Weddingbee boards

Or maybe I should say ex-friends... who knows?

This is kind of a vent and I'm sorry it's so long...

FI and I are/were friends with a married couple (let's call them the Cs). I was Mrs C's maid of honour (which was a big surprise) for her wedding two years ago. Since then they have moved interstate and have started a very successful wedding photography business. They've also changed somewhat--started dressing in designer gear and becoming extremely socially networked (ie on their iphones all the time).

When FI and I got engaged, they were delighted and postponed their trip to Europe so that they could attend our wedding. They've since shortened their trip for another friend's wedding, but I think they're being the official photographers there.

We asked them to recommend some local photographers for us... this was partly because i) they lived interestate and ii) we didn't really love their style of photography (they're really good--just not our cup of tea). This they did and we selected one of the photographers after absolutely loving his style and his personality. We thanked our friends and let our photographer (Mr P) know that the Cs had referred him The Cs are hugely reliant on networking for their business so we thought we'd help them strengthen their bonds.

Then things started getting weird.

Mr P won a pretty big award for his photography. The Cs were on his website congratulating him straight away.

Soon after, Mr C contacted FI and asked if Mrs C could replace Mr P's normal assistant for our wedding. We didn't want to lose Mr P's style (which we assume is partially due to his assistant), so we thought--if they're all friends, maybe Mrs C could go in as a second assistant...

We phoned up Mr P to ask him if he'd take on a second assistant and found out that the Cs had already asked him whether they could be the assistant, without asking us first. :( They also gave him the impression that we were okay with it, and that he'd be doing us a favour by letting them replace his assistant. So that was the beginnign of the weirdness. Mr P hadn't yet responded to them, but was open to the idea of Mrs C being second assistant.

We told Mr C about the 'second assistant plan' and he flatly said no, it was either Mrs C = only assistant or they wouldn't be involved at all. Which was again weird, seeing as we were the ones who should be calling the shots here! So we said no, we'd prefer to keep Mr P's services as is.

Cue gentle harassment from Mr C, saying that Mr P's assistant had no idea what they were doing, that Mrs C could offer a better 'package' and that in fact, Mr P didn't really have a specific style and just relied on photoshop. Eh? Then why did they recommend Mr P to us?

Anyway, just before this began, Mrs C was matron of honour for a mutual friend (J)... FI contacted J to ask her what she thought. It turned out that they'd pulled the same thing on J, trying to become the assistant to her photographer without first asking J's permission. Note that J's photographer was the top photographer in our state at the time.

When the Cs talked to J, they told her that her photographer was perfectly okay with the replacement... but when J asked her photographer, she actually wasn't happy about it and had only said okay because the Cs had insisted that it was J's wishes to include them. !!

But that wasn't the most disappointing part--as one of his selling points, Mr C said that J's wedding photographs had turned out "crap". I've seen the photos... the problem is not with the photographer, the problem is that J is not smiling (she looks terrified--she looked that way for her entire wedding, not just photos), and I'd say it's probably more her bridesmaids' job to help her ease her nerves. In the photos, J looks scared and Mrs C looks obliviously happy (she loves being photographed). So I think blaming the photographer for his wife's lack of support for J is really underhanded... not to mention using our friend's unfortunate experience as a selling point!

Anyway, we ended up saying a firm 'no', at which point Mrs C wrote me an email telling me that she'd only wanted to help me out at my wedding and that she thought her presence would help relax me (didn't work for J!) and that's all she'd been thinking when she'd asked us about the assistant thing. Then she wrote in the same email that she was disappointed, but over it.

I wrote back an email saying I was sorry, and let her know that my sister (who is my only bridesmaid) would be enough to relax me, and joked that maybe they could help out by washing my dad's car (it's a running joke that I'm going to get all my friends to do menial tasks on the day). No response, but I didn't really expect one.

Anyway, a week or so passed and I thought I'd try to contact Mrs C to make sure things were okay.. I wrote an email not really mentioning wedding stuff and asked her how she was going and how the photography was going... she replied after a week, very apologetically, saying she'd been busy. I wrote back, and no response.

