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Am I the asshole for asking my husband's best man to wear a tuxedo?

Originally posted to r/AITA_WIBTA_PUBLIC

TRIGGER WARNING: body shaming, manipulation, controlling behavior, bullying

Original Post  June 12, 2024

I (26F) am  getting married to Mark(28m), a handsome, responsible, intelligent man with a kind heart and a great sense of humor. My sister Jennifer (23F) is going to be his "best man."

Jennifer is best friends with my husband Mark (26m). He's known her more than twice as long as he's known me. We only really met and talked at any length about 3 years ago or so. They were co-workers together at her high school job, and she's been a part of his gaming group since then. They went to the same college, and they're coworkers again now working for his friend John's (42m) company. Mark was in college for the better part of a decade getting two undergraduate degrees and his PhD, and Jennifer ended up doing the same major as him, likely due to his encouragement. She's thinking about her masters in the same field, but they both work full-time now. 

In addition to being coworkers and playing dungeons and dragons together, they also game online, and they hang out all the time. They've gone to conventions together, either as part of a group, or just the two of them. They do local classes and events together, and Mark helps Jennifer with her photography and editing.

While she has a solid full-time job she likes, Jennifer still has aspirations of being a model/influencer. She loves fashion, and she's also into cosplay.

After we got engaged, we were at a family dinner, and I was talking to Mark about the wedding party, and I mentioned that even though I have two sisters, I wanted my own best friend Helen (26f) to be my maid of honor.

Mark said that was great, because he actually wanted to ask Jennifer to be his best man. Jennifer immediately and enthusiastically agreed. Being a female best man is just the kind of thing She'd love. Obviously, even if that meant she wouldn't be one of my bridesmaids. She also knew that between our other sister and some of my friends I had too many people who needed to be bridesmaids and Mark was worried about being short on groomsmen. 

This was all fine and well until later on when we were talking about what people were going to wear. I picked out my dream wedding dress, and I coordinated the bridesmaid dresses, and Mark was going to have his groomsmen, most of which were other gaming buddies in tuxedos. I had to talk him out of putting them in cosplay/renfaire stuff. However, Jennifer was going to wear a dress. 

Jennifer is a very tall, very attractive woman, and to be perfectly frank, she has a large chest.

The dress that she wants to wear was designed by one of her friends online, and while it's not white or anything (It's mostly red and black and pretty well matches the other groomsmen) And it's formal and fancy, it definitely shows off her figure. I wouldn't say in a slutty way at all, but it just does. She would also, as best woman, stand out from the other men on the groom's side, especially in the heels she wanted to wear with the dress. 

After dropping a few hints here and there and broaching the subject of each side of the wedding party matching and women's tuxedos, I gently requested that Mark have Jennifer wear a tuxedo rather than the dress and shoes she wanted and he had previously liked. 

When they gave me pushback, I pointed out to Jennifer that she might be too exposed or she might distract people with such a flashy dress.

Jennifer gave me a dirty look and said, half under her breath, "are you fucking serious?" And before I could react, she just said "fine. Fuck it. You're the bride. I'll wear the fucking tuxedo."

Mark sighed and half said some things about it being ridiculous, but then when I asked him what he said he just said, "Okay. It's whatever. It's fine." 

Since then, Mark and Jennifer have been passive aggressively making fun of my concerns, with them doing things like Mark comedy ogling her chest, or her making all sorts of boob jokes. She's done things like ostentatiously covering up her chest with her hands when she moves past people while saying things like, "gotta guard the girls, wouldn't want to knock anyone over". Both her and Mark keep making fake Freudian slips about her chest or her figure, and Jennifer even pretended to lose her balance and fall over because "her boobs were too heavy".

They pretty much just do this when I'm around. They seem to think it's hilarious. 

They've made it very well known that Jen is really disappointed about not getting to wear the dress and that her seamstress friend is upset about it too, and Mark has seemed a bit distant and disinterested in wedding planning.

I was looking over some tuxedos for women and making some suggestions to Jennifer, about ones that aren't too tight in the chest or hips, and she just showed me the one that She had already picked out and said, "is this fine, or did you want to further micromanage my specific tuxedo?"

We started to get into a fight, and she accused me of being a bridezilla. When I told her she was being a bad sister, she said that she wasn't the one who was being body shamed and told what to wear. I told her My requests weren't body shaming, and she said that they were the same thing.

My parents completely took Jennifer's side and said that I should just let her wear the dress. Obviously, she showed it to them too, and they thought it was beautiful. They like her friend too, and her friend has done clothing and costumes for / with her before. 

My father said that I should at least stop bothering her about the tuxedo if I'm going to make her wear one, and then I should just let her go with the one she picked. The one she wants though is very high visual impact and it is also very tailored. She said she can match it to the colors but I feel like she'd still stand out. 

When I tried to get Mark to weigh in on this, he just said, "It's your wedding, do whatever you want. I guess I'll tell her to do whatever you want." And I obviously don't feel like he's very invested. I feel like he's not on the same page but he just doesn't want to argue. He's always like that. 

