The Vine: April 13, 2011
I’ve been asked to be a bridesmaid in a close friend’s wedding. There are four bridesmaids altogether — the other three are all family members. Bridesmaid dress selection has been difficult — bride-to-be keeps changing her mind on the dress selected, and I suspect it has to do with the opinions of the other bridesmaids. I knew she was stressed about the situation, and I emailed her and explained that ultimately it was her choice, we’d all wear what she wants us to and be happy about it, I’m sure it’s going to work out fine, let me know if she wants to meet up and brainstorm, etc.
I received a text yesterday from bride saying she was getting obsessive over the dresses and she’d like me to pick out my own dress by a certain designer/color, and specifically said if a v-neck, no more than a half inch to an inch of cleavage. This was a text sent to me — not a group text.
Now, I wear a 38F bra — I don’t have a small chest, and there’s nothing I can really do about it. I also don’t have a history of wearing inappropriately revealing clothing — if anything I tend to cover up. I’m quite insulted by the text — I feel like she’s implying I dress in an inappropriate way. I also feel like telling her she can pick out my dress herself and cover up my chest however she wants, but I’m trying to wait until my initial anger dies down. Bride is also small-chested, so maybe she doesn’t realize how difficult it can be to dress with a big chest, especially with bridesmaid dresses.
Am I wrong to find her comment so insulting? Should I mention it to my friend or just suck it up for the sake of her wedding?
Busty and Bitter
Dear BB,
This is a close friend of yours, who presumably knows that you don’t tend to hooch it up, and while you don’t mention any tendency of hers to get judgy about your attire, you do mention that every other bridesmaid is a relative. Why not assume that the bride made the cleavage call at a family function, and informed the other ‘maids then, or via some family list, and then texted you separately — that it had something to do with the relatives angle, instead of jumping to the conclusion that Bride singled out you and the girls?
I mean, maybe she did, but…she didn’t. Yes, you have a roomy front porch and Bride doesn’t “get that,” but by that same token, she’s not as focused on it as you; I think you’re projecting, honestly. You said yourself that she started “obsessing” about the dresses, so at this point, she’s probably not operating from any place other than “I can’t think about this anymore, so: everybody cover up in church so I don’t have to hear about it from the groom’s mother, done, next.”
I can think of half a dozen explanations for the fact that only you received the text, and none of them involves your chest. Take a deep breath, give Bride some credit, and drop it.
Tags: etiquette friendships
With Sars on this one. I’m in the midst of planning my wedding and understand making some sort of blanket judgment just to save your sanity.
If you still feel like you need to talk it out, give it some time to cool down,then see if the bride can take a few minutes to get together for coffee or something. instead of jumping straight into “why are you being so anal over my chest?”, probe to see just how tough wedding planning is going. Once you get a feel for that then you can judge whether the dress is a “real” issue or just stress.
This makes me happy that a)I only have 2 attendants and b) i’m giving them a designer, color and length and letting them choose the other details. i am lucky that both are new(er) moms with similar figures though…
Man. Why are weddings designed to bring out the worst in us?
As a girl-ful gal myself, I’d be tempted to go with plunging neckline and then plead ‘oh dear, I thought you meant a half inch of fabric from the waistline!’ You know: ‘easier to get forgiveness than permission’, and all. But it’s probably best not to be me in my temptation.
If you can’t meet the half-inch of cleavage command even by trying and you’re self-conscious about the results, toss on a lightweight and similarly colored scarf. You’ll probably have to doff it for photos, but presumably you won’t be the center of attention in them, and the photographer will be unlikely to zoom in on the offending decolletage.
i’m going to have to agree with sars on this one, but i’ll go a step further… i think you’re overreacting. since you’re good enough friends to be in her wedding you should ask yourself, does she have a history of making snide implications? or are you really sensitive about the size or your chest? i’ve got some pretty big tits myself, and it never occured to me she might be passive-aggressively calling you slutty.
Agreed that you’re worrying too much about this, BB – I’m gonna guess, based on my own big chesty experiences, that because you’re so used to having to dress around your shape and so used to worrying about whether things that look cute on other people look straight up trashy on you that you assume she’s thinking about it all the time too. And she isn’t. If you really don’t dress inappropriately, and I’m sure you don’t, then it hasn’t even occurred to her.
