
Weddings are a lot of fun for the couple getting married, the people in the wedding party, and the guests. But even with all the fun memories that will be made, there’s a lot of planning and stress that comes before the wedding day even arrives. And if the bride getting married tends to be less of a “go with the flow” kind of person, there can be a whole lot of tension — especially when areas the bride was intending to control aren’t in her control anymore.
That’s what happened to one bride who was furious at her teen cousin who changed her look before the wedding where she was going to be the flower girl. The teen (who we will call OP in this retelling), didn’t have any control over her look changing — she was diagnosed with cancer and treatment meant her appearance was going to change. She was worried about how that might affect her cousin's wedding.
A required style change caused some strain between herself and her cousin that OP needed to get some advice on.
Posting to Reddit’s AITA community, OP gave the details on what went down before she walked down as a flower girl in her cousin’s wedding.
“My cousin, Delaney(24F), is getting married soon and I(13F) was asked to be the flower girl in her wedding,” the teen began her post. “I know I’m a bit old for it, but I’m the youngest girl on that side of the family.”
She was excited for the wedding, but things came crashing down about a month later.
“Around a month after being asked to be the flower girl, I was diagnosed with Anaplastic Ependymoma Grade 3,” OP shared. “I started chemotherapy, and my hair started falling out pretty quickly.”
Losing her hair due to treatment for her cancer was likely very traumatic for the teen.
But even still, she was worried about how her hair loss was going to impact her cousin’s wedding day. “I called Delaney and asked her what the hell I was supposed to do about my hair,” OP recalled, “and she told me that it’d be fine, and just to leave it alone for as long I could.”
OP and her family knew that with the rate her hair was falling out from chemo, it wouldn’t take long until most of it was gone. “We all knew my hair was probably not going [to] last till the wedding day,” she shared. So they tried to be proactive. “My brother ordered me a wig online,” OP wrote.
“The wig looked a lot like my actual hair,” which was a comfort to her and gave OP hope that she would still look OK to be a flower girl. “My hair continued coming out in clumps and was getting extremely tangled and was just really uncomfortable,” she added.
Although OP knew that the chemo meant she was likely to lose all of her hair, the situation got even worse.
“No one ever told me that losing my hair would be physically painful,” she wrote.
It didn’t take long for OP to realize that she would need to say goodbye to her hair.
“Eventually, a couple days before the bridal shower and rehearsal dinner (they happened the same day),” OP explained, “nearly half of my hair had come out, and I was so sick of the hot mess that my hair had become that I just cut all my hair off.”
When it was time to attend the rehearsal dinner, OP intended to get help from some guests.
“The day of the rehearsal dinner, I wore my wig so that Braelyn, the family friend that Delaney had asked to be her hair stylist, could figure out how to style it,” OP shared. She was trying to make sure that everything worked out flawlessly when she was part of her cousin’s wedding party.
“Delaney walked in as Braelyn was showing me how to use wig glue,” OP explained, “and absolutely lost it.”
Her cousin asked OP what was up with her changing her hair, even though she should have known already.
“She asked me why I didn’t have hair and I told her ‘I have cancer, I lost my hair,’” OP explained, but that didn’t matter. “She kept berating me and eventually I admitted that I had shaved my head because of how awful my hair looked.”
After OP admitted that her hair had thinned from the cancer treatment, her cousin really went in on her. “She called me a selfish brat and said that I didn’t have her permission to do anything drastic with my hair before her wedding,” the teen recalled.
After sharing what happened, OP turned it over to Reddit to let her know if she was in the wrong.
“OP should tell her parents what happened and (hopefully) they will stick up for her,” one person replied. “I bet the family friend/stylist was APPALLED at what the bride was saying to OP and I wish she spoke up about it for OP.”
“This makes me so angry. Screw the bride. You have f—ing cancer,” another Redditor shared. “At 13. And you have a wig. What’s the problem. I’m so livid right now I’m trying really hard not to swear while talking to a young lady. I can’t believe this bridezilla nonsense.”
“She is a selfish and cruel bridezilla,” wrote someone else. “Tell her that if she cannot understand what you are going through then you cannot be part of her wedding.”
“Who the hell berates someone with cancer for shaving their head?!” wrote another commenter.
Reddit was pretty firm and united in believing that OP was not wrong in this situation. Instead, her cousin should be ashamed of herself.
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