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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Quirky_Ad_979 on 2023-07-01 02:57:53+00:00.
My mother was a talented seamstress and worked in fashion for a long time. When she married my father, her employer designed and created a bespoke dress for my mother as a wedding gift. The dress is stunning. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but it's honestly a work of art (hand embroidered, hand beaded, the whole nine yards).
Before she passed, my mother spilt up several of her possessions based on our personalities, and was explicit about who got what in her will. I was gifted the dress, and my sister received jewelry (including pieces that my mother wore on her wedding day).
My sister is engaged, and she recently asked me to gift my mother's dress to her so she could wear it on her wedding day. I told her "no" for various reasons:
- The dress was gifted to me specifically, and it's one of the last few meaningful possessions of my mother's that I have.
- My sister is probably 3-4 sizes larger than my mother. Nothing against her (she's healthy and beautiful), but wearing the dress would require her to let the dress out at the seams, requiring much of the embroidery and beading to be destroyed and re-done. I do not have faith that the dress can be properly restored and maintained.
- My sister implied that as a gift, it would then become hers. I asked if that meant she'd give me some of my mother's jewelry in return, and she said no, which rubbed me the wrong way. BTW, I don't actually want to trade (the dress has too much sentimental value to me). I just wanted to see where my sister's heart was at, and it felt selfish to me.
She's since started a campaign about me to family, She's been crying to my dad and writing nasty things about how selfish I am. She's even brought up the fact that I'm a widow (likely to never remarry) and that I'd never have any use for the dress.
I feel justified in what I did, but based on what I've been hearing from my family, I feel like I'm really ruining her wedding, and it's caused a strain between me and my father. I wonder if I'm being needlessly stubborn.