The Bridesmaid-To-Ex-Best-Friend Pipeline

Your wedding day is supposed to bring everyone you love together, but according to TikTok, it often marks the end of lifelong friendships. While many make it to the event without a scrape, some bridal parties experience reality TV-level plot twists, dramatic exits, and unforgivable low blows. Though it may seem counterintuitive, the bridesmaid-to-ex-best-friend pipeline is very real, and it’s more common than you might think.

Jaina Azalea, 28, a bride who lost her best friend in the lead-up to her wedding, posted a TikTok in February exploring the reasons so many friends part ways during the planning process. She points to envy and stress-induced feuds as some of the top contenders, citing her own best friend who backed out of her wedding and ghosted her completely.

Then there’s Thu, who goes by @lazygirlglam22 on the app. “Let’s talk about how weddings can be the end of some friendships,” she said in a June 23 video. Thu suspects money is often an issue, pointing to her own experience with a friend who expected her to spend thousands of dollars on a last-minute bachelorette trip. The ask highlighted how lopsided the friendship had always been. As a result, Thu ended their relationship — and didn’t go to the wedding.

Alexandra Hayes Robinson, an advice columnist who addressed the subject of wedding stress during the July 23 episode of her podcast Hello Hayes, suspects the stress of planning emphasizes preexisting wounds that have always been lurking beneath the surface, even in seemingly perfect friendships.

“We have a hard time confronting painful truths in our lives,” she tells Bustle. “Weddings — and particularly [drama around the] guest list, maid of honor, bridesmaid, and bachelorette party — force us to see things as they are. The high-intensity emotions surrounding a wedding or engagement can make these friendship reckonings all the more explosive.”

While your nuptials are supposed to be magical, for some, the sound of wedding bells is more like a death knell. Below, brides and bridesmaids who have seen it all share how weddings lead to best-friend breakups.

A Wedding Day Heist

Being in a wedding is expensive, but Rhia, 29, never expected her best friend to literally rob her. The pair had been best friends since childhood, after all. “She and I were so close her parents had photos of me around their house and my parents had photos of her,” she tells Bustle.

As Rhia’s maid of honor, her friend was responsible for booking vendors, like the photographer and florist. “I gave her $3,000 for deposits ... and she was assuring me everything was ready. She even sent me pictures of things, like centerpieces and signs for the reception.”

Then, a week before the big day, Rhia realized her friend hadn’t actually booked anything. “She had been sending me fake photos from Google and wedding blogs.”

She had been sending me fake photos from Google and wedding blogs.

While Rhia made do — she gathered wildflowers for her bouquet and asked her sister to take photographs — she still has no idea why her lifelong friend stole money and went MIA. She didn’t attend the wedding and she never apologized.

“[It’s been years] and I haven’t spoken to her,” Rhia says. “I still don’t know why she did it. Her parents paid me back and they also came to my wedding, and my husband and I joke about it now. We say it’s like the plot of a Hallmark movie. But it was so bizarre at the time — and it sucks not having closure.”

More Money, More Problems

For Thu, reaching for her wallet was nothing new. She often found herself spoiling her friend Jenna* throughout the decade-long friendship. “I celebrated her graduating school with a girls’ trip, an expensive gift, a dinner, and I also bought her a round of drinks at her engagement party,” she says. “The total cost was over $3,000 dollars.”

Thu was happy to continue being generous, but as Jenna’s wedding planning wore on, the cracks in their friendship started to show, especially when Jenna waited too long to plan her bachelorette party, thus forcing Thu to back out due to pricey flights.

Big events unfortunately and fortunately show the flaws in relationships we otherwise wouldn’t see.

When Jenna got upset, Thu instantly realized Jenna had never spent a dime on her. She also often forgot important dates, like Thu’s birthday. After a few attempts to repair their connection, Thu decided not to attend the wedding, and the two haven’t spoken since.

In her comments section on TikTok, one person said, “Big events unfortunately and fortunately show the flaws in relationships we otherwise wouldn’t see.”

