Woman called 'cruel' when she charges pregnant cousin for last minute wedding dress.
When this woman feels guilty about her pregnant cousin, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for charging my pregnant cousin for a new wedding dress after she told me about her pregnancy last minute?'
I 29f own a bridal shop. My cousin Lucy 27f is getting married in 2 months and I designed and tailored her wedding dress as a gift. She paid me for the materials. It will take another week to finish the dress, and I constantly update Lucy on the status...
of her dress and asked if she is happy at every stage and if she had any more ideas. She would make the odd comment, but never anything major. The dress in total took me just over 4 months.
Last weekend, her and her fiance hosted a family dinner, and at the end, Lucy announced she was pregnant. At the dinner, I congratulated her and her fiance.
She came to my store with my aunt that week for her final fitting. I again mentioned the pregnancy and asked how far along she was. She was 12 weeks along and told me how hard to keep the pregnancy a secret.
I told her the dress wouldn't fit her at 20ish weeks during the wedding and she said she knew and asked me to retailor the dress to fit her new proportions as she would showing heavily at the wedding.
I told her I can't do that due to the intricate beading that I will have to carefully remove and reattach. I told her she might as well get a new dress as it would be easier for me to start from scratch and essentially I was just making her a second wedding dress.
She agreed and then I gave her the invoice for a new dress. I gave her a breakdown and charged her for materials, tailoring, labour and overtime (still with a discount). I will have to work outside my hours to make her the new dress on time as I have a busy schedule with existing clients that pay full price
I told her if she had told me about her pregnancy from the second she had found out, I might've been able to adjust the dress then, but it is complete now. She said her fiance wanted to keep it private, which I understand, but I wouldn't have told anyone, and I only needed to know for the dress purposes.
She called me TA for not understanding where she is coming from and said she will only pay for materials. I refused to back down, and told her that this close to the wedding she will struggle to finalize a new dress she likes and get it tailored in time as she will be pregnant.
I also refused to give her the dress sketch, as it was my design and I didn't want her to replicate my work elsewhere. She left angry with her mom who later called me up to say Lucy is upset about not having a dress this close to the wedding and that I am being cruel because this stress is not good for the baby. AITA?
Let's see what readers had to say.
ladymac writes:
NTA.you gave her a free wedding dress. I think it's fine to say 'i don't have time and resources to make a completely new wedding dress for free'.
But, I would give her the dress that you made and give her the option to go to someone else to get it tailored, if she's stuck on that. That way you don't have to deal with her anymore and she can pin the failure/frustration of the dress on someone else.
above all, i just encourage you to try to find a peaceful resolution here. avoiding drama has its own value. Not saying do work for free, but have a meeting with her, her mother and her fiance and really try to find a resolution - and help them to understand your limitations and all the work you've done out of kindness up to this point.
sheabands writes:
NTA. Does she think David's Bridal would just fork over an upsized dress at no cost to her after her original purchase has been altered? Ha! The audacity of her to assume that because you have a personal relationship that you should eat the costs and donate your time to make her a whole new dress. The nerve.
huckleberr writes:
NTA. At all. I get the keeping it a secret until 12 weeks, because that is the most dangerous time for a pregnancy. But situations that a pregnancy may change the circumstances of, affected parties should know ASAP.
Most people I know (including myself 2x) aren’t heavily showing at 20 weeks - I just went back and looked at photos of myself at 20 weeks and I had to pull my shirts tight to my stomach to see the “bump” - perhaps it won’t be an extreme showing at that time (trying to be positive here lol)?