Even though we both have good jobs, both Jennifer and I still live at home with our parents, because housing is ridiculous, and it's been awkward around each other. I've been staying over at Mark's a lot over the last year, and I was supposed to be officially moving in, but he's been kind of cool and passive about it recently. 

Everyone seems to be acting like I'm the asshole here, even though Mark and Jennifer are the ones being passive aggressive and unreasonable. I almost feel I should have just made Jennifer a bridesmaid right off the bat or told Mark that it didn't make sense for him to have female groomsmen.

Am I the asshole for wanting my husband's "best man" to just wear a normal tuxedo?

Update  June 19, 2024

There is not going to be a wedding. 

John (42m), of all people, Mark's (28m) boss and gaming buddy noticed my(26f) post, as it got way, way more attention than I ever expected.

We've only ever met a couple of times and hardly ever talked before, but he reached out to me with,"This is "John" lol call me". So I called him from the parking lot after work.

John says he’s been married for about 20 years, and he's tried to give Mark relationship advice. He doesn't think we're a good match. He told me that I should talk to Mark and that Mark has been unhappy with our relationship and extremely unhappy with the wedding planning, even to the point that it's a running gag amongst him and his friends. 

I got into it a bit with John, because to be fair to me, Mark's ideas have been ridiculous. Just some of the things he asked for, and which John, Jennifer(23f), and his buddies thought would be "Cool",

He wanted the wedding party to have custom swords/daggers and amulets. He wanted them to have the swords during the ceremony and he thought people would like fantasy amulets. 

Mark had told me that John was willing to pay for the bridesmaid dresses if we had them done by Jennifer's costumer friend. I told him no, because I wanted normal, nice bridesmaids dresses from someplace reputable and that the bridesmaids could buy them themselves. John told me that he had offered this as a bit of a bet with Mark.

Mark wanted to serve mead at the wedding, he said that his friend, John, could provide it and that he made mead in his basement and had tons of it. I obviously said No, because why would I want mead at my wedding, never mind some guys' basement mead? John got a laugh out of this at the time, and talking to me, because he's a nerd who likes to laugh at his own jokes. Apparently, he's very proud of his "basement mead", and They like to make toasts with it. "Basement mead" has apparently become a running gag in their games, as John insisted on telling me. Frankly, John seemed kind of tickled with himself just because he was speaking with me. 

Mark wanted the band at the wedding to play classical covers of video game and superhero music.

Mark wanted the reception to have a "jester" who would wander around doing magic tricks and asking people riddles. 

Some lady that Mark and his friends know asked if she could be an elf at our wedding and wear her "forest gown", and Mark said he'd ask me and He described it as some kind of green Greek toga dress with leaves and elven writing on it, and that she'd have elf ears. It's a wedding not a costume party, so I don't even know why he would ask that.

I mentioned this stuff to John, and he recognized all of it and some more things to add besides, because Mark would always vent to them about the wedding plans, and John just agreed along saying that I was constantly shooting down all of Mark's ideas. 

The point is that all of Mark's ideas were completely ridiculous, and that I wanted to have a wedding and not a Halloween party.

John laughed when I brought this up to him and said that these ideas were "awesome" And thatI was just being “too boring”. 

John said that he thought we weren't a good match, and that he's told Mark that he needs to talk to me. I asked him if he thought Mark and Jennifer were a good match, and he just said yes. I asked if there had been anything between them, and he said no. He said he's "100% certain" they've never hooked up, because, "Mark doesn't have the poker face for it," especially with as much as him and the other group members rib them over it.

He said that Mark is too oblivious for his own good and that the week after her 18th birthday Jennifer said, pretty much straight to Mark, "I'm 18, so you can fuck me now," and Mark just laughed it off as a joke. It does sound like something she’d say because Jennifer does love making inappropriate sexual jokes. John thought there was more to it though. They've had their characters date each other in games. He said they've been “the very model of chastity” since Mark has been dating me. Once at an event Jennifer was supposed to kiss Mark, but instead she kissed the palm of her hand and then had him kiss her palm. John is fully confident that neither of them would cheat.

I went over to Mark's house, because he hadn't called or texted in a while, and he basically confirmed everything John said. 

Mark said that I "stressed him out" when I was over, and he wasn't sure about me moving in because thinking about it gave him anxiety. He didn't like any of my ideas for our house (It was his childhood home, and he's resistant to changing anything. He just has his stuff everywhere and wherever. He kept trying to talk about giving me "some rooms" or "some space" when it's supposed to be "our" home where all of the space belongs to both of us) He was extremely frustrated about the wedding planning and he felt like He didn't have a say.

He said the dress Jennifer wanted to wear was just about the final straw because I told him he could pick the outfits for the groomsmen and I told him Jenn could be in a dress as long as it matched. She really loves the dress, and she got it from her friend, She and John and apparently all of his buddies warned him that I'd "find some way to have a problem with it".

