Maid of Honor's Reason for Ruining Wedding Applauded: 'I Just Walked Out'

A maid of honor is usually the bride's right-hand woman during wedding planning and her big day. But one woman recently gave up her role and left the wedding after receiving some unpleasant news.

In a viral Reddit post, u/That_Technician_9244/, explained her best friend "Stacy" and her fiancé "Tom" were her "rocks" when she was going through a break up last year.

She wrote of her split: "I thought we were pretty happy, but last year he dumped me pretty suddenly. I tried to figure out what went wrong, but he said it was 'personal' and that I should respect his space."

During this time, she crashed at her friends' house and describes them to be "overwhelmingly supportive and loving." Therefore she was delighted when Stacy asked her to be her maid of honor.

According to wedding planner website Hitched.co.uk, the term "maid of honor" comes from the tradition of a maiden, a woman who has never been married, whose duty or "honor" was to attend to a queen or princess. Nowadays, if a wedding's maid of honor is unmarried, they are called "chief bridesmaid" or "maid of honor." If they are married then they go by "matron of honor."

Some of their duties include organizing the bachelorette party, helping choose the bridesmaid dresses, and, most importantly, providing emotional support for the bride. However, things took a turn for the worse on Stacy's big day after Tom shared a shocking secret.

"The morning of the wedding, Tom asked me to meet him for breakfast super early in the AM before all of the festivities," the original poster wrote. "I thought it was weird but assumed he maybe wanted me to pass something on to Stacy.

"What happened instead was that Tom let me know that a few days prior, Stacy admitted to him that she had an affair with John, which was what [led] to my breakup. He said that Stacy wanted to come clean to 'start their marriage fresh,' and that he was forgiving her to move forward," she wrote.

Tom explained he has forgiven Stacy and expected the OP to do the same.

She wrote: "The opposite pretty much happened, and I just walked out on the wedding."

This didn't go down well with the bride as the Redditor had organized "everything," so Stacy didn't know what was going on during her big day. But that was the least of her worries as guests began to question where the maid-of-honor was.

"News of the affair eventually got out because her cousin knew John," she wrote.

Since then, the newlyweds have accused the OP of ruining their "once in a lifetime moment" and believe she should have handled the situation differently.

"I personally don't know what Tom expected, but either way I've been getting bombarded with texts and I heard that Stacy has been so upset she's had to take time off work, which does make me feel like an AH [a******]. Especially since I've just been ignoring her calls," she wrote.

The post has racked up more than 20,000 upvotes since August 24. Newsweek reached out to Amanda Wheal, a wedding officiant and former teacher of behavioral psychology, to find out if marriages can work after an affair.

Wheal told Newsweek: "Saving a marriage is possible but it takes time, hard work and can be a painful and traumatic process. The cheating has to stop, trust has to be rebuilt, underlying issues need to be addressed and total honesty is essential.

"It all sounds like very hard work and can take a year or more and sometimes the marriage isn't saved but there's two positive aspects to this. Often those marriages that do survive evolve into something different and in some ways stronger with a deeper understanding of each partner.

"Secondly, and this is something I see frequently as a wedding celebrant, couples remarry, and successfully raise children within a blended families context with good relationships all round especially amongst parents and step parents."

More than 3,000 Reddit users have commented on the post; with the original poster being applauded. The top comment alone has 29,800 upvotes.

It said: "Was walking out of the wedding the day of [the wedding] a nice thing to do? Not particularly. But what on Earth did they expect would happen by telling you? And on the wedding day. They knew they were playing with fire. They chose when to tell you this information. Simply walking out—because whoa nelly I bet there were a ton of conflicting emotions—was pretty adult. You didn't cause a huge scene. You simply extricated yourself from the situation."

Another user said: "She made you [maid of honor] and put all the work of her wedding into you all while hiding her participation in your relationship breakup. She is major [a******]."

Newsweek reached out to u/That_Technician_9244 for comment. We could not verify the details of the case.

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