Here we go again… it’s another wild AITA Reddit story. And once again the drama has culminated on someone’s wedding day. In a thread posted this week, a 45-year-old woman wanted to know whether she was the arsehole for walking out of her cousin’s wedding 25 years ago when he swapped the bride from his fiancée to his mistress without telling anyone.
The woman’s cousin, a 47-year-old man called John, had been cheating on his girlfriend Rachel with an ‘old flame’ called Kristen. When Rachel discovered his infidelity and called off the wedding, John saw no problem with saving the date, caterers, and wedding band and using the ceremony to tie the knot with Kristen instead… Thrifty.
‘John had been engaged to Rachel for about two years and she was very lovely and sweet,’ the woman wrote. ‘All the family loved her and really tried to make her feel like a part of the family. They’d come to holidays and birthdays for the family and we threw a part for her on her birthday.We didn’t hear from them in the month or two leading up to the wedding but we figured they were just busy with last minute planning and none of us were in the wedding party,’ the OP explained in her Reddit post.
‘On their wedding day, all of us turn up at the venue to see signs for “John & Kristen’s Wedding”. We thought we were in the wrong place initially until John came out and confirmed it was the right wedding hall,’ she remembered. John said that he’d called off the engagement with Rachel a month prior after “reconnecting with an old flame,” and they decided to use the date to get married instead.’
This is undeniably scandalous and we can only imagine the faces of the extended family when they received the news that John has done a secret bride-swap just weeks before the wedding: ‘We were all confused and upset,’ the OP told in the post. ‘While John was trying to calm everyone down I went and used the phone to call Rachel,’ she said.
‘She said that two weeks before she had caught John cheating with Kristen and ended things right then. She also said that John had refused to cancel what they could for the wedding and get back what money they could. Instead, he used them towards his new wedding with Kristen.’
The OP and much of the family then walked out of the wedding, saying they were ‘not going to stay for this bait and switch wedding’ after how he had treated Rachel and kept it all a secret that he was marrying someone else. John, naturally retaliated and said the family should support him no matter who he was marrying. ‘We didn’t, so he hasn’t spoken to any of us for 25 years,’ the OP said. ‘AITA [am I the arsehole] for walking out of the wedding and not apologising, even after 25 years?’
We certainly don’t think so. Meanwhile, cheating, bride-swapping in secret and then using your ex’s cash to marry another woman seems like a seriously arsehole-esque thing to do. John's behaviour suggests the groom problematically thought his lovers were so interchangeable that nobody would really be bothered or notice if he used one to stand-in for the other.
But, as many commenters pointed out, the drama has re-emerged after 25 years because John and Kristen’s (yes they’re still together) 23-year-old daughter Emily has tried to build bridges with the family that walked out on her father.
Emily is, obviously, an adult with her own agency. While it might make things less awkward all round if the bad blood with John is cleared up, the OP and Emily don’t really need anyone else’s permission to build their own relationship as aunt and niece.
What we really want to know is what happened to Rachel? ‘I hope she found someone better,’ the OP said.
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