Oh, there it is.
Yeah, I agree that it seems like the people around the bride are being pretty obnoxious.
That’s no excuse.
Nothing wrong with a bride wanting to make her wedding a big deal special day, and want things a certain way, but IMO, don’t lose focus on what the day is about by getting crazy over the details.
If you or your parents can afford a lavish wedding hire professionals. If you can;t and you’re expecting friends and family to pitch in you should expect some reasonable limitations. Asking someone to make dresses is a big deal and they have every right to set a limit.
Good for you. Making her dress is enough and hopefully she will appreciate it. The other bridesmaids can handle their own however they choose. It’s really not your problem or obligation in any way.
I’m not sure what you mean by reasonable expectations. If I’m invited to someone’s wedding it’s THEIR wedding and I’ll help to whatever degree I’m able. I don’t feel entitled to expect them to accommodate me at all.
If you ask someone to be part of the wedding party then there needs to be an understanding about attire and who’s paying. The same with other details.
It’s really easy to say that, but I had to fight my mother about everything UnFancy I wanted in my wedding. I had a screaming throwdown in Macy’s because my mom was INSISTING I “had to wear heels or I wouldn’t feel right” (to understand how crazy this was, note that my mother was a bra-burner in the 70s).
I wore the embroidered freaking sneakers under my dress I planned on wearing all along. Was I being “Bridezilla” when I insisted on choosing my own shoes? Was I making myself the “center of attention”? Was I “focusing too much on the party being perfect”? No, I just wanted to wear freaking sneakers, and I was sick of people telling me I couldn’t.
People have this idea that if you try to keep it minimal things will be so easy. The more you try to make it simple, the more the Moms, aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, hairdressers, etc. freak out and make your life a living hell. Knuckling under to the Wedding-Industrial complex is often the path of least resistance, NOT representative of the bride asserting herself as the most important.
I have completely the opposite view. If I’m the guest, I have no obligations at all. I’m not helping with shit. I didn’t ask to be invited to the fucking thing. I’m just minding my own business and get hit with an invitation. Maybe I’ll show up, maybe not (probably not, I loathe weddings), but that’s all the fuck I’m going to do. Their party plans are not my responsibility. Wedding guests shoul;d not be treated like free labor and bank cards. I think it’s inappropriate to expect a guest at any party to lift a finger or spend a dime. The host is supposed to entertain the guests, not the other way around. They’re imposing on me enough just by inviting me.
I think you have to just let that one go - for whatever reason, this is your new reality. Sorry. 
Good for you. It is hard to get older siblings to see you as an adult in your own right, but (I assume) you are, and you have the right to draw some lines with your sister (even for HER BIG DAY!). And her friends. And your mom.
Keep in mind that this is only for a couple of months, then it will be over. Do what you can to help her, try to figure out what is just too much and put your foot down, and have some fun.
As for accommodating guests versus making your wedding the way you want it, that’s a difficult line that every marrying couple walks. Yeah, it’s your wedding, and you’re paying for it (or your families are), but you have to think of your guests, too - I think we’ve all been to weddings that were the way the happy couple wanted them, and the guests were uncomfortable throughout.
Apparently my sister was quite the bridezilla at her first wedding (I was too young to be aware of it). She mellowed out for her subsequent weddings (which she also had to pay for herself).
You don’t do things to make your family and friends uncomfortable - if it is within your power to accommodate them. i.e. your wedding is not the time to introduce your grandmother to sushi (unless you have additional entrees). Or to decide that since the theme of your wedding is orange, all your guests should dress in orange. Where you make requests of your guests beyond what is traditionally required of wedding guests (show up, dress nice), you understand when they don’t comply (i.e. you don’t throw a fit when your guests decide not to spend their vacation time and dollars going to Aruba so you can get married on the beach.)
WTF is up with that, anyway? You’d think that people would jump at the chance for things to be low-effort and inexpensive, but noooooooooo. Everyone has to bitch about how really must have this and OMG you can’t skip that, and it won’t be a real wedding without the other thing, and Oh! wouldn’t it make things so much nicer if you just…
By the day of the wedding, I honestly thought that if I heard one more goddamn kvetch about bridesmaids, or printed napkins, or real flowers, or a bigger cake, or why couldn’t we have had it in x location, I was going up a clock tower with a rifle.
So why include those people in the planning at all?
Because if you say “butt out mom/aunt/friend/brother/hairdresser” you are a BRIDEZILLA WHO DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ANYONE BUT HERSELF and is ON A CRAZY EGO TRIP. Eleventy!~!~
Many of these people are not, in point of actual fact, involved in the wedding planning. They’re people you have to keep updated on what the plans are and they just volunteer their obviously awesome and helpful opinions unsolicited. And if you disregard said opinions, or just stop talking to them about it…you’re a self-centered, bratty Bridezilla who needs to get over herself.
