No matter what, family always has your back. Except when they don’t.

Just a few days ago, a now-deleted Reddit user submitted a story about her wedding to the ‘True Off My Chest’ community, which invites people to speak their minds when no one else listens to them.

In it, the woman explained that her cousin had a thing with her new husband, and, feeling bitter, decided to wear a red dress to their wedding to inform everyone about it.

However, the bride came up with an idea of how to protect her big day from becoming a scandal.

Image credits: Joeyy Lee (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

Credits: anon

It’s not entirely clear how widespread the whole red dress equals infidelity thing is. But many industry experts dismiss it.

For example, Lisa Burton, aka The Bridal Consultant, who has two decades worth of experience in planning weddings abroad and currently focuses on throwing ceremonies in Greece and Italy, didn’t even know it existed.

“I’ve been planning weddings for just over 20 years and I can honestly say that I’ve never heard anything negative about wearing red to a wedding,” she told Bored Panda. “In fact, at Chinese weddings, red represents joy and celebration and is a very popular choice with Chinese brides.”

“The only color I’m aware of that has any type of ‘taboo’ to it would be all white, which traditionally is reserved for the bride.”

“I think I might even have worn red myself at one time. Red is widely worn by guests of all ages so I dare say there is very little truth to this unless the groom is a very busy man,” Burton explained.

Meredith Stoeklein, the founder of bridal label LEIN, also advocates for wearing red to a wedding because it is often associated with love and passion, and has an extensive palette. According to her, red attire for a guest should ideally have a muted shade and elegant undertones such as burgundy, berry, or rust. If the look is subtle and tasteful, a red ensemble is wedding-appropriate.

You could say that the whole mess could’ve been avoided had the bride just uninvited her cousin, but that’s a really complicated process. “I had a bride that once uninvited her chief bridesmaid due to arguments about the style of bridesmaid dress,” Lisa Burton recalled. “The situation escalated to a few nasty conversations over text which eventually led to the bridesmaid being ‘fired’ and the invitation being revoked completely, and more sadly, the end of a long, close friendship. I dare say there was more to it than this, because losing a friendship over a style of dress seems incredibly sad.”

“Most situations with difficult guests tend to be in the close bridal party, or at least these are the ones I hear about,” Burton said. “And mainly due to falling out, so the way the guest is disinvited is often quite abrupt and not in the nicest way. However, is there a way to nicely uninvite a guest? I don’t think so, considering it’s often due to unpleasant circumstances.”

Luckily, the author of the story seems to have found the perfect solution that prevented all the family drama that could’ve come in case she demanded the cousin stay away from the ceremony.

Unfortunately, though, sometimes you just feel you have no choice.

If you feel it’s impossible to avoid, Burton suggests “to do this verbally over the phone, or even better in person. Emails and texts can be misconstrued and they might portray the wrong intention.”

The wedding planner feels a verbal conversation is more personal and you can better communicate your reasoning, no matter what it is. “It’s also the hardest way, and takes courage, but for the sake of future relations, I’d say it’s worth the effort,” she said.

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