My best friend was a bridesmaid for an acquaintance and it went... poorly.
My friend was asked to be a bridesmaid for a destination wedding in Hawaii. She doesn't know the bride very well, she us her younger sister's best friend. She doesn't have many friends and she needed four bridesmaids to match the groom's side of the party. She agreed only because she felt bad for the girl.
She was told she'd only have to pay for her plane ticket. A few weeks before the wedding, the bride dropped a bomb on her. She suddenly needed to pay for professional hair and makeup, pay $100 a night to stay in the airbnb, and she could no longer bring a plus one. Mind you, her sister and the other bridesmaids all got plus ones.
She also had to sleep on the couch at the airbnb. So she had to pay $300 to sleep on a couch.
During the wedding festivities, it was very clear who the bride wanted there and who was just a placeholder. They basically pretended she wasn't there during the rehearsal dinner, getting ready, day-after brunch, etc.
The worst part? One of our best friends set a date for her wedding on very short notice, a couple weeks after the Hawaii wedding. It was too late to back out of the wedding. I told her to bail anyway but she was getting a lot of pressure from her parents to follow through. So she didn't have enough PTO to attend her best friend's wedding after taking time off for this girl's wedding and she was so bummed out.
Edit:
I absolutely agree that she should have bailed. I encouraged her to bail and so did her boyfriend, but she is a people pleaser, as many of you guessed, and felt like she couldn't. I was surprised to see almost 0 hate for the bride though.
I am not the bridesmaid 😆 I 100% would have bailed, if I even agreed in the first place. This is a real thing that happened to my friend a few months ago.
I don't know how her sister acted while they were there. She never mentioned her sister doing anything to improve the situation, so it's safe to assume that, yes, she participated in ignoring my friend.