Help! My bridesmaid was to dye her hair black and Red??

View Quoted Comment The point is that it is not the business of the bride to choose. Bride chooses ceremonial dress, period. no say over hair, makeup, facial hair, nails, not cut, decoration or color. Your mother will be your mom always. But it is her place to keep her mouth shut about your wedding dress or hair unless asked. And the same for it being BM decision what she does for hair. Bride has no control. And acting controlling is considered rude. Let it go.

I'm aware that this is an unpopular opinion, but I stand by it.


If I had to guess, I'd say something like 97-99% of people have a hair color that human hair naturally comes in. Maybe it's not *their* natural hair color, but it's within the spectrum of what looks passable as natural hair. It's unreasonable for a bride to expect her bridesmaids to all dye their hair the same color so they're all blondes or brunettes, but it is NOT unreasonable for a bride to expect her bridesmaids to have hair that looks like human hair...i.e., to look like just about the rest of the population.
If anyone is being selfish here, it is the BM who insists on standing out and looking different. Your job as a BM is to blend in. This is no different from wearing loud jewelry, neon shoes, whatever.
It's very possible OP picked her BMs before covid/she started dyeing her hair, or maybe she'd done it once and OP thought it would be a phase. Regardless, given that the BM is planning in advance to have this color hair at the wedding tells me there is no reason why she can't plan to have it a natural color. The BM is being selfish.

View Quoted Comment Honestly, I'd do this too. While I think this is a little different for the reasons I mentioned, I'd do it if she wanted because it's her wedding, not mine. Photos are forever.

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You're actually not supposed to ask them to spend money on all those things. Dress yes, within their budget. Shoes you can dictate a neutral color. Otherwise no, you should not be requiring them to spend money on specific shoes or to get their hair or make up professionally done.

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The purpose of photos is to document what's going on. Photos are forever is not a reason to make unreasonable demands of anyone. This is a wedding, not a pageant.

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There is no such thing as a bridesmaid job to blend in. Their only job is literally to stand next to the bride in support of the marriage. It's a ceremonial honor. They are still individual human beings with individual styles and looks and tastes.

View Quoted Comment Yeah...no. There's a reason why BMs usually wear the same or similar dresses, which are selected by the bride. It's not a free for all to look like whatever you want, there are guidelines. If a person can't let go of the me me me mentality for one day, then they don't belong in a wedding party - unless their friends are just as much, uh, free spirits as they are. Most standard/normal/vanilla weddings operate within some basic style expectations. This isn't really that out there.

View Quoted Comment This mentality, to me, is completely backwards. It seems completely contradictory to give those closest to you a title of honor, but then not honor them. In fact, this mentality (that a bridesmaids job is to “blend in” and it’s not a”free for all to look like whatever you want”) actually treats them LOWER than just a guest with no honorary title, who CAN “look like whatever they want”. And on the contrary, same/similar bridesmaids dresses were not developed in order to make them “blend in”. They were developed in order to make them STAND OUT and be easily recognized as part of the wedding party, not just a guest. It was created to make them feel SPECIAL... not to try to strip them of their individuality and make them invisible.

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Wow. Many bridesmaids request specific hairstyles, makeup, and other details of bridesmaids wedding look. It is pretty commonplace actually. If I were a bridesmaid and the bride asked me to have my hair in an updo I wouldn't consider it rude at all. I wouldn't like if a bride asked me to dye my hair or go tanning, but those things change me. Asking me not to change and stay the way I am feels like a very different request.

You need to chill out. OP asked for opinions and they've been given. Different people have different opinions. The only thing rude here is attacking people whose opinions are different from your own.

View Quoted Comment First, saying a behavior is considered rude is not an attack on a person. if you look up Miss Man ers or similar etiquette people ( not ones who are wedding industry shills) that very same word rude is used to describe brides who try to dictate the appearance of others, beyond the allowable color and style of dress. You say it is not much different than what many brides do for hair and make up. That is true. But those are also a recent change. Standards for weddings from recent tv and media are very different from long term standards of what is acceptable, and are not something that has changed everywhere. It has taken more that 50 years of steady change to make it unacceptable for people to have so much power over other people's appearance, in jobs, from whenairlines an stores were allowed to let supervisors arbitrarily decide on standards of hair and makeup, and any for clothes except clean, maintained, and appropriate for a job, with only uniforms and Special Occasion Clothing an exception. Men have never been so harshly judged, or required to jump through hoops, except for hair length. Well, all these standards have changed, under the law, and wedding shows want to bring back social standards fought against for many decades. That is, for individual people, not their friends, supervisors or brides who are friends and family, to not be judged and asked to change their personal looks in an arbitrary way, to suit someone else's tastes. That is, finally, a stage of freedom women have fought for, and now have legally, probably for many here something you have grown up thing always true. But it has been hard won. From a social etiquette point of view, for a very many years the standard has been clear: that it is rude to state or imply that your friends and family's basic personal looks are not acceptable without some makeover. Basic social etiquette, good manners, is to assume that adults who jave been capable of dressing themselves in all other situations without your, the bride's help, are capable of doing it for your wedding. They put on ceremonial clothes, dress, suit, whatever ( like a graduation gown or choir or judges robe.) That is subject to bride or other person's choice. But the personal appearance: hair, skin, nails, facial hair, and personal jewelry, and any long term thing like tattoos or religious markings, are in the control of the individual. Perhaps if you read a book or two on real etiquette, or on social protocol, or simply changes in the law in regard to women 1960 to the present, you would see that I am not just a 1 of a kind flake. For a supervisor to expect to have such control of someone else's looks in a gender specific way, is against the law, harassment. In social settings, not a mean or swear word, just an adjective, it is considered rude or bad manners. And the word rude is not a personal attack. 🙂 If you do not like someone's opinion, scroll on. There should be multiple views on WW in many subjects.

