This Is Us. Anyone watching?

Just watched the episode - Kate!!

Umm

 have you ever been a bridesmaid? Plenty are perfectly comfortable in bridesmaids dresses, especially since now many just have to be a certain color, but the dresses can vary.

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The time to have that discussion is when selecting the dresses, and in consultation with the bride, not on the wedding day and not a unilateral decision by the bridesmaid’s mother. Few here would not have been pissed if they were the bride, IMO, and rightly so. The role of the bridesmaid is to support the bride in her day, and I do not need to have been a bridesmaid to understand that.

I get that it’s a story arc, and that this series has enough holes in logic to drive a Mack truck through, but if this happened in real life, Beth would be called a Dance Mom and Tess a Snowflake. And that’s if the speaker were being polite. The scene would have been more appropriate, albeit overused, as a pre-prom event.

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I would be plenty mad if one of my bridesmaids did that. I know it pushed a storyline forward, but still. Beth was out of line.

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Agree, Beth was an out-of-line mama bear.
I was expecting a jumpsuit - creating legs from the ample skirt, not a different dress.

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I maintain, “Go Beth”. She didn’t tie dye the top and dye Tess’s hair rainbow colors. She tastefully altered the dress. If a wedding is truly about family and love and wanting to share that amongst everyone who comes to celebrate than an dress adjustment is also a celebration of Tess’s acceptance in the family.

ALSO, Tess seemed shocked when she saw the dress. I picked up on that right away. My guess with this quickie wedding that Madison got bridesmaid measurements and the dress decision was hands off for the bridesmaids.

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Oh come on now. There is almost ZERO chance that the amount of changes they made to Tess’s dress, top and bottom, could have been made the day of the wedding. This is television. That said, there was a discussion on another forum that a sibling who is considering transitioning but still identifies as male but cross dresses, wanted to wear a dress to his sister’s wedding. It led to a lively discussion.

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I acknowledged that.:grin:

The sibling, if they are a guest, can dress as Lady Bunny if that’s what floats their boat. And yes, I know that wearing a dress is not synonymous with being a drag queen. But if they are an attendant, they wear what the bride tells them to wear.

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Show definitely bounces back and forth between literal and representative. Some things symbolic. I think the dress was a lot of that. For Beth to intervene when dresses were picked out involves another scene. So why not do that the day of the wedding? Plus it was anti-perfection in terms of what Kevin was trying to achieve all while the altar Madison designed/built crashes down (Kevin knows it did but Madison did not – yet she knew the marriage it was built for wasn’t right).

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EXCELLENT observation!

If it were real life, Tess should have worn the dress as-is. Thank goodness television takes some liberties because it’s makes it a whole lot more entertaining to watch.

My predictions for this show have been terrible, but I think Kevin and Madison end up together. At the bachelor party, they watched Kevin’s favorite movie, Jerry Maguire, and Kevin was called Jerry 2.0. I just ordered the movie from Netflix to watch again, but if I remember it correctly, Kevin and Madison are following the path of Jerry and Dorothy.

I loved the scenes with just the core family. The conflicts from the last season were resolved and they were all at peace and supporting and loving one another again.

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But what bridesmaid think they are going to wear anything but a bridesmaid dress? I find her attitude very selfish and entitled. Plus, what bride would have been ok with that? Not any woman I know. Why didn’t Beth go to her, why Justin only?. Because she knew what she was doing was wrong.

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I’m a very not worried about tradition person in the sense of weddings. Unique things - like a dress fit for the person - are what make weddings memorable to me. As a bride I would totally be on board. I would hope my groom - as important of a member that day as a bride, would be on board too. As a family member I would hope I would recognize the symbolism that my sister in law (Beth) would make my niece (Tess) stand tall and proud at my wedding as a part of OUR family - not MY family. A decision I would prioritize over matchy-matchy photos for the photo album. But that’s ME.

