Bride Slammed After Criticizing Cousin With Cancer for Shaving Head

A bride-to-be has sparked outrage after hitting out at her younger cousin, who has cancer, for shaving her head before the wedding.

Weddings are undoubtedly stressful affairs for the bride and groom. A 2020 survey by Zola found that 72 percent of couples said they were either "very" or "extremely" stressed during the planning stages for their big day.

However, as important as a wedding might be to those involved, it's not a matter of life and death and a little perspective is always important.

But one wedding bride called Delaney appears to have overstepped the mark in the most extreme way possible ahead of her nuptials after lambasting her 13-year-old cousin, who was set to serve as flower girl, for shaving her head.

She had a very valid reason for cutting her hair though. "Around a month after being asked to be the flower girl, I was diagnosed with Anaplastic Ependymoma Grade 3," she explained in a post shared to Reddit under the handle adelyn_jo.

According to the National Cancer Institute, Grade 3 ependymomas are malignant, fast-growing tumors that most often occur in the brain, but can also occur in the spine. The current relative five-year survival rate set at around 83.9 percent.

"I started chemotherapy, and my hair started falling out pretty quickly," the young girl wrote. "I called Delaney and asked her what the hell I was supposed to do about my hair, and she told me that it'd be fine, and just to leave it alone for as long as I could."

Increasingly aware that her hair was "not going to last until the wedding day," the teenager had her brother order her a wig online that looked just like her hair.

In the run up to the bridal shower and rehearsal dinner, she finally decided enough was enough after becoming "sick of the hot mess" her hair had become, so shaved it off entirely.

However, on the day of the rehearsal dinner itself, the bride "absolutely lost it" at her for having her hair shaved off, even though she was wearing a wig.

"She asked me why I didn't have hair and I told her: 'I have cancer, I lost my hair' but she kept berating me and eventually I admitted that I had shaved my head because of how awful my hair looked," the girl wrote.

"She called me a selfish brat and said that I didn't have her permission to do anything drastic with my hair before her wedding."

Newsweek has contacted adelyn_jo for comment.

Though tensions may have been running high ahead of the wedding itself, with the bride evidently desperate to ensure everything was perfect, her criticism of her cousin was met with a furious response on social media.

AaeJay83 wrote: "I'm sorry about your cancer. I don't know why weddings make people forget their humanity," while TheoryAddict urged her to "skip the wedding." "She doesn't deserve to treat you like that," they wrote. "You are not some centerpiece, you are a human being with a lot on her plate right now and probably in a lot of mental and physical pain."

DuckOpen commented: "You are undergoing treatment for an awful disease that unfortunately makes you lose your hair. If your cousin doesn't like that she can take a hike," with Nutwit9211 writing: "You should let the groom know what she did. Give him a chance to not make the biggest mistake of his life!"

The1983Jedi meanwhile said: "As a two time survivor f*** her. It hurts so bad when your hair falls out because of how the chemo affects your hair follicles. I would walk down that aisle bald after that."