From BFF To Bridezilla

The stress of the wedding planning process can bring out the worst in people. But Nina, 27, never predicted her best friend of a decade, Laura*, would morph into a bridezilla. “We really considered each other sisters,” Nina says. “She was my ride-or-die.”

As Laura began to plan her wedding, Nina watched as Laura’s normally sweet personality did a complete 180. She picked fights, complained 24/7, and cried that no one was helping her, even though Nina says she had been by her side all along.

At a pre-wedding get-together, Laura even snapped at Nina to get off her phone. “I felt sick being there,” she says. “It got to the point I was scared to say or do anything wrong.”

It’s so f*cked that this process turns so many people into monsters.

After months of stressful interactions, Laura eventually sent a breakup text to Nina, ending their friendship. “It’s so f*cked that this process turns so many people into monsters,” she says. “I mean, yes, your wedding’s very special and I love that for you, but it’s just one day and it’s not the end of the f*cking world.”

According to Hayes, many brides act like this because they feel protective of their fairy-tale experience. “I think it relates back to the lie so many women are told that your wedding is the most important day of your life,” she says. “It’s not.”

Ghosted And Gutted

Azalea and her friend Sarah* had been inseparable since they were 16. “About three years before I got engaged, I even [helped her move and] drove with her across the country.” But after the move, the friends started to drift apart.

Things went downhill even more when Sarah found out about Azalea’s engagement via Instagram. “I had shared a story frame of [me and my partner], but we had probably only been engaged for about 10 minutes max,” she says. “I hadn’t had the chance to make my rounds with friends and family.” Immediately, Sarah started acting cold and distant. The shift was especially obvious during Azalea’s bachelorette weekend in the Catskills.

She was my oldest friend. Now we no longer talk.

Instead of celebrating with the group, Sarah sat apart from everyone else, and eventually isolated herself in her hotel room. After Sarah flew back home, Azalea offered to talk about the weirdness of the weekend. “At this point, my wedding was five weeks away,” she says. “She had already RSVP’d, but by the week before the wedding I still hadn’t heard from her.”

Azalea sent one last text asking if she was coming, but Sarah simply replied “no” — and that was the end of that. “She was my oldest friend. Now we no longer talk.”

In her TikTok, Azalea talks about the mental fatigue that comes with planning a wedding, and how it’s something that can highlight who’s there for you and who isn’t. While some friends understand that you’re busy or that your roles are shifting, others take it personally.

It’s a time that makes it clear which friendships are true and which ones you need to let go.

According to Hayes, this is yet another factor that drives friends apart. “Most of us have a really hard time examining our relationships on a regular-ish basis: noticing how things are shifting, making the changes we need to prevent those shifts from becoming long-term endings,” says Hayes. Weddings highlight these shifts — they also show which relationships are worth saving.

Looking back on her pre-wedding days, Azalea agrees. “It’s a time that makes it clear which friendships are true and which ones you need to let go of as you enter this next phase of life.”

Stressed Out And Lashing Out

While good friends will try to be understanding, sometimes wedding stress and drama is too much to handle. “My friend kept screaming at me [as she got ready to walk down the aisle],” says Brittany, 36. “She was bossing me around and telling me what to do, and I hated every minute of it.”

Brittany, who met Kim* while working at a pizza shop in high school, never expected the experience to be so toxic when she agreed to be a bridesmaid. “She didn’t thank me once, even though I did everything for her: the shower, the bachelorette, pre-wedding makeovers,” she says. “On the morning of the wedding, while we were getting ready, you could cut the tension in the room with a knife.”

On the morning of her wedding, you could cut the tension in the room with a knife.

Their friendship never fully recovered after the “I do’s” and the two lost touch soon after. Now, a decade later, Brittany still doesn’t speak to Kim. “I have no interest in reaching out,” she says. “I can’t get over how she acted that day.”

While ups and downs are normal in any kind of relationship, bridal parties have a way of tearing friends apart — or weeding out the ones that were already hanging on by a thread. But sometimes, that’s for the best. “It seems like my relationship was eventually going to end,” Thu tells Bustle. “The wedding just sped up the process.”

*Names have been changed