Fix a friendship after a wedding!! Any advice is welcome!!

Telling us how to post will go over well...

Well after that we didn't talk much and i just felt like i did something wrong by pushing her to get a dress. After we left college i still invited her to the wedding but she didn't come. i still text her every now and then and she will talk to me but not much. any suggestion on how to bring up the past and try and fix this problem if yall think there is one.

Im not trying to do that i just don't want to be judged for trying to ask for advice.

People will judge you for telling us what to think/how to post.

How she spends her money is her business.

I'd reach out and try and spend time with her. Ask her if something is going on.

"Please no judging"

I'm not even going to read the rest of your post because of that.

What happened with the wedding is unfortunate, but it's in the past. Address the elephant in the room and say you're sorry if you put her in an awkward spot for how things played out with the dress. Apologize sincerely. Tell her how you feel. Say you cherish your friendship (if you do) and really want to be close friends again (if you were and if you do want to). If she feels the same you can move forward and be friends. It takes both people to make a friendship work though and sometimes friends just drift apart for good, despite trying to keep that from happening. I'm not saying that will happen, but she has to want the friendship as much as you do.

So, I'm hearing that the bride micro-managed the bridesmaid and judged the bridesmaid's life choices, so the bridesmaid quit the wedding and will no longer talk to the bride. If I was in her place, I probably wouldn't be interested in rekindling the friendship. Move on.

"Please no judging."

Hon, you judged your friend and her expenses. Not cool.

Listen to Sir Richard

ps: Telling people how to post inflames the inflammable (my new mantra here).

You can't dictate how people post.

People drift apart. If you want your friendship to start up again, realize that it's work. And you both have to put that work in, if it's still an important friendship. Sometimes people just grow apart and dragging the whale back into the ocean really isn't worth the effort.

And her decision to get a dog has nothing to do with buying a dress, though it's a convenient thought, isn't it? You can't tell people how to spend their money.

You can't dictate how people post.

People drift apart. If you want your friendship to start up again, realize that it's work. And you both have to put that work in, if it's still an important friendship. Sometimes people just grow apart and dragging the whale back into the ocean really isn't worth the effort.

And her decision to get a dog has nothing to do with buying a dress, though it's a convenient thought, isn't it? You can't tell people how to spend their money.

@Richard I was thinking the same thing.

Just say I'm sorry things went down the way they did and I hope we can move forward and fix our friendship

In the first line you say, "Hi everyone, before I get started I want to say please no judging!"

But then later you say, "well, after we talked I found out that she was getting a dog, in my mind if she had money for a dog she could pay for the dress or at least half of the dress."

Sounds prettyyyyy judgey to me.

Just sayin.'

I know you don't want to hear this but you are definitely in the wrong here. It is very sad that a friendship was damaged over a dress. You have no business getting involved with her finances either.

That being said, if you really do want to be friends with her you need to apologize, and mean it.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I think the big problem here is that you still don't seem to understand that YOU are the one who shit the bed here. Before you can even begin to fix anything, you need to really get it through your head that you treated your friend terribly and she reacted to that poor treatment in a predictable manner--by deciding she was sick of being treated badly and cutting you off. That's what happens. When you are mean to people they don't want to be friends anymore.

And the most baffling thing here is that you threw away this meaningful friendship over nothing. 3 months before the wedding is a perfectly reasonable time frame for buying a bridesmaid dress. If that's when she would have the money to spend on it, that's when she should get it. If she was planning on waling in the day before the wedding and buying something off the rack, people would have a little more sympathy for your reaction (although you would still be in the wrong--if she shows up on the day of the wedding wearing the appropriate dress, she has done her part.)

Come to think of it, did you even ask her privately how much she was comfortable spending on a dress for the wedding? Or did you just pick something that was beyond her means and expect her to just suck it up and pull the money our of...somewhere? Her money and her budget are her business. It is wildly unreasonable of you to expect her to sacrifice her chance to have a pet so that she can buy a dress on your schedule.

So what to do now? Think about what you did. REALLY think about it. Feel bad. Sit with those feeling for a while. Then, give her a call. Tell her how much you miss her and that you now realize what a terrible friend you were to her in the runup to your wedding. Apologize. Sincerely. From the heart. Then offer to take her out for coffee. Catch up about your lives. Work at rebuilding a connection.

Good luck.

Honestly if my choices were get a dog or get a bm dress....I'm getting a dog. Call your friend go out to lunch and apologize.

Yes i did ask all my BM. I picked a few dresses and allow them to pick what one they wanted. I even gave them 6 month to get the money together and told them all if they could afford to pelase tell me and i would find something else. But no one did that. Before i even asked everyone i thought in my mind if i was a BM which i have been a few times i would want extra time to get the money together. I can see how i treated her wrong. I was just tryong to make all my BM happy and most of them wanted to buy their dresses when we went to try them on exept her. And i know how she spends her money isnt my business. I just knew she was going to need extra time to get money together and it was like i still wasnt giving her enough. All my other BM wanted to get 20% off that is what i thought they had all decided on at least i thought.

My dog means the world to me, and my world would be empty without a dog in it. I would absolutely prioritize adding a dog to my family over buying a dress. Love and companionship......a dress. If I were criticized for choosing companionship over a dress, I would drop that so-called friend in a second.

You don't sound from your post like you truly acknowledge that you were wrong here. I suspect that if the friendship is fixable, admitting your error is the first step.

Dogs over BM dresses.

Just sayin'....

"...i thought in my mind if i was a BM which i have been a few times i would want extra time to get the money together."

That's the thing, Hon. What we think and do doesn't always mean what others think and o.

I can see you have learned an invaluable lesson here, though. Come back and let us know how it goes