My friend recently got engaged, and at first, everyone was thrilled for her. But things took a strange turn when she announced she wanted a \u201cfree\u201d wedding \u2014 the kind she\u2019s seen on TikTok where the couple spends nothing. Instead of keeping it simple, she planned a full event by having friends and family do everything for her \u2014 venue, photos, flowers, music, food, decorations \u2014 all at their own expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She assigned each guest a potluck dish, asked another friend to design invitations, expected someone to provide a large tent and speakers, and generally acted like everyone should be honored to help. The kicker was when she told me<\/em> I\u2019d be baking her wedding cake \u2014 a multi-tier, gold-leaf, fondant masterpiece. I\u2019m not a baker; I make cookies for fun. When I told her I couldn\u2019t pull that off and pointed out that a \u201cfree\u201d wedding shouldn\u2019t mean other people pay and work for it, she got silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I explained that asking everyone to contribute expensive items and labor wasn\u2019t fair, and that if she truly wanted a free wedding, she could elope or do city hall. She left upset, and later I got a message from another friend saying I hurt her feelings and should\u2019ve let her realize it herself. The bride-to-be then texted me a cold, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now I feel torn \u2014 I didn\u2019t insult her, but I was honest. She seemed so excited, and I didn\u2019t want to crush that. But I also didn\u2019t want to be taken advantage of. I still believe someone needed to say it, even if it wasn\u2019t what she wanted to hear. Sometimes being a good friend means telling the truth, not just nodding along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My friend recently got engaged, and at first, everyone was thrilled for her. But things took a strange turn when she announced she wanted a \u201cfree\u201d wedding… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":131,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16576,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16574\/revisions\/16576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}