Bridesmaid drops out of wedding after buying a $240 dress that she chose, now she expects a reimbursement from the bride: 'I can technically afford to reimburse her, but we're already paying for most of the wedding ourselves'

If you decided to buy a $240 bridesmaid dress that, most probably, you were going to wear only once, then why do you expect a refund for it? You made the choice, didn't you?

Bridesmaid dresses are a big deal, but also a big cause of problems. If the bride isn't paying for it, then that's a whole deal on its own due to the fact that brides love to decide what the dress should look like but never offer to pay. Another big problem tends to be the design of the dress, what color it has to be, and whether all of them need to look exactly the same without taking into account what fits each person best. And of course, how much it costs. It can cost $20 or $2000, but if the bride says that it has to be the dress from some particular store with a set price, then that is going to cause the biggest problems. The bridesmaids will not agree; screaming and arguments will take place, and in the end no one is happy with the dresses. 

After I read thousands of stories about brides and bridesmaids arguing about the dresses, I have formed my mind about what's acceptable and what isn't when choosing the bridesmaids' dresses. My main thoughts are: if you, as a bride, are going to choose everything about the dress. The color, the style, the store. Then you need to pay for it. You can't make your friends pay for something that they don't even like. If you want them to pay for their own dresses, then you need to either set just a color or a set of colors that they can choose from and let each person choose what style is more flattering to them and from which store they buy it. That way, there is no problem with each of them paying for their own dress; after all, they chose it. So if you just say that the dress needs to be blue, then I, as a bridesmaid, can buy the blue dress that I actually like and be able to wear it again, so I don't lose money in the process. 

So, the next time you end up as a bride having to decide what you are going to do with your bridesmaids' dresses, be aware of when you can make them pay for it and when you at least shouldn't expect it. These are my views on the topic, but I'm pretty sure they are accepted by most people, maybe not by entitled brides or, in this case, an entitled bridesmaid who, even though she got to choose almost every aspect of the dress, still expected the bride to pay for it. What's also insane is that she never talked to the bride about that before buying it. She did everything wrong; she could have picked a cheaper one, she could have picked a dress she wanted to keep for more than just the wedding, and she could have talked to the bride previously to buy it about her covering some of it.