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*Warning- Long*
My matron of honor (who does not read Weddingbee) decided to go dress shopping without me on Saturday. I figured it wasn’t a problem really, although I did want to go… we had discussed previously how a nice rust color would be perfect- she had strappy gold shoes she wanted to wear. Cool, right?
Well, I get a phone call Saturday afternoon, saying she got the perfect dress from David’s Bridal… in chocolate brown. 
Brown? I love the color brown, it’s beautiful and rich, but not in our colors at all. So, I say, “Brown? I thought we decided on a rust?” No, the brown was better she said. And my FMIL also got something in brown. Although she was supposed to get something taupe/goldish. According to her, MOH (who is my future sister in law) told her that all fall colors were fine. Um… No.
So, Mr. Kiwi gets on the phone and tells his mother that we had agreed on rust, or something like rust, as the dress color. Everything we’ve done so far has been with the idea that the dress would be in a color like this:
Since they called after they went shopping, they were all pissed off when Mr. Kiwi said it was the wrong color. They didn’t know what color I wanted. Liars! It’s on the website. His mom left a COMMENT on the picture on the website! What is going on here?? They accuse us of being immature, and things don’t have to be like this.
Mr. Kiwi is yelling at this point, as he’s the one who actually picked rust as our main dark color. They could have called us before they left, and why didn’t they call to ask me to come along? He says it seems like they were trying to leave me out on purpose. Finally, his sister and mother go back to the store, and call me to say, “There is a color called cinnamon, is this to your liking?” Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t that a bit mean?
I’m sitting there, stomach in knots because this arguing brings me back to my childhood - I hate fighting. I don’t want my in-laws to think I’m being difficult. All we wanted was a dress in the rust/cinnamon/sienna family; the style, cut and maker is whoever the MOH would like. Is it really that hard? Mr. Kiwi’s sister had the nerve to tell him to lose 20 pounds and cut his hair before her wedding, and she’s saying we’re being difficult? This is partially the reason we chose her for MOH (that and the fact that I have no lady friends) - she’s particular. We assumed that because she’s so detail oriented in her own life, she’ll be great when it comes to our wedding.
Seems like we were wrong. The color we chose was “ugly” she said. Brown looks better on her. Sorry to be a little domineering here, but isn’t the fact that it’s our wedding and we’re paying for it all, enable us to choose a friggin’ color of her dress? I mean, she’s got the perfect skin tone for rust, and we just asked for the color- nothing else.
So now there is a small rift in the family, Mr. Kiwi’s brother was called into battle by MOH, but he blew her off. Mr. Kiwi called his mom last night, a little bit calmer, and said, “We don’t want to be called names, or talked about behind our backs, we just want to have the wedding we’ve been saving for. And I definitely don’t want you guys assuming it’s Miss Kiwi’s fault- it’s MY choice.”
We are waiting for news on the next trip to David’s bridal. MOH ordered her dress from there, so she should be able to exchange it. And while visiting the site, I saw these other color choices: copper, cinnamon, heck, even redwood is fine.
Copper
Cinnamon
Redwood
See? All these options. Mr. Kiwi thinks that because the only size she had to try on in the right color was a size 26, she thought it was ugly and figured brown was better.
I’m at a loss. On one hand, I don’t want poor relations with my in-laws. On the other hand, I don’t want to be walked on, and talked into a brown dress. Albeit with a copper sash. We chose that color, and all decided on it, and they should have gone with that decision. They also should have told me they were going, and were wrong to say I was being petty for not being happy with a brown dress for our rust colored wedding. *sigh*
u should practice not talking crap about your in laws no matter what…it comes to bite you in the ass!!
So sorry about all of this - what an awful position to be in. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to want your MOH to wear the colour you’ve picked for your wedding. It’s one of the things you accept when you agree to be in someone’s wedding party - that they call the shots and that your position is to support them as best you can through the wedding process - not to ignore them altogether!
On a brighter note - the dresses in the correct colours look lovely!
One thing to consider is that people who aren’t immersed in bridal world may not know all of the different names for color tones… so maybe she just assumed brown and rust were close enough.
It’s really sad, Miss Kiwi, how weddings, which are supposed to be happy occasions, cause so many fights and bad feelings in families. The color of the attendants’ clothes is yours and Mr Kiwi’s choice, and they should respect that. I hope everything works out, and you get your rust dresses! Don’t let them bully you.
What a headache. Hopefully it will all work out. Seems like they are just going to find something as a point of contention - if it wasn’t this, it would have been something else. My advice is to have an arsenal of things to talk about when the topic comes up. Not that you should have to validate your choices or anything, but just try sugar coating it with all of the nice things that you have to say: “The rust looks so good with those shoes” “This is a much better shade to go with your flowers” “The black tuxes look nice with the cinnamon fabric” “That is so flattering and exactly what we had in mind” … Stuff like that. When you put out something positive, hopefully they will, too. Hang in there, it will all work out! And BTW I love the colors you chose.