Since then, another friend has gotten engaged and has chosen them to be her photographers (and I suspect also has chosen Mrs C to be her bridesmaid)... she's getting lots of accolades and buddy-buddy messages from Mrs C on her facebook wall, while I get no comments in response to my wedding-related posts.

I invited Mrs C to my hen's and she responded that she was busy that weekend but that she would have LOVED to come... I let her know that she'd been mistaken about the date (the weekend she was busy was actually FI's bucks, which Mr C is attending) and that my hen's was actually on a different weekend, so she could still come if she wasn't busy. No response and it's been a week.

Anyway, that's where it is at the moment.

I guess what I'd like to know is what your response would have been to this situation.. was it unfair of me to say no, because they'd postponed their trip and I'd been their MOH previously?

Is it okay that I am disappointed in the way they went about things?

I'm also wondering whether she's signalling that she's still miffed, or whether I'm reading too much into her behaviour.

But most of all, thank you for letting me vent. :)

Thanks aunt pol... Those are my thoughts too (using us to further their career) but I tend to want to give the benefit of the doubt. I'm miserable when I think about it. Mrs C was like a mentor to me when she lived nearby. They'll still be coming to our wedding, but I'm a bit tense at the thought. I'm hoping things will be more like old times, but there may be too much mistrust there now.

Update: I couldn't stand it anymore and sent her an email asking her to tell me if she was upset or annoyed with me, because I felt that things had gone wrong between us. I also said that I'd take her response at face value, so whatever she said, I'd believe.

She wrote back immediately that nothing was wrong and that she was just extremely busy (said herself that it was a poor excuse), reminded me that they'd postponed their trip for us, and that she wished she could sit me down so she could get me to see the 'bigger picture' of all the awesome things that God has been doing in her life. She also said she didn't want to lose me as a good friend.

So I'm going to try to take it at face value and believe there's no bad blood between us.

However, strangely enough, it also confirms to me that we're trying to continue something where the effort put in greatly overshadows the result. It's become a friendship of diminishing returns, so it's best to just let it go.

I'm going to take their attendance at our wedding day as a bittersweet 'signing off' point in our friendship. I'm sure we'll still be distant friends, but I accept we will no longer be close. At least it will end without bad feeling, and I will be able to greet them and treat them lovingly at the wedding, because it'll be like a 'so long and thanks for all the fish'. I like my closure.

I just feel calm and accepting now, not negative towards them, so all in all, probably an okay result. Yay!

Ugh... we just found out that despite them not being our photographer, Mr & Mrs C had a good old time handing out their business cards at our wedding reception. SO unclassy!

And I hope this is my last vent on the subject, but Mr C pulled out of my husband's buck's too at the last minute, saying that they needed the money to refurbish their photography studio. Though later on, Mrs C potsed on facebook that she 'splurged' on a designer dress--it retails for almost $800!! Ugh ugh ugh... yeah, I'd like to dropkick them into next week if possible.

@bellenga: Yes, I would much have preferred them to be truthful instead of trying to manipulate us. I was mostly disappointed because I thought our friendship was better than that.

If they'd needed some extra business, they could have just said so.

If they'd wanted to get some more experience with an award winning photographer, they could have just said so.

We tried to accommodate their wishes in a way that our wishes would also be met, but they said it was their way or nothing. I just don't get why they went to hard bargaining among friends. :-/

As to reasons... I think they were very disappointed and we injured their professional pride when we didn't choose them (we tried to say it was simply a style preference rather than a talent/skill thing, but I guess we still didn't get it right!). I think it was also mix of wanting to be a part of their friends' day, but the main reason was to be able to watch how P works and get some free photography lessons and tips off him. 

I guess they also completely expected us to say yes as they normally have very good sales skills, so when we kept saying no, their business sense just took over and forgot we weren't 'marks' for selling to, we were friends!

I must admit my brain is a bit evil though. :) I entertained the thought of saying 'yes' to them, and then sending Mrs C off to photograph in places where Mr P wasn't going to photographing, thus defeating that purpose. Heheheh...