Weddings are essentially performative ceremonies of love. They’re meant to be shared with the people who matter in your life, and adding a particular relation or friend to your wedding party necessarily makes them a part of that performance. This bride is facing a predicament: should she let her hated sister pay to play?
In a delightfully insane Reddit thread, original poster Richbiche described the family dynamics surrounding her impending nuptials. The backgrounds for her two sisters, Mary and Anne, sound like the character break down for a soap opera. One is evil and rich, one is good and poor. Sweet Anne was OP’s pick for Maid of Honor, obviously, but then Gilded Mary made an indecent proposal: $10,000 for one day as her Maid of Honor. Gasp! But why?
My older sister Mary was always daddy’s little girl and she grew up cruel, selfish, and conceited just like him. My little sister and I have never been close with her or our father but we’ve always been there for each other.
When my father passed last year he left Mary the bulk of his estate. Mary is flashing about town with the cash while my sister and I have been struggling to help our ailing mother get by. Mary visits our mom once in awhile and spends her time there making the kind of cruel comments our father made and texting. I really don’t like her but she mostly ignored me until now.
My younger sister Anne has always been the great beauty of the three of us and my older sister has always reserved the best of her vitriol for Anne. I know showing up Anne is probably the only reason Mary wants to be my maid of honor.
For the OP, ten grand is a lot of money, and she’s sure Anne would understand her taking it if she explained the situation. She doesn’t want her older sister to mar what should be the happiest day of her life, “But every financial difficulty I have in the future I’m always going to be haunted by the thought that I should have sold out my wedding day for my future.”
Commenters seem split, but most can’t believe Richbiche would want the $10,000 just to make her wedding fancy—which she has repeatedly explained is not the case (that is, presuming this whole story is real in the first place). Her wedding will be a potluck in the park. The money will give her and her partner and even Anne some breathing room as they continue to care for her invalid mother and work multiple jobs. Others suggest it’s a set up and Mary has no intention of paying, to which the OP responded that she’s done this kind of thing before:
She paid my brother to let her come to his graduation and make a speech, she paid up. She paid Anne to let her be a chaperone on her senior trip instead of mom, she paid up. She pays my brother for information on what Anne will be wearing to certain events, Anne knows, she always pays up. When we were little she would give me candy to tell her what Anne’s diary said, Anne made stuff up for me to tell her, she always paid what she thought she owed.
The post has garnered thousands of comments, though there’s no clear answer on what Richbiche will do. She says, “At the end of the day the people I really love will still know they’re really loved and Mary still wouldn’t able to say that…. But I still don’t want to do it.”