As a former crazed bride, I finally just threw everything back on my maids too, with a little bit of guidance – x color, x designer, x length. And I wasn’t implying that if I didn’t give them a length, they’d all show up in miniskirts; it was just, you know, GUIDANCE, for uniformity and my general taste while still allowing them some freedom to choose. I’m sure she’s just doing the same.
One unfortunate by-product of the supposed “Bridezilla” phenomenon is that just about any request a bride makes of her attendants is presumed malicious. My maids were all chesty (as am I, although admittedly not as far down in the alphabet as BB) and it was a challenge finding dresses that looked neither dowdy nor cartoonish. You want to blame somebody? Blame the fashion industry, for refusing to accept what the Pill has done to average cup sizes.
Full disclosure: I’ve been a bride once, and a maid never. But I have to think that if I got that text message, I’d be like, “Awesome. I can pick my own stupid dress, and I know what the modesty standard is.” It’s not as if she told you to dye your hair or lose weight.
I agree with Sarah, I think you’re reading a bit too much into the request. You might just be overly sensitive about it because you have a larger chest, but to me it seems pretty innocuous. How would you have reacted if she’d said, “The skirt can’t be shorter than an inch above the knee?” IMO, it just reads as a matter of preference rather than a personal dig at you or your breasts.
I agree with Sars.
Also, there’s no reason to plan for a problem that doesn’t exist yet. Go, try out the dresses and if the one you like poses a cleavage problem, then talk to Bride about it.
Good luck!
“why are you being so anal over my chest?”
Hee! Sounds more what like the strippers at the batchelor party are snarling at their boss!
(Not that your freind’s fiance is having strippers at his party.)
I am 100% with Sars on this one — and I wear the same bra size as you. I’d guess that the cleavage decree was the same for everyone, prompted by who knows what, and just delivered different ways.
I don’t really have any advice to add to Sars’s answer, just wanted to chime in that as someone similarly busty, I wouldn’t have taken the least bit of offense to the text.
Busty here- I got the text about a month ago and kept trying to forget about it and I couldn’t…and I know how stressful planning weddings are (many times a maid!) and I didn’t want to add more stress for the bride-to-be…but it ended up gnawing away at my insides. What I did is bring it up calmly, let her know it had offended me and why, explained I wanted to get it out there so I could forget about it and get back to being excited helping her plan the big day. We talked about it and I thanked her for being the kind of friend that we can talk about this stuff (which is true and super important)…and we’re both happy now. And the bridesmaid dresses are now coordinated and cleavage free and we’re all a big happy group about it. I left out some details in the original letter but it doesn’t matter- the point is nothing was meant by it and everyone’s happy and drama free now.
Thanks for all the feedback though! It’s helpful to have a place to help sort out your mind on crazy days. ;)
I agree with Sars on many, many levels. I see that the Bride wrote that IF you choose a V-neck, keep the cleavage to a minimum. I don’t think any slight on your taste or style was intended, just a list of the rules. A text does not allow for much exposition or politeness.
My friends and I average at G-cups so body image and cleavage are frequent topics of conversation.
Make a joke and laugh with the bride about it. Offer to donate some to her for the wedding! You’ll both appreciate the levity!
Glad you worked it out!
This is one reason I just gave my bridesmaids color and length for a unifying factor, and left the rest entirely up to them. (The other two reasons were budget and reusability.) An idea I freely share and heartily recommend!
(Oops, noticed a grammatical error that I couldn’t deal with, so I’m resubmitting. Sars, if you could just post this comment, it would be great).
I’ve been a bridesmaid three times and I think you’re reading too much into it. She might have sent personal texts to all the bridesmaids. Maybe she doesn’t know how to send a group text or talked to them personally. Or since you offered to help, she contacted you first. Maybe she’s under pressure from her mom or grandma or future mother-in-law to tell the bridesmaids to be appropriate (My personal plan for bridesmaids when I do get married has always been to say “buy a black dress that you’ll wear again that is sexy, but modest enough that my Catholic grandma won’t think you’re slutty.”)
Even if it WAS meant to be personal because you have lots of cleavage or even just that she knows you like v-necks, it doesn’t mean she didn’t also say something personal to the other girls. Maybe one of the others tends to wear too-short-skirts and she told that girl to keep it knee-length. Maybe another likes a plunging back and she told her to avoid it. Or another likes things too tight. Even then, she’s probably just stressed about it and wants to put it on you guys without having to hear about whether other people think the dresses were appropriate. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Glad you worked it out!
