A woman has sparked a debate after she left a dry wedding early with the bride’s friends to go to bars.
In a recent post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole?” Reddit forum, a woman recalled how she went to a wedding out of town for a friend from college. She also noted that she attended the event with her husband, while their children were staying with their grandparents.
“We got a Vrbo [vacation rental home] with another couple I went to college with for a few days,” she wrote. “My husband and I don’t have a ton of time to ourselves away from the kids, so we were excited to let loose.”
She explained that in the invitation, it said the wedding went until 11pm, with “an after party” at the venue. She also described the venue as “a gorgeous mansion” that the bride and groom were staying at for the night, before leaving for their honeymoon the next morning.
The woman noted that it wasn’t until she arrived at the event that she and her husband learned that it’s a dry wedding, meaning no alcohol is served, since the groom was two years sober. However, she confessed that she wasn’t thrilled about the dry wedding, which is why she mentioned to a few other guests that she’d be leaving early.
“We were admittedly bummed,” she continued. “When we found out there was no alcohol, we told people we were going to some bars after and not going to the after party. We left the wedding at 9.30pm because we were itching to go out and the wedding was boring.”
According to the Reddit poster, her friends from college also left around 9.30 and “went out”. In addition, the bride’s “friend group didn’t stay” for the after party, while the groom’s friend did, so “the optics were very lopsided” at the event. She acknowledged that she heard the details of the after party from the bride, who was upset at her friends for leaving the wedding early.
“[The bride] said that she didn’t feel supported and felt like we were [shaming] her now husband for his sobriety,” she concluded. “I told her that she was reading too much into it. We just wanted to go out. She is especially mad at me as I’m looked at as the ringleader of this outing.”
The post has quickly gone viral, with more than 6,200 upvotes. There are some mixed reactions in the comments, with multiple people criticizing the Reddit user for not only leaving the wedding early to go to bars, but also for seemingly encouraging the bride’s friends to do the same.
“I understand that you don’t get much time, just the two of you away from the kids, but you should be able to have fun without alcohol. You were with all your college friends. You guys can’t have fun together without drinking?” one person asked.
“That’s kind of a crappy way to treat a ‘friend,’” another added. “Basically, you all abandoned the wedding celebration, and I’m guessing she was looking forward to celebrating her wedding with her ‘friends.’ Hence why you were invited. And it was a reasonable expectation of hers that you actually wanted to celebrate her marriage, since you went.”
“I’m going to get downvoted because people seem to hate dry weddings, but as someone with a partner in recovery, I will never understand why people can’t go without for one night to support someone you supposedly care about,” a third wrote. “You picked getting drunk over spending time with your friends for the entire reason you were out to begin with.”
However, other people came to the woman’s defense, claiming that she left the event at a “reasonable time” and that the couple should have mentioned in the invitation that it was a dry wedding.
“10pm is a perfectly reasonable time to leave a wedding. Some guests started filtering out of my wedding at like 8pm, and I didn’t cry about it; just hugged them and sincerely thanked them for coming,” one wrote.
“At my wedding, we had people leaving earlier than that for various reasons, and it’s perfectly OK,” another added. “If you’re planning something that’s lasting until late at night, it’s your job as a host to entertain your guests. If they aren’t entertained and leaving on mass before it’s over, then it’s on you
“They definitely should have added this information to the invitation. Not that you wouldn’t have gone to their wedding but you would have gone without the expectation of drinking I guess,” one Redittor wrote. “Dry weddings are successful when guests know what they’re getting into. They kind of created the failure of their party.”
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