I agree with Pencils - one thing I’ve learned from being engaged and wedding planning, is that it really does bring out interesting things in different people - meaning their “deep down buried” feelings and issues about weddings, relationships, commitments, control, etc.
To me, it sounds like Mr. Kiwi’s mom and sis are struggling with some control issues - perhaps realizing that you will now be the #1 lady in his life, rather than them?
Any way you look at it, it’s not right. They knew the color, clearly they knew, otherwise their response would have been “omg we’re so sorry we didn’t know” rather than “well brown looks better”. Duh. So rude and inconsiderate, and I think it’s right that you make them exchange it. It seems like Mr. Kiwi handled it really well, and definitely showed solidarity with you. How frustrating for you though! I’m so sorry! And agree that the dresses in the right colors are so great!
(sigh) Oh, Miss Kiwi - How we wish that weddings were all flowers and butterflies and families loving everything! (sigh) Don’t know what comfort you’ll find in knowing that you’re not the only sighing bride out there.
Ugh. First, bravo to Mr Kiwi for firmly involving himself in this “scenario” and sticking up for you. You two have a firm grip on reality and make a healthy, cohesive team! 
Second, your MOH should be thankful you (like many brides do) did not just chose a dress/color FOR her. You gave her a palette of colors (brown, terra cotta, siena, etc.) to chose from and told her to go to town.
Third, consider yourself lucky that you WEREN’T with MOH and FMIL while they shopped. They may have been snippy and dismissive in person - which would have been much harder to forgive. Yes, it would have been polite had they asked you to accompany but that’s water under the bridge at this point.
It’s harder to control what color the FMIL wears. In my last marriage, my MIL chose ivory. That’s AFTER I told her my dress was ivory. Quite frankly she was the one who looked like an idiot - she matched my shade exactly. Fast forward to now FMIL, the poor thing is driving herself crazy trying to stay within our color scheme and not conflict (or match too closely) my MOH and MOB dresses. She is being extremely respectful and quite a dear!
My only recommendation would be to let Mr. Kiwi continue managing the situation. Perhaps you both can accompany MOH and FMIL to DB to choose a more appropriate color. Let him play the bad guy and support you behind the scenes.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck dealing with this issue! (And I hope your tummy feels better, too!)
Honestly, when I started reading your post, I was picturing something very different that the shade you designated “rust”. And even though you had it on your website, chances are they didn’t bring it with to go pick out dresses. So they might have been thinking of a darker copper, couldn’t find it, and figured brown was close enough.
You can’t have it both ways. It sounds like you invisioned yourself as “the laid back bride”, that doesn’t care about the dresses and just wants the BMs to pick something out they like and feel comfortable in, but really you’re not. You want a specific color to tie in with the picture you’re envisioning. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, you need to make that clear to the BMs at the beinging, instead of acting like it really doesn’t matter to you, and then getting upset when they don’t pick out something that’s in line with your vision.
If you don’t want them to all have the same style of dresses, but you do want a specific color, then you should probably just pick a designer, a fabric and the specific shade, and then tell them they can get whatever they want under that umbrella. Otherwise, just sending them out to find a shade, usually doesn’t work (unless it’s just a basic black dress).
Again, I totally emphathize with wanting their dresses to be a specific shade. It’s your wedding, your colors, and your choice. But you’ll probably save yourself a lot of drama, if you take more control, instead of waiting for something to happen that you don’t like.
I just can’t get passed the point that they didn’t ask you to come! this would have solved it all!
Miss Kiwi, isn’t this the same person you blogged about a few weeks ago who just realized her son was to be ring bearer? On one hand I hope so (it cuts down on the number of *difficult* people for you), but jeeze, get with it people! I want to knock some sense into them for you.
Good luck!
Oh Miss Kiwi- that stinks. I am so sorry that you are having to deal with this at this time. I am shocked that Mr. Kiwi’s mom and sister are so demanding and demeaning when you are entering their family.
I think it was very nice and thoughtful for you to give his sister a color family and let her choose from there. For her to go outside that color family is very inconsiderate and rude. Unfortunately, since they are Mr. Kiwi’s family you will probably have to suck up to them and be nice about it even though they were out of line. But I am shocked at their behaivor.
On the brightside, kudos to Mr. Kiwi for sticking up for you against his family. What a prince charming.
Just to recap- you’re right, they are wrong. It stinks you have to deal with this.