While I see the bride (and everyone else’s) point of view, I want to tell you that I was also a 38F at one point, and would have reacted the exact same way as you. (Clothes in general made me anxious. They don’t make many things for girls like us.)
I’m glad you worked it out. It’s letters like these that make me glad I only had the one attendant. I’m in New Zealand, she lives in Australia. We only see each other every couple of years so I left her to it.
Me: “Find something you like in the wedding colours. Get enough extra fabric for my niece to have a sash made so you coordinate.”
Her: “Length? Can it be short”
Me: “If your legs are looking good and you want to show them off. Go for it.”
Her: “My legs are %^#%ing awesome!”
Good times. Nothing better for a bride than an awesome MoH.
I’m late to the party here, but I thought I’d toss my own bridesmaid dress solution into the discussion. I only had two attendants, my skinny sister and my zaftig best friend who couldn’t be more self-conscious about wearing dresses. So I made them each a shawl in my wedding colors and just told them each to coordinate a nice outfit around it. It turned out great and everybody was comfortable and happy with their self-image.
As for the text — even when I send group texts my phone only lets me address and send it to one person at a time. I know the issue is already resolved, but I just thought I’d point out that sometimes you can’t really tell if the same text went to more than just you.
“As for the text — even when I send group texts my phone only lets me address and send it to one person at a time. I know the issue is already resolved, but I just thought I’d point out that sometimes you can’t really tell if the same text went to more than just you.”
Yup, yesterday I sent a single “going to be late” text to three people at my job, and it came up three times in my sent texts list, same content but each time with a different “To:”.
I agree with everyone else here, I think you need to dial it back a notch.
Personally, I wish my sister-in-law had made that decision. As it was her sister (the maid of honor) picked out the dress and it only looked good on her perfect size 2 body. The rest of us had to pay an arm and a leg for alterations and even then they didn’t fit right, even on the thin girls. We were all jealous of the one bridesmaid who seven months pregnant because she got to wear a different dress that actually flattered her.
Another thought: sometimes churches (if it was a church wedding) ask that bridesmaids/brides not show much cleavage, have covered shoulders, etc. A bride could easily relay requirements like that to the wedding party without thinking too much about them, because she didn’t come up with them herself.
Glad it worked out, though I’m curious what her response was. Had she meant to single you out? Was it something at the directive of her relatives? Having been in a wedding with three busty bridesmaids and a bustier bride, the bride was very specific about us tacking our v-necks so we minimized on the cleavage. Not because we’re whores, but because it’s a wedding, not a club, and being one with large girls herself, she knew that it would be a challenge.
@Esi- It was texted/directed at me personally and it had nothing to do with her relatives/in-laws, but instead with a recent wedding that we each attended where I was also a bridesmaid and I wore a v-neck dress (that That bride picked out)…which probably made me more sensitive to the text because I felt like she was judging me in that particular dress. And, she was thinking about that dress, but she said she thought she’d be making me feel more comfortable by the restriction because of a reaction to facebook photos at that wedding…the point is, she didn’t mean anything by it- I think she was also going crazy with the dresses (she did call herself obsessed heheheh), and if she had said it to me in person I think tone would’ve helped or context certainly would’ve.
Instead, I was at a point where I kept cancelling appointments at bridal shops for dresses I had hunted down at the request of the brides/bridesmaids (I had been 100% flexible about the dress since the beginning) because the dress kept changing and I was irritable…that text arrives out of nowhere while at lunch with other friends and they all thought it was insulting…and I kept going back and forth in my head “I should just forget this- it’s her wedding…oh but I’m still all bubbly inside- does she want me to bring a ruler with me?…I should forget it…but so-and-so says I’m not crazy…I’ll get an outside opinion (hells yes TN)” and then I decided that it was all ridiculous and talking it out with the bride was the best thing to do. ;) Screw wedding drama- this is my friend and we are so above this! And…that’s probably too long of a summary.
Moral! Don’t be afraid to talk to friends about sensitive issues just because they’re getting married…makes everyone the more crazy. The wedding industry takes too much out of us as it is.
As another anecdata point, I’m a completely flat girl (I don’t even fit into an A-cup), and I didn’t know about the same-shirt-yields-more-cleavage thing until a friend explicitly told me about it a year or two ago. (I’m 27.) It just never came up. So I would have been horrified if I had been Bride and found out my text had come across as “don’t be slutty,” because that’s not how I would have meant it at all. (If I understood the exchange properly.) Anyway, glad it worked out regardless!