Jilted bride lawsuit raises questions
Every so often I hear a news story that makes me question the sanity of some people in our country.
Tuesday morning as I rolled out of bed and turned on CNN to catch up on national news, I heard such a story.
A bride in Chicago is suing the man she was going to marry when he backed out of the wedding four days before the ceremony. She is suing for the cost of the wedding, which she claims totals $95,000.
According to a report by the Chicago Breaking News Center, the bride, Dominique A. Buttitta claims the groom “breached his promise to marry and intentionally inflicted emotional distress on her when he told her on Sept. 27, days before their Oct. 2 wedding date, that ‘he would not marry her.’”
Buttitta is a lawyer who claims she spent $95,942 on the wedding and that the groom has refused to repay her for the expenses.
She allegedly spent $30,000 to rent out the reception hall, $12,000 on flowers, $10,000 for an orchestra and $5,400 for her wedding dress.
Her suit has the great argument that since she put faith in “relying on the promise of the defendant to marry her, [she] has remained ever since and still is unmarried.”
While I can sympathize with her being jilted, I oppose the lawsuit for several reasons.
First, I thought it was tradition for the family of the bride to pay for the ceremony.
Second, I don’t care how rich you are, I think it is ridiculous to spend so much on a wedding. I know this is the guy in me speaking, but I don’t understand spending $12,000 for flowers that will begin wilting less than 10 hours after the ceremony.
Third, he did not wait until the bride was at the alter to call it off and she knew before he did that he was getting cold feet. He had told some of his friends he was having second thoughts and it got back to her — she asked him and he denied, but it should have given her a heads up anyway.
Finally, if the lawsuit is not thrown out it opens up a bad legal precedent.
What happens when a groom who was left at the alter claims the bride agreed to marry him when she accepted the ring? It seems that the man would have a great argument to have the woman declared his wife.
I once had doubts anything like the above mentioned scenario would happen, but courts are issuing disturbing rulings more and more these days.
The judge should throw the case out and send a clear message.
After all, people are left at the alter quite often and any bride should assume that is a likely possibility. If they still want to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a wedding and they are left at the alter they should still be held responsible for paying the bills.
If a person buys a new car, they sign a contract agreeing to make the payments. Usually that person has a job and expects to keep that job. When that person gets laid off and can’t make the payments, that person has no legal recourse to require his or her former employer to continue to make those car payments.
Spending so much on a wedding is no different.
Besides, an expensive wedding is no indication of how the marriage will ultimately turn out.
It is not the extravagance of the wedding that will determine the success of a marriage — it is the ability of the people involved to solve their problems in a mutually acceptable way.