It’s not that big of a big deal is it? I think brown would actually age better in photos than rust…
I HAD to comment, since a similar thing happened to me. I tried to give a lot of leeway to my bms. I emailed them different shades and dresses in a variety of price ranges. In the end I just had to pick the dress for each girl and say–wear this.
Good for Mr. Kiwi for standing up for you! I think your best bet is to TRY not to carry this with you. You stood up for yourself and what you wanted–you can’t also carry around guilt and insecurity about whether you are being a bridezilla! I hope you’ll be able to take a deep breath and just keep on going…
I agree w/ LS!
Now, with my coloring I don’t even own clothes in ANY fall colors (brown, tan, rust, green, gold, yellow, orange), so I totally get that she didn’t LIKE the color. But when ya agree to be in someone else’s wedding, ya wear their choice, so pooh on her! I understand she thought it was ugly and was not looking forward to wearing it, but I think it was very mean of her to say anything and not just go along with the bride’s plan, ESPECIALLY considering that you were paying for it. Some “welcome to the family.” Hmph!
Miss Kiwi! Hang in there! This is a really tough situation, but the only thing you can really do here is try to be as honest (and calm) with them as you can. You know the color scheme you are going for. You’ve discussed it with them and they agreed to working with it for their attire. They then decided, for whatever the reason, to change this color scheme without consulting you. You should, without tears or anger, tell them why this upsets you. It’s possible that this wasn’t done intentionally and by alerting them to how that behavior upset you, it might help you down the road in your relationship with them. And if it was done intentionally and without respect for your feelings, it’s important that you tell them that this upset you - nobody wants a lifetime of their inlaws disrespecting them. As an avid reader of your posts, I really hope this gets resolved!
On a side note, your picture of rust is Jim Hjelm’s “Sienna” right? Also my main wedding color and the color my bridesmaids are wearing! So I totally sympathize on brown not being the same color!
Thanks for the support, guys!
A couple of things:
Chrissie: Like I said in the story somewhere, our matron of honor did in fact see the color we wanted, but thought it was ugly. So she chose brown. A DARK brown. Not a chocolate brown like I thought, it was a truffle brown.
Jessica: I only have one person in our bridal party, so it’s not about matching with other girls, but it’s about matching with the flower girl, the vests/ties for the men and most of the “things” in the wedding. And I DID make it clear to her. We spoke about it many times and she agreed with me, a burnt orange/rust/sienna would be perfect.
JenniferB: This is a different person!
hm: I love this color, Mr. Kiwi chose this color and wanted it honored, especially when she agreed to wear it.
Mr. Kiwi’s mom said the MOH didn’t like the color because the sample she had to try on was a size 26, and she didn’t even want to see it. The color she chose (without even talking to us at all) was a very dark brown, and didn’t match anything.
So it wasn’t so much about colors as they KNEW what we had decided on, had agreed with this color previously, but once there, and alone, decided to change the colors for us, without even checking to see if anything else had been purchased for the rest of the wedding party. THEN they said they were right. So, in my opinion, I think that was wrong.
You’re totally right! She should just be happy you didn’t pick the exact dress out for her.
They always say that as a bridesmaid, all you have to do is show up and wear THE dress. Not A dress, not “a dress that’s kind of similar but that you like better than the real one,” but THE dress the bride chooses.
You’re giving her a lot more leeway than is really necessary– after all, it’s yours and Mr. Kiwi’s wedding, you should get to pick the colors!
P.S. I wouldn’t get TOO overly concerned about what color FMIL wears, since she’s not a BM. It’s more important to get off on the right foot with her. It’s extra considerate of her to sort of be in the color family (i.e., she didn’t pick lavender or magenta), but I’d consider that more of a pleasant plus than a requirement that the moms dress anywhere near the BM color family.
I’m sorry to hear that - I didnt have trouble with my BM but my own mother who kept on picking black dresses and then, a white dress *gasp*
sigh. That was a cause of arguement and I had the fiance step in and talk to my mother several times that she could not wear all black to our wedding or an all white dress either.
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Mrs. Kiwi, Los Angeles Age and Occupation in 06: 27, Bookkeeper Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, P.E. Teach/Coach @ private schools in LA Engagement Date: March 31, 2006 Wedding Date: November 3, 2007 Venue: Radisson Hotel About Me: I'm a bookkeeper who failed high school algebra. I'm currently living in Los Angeles, literally a street over from where I grew up with Mr. Kiwi, my honey of three years. We have a jumbo mini-dachshund (seriously, he's huuuuge), and we're planning an autumn themed wedding on a shoestring, paid for by ourselves. The wedding date is my late grandma's birthday, I needed her there somehow, and that seemed like the best way for us. I can't believe I'm a Bee! I couldn't be more proud!
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