Accidental Petty Revenge: How a Wedding Gift Unintentionally Exposed a Bride’s Secret
The original poster (OP) clashed with a cousin’s fiancée when she became engaged to a new, uptight and materialistic woman. From the beginning, Julie was all about appearances, paying a small fortune for wedding invites and arguing with OP over OP not playing ball. When OP was casual about how none of the fancy invitations made a difference, the whole bridezilla thing really exploded.
However, the real twist came later, at the actual wedding. Going for comedy, OP found some baby-themed wrapping paper with a rattle on it to wrap their wedding gift. That was supposed to be a joke but when the husband came back from his honeymoon, he called OP, shocked — Julie had secretly gone off the pill months before the wedding and was 2 months along. Julie blew a gasket over OP and his cousin’s “prophecy” though. As for karma, it found Julie as well — ended up cheating with a rich client, divorced (twice) & OP and her cousin’s second ex-husband hit it off and became pals reminiscing about what they should have done for their wives.
The man wasn’t on good terms with his cousin’s fiancée
But during the wedding, the universe handed him the perfect chance to get the last laugh
Materialism, Symbolism & Relationship Red Flags
1. The Psychology Behind Materialistic Obsession in Weddings
Julie obsessing over elaborate wedding invitations shows a larger obsession with class relations and status. According to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, materialism-prone individuals tend to equate possessions with self (source).
- Pick the right partnerMarriage, costly wedding, couple at the altarGetty ImagesIn a 2014 study, weddings coughed up too much money were found to have a higher divorce rate—high-cost weddings were associated with short-lived marriages.
- Julie seemed far more concerned with who was invited over expensive relationship, their price tags, than who was and was not invited, which early in the story-painted Julie as a future cheater and commitment-phobe at a first-glance.
For many, the wedding is more of a show than the marriage, especially if they are type who cares more about appearances than meaning, and this only reinforces that old belief.
2. The Symbolism of OP’s ‘Baby-Themed’ Wedding Gift
Despite the fact that OP’s wrapping paper depicting babies was a joke, symbolics and subconscious allusions play essential role in human behavior.
- Accidental prophecy has to do with confirmation bias in which random events are perceived as related post hoc (source)
- In retrospect, the wrapping paper was a metaphor and Julie being pregnant was a secret and it felt like OP had somehow known, which angered Julie.
This is a relatively normal psychological phenomenon called guilty exposure syndrome, whereby an individual who is hushing up, often overreacts to an event that is not related to their case, but feels subconsciously exposed inferring this event onto them.
3. Relationship Red Flags: What OP’s Cousin Missed
Julie isn’t an example of the perfect wife or husband, she embodies the red flags–the materialism, mystery and lack of humor from an early stage–that hint at a bad spouse. Research on relationship behaviours reveals common warning signs — most of which Julie displayed:
- Controlling behavior (elder demands extravagant wedding details; brides goes along with what she wants).
- Hidden conformity (stopping birth control without informing partner)
- For emotional immaturity (OP crack a harmless joke, over-react)
- Risk factors for infidelity—those who choose a woman with status and money over one without have a higher statistical correlation to infidelity (source)
In the end, OP’s cousin avoided that bullet (after a horrible marriage and divorce, though).
In the replies, the author shared that the rest of the family also had their fair share of issues with her
A light-hearted joke revealed some uncomfortable facts about an already imperfect relationship. And that same wrapping paper — the one with babies on it that OP used to wrap Julie’s gift in — was the one thing that catapulted this revelation, revealing just how much symbolism, materialism, and red flags can factor into doomed relationships.
Julie went on to yet another rich husband (and yet another divorce), whereop cousin, whereop went on to a most unlikely friendship–with her second husband? One of those ironic endings to some small, churlish revenge due mostly to the sheer absurdities of the FDA and the state government.
