Bride gets ‘upset’ after seamstress friend refuses to make her wedding dress for free

A bride and her seamstress friend are in the middle of a row as the bride feels that her friend should create her wedding dress for free.

The seamstress said that she offered to make the dress for £600, a quarter of the price she would charge others, because they are pals.

However the bride feels that this should count as a wedding gift, and instead wants the seamstress to make the dress for the cost of materials.

Taking to Reddit’s Am I The A**hole subreddit, the seamstress explained that they are used to feeling like a “personal seamstress” for their friends, but this was taken to new heights when a friend got engaged.

The bride, who is also pregnant, sent the Redditor an idea of the type of dress she had in mind. Although it wasn’t simple, it wasn’t the most complex design they had every tackled either.

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

They explained: “I told her I could for sure do that for her and it’d cost £600, she was shocked at this and told me she thought I’d do it for free and she’d just pay for materials, I pointed out how many hours this would take me to do and all the hand embroidery needed, then I explained I was doing this for a quarter of the price I’d charge other people because she’s my friend.”

However at this point the bride became “very upset”, telling them how much stress she’s been under due to the wedding, pregnancy and money being tight. The bride suggested this should be the Redditor’s wedding gift to her and said “how great it’d look in my portfolio”.

They continued: “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to want some money for this...but other friends are telling me it’s horrible how I’m wanting to charge her for this and it’s not like I’m a high end bridal shop...am I being unreasonable?”

The comments were firmly on the original poster’s side.

The top comment with 4,500 upvotes tells the Redditor that they are not being unreasonable, adding: “It takes time to do the work. And you already lowered the price. I don’t like how they tried to use their pregnancy to get you to do it for free.” Responding, the seamstress said: “Some of my former classmates would charge extra for the pregnancy as it’ll mean more adjustments than normal over the coming weeks. I don’t agree with it but I know that’s a thing.”

Another commenter pointed out that something looking good in a portfolio won’t necessarily pay the bills. The Reddit replied: “Yeah I wish it did, I’d live like a Queen with my portfolio in that case.”

While responding to other comments, the original poster said “there is no way in hell” her friend would find the dress cheaper than £600, saying they thought it was “reasonable” given all of the hand embroidery her friend wants.

Another commenter wrote: “She wants you to do lots of hand embroidery for free? For just the cost of materials, because her money is tight? Hell no. People short on funds need to moderate their decoration dreams, and if all those friends think otherwise they need to pick up a needle and thread and get embroidering. NTA [not the a**hole].”

This bride’s attitude reminds us of another story we spotted on Reddit recently about how a bride still wanted to borrow a guest’s dress, despite disinviting her.

Oof.