When it comes to weddings, there are countless details that you need to think about when planning the big day. Color schemes, makeup, flowers, buffets or sit-down-dinners, the list goes on. One thing that never really requires much thought is having the ones you love, be a part of your big day.
One mother wrote to an advice column with an absolutely horrific letter regarding her daughter’s bridesmaid that has sent the internet into a tailspin.
Often, advice columnists, like Dear Prudence, receive letters asking for advice or moral guidance on difficult situations. However, other times, they receive letters that are so shocking that you have to wonder if someone this awful could actually exist. They do.
Dear Prudence is a column written by Mallory Ortberg for Slate magazine. She received a letter from a woman regarding her daughter’s bridesmaid choice that left her with her jaw on the floor.
The initial letter starts off in a normal fashion, then takes a deeply disturbing and seriously unclassy turn.
Q. Daughter’s friend being in wedding: My 27-year-old daughter and her best friend, Katie, have been best friends since they were 4. Katie practically grew up in our house and is like a daughter to me. My daughter recently got engaged to her fiancé and announced that Katie would be the maid of honor (Katie’s boyfriend is also a good friend of my future son-in-law). The problem is that Katie walks with a pretty severe limp due to a birth defect (not an underlying medical issue). She has no problem wearing high heels and has already been fitted for the dress, but I still think it will look unsightly if she’s in the wedding procession limping ahead of my daughter. I mentioned this to my daughter and suggested that maybe Katie could take video or hand out programs (while sitting) so she doesn’t ruin the aesthetic aspect of the wedding. My daughter is no longer speaking to me (we were never that close), but this is her big wedding and I want it to be perfect. All of the other bridesmaids will look gorgeous walking down the aisle with my daughter. Is it wrong to have her friend sit out?
Yep. You read that correctly. The nerve of this woman was incredibly appalling to Dear Prudence; she had to have been left wondering if she was talking to an evil villain from a movie. The offensive words were shocking.
Mallory Ortberg, aka Dear Prudence, tried her best to respond with tact to the horrific letter, and she did so in the most amazing way.
A: I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around this letter. I encourage you to reread it and to ask yourself that time-honored question, “Do I sound like a villain in a Reese Witherspoon movie?” You are, presumably, sympathetic to your own situation and are invested in making sure that you come across as reasonable and as caring as possible, and yet you have written a letter indicting yourself at every turn. This girl is “like a daughter” to you, and yet you want to shove her to the side of your other daughter’s wedding just because she walks with a limp. Your daughter’s wedding will be perfect with Katie as a full and honored member of the bridal party. A limp is not a fly in the ointment; it’s a part of Katie’s life. It is not only wrong to have asked your daughter to consider excluding her best friend over this—it is ableist, and cruel, and it speaks to a massive failure of empathy, compassion, and grace on your part. You must and should apologize to your daughter immediately, and I encourage you to profoundly reconsider the orientation of your heart.
Although the response to the Momzilla’s letter was absolute perfection, with no B.S. at all, the internet wasn’t going to let this slide without chiming in.
What do you think of this mom’s surpsing, advice-seeking letter? The Tweet that made it viral is below and the Twittersphere has officially taken it upon themselves to be advice columnists of their own.
I am no longer of this earth. This letter has killed me. https://t.co/McnBl7wsfS pic.twitter.com/vAK3xsWiVh
— Alex Trimboli (@Nicole_Cliffe) September 6, 2017
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