View Quoted Comment Again, the idea that a person would rather be a guest than be in the wedding party and participate in the wedding party festivities because they want to decide what to wear to the wedding and don't want to be "burdened" with "obligations" just seems like a very me me me mentality. I'm a BM in an October wedding I'll probably spend $1,000 on by the time all is said and done (because I live across the country). The dress my friend picked isn't something I'd buy for myself. But I'm happily doing all of this because she's my friend and it's her wedding and I'm honored to stand by her side even if she wanted me to wear stripper heels and a potato sack 🤷🏻‍♀️ the day isn't about me. If people can't see past themselves for one day then being a BM isn't for them.

View Quoted Comment I mean at the same time, plenty of professions dictate that you can't have blue/green/purple hair because it's considered unprofessional.


If people want to have traditional weddings with the full shebang, BMs in matching dresses, getting ready together, with normal colored hair, and this is completely intolerable to someone for some reason then they should say they don't want to be a BM if they are really that inflexible. Not everyone has weddings like this but plenty of people want them and that's fine.

View Quoted Comment So you would get a tattoo for a bride because she wanted y’all to have matching tattoos for her wedding?
Because it’s the same thing. That would be asking you to spend a considerable amount of time and money in order to change your physical appearance just because the bride likes the aesthetic of it. And if it’s not “your taste” then you could always just spend lots of time and money getting it removed after the wedding, right? 🤷🏼‍♀️

View Quoted Comment That's an irrational comparison as a tattoo is permanent whereas most other things, including hair color, are not.


As I said in a previous comment, a bride would be out of line for demanding that her BMs have a certain hair color. It is NOT unreasonable to expect bridesmaids to have hair that is not bizarrely colored (which is also an expectation for most professional jobs). In this bride's case, the BM is planning, months in advance, to have her hair colored a certain way. She can just as easily plan to have it colored some kind of natural looking color. Come on now. This is a wedding. Insisting upon looking like a comic book character is juvenile and selfish.

View Quoted Comment It is not an irrational comparison at all. In both situations, a bride is asking somebody to spend a considerable amount of time and money in order to change their own appearance in a way that they do not wish/are not comfortable changing it. Both options are “permanent” in that they will stay that way unless drastic measures are taken to change them. The BM in question already has wild colored hair, and the bride would be asking her to spend time, money, and irreversible damage to her hair in order to color it a specific color for her wedding (which, is exactly what you said would be irrational for a bride to request- a specific hair color for her wedding). The BMs hair would then stay that color permanently, unless she spend even more time, money, and irreversible damage to her hair to change it to a color she wants/likes/feels comfortable in. Just like demanding a tattoo would cost you a lot of time and money in order to change your appearance in a way you do not want/are not comfortable with. And that tattoo would be permanent unless you also spent a lot of time, money, and irreversible damage in order to remove it from your skin.

View Quoted Comment Lol...you can't be serious. Hair literally grows out; she would not be a natural color (which she was her whole life until last year) any longer than she'd be her black and red comic book color. She's already dyeing her hair, doing the irreversible damage, etc. If anything this bride would prefer she NOT spend the time, money, and irreversible damage and just wear her hair the color she was born with.


Not going to argue with you anymore...I said what I had to say. We disagree, and we're not in each other's weddings, so that's fine.

View Quoted Comment You are missing the point... the BMs hair is already an unnatural color right now. So no, the request is NOT to “just leave it the color she was born with”, as that is not the color it currently is. The request is to not only NOT do what she wants to do with her own body, but also to spend time, money and damage to her hair in order to change it from its current color, to a color the bride finds aesthetically pleasing. Whether the BM is already planning to spend money and damage to her hair is irrelevant because she is planning on doing what SHE wants with HER body. And I’m not sure if you know anything at all about coloring hair, but you cannot continually make drastic changes like that without completely ruining your hair. Thinking that it is OK to request someone to do so is beyond over-the-top, inconsiderate and entitled. Which is exactly why I suggested the bride offer to pay for a wig that the BM likes so she could wear it during the ceremony and for photos. Although I personally think that is ridiculous as well, it is much less rude than actually asking someone to physically change their appearance for your photographs.

View Quoted Comment Girl did you read the OP? She is *planning* to have her hair colored black and red for November. It isn't black and red now. I can't...🤦🏻‍♀️

View Quoted Comment Did YOU read the subsequent comments from the OP? The BM already has unnatural colored hair and has for a year

View Quoted Comment Yes - which means not only that OP's friendship and possibly this woman's status as bridesmaid predates her hair dyeing phase, but also that she's already indicated that she's willing to spend the time, money, and damage to her hair to dye it.


Again, I've said what I had to say - as a bridesmaid, willfully doing anything with your appearance that makes you stand out, goes against the aesthetic/color scheme/etc., unless specifically requested by the bride, is out of line, selfish, and uncharitable. This bride is not making unreasonable demands about wanting this or that specifically, she is asking that her bridesmaid simply look the way a human being might possibly look. It is the bridesmaid who is putting her desires first, for an occasion that is not in any way about her.
OP - please don't let people make you feel bad. As you can see this is a controversial topic. Please know plenty of people on this forum and in real life don't think you're crazy.