WIBTA for uninviting a friend to my wedding for how she's reacting to details I share?
This will probably be a long one so please bear with me. English isn’t my primary language, so if there are mistakes I’m sorry.
To give the outlines: my husband and I got married in a civil ceremony in July 2026 and we will have another wedding celebration with vows and a free ceremony in spring of 2027.
Both of those celebrations have been planned to be very small and intimate with less than 30 people each. My Husband has a rough relationship with his family so we opted to have them at the civil ceremony but leave them out of our wedding weekend next year, that’s why we had two celebrations. This post is about the second celebration.
We love to host so we tried to plan in a way that everyone feels as comfortable and at home as possible. We rented an estate for the entire weekend and it has more than enough space for everyone to sleep there, the cost is covered by us. Everyone has their own space, bedroom, their own bathroom and access to amenities like a whirlpool and a gym. Food, beverage and entertainment will be provided for the entire weekend and the only thing that guests have to do on their own is get there (the longest travel is going to be a 4 hour car ride). We also helped with organizing carpools for everyone that wanted that. Our dress code is formal for the day of the wedding celebration and we feel like we are providing an experience that fits that dress code (five course plated meal with wine pairing, live band, seafood bar, passed appetizers, open bar with a mixologist who makes custom drinks and more). We indicated seven colors on the dress code (dark green, green, purple, blush pink, orange, blue and dark blue). When we got asked if it had ti be the exact color we told everyone that we’d love for the guests to be colorful while my husband and I are in black and white so if they preferred another color we’d be totally okay with that as well. Pretty much everyone has been thrilled about everything we’ve revealed so far and some even said that it feels like a planned vacation and that it’s a highlight they’re looking forward to.
Now onto the issue: A good friend of mine has made me feel incredibly insecure about all our plans on multiple occasions and now I’m playing with the idea of uninviting her, but I’m unsure how to approach that and if its the way to go.
I’ll give some context about our relationship and then I’ll rehash what’s happened with the wedding.
My friend and I are both still in university and that’s where we met. We’ve known each other for about five years now and have become so close that I even considered asking her to be my maid of honor. Our partners with work full-time, our lives are very similar. We’re both on the pass to get quite challenging degrees and that’s something we bonded over. We can talk about pretty much everything and I appreciate her a lot. Sometimes she can be quite hard with her judgement and very sure that was she consideres right is ultimately right.
The wedding issues started pretty much at the beginning. The first time I told her about our wedding plans and that it might be a destination wedding she reacted quite harshly and asked me how we could even consider that and if I thought about the environmental effects of the travel. Our loved ones are quite scattered so people would have to travel either way. The longest guest travel would’ve actually been longer getting married at home. After I explained that to her she understood but still seemed like she didn’t like the Idea.
The second time we had a bigger discussion was around the menu. She has some dietary restrictions so I went over the menu with her before signing it off with our amazing chef. She’s not a vegetarian but her partner and several of our guests are so we opted to have one vegetarian menu and one with fish and meat. We don’t have any vegan guests but if we had any we would’ve had a third menu. Several guests have allergies and restrictions and all of that will be taken into account and everyone gets a menu catered to their needs. After I told her the menu she wanted to switch to the vegetarian one and we made it possible. A couple days after her partner contacted me and asked how we could serve the omnivore option for so many people with a good conscience. Our chef works with local organic products and we carefully selected the menus so that everything is high quality and the vegetarian menu is as good as the omnivore one (so not just a plate of boiled veggies, tofu and cheese). No one has to eat meat if they don’t want to. I later spoke to her about it and she said that she didn’t think I’d serve meat if so many people are present (15 PAX omnivore) and that she had to tell someone but asked her partner not to say anything, which obviously still happened. I let it go and didn’t ask further to not ruin ist for me but now every time I think about our menu I feel weird.
Third time was the most recent one. I had just been dress shopping with my mother and she had complained that she couldn’t choose anything creme colored. I told my friend about it because my mothers comment made me quite sad since anything white should really be the brides color to which she said that our dress code is putting an incredible amount of pressure on all our guests. I was really taken aback by her statement since I know she has a dark green formal gown that she wears at weddings normally that would match the dress code perfectly. Apparently that doesn’t fit her anymore and now she wants to sew herself a new gown (she’s an incredible hobby seamstress). She said that our color palette is too restrictive for that and that she normally only wears black and now we’re forcing her and all the guests to get outfits in the right colors. She knows dress codes that indicate formality levels but the giving a color scheme is outrageous and pressuring and she doesn’t think that’s normal. She finished the whole thing off by telling me it’s probably because we „grew up in different classes“ which really isn’t true. I grew up a little all over Europe because of my Dads job so I saw more of that part of the world but bottom line we both grew up upper middle class, she just didn’t move as much. I told her that were not gonna stand there with color cards and a bodyguard to control what people wear and that I can’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to nor do I want to do that. Now she wants to wear black or midnight blue.
Those were the three big issues. There were a lot more small jabs here and there but that’s the most important ones. I know just reading that paints a picture that isn’t very beautiful so I want to point out that we both still really appreciate each other. Her present to me was making my wedding dress for the civil ceremony (I of course paid for the materials) in which I felt stunning and am incredibly thankful for. I made and remade her engagement ring (she didn’t like the first design she came up with when it was on her finger) and also made their wedding bands (they aren’t engaged or married yet but the rings are there when the time is right for them:)) So we both love each other in a way that we don’t mind spending hours of our time to make something special and beautiful for the other. We spend a lot of time together in general and I’d consider her one of my closets friends but every time I think about sharing details of the wedding I just feel a little sick because I don’t want her to ruin another aspect of it for me. I know that sounds horrible but I was so excited about the wedding before all of this happened and now I just think about all the details she’ll think are too much or too extravagant. It’s a small wedding, we’re foodies so the majority of the budget went into food and beverages which we really loved at our tasting and I put a lot of time into details (personalized fonts, hand embroidered guest towels etc.) and I love that. Everyone else is looking forward to it but I feel like she resents it for some reason. She isn’t in a financially unstable situation where she can’t afford a dress and there are no other costs included (no vacation time either since it’s a weekend and the Monday is a public holiday).
We tried to include every dietary restriction she has they get a free ride there and if they didn’t want all that they could’ve RSVPed no. My maid of honor suggested that she doesn’t want to come but can’t say it and now wants me to uninvited her. I feel so torn about everything.
WIBTA if I uninvited her because of how she made me feel so far? Any advice or input is appreciated.
To everyone who made it this far, thank you for reading and all the best for whatever wedding planning or marriage stage you’re in :) Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
EDIT: I saw that a lot of people think that a color palette for the dress code is inappropriate or obnoxious or using people as props. This was never our intention. I've talked about that to almost all of our guests because they are very involved and excited about the celebration and no one thought of it that way besides the friend in the post. It's also something that I've encountered at all the weddings I've been to before so I didn't think of it as unusual. I've now learned that this is in fact not the standard and will keep it in mind for the future. Thank you for the input.