His Fiancée Wants To Wear Her Custom Wedding Gown From Her First Marriage At Their Wedding, But The Idea Makes Him Feel Creeped Out
Not long ago, this 39-year-old man got engaged to his fiancée, Anna, 40. They are in the promise of looking at venues, so they haven’t set a wedding date yet.
The plan is to get married next summer or during the fall. Ten years ago, Anna became a widow when her husband tragically passed away in a car accident. Anna and her late husband had a daughter together, Cara, who is now 21-years-old.
Understandably, Cara misses her father tremendously, and he has made sure not to act as if he is trying to replace her father in any way.
Even though he and Cara don’t have a close bond with one another, they get along really well, and he’s content with that.
All of Anna’s other family members act a bit strange whenever he’s around them. Anna and her late husband had known each other since preschool, and their parents were all best friends. Her entire family adored her late husband.
While he acknowledged that they don’t despise him, he knows that Anna’s family misses her late husband, so it’s tough for them.
During every family event, one or two people mention some of their memories of Anna’s late husband. This turns into the entire family talking, laughing, and crying as they bond over these memories.
He recognizes that Anna’s late husband was a big part of her family members’ lives, but he feels uncomfortable when they seem to ignore him completely while sharing memories.
Over time, he’s developed closer relationships with them, but he still feels like they keep their distance from him. But he feels grateful that he’s become closer to them rather than not making any steps in that direction.
elnariz – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
In his view, whenever Anna’s family members look at him, all they can think of is her late husband, whom they dearly miss.
As a part of his family’s tradition, his mother, who has four sons, pays for her daughter-in-law’s wedding dress as a way to welcome her into the family.
He mentioned this to Anna, and she told him that she would rather wear the dress from the wedding with her late husband because it’s in great condition and still fits her.
Her reasoning behind this wasn’t because she was concerned about money. They would be able to comfortably include a wedding dress in their budget if his mother wasn’t paying for it.
“Anna simply said she just doesn’t like the idea of stressing out over a new dress when we have so much more planning to do. It makes me a bit uncomfortable. Her first wedding dress is very sentimental. Since she had her daughter so young, they were too busy and broke to get married until she was around 25-years-old,” he said.
Before getting married, Anna’s late husband asked Cara to have Anna draw and color a picture of what her dream wedding dress would look like.
Anna was under the assumption that they would be going to a dress shop to find a dress that was the closest to what she wanted.
However, her late husband enlisted his grandmother (who sadly passed away a month after he and Anna got married) to sew the exact dress that Anna had drawn. His grandmother happened to be an incredibly talented seamstress.
He saw wedding photos of Anna and her late husband, and she looked overjoyed. And it makes sense why the dress means so much to Cara as well since she played a role in her mother’s wedding dress becoming a reality.
The dress is gorgeous and meaningful to keeping the memory of Anna’s late husband alive throughout the years. However, the idea of her wearing this dress on their wedding day makes him uneasy. He predicted that all of their guests would look at Anna and think about her wedding to her late husband.
“I’m sure her husband was a fantastic guy, and she has the right to mourn him, but I want the wedding to focus on our upcoming life together, not only her painful past. I really want this event to speak for only us as a couple and our own love,” he explained.
He understands that Anna’s love for her late husband will last forever, but he would appreciate their wedding day being a special day to have fun with their friends and family without everyone thinking back to Anna’s first wedding.
Also, he assumes that Cara wouldn’t be happy for her mother to wear the same wedding dress that served as a beautiful reminder of her father while marrying another man.
“It almost feels sort of creepy and disrespectful to wear the same dress her dead husband and his grandmother went through so much trouble to make,” he shared.
“I would bet neither of them pictured her wearing it to marry some other guy who doesn’t even know them. I feel like it’s a bit disrespectful to their memory.”
He expressed his views to Anna, and she brushed them off, telling him that he was taking it too seriously and thinking about it too deeply. She assured him that wearing her wedding dress from her first wedding wouldn’t be an issue.
In response, he asked her to consider purchasing a less expensive wedding dress herself rather than having his mother pay for it, and she rejected this idea.
Then, Anna called him “jealous” and “irrational,” and she was angry with him for not agreeing with her plan to wear her old wedding dress.
When he asked his parents and some of his friends to weigh in, they told him that he should have dropped the subject when she first told him that she wouldn’t consider wearing a different wedding dress.
In their view, he sounded a little selfish and made too big of a deal out of the situation. He’s deeply in love with Anna and feels terrible that she may be feeling he doesn’t have trust in her. Now, he wonders if he should tell Anna he’s sorry for asking her to wear a different dress on their wedding day.
What advice would you give him?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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