::sending supportive big-girl panty vibes your way::
I crochet and my “specialty” is fine lacework. I made small doilies for favors for my cousin’s shower and she got it into her head that I could make full-sized shawls for her 6 attendants, out of silk, in 2 months, because it would be cheaper than just buying the damn things. She wanted me to copy one that she saw at a store so she wanted me to go there and “look at it”, figure out how to do it, and make it so.
She did offer to cough up a whopping $25 for materials because “yarn’s cheap, right?”
I diplomatically told her no (“I’m sorry, September’s such a busy month for me and I’d hate for you to be disappointed if I couldn’t have them ready in time”) and she spent the rest of the time whining about how I was making her spend all this money (on shawls the bridesmaids had to buy themselves) and they looked ugly because I didn’t want to help her by making nicer ones. Not to mention how every time I saw her I got the snide “So how’s work 'cause I know you’re sooooooooo busy!”
Stick to your guns. It’ll be an ugly scene when you tell her you’re not doing the other 4 dresses, but personally I’d rather have one knock-down-drag-out now than spend the next 3 months resenting every stitch. Think how nice it will be, the week before the wedding, when the “I gained ten pooooouuuuunnnddddss!” “I’m pregnant and it doesn’t fit anymore!” “This color sucks it clashes with my hair color!” etc hit and it’s Not Your Problem. It sounds as if there’ll be plenty of sound and fury to make up for it
No… whipped husbands usually start earlier in the process- they’re the guys who should know better than to marry these awful harpies, yet do it anyway out of blind love, duty, or whatever.
Having said that, I’ll say that there’s something uniquely frightening about confronting a bride-to-be about “her” wedding as the groom-to-be. Years of expectations have been built up about “her special day” and you’re going against all of those expectations and the tacit approval of society and usually of her female family and friends that she gets what she wants in this one case.
It’s kind of the ultimate marriage argument you’ll never win, and you’re starting off with it.
Those of us with some sense know that it’s much better to choose your ground like a general deciding where to fight, and then maneuver her onto that ground and flank her. In other words, what you do is figure out what’s important to you to assert yourself over, and then figure out how to present it in a way that she’ll agree with, rather than telling her she’s wrong and starting a fight.
Heh. While still refusing to do it (hell, I couldn’t turn out that many shawls that fast if I didn’t have a job at all), you should have showed her a catalog and told her how much that yarn would cost. I just looked online, and for 1200 yards of sport weight silk (one shawl, according to the pattern I pulled at random off Ravelry), that’s at least $80/shawl just for the materials.
ETA: Oops, I was looking at laceweight. Make that $150/shawl.
I have to say that I think this is incorrect- I can remember every single wedding I have been invited to as a day of great joy, and some of them were small events in private quarters, and others rented out entire ballrooms or northern california wineries, and they were all special, and I was properly worshipful to both the bride and groom, both of whom I was friends with long before.
A good wedding is awesome.
A bad wedding where bride or groomzilla behavior is evident negatively is horrid. One where attention to detail is wonderful and a great memory to all concerned, the least guest (our daughter, who was known of but not known) will remember forever as a time to dress up and be publicly radiant with deference to the royal couple (the bride and groom).
My buddy didn’t give two shits, but he dug seeing all his buds- the bride was in heaven, even if tiredly so, and it was great, on every occasion but one, where the groom was loving it more than the bride. I haven’t had the occasion to be at one of my gay friends’ weddings, but that’s cause they shut it down so quickly in California…
So I myself eloped, as I didn’t have the stomach nor the bank account to afford it, but be assured, your talents will be remembered, even if your input and name is not.
This is NOT to say that agreeing to two dresses, yours and your sister’s, is tantamount to agreement to sewing all six. That’s fucked up.
I know, I couldn’t make one shawl out of bedspread cotton for $25 let alone anything fancier.
Thing is, if I mentioned price she’d come right back with “So shop around and find it cheaper somewhere else.” She’s the same cousin who wigged out when she found out the 5-tiered fondant monstrosity of a wedding cake she wantedwas going to cost over $1000. “It’s just cake!” Well, when you go to the fancy custom cake designer instead of, you know, the boring old bakery and picking something out of their catalog…
I’d suggest you decline to argue. Say something along the lines of “I thought hard about it and decided I could make two dresses that come up to acceptable standards. If I tried to make more, they wouldn’t be right. So that’s my decision.”
To any and all ensuing protestations, you simply say “I am sorry, but my decision has been made: I want this wedding to be good, and two nice dresses are what I can manage.”