Throwaway account.
As the title says, I’m wondering if I’m overreacting to how my dear friend behaved on her wedding day… namely toward her stepdaughter (9F). I’ve been sitting with this for sometime, the wedding was in April.
I was one of the bridesmaids (30F), and the rest of us, along with the bride (32F), had spent almost 2 years diligently planning this wedding after almost a decade with this man. We put in a lot of time and effort to make sure everything went smoothly, and objectively, it did. We, including the bride, all had extensive event planning & management experience for week long events with triple the guests, so this should have been a walk in the park. We were always easily ahead of schedule, visuals were perfect, and everything was as planned. The only real issue was the bride herself.
She was as I would describe as a tyrant all day. It made the whole experience pretty miserable. Another bridesmaid and I even found ourselves wishing we weren’t there because we were scared of her yelling at us, which felt awful after being so excited for so long and pouring so much love into her and the day.
What’s really bothering me, though, is how she treated her stepdaughter. The kid could do absolutely nothing right. It felt very much like a “children should be seen and not heard” situation, but even being seen seemed to annoy her. She was expected to be perfectly still and “on” the entire time.
Some examples:
- She snapped at her for hugging her dad during their first look because she might “ruin his suit.”
- She kept telling her to smile over and over. If she wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t to be in pictures.
- She wasn’t allowed to eat once her dress was on (even though the rest of us were eating, and I hadn’t seen her eat at all that morning or afternoon).
- Right before walking down the aisle, she snapped at and belittled her in front of everyone.
What really stuck with me is that the stepdaughter didn’t even flinch. She seemed used to being spoken to like that.
For context, this child already has an abusive mother and serious abandonment issues, and my friend has been in her life for most of it. I’ve never personally seen my friend act this way before, but we’re long-distance in the UK (5hr drive), so I don’t see their day-to-day dynamic. I’m also a parent who was abused as a child, which might be part of why this is hitting me so hard. They plan to start having more children.
I can understand that weddings bring out stress and perfectionism (my friend is definitely Type A) and I’ve had people brush it off as “just being a bridezilla,” but this felt like more than that, especially when a child is concerned. I also learned that they can be pretty restrictive and controlling about what she eats, which, combined with the wedding day, didn’t sit right with me.
Since the wedding, she’s been calling it “the best day ever,” which honestly makes it harder for me to process, because she seemed so tense, critical, and unhappy the entire time.
I do plan to talk to her after the honeymoon which they are currently on, but I’m struggling with how to even approach it…or if I even should? Part of me fears this may have permanently changed how I see her. If it had just been how she treated us adults, I think I could brush this off, but I advocate for children before anything else. So many adults early on in my life could have said something to my parents or even just validated me as a child, and didn’t out of fear of upsetting my parents. Then they would disappear from my life because they distanced themselves from my parents. I often wonder if it would have gotten as bad as it eventually did if someone had just said something… or maybe they did, and it was instead my parents that distanced themselves. It’s this thought that makes me most stressed about what to do next.
Am I overreacting?
edit to clarify: they met and got together when stepdaughter was a toddler and dad was fully split from toxic mum.