Childhood Best Friend Assumes She’s Maid of Honor’but Bride Has Other Plans

A bride is struggling with a tough choice due to her childhood best friend assuming she will be the maid of honor.

The bride-to-be asked Reddit users in a recent post on the platform’s “Wedding” forum whether or not she’d be “awful” for not naming her friend maid of honor, even though the woman already expects the title. She also sought suggestions on how to tell her she has someone else in mind without ruining their long-term friendship.

“My childhood friend has already made comments about being my MOH (maid of honor) and I don’t know how to break it to her that I’d rather have someone else,” the bride wrote.

Although the bride was her friend’s maid of honor seven years ago and the pair “still talk,” she doesn’t want to return the role because their “relationship isn’t as close.” Plus, her friend has shown little interest in getting to know the groom-to-be, so she doesn’t “know the extent” of the couple’s relationship.

Instead, the bride wants to bestow the honor upon one of her “super meaningful” friends she made during a brief split with her fiancé.

“My fiancé and I have been together eight years, broke up briefly in year five and reconciled. Everything is so much better since,” she explained. “During that time, we lived out of state and I made [sic] some of the best people and have stayed close [sic] friends since.”

She continued, “Now that it is time to pick the wedding party, I am struggling on who to place where!”

To avoid “drama,” many Reddit users advised the bride to have a bridal party without distinguished roles.

“You could always not have a maid of honor,” the top comment reads. “My best friend couldn’t choose between me and her sister to be MOH (maid of honor) as she didn’t want either of us to feel left out so we were both just bridesmaids and therefore at the same ‘level.’ “

One concern raised was the order in which the bridal party stands at the altar, as several Redditors pointed out that whoever is chosen to be next to the bride could be perceived as the maid of honor or as having the closest relationship with her. One person suggested “lining them up according to height” to avoid conflict.

Some individuals recommended having two maids of honor, or having no bridal party at all.

“Just have everyone as bridesmaids with no MOH (maid of honor),” one person said. “There really is no good reason to hurt your friends’ feelings by publicly stack-ranking them. If you want these two to feel special, maybe invite them to give speeches. You could also just not even have a wedding party.”