‘My vegan friend pulled out of our wedding for this bizarre reason’

“She is being super entitled,” an observer wrote.

Laura Jackel

4 min read

June 26, 2024 - 9:07PM

Image: iStock

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Planning a wedding is a huge task with a lot of moving parts: There’s the outfit planning, the venue hire, flower arrangements and finally - the catering.

With some weddings hosting well over one hundred guests, there can be a lot of dietary requirements to take into account. And as one 27-year-old bride recently found out, this can be trickier than it seems.

Posting to a popular forum for feedback on her actions, the bride starts by sharing some background.

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Image: iStock

"She was excited to come"

“I got married recently and I invited a friend and her partner, and she was excited to come,” the woman explains of her pal who lives overseas and was flying to the celebration.

“We asked seven months before the wedding about dietary needs, and she told us her and her partner would need vegan options.

“Since my dinner included veggie options, I (wrongly) assumed the caterer could also do vegan ones, but when I asked six weeks out from the wedding I learned they couldn’t.”

While she confesses she should have confirmed these details with the caterer earlier, unfortunately she says she was busy and the prep was delayed.

While six weeks still seems like plenty of time to come up with a solution, it all went downhill from there.

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"I offered to buy something from a supermarket"

“I informed my friend, saying I was sorry and initially asking her if she had ideas about what we could do (maybe I was in the wrong there), and then offering to cook something myself or buy something from a supermarket.

“But the conversation turned quite cold, and the next day she said she decided not to come to the wedding, or to the bachelorette that was happening the following week (even though there was no catering issue there).

“She said her decision was final and we could speak after the wedding, as she didn’t want to upset me before the day.”

The bride says that after a couple of days she asked her friend if she could help her to understand her drastic decision for not coming to the big day.

“She said she found it disrespectful that I didn’t have a suitable vegan option for her and her partner so close to the date, even though they told me with plenty of notice.

“I felt extremely hurt and blindsided, especially since I feel she didn’t give me a chance to find a solution together.

“I kind of understand not coming to the wedding (even though I’m vegetarian and attended plenty of weddings that didn’t have veggie options, but that’s her call) but not skipping the bachelorette, since we could easily have planned for vegan food.”

“Now I’m not sure I want to be her friend anymore. Am I the Asshole?”

"It's about the friend, not the food"

The thousands of comments were very mixed with many supporting the disappointed bride and questioning her vegan friend’s strict and inflexible stance.

“You made every effort to offer alternatives, but your 'friend' was more concerned about the day working for her, rather than for the bride and groom,” said one poster.

A vegan user weighed in with empathy: “I'm vegan and I'd rather be at my friend's wedding and bring my own food or have something simple. It's about the friend not the food. I think the friend is being super entitled.”

However other commenters felt the bride - and their caterer - could have done more to meet her friend’s needs.

“It’s outrageous that the original poster didn’t push back on the caterer to make two vegan meals.

"The realistic solution outside of that would have been to touch base with the venue and see if they would allow a nearby restaurant that offered vegan options to cater those two meals.

“The caterer should have handled the situation though. That’s the whole point of asking for dietary restrictions in the first place— so you can accommodate them.”

Another user asked the bride to consider how it must have felt from the vegan friend’s perspective.

“I think the biggest faux pas wasn’t not checking with the caterer, but putting it on the guests to come up with a solution instead of figuring it out yourself.

“I can imagine it made them feel like a burden and that their presence at the wedding was causing more stress than anything. I would have felt really uncomfortable being on the other side of the conversation.”

After some reflection the bride returned to the post to add her final thoughts.

"I made some mistakes"

“I understand that the biggest mistake was clearly leaving it so late to sort it out,” she wrote.

“The second and most stupid mistake was bringing up supermarket food, when it was never a viable option, and the third mistake was telling my friend about it and asking for her input, as it probably made her feel like a burden.

“I will now wait and see if she wants to reach out, and take things from there if she does.”

Good luck friends!