He says that I "talk him in circles" Whenever he tries to choose or change anything, even though all of his suggestions are ridiculous. And he said he'd just about given up caring by the time I complained about the dress, so he didn't bother fighting about it.

He said it upset him the way I was "body shaming Jennifer about her figure and her breasts". He thought I was being jealous and controlling, and that I had been a bridezilla ever since he proposed. 

When I asked him why he even proposed, if I apparently give him anxiety and he doesn't even want me to move in with him, he said he felt like he was pressured to either propose or break up, and he hoped things would get better and that he didn't know if he had a good enough reason to break up. 

When I told him that I never pressured him to propose, he said that all of my friends and family know that I consider it a goal to get married before I'm 30, and he brought up a document on his phone where he had taken notes about what kind of proposal I wanted from all the times I had talked about it. He said that he started the document because of how obviously important it was to me to have a perfect proposal and how often I talked about what I wanted. He proposed because he felt like he had to either marry me or dump me if, "I was going to have time for my plans".

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a timeline for your life, and I wanted to start having kids by my late 20s or early 30s at the latest. I mentioned all of this to Mark again, and he said that that was fine, for me, but that he was kind of on the fence about if/when to have kids, and he mentioned that Jennifer isn't sure about having kids at all and certainly isn't in any hurry about them, but I told him that doesn't have anything to do with anything and that Jennifer is just being shortsighted. 

I asked him if anything had happened between him and Jennifer, and he said no, and I believe him.

I asked him why he wasn't dating Jennifer, and he said that at first she was too young, and then he was seeing someone, and then he was dating me, and he said that he values his friendship with her more than anything. He said that his friendship with Jennifer was "worth not getting to be with her that way", and that she's too attractive to want to be with him.

Apparently, the only reason Mark even started dating me is because he tried flirting with me at a family party we were at, and he said I seemed into him. He doesn't think of himself as handsome, but he is, and He's got his PhD, a great job, and his own house at 28. He's definitely a catch. He didn't agree And he said he's only ever dated his high school prom date, a girl who was kind of his girlfriend until she graduated and left, and me.

Mark apologized and said that he wanted to put a hold on any more wedding or moving plans, and that he wasn't sure about the relationship. I had already started crying, but then I broke down and he apologized again. He said he was "sorry for messing up my plans" And that he kept hoping things would get better. I left as soon as I felt like I could drive.

By the time I got home, Mark had already texted Jenn "your sister is crying. Sorry" and the two of them had been on the phone the whole time, And of course my mom knew And she tried to comfort me but I could just tell she wanted to say I told you so, because she had been warning me I was going to drive Mark away, and she thought he was better with Jennifer too. 

Jennifer said that she tried really hard to have this work out, because she just wants Mark to be happy and that she had tried inviting me to gaming and for Christmas before last she bought me a switch with games Mark likes and that she was sorry stuff happened this way. She accused me of not really liking or caring about Mark and just wanting a "generic husband". When I told her that wasn't fair she mentioned the same stuff from the wedding planning and a bunch of other stuff from our relationship that she said made Mark feel ignored or suffocated. She said that the only reason I liked him was because he ticked boxes and always gave in and let me have my way. We started arguing, but our mom stepped in before we could get into it too bad.

I asked Jennifer about what this meant for her and Mark and she said he is absolutely her best friend and nothing is ever going to change that and that she loves him. When I asked how she loves him she just said that's not a discussion she wants to have right now. Our mom said everyone needed to cool off and that was enough for Jenn to step away and drop the subject.

One of the commenters on my original post asked why I was “marrying my sister's boyfriend”, and my mom asked very nearly the same thing. She questioned how I had started dating Mark just about as soon as his age gap with Jennifer stopped being awkward and she implied I shouldn't have been dating him in the first place. That's not fair at all. It's not like he's her property, and Jennifer can clearly just go get whatever man she wants. It's not like she had any kind of claim on a man just for knowing him.

Even while she was trying to comfort me and saying that things will be alright, my mom wouldn’t stop implying that I was wrong for going after Mark in the first place or criticizing me for how the relationship went. She said that Mark wasn’t the man for me, and I could tell she meant that he belonged with someone like Jennifer, as if I’m not good enough or what I want doesn’t matter.

And then I caught her talking to Jen about how things should be fine and how *she* should try not to be to mad at *me* as if I was the one in the wrong or I should be apologizing to her.

Jennifer just kind of went on like normal and went ahead and went to go game with Mark and her friends the next day. I know they've been chatting online like normal.

I gave Jennifer Mark's ring to give back to him, And then I had a missed call from him while I was in the shower and a text that said, "Okay. I guess we are broken up then. I'm sorry."

I don't know if I messed this up or if everyone else were the assholes here.

Sorry this was so long. A lot of stuff has come out.

I feel like I'm definitely not going to get married by the time I'm 30.

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