended our friendship, but it was a factor.
I’m sure that friends can be planning weddings together and have a great time, but it doesn’t always happen that way…
I was in a sorority in college and there are weddings constantly–including one of my closer friend’s from the sorority and mine next summer. There are two other women who we were in the sorority with getting married next summer as well (a grand total of four)! There has been no viciousness, thank gosh–and sorry you’re having to deal with that. Unfortunately, it must be the nature of females to at least be caddy, because I have almost the same exact e-ring as one of our sorority friends who got married last summer, and another girl keeps asking me how it feels to have a ring bigger than the first girl’s ring!
I honestly have been separating myself from people when I know they have opinions or as they ask questions about the wedding–namely people I work with. I think it’s your perogative to do what you want and what you can afford! It’s a shame your friends are going bridezilla over weddings–an event that’s supposed to be fun and celebratory. If I were you, I wouldn’t initiate calls or emails, leave it up to them. Thank them for ideas and tell them you have NO IDEA what you’ll choose.
Hope this helps…and I hope things improve for you.
Unfortunately some people are just like that. I have several friends that either got married recently or are engaged. My roommate and i seem to have no problem what so ever when discussing wedding plans. We are very encouraging of each other. She has much more planned than i do and while i love what she’s doing, it’s not similar to the vision that my fiance and i have and i don’t feel the need to compete with her over any part of wedding planning. And we have helped each other and given each other ideas for things like centerpieces and things like that. (you can’t possibly do all the ideas you have.
However, i have another friend who does want to make it a competition and honestly, it hurts. She has seesawed in whether or not i was a bridesmaid. She told me i was one in may and i was gone all summer worked at a summer camp. I returned to hear from everyone else that she was mad at me. I confronted her about it since it was all for things that i didn’t do because i wasn’t even in the same state for her to be mad at me. She had no real reason to give me and said that she had already put someone else in the wedding. She took out her childhood friend (i’m a college friend) because her C-friend didn’t call her for 3 weeks. We came to find out that her friend was having family trouble and moved and didn’t have a phone or way to contact for several weeks. And this friend was supposed to be her MOH!! This girl also changed the style of her gown after I showed her the gown I wanted to a style similar to it where her first choice of gown was a completely different style. She also changed her bridesmaid dresses after another girl got similar ones in the same color. And to top it all off has changed her date at least 6 times. (first one and latest one are over a year apart. Nov 05; Mar 06; Apr 06; Jun 2, 06; Jun 10, 06; and now Dec 06.)
It’s driven us apart and I’m considering not having her in my wedding when i was thinking of her originally for my MOH. It’s all very sad when i think about how we were such close friends before. She also compares the price of everything, like the dresses. Her’s was 900+, while mine retailed at 1300. (I did find mine for 800, but she doesn’t know that yet.) But she admitted to me that so far they have spent 2000+ on just her for dress, shoes, jewelry, etc. And it doesn’t look like i will come close to that.
We were shopping one day and i found a $25 pair of earrings i thought were gorgeous for my wedding. She said they were “pretty but not her style, and oh, by the way, her fiance thought she should have REAL jewelry for her wedding so he bought her pearl and swarovski crystal earrings.” (her words)
I feel like i’m competing with this girl when i talk to my roommate because i say things like my dress is less than this girls and i don’t like it. None of our other friends have been this way. She driving other people away as well, not just me.
I’ve done the same thing as far as not sharing my planning ideas with her anymore. I just thank God for my roommate and discuss ideas with her. Just find a few true friends, or even just one, so at least you have help and can bounce ideas off someone who truely cares more about a life long friendship, then a one day event, however important it may be.
omg, laguna beach called, and they want their drama back. muahaha. that’s a shame. friends are supposed to support one another. forget about the cattiness and enjoy the moment. you’re engaged!! congratulations!
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