Assuming she went to Justin only because she knew it was wrong
well, that’s an assumption based on your views, no? I mean, maybe Madison could not be accessed? Maybe Justin was the one who picked out the bridesmaid dresses - he’s been quite involved! Maybe she went to Madison and she said, “I don’t care, check with Kevin”!!

Again, TV.

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I can think of a few occasions where a bridesmaid, uncomfortable with wearing dresses and comfortable with their identity, wore that dress. It was a day, they got through it. There are pictures to prove it.

At their own weddings, they got to wear what they wanted.

I know it’s tv and all. But I am a big believer in that sometimes we don’t always get to do exactly what we want to. But I have relatives who raised their children that they never had to do anything they didn’t want to. Now they are adults who behave the same.

Sometimes we just have to put our big girl panties on (or dress) and take one for the team.

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I would say that weddings have changed a LOT since most on this forum got married. When I got married, everything was completely matchy-matchy. My bridesmaids wore lavender dresses and had dyed-to-match lavender shoes. Even everyone’s nail polish was the same! Brides often gave gifts of jewelry for bridesmaids so that everyone’s fake pearls were EXACTLY the same. There was just a lot of “sameness,” in all weddings - all receptions, too.

I personally think the trend of all bridesmaids in an identical color but different styles of dresses is a great thing for brides to do. It’s hard to find a dress that flatters every single shape, height, and size of bridesmaid. HOWEVER, I also think it’s perfectly fine if a bride wants all her bridesmaids in identical dress styles. I tend to be in the school of thought that it’s the bride’s decision. I’m not a fan of bridezilla types at all, but I don’t think wearing an unflattering dress (or one that doesn’t suit your style/personal taste preferences) for one day is asking all that much.

It was a nice gesture of Beth, but yeah, Tess - suck it up or don’t be in the bridal party. No day of switches/changes allowed.

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Does it not weigh/factor in at all that Tess seems to be shocked when she sees the dress? That seeing it in person with all it’s “pink frilliness” was not something she had been shown before?

Not to beat this point down. :slight_smile: The real point and story arc was not Beth’s parenting with a bridesmaid dress and telling her daughter to suck it up with a dress she doesn’t like but Beth’s parenting with regard to her daughter’s identity, recognition and acceptance of that and movement forward on their relationship in regards to that. Don’t say that could be done after the wedding. We can only “see” what the script shows.

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I do get that it’s not about the dress. But a metaphor for something bigger.

And there were some other things in that episode that defied reality. Which I won’t go into.

I would have insisted that DD wear the dress, saying we can talk about it later. Plus I haven’t the creativity or talent to make such changes even if I wanted to.

It was at that scene that I foresaw that the wedding was off. After all of Madison’s excruciatingly detailed specifications for everything, and Kevin’s extreme oversight, I figured the change in dress wouldn’t be important at the end of the day.

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I have worn a couple of horrible bridesmaids dresses (including one with a huge yellow hat, one made me feel like an autumn leaf
) with no complaint. If you agree to be in a wedding party that is the cost of honoring your friend/relative. (remember the movie 27 Dresses LOL) For my wedding and my D’s upcoming wedding we both had just one maid of honor who chose her own dress. BUT for purposes of this FICTIONAL show I imagine the bridesmaid’s dress was simply a mechanism to bring mother and daughter closer.

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Yeah, the dress scene was intended for mom to show that she “got” and accepted her daughter and her daughter to “get” that.

It would have been diff if Tess was transgender and wasn’t comfortable wearing the dress but that was not the case. In the real world you suck it up and wear the dress for the bride.

And the magic redesign? Well, we are all used to the unrealistic things in the show (just how do they all often jump on planes and go across country when you are unemployed, etc? And I never understood when Beth and Randall had that huge house, it appeared they only had 3 bedrooms - the girls shared a room when William was there)

But we love the show anyway!

Good episode. And the Kate ending certainly surprised me!!