Influencer Kit Barrus says her 17-year friendship with her childhood bestie ended after the bride uninvited her from her wedding because of a social media video Barrus claimed was harmless.
Kit Barrus has built an incredibly successful career as an influencer, spent around $3,000 on her friend’s bachelorette trip, only to be ignored and uninvited by the bride and her bridesmaids throughout the trip.
She was ignored by everyone and felt obligated to pay for everything, which ruined the experience instead of letting her have the time of her life. The situation took another turn once she got back home.
Kit Barrus is originally from Thousand Oaks, California, where she met the bride when they were 11. In recent years, Kit Barrus says their friendship became toxic, mostly because she became an influencer.
“Things were like, we had this weird on-again, off-again friendship the last few years,” Kit Barrus says. “She was really, really critical of my relationships with men.”
Kit Barrus says the bride often compared her life to Kit Barrus’s. “She kept saying stuff like, ‘I could never do what you’re doing because I love my man.'”
Additionally, Kit Barrus says the bride once told her that the bride’s mom didn’t want Kit Barrus to be the bridesmaid because her work as an influencer is a “bad look” for the wedding.
Money had already caused tensions between them before this incident. Kit Barrus says she once spent around $1,000 on Disney tickets for her friends during her trip back to Thousand Oaks from Australia, where she was living at the time.
“She spent a whole year where she didn’t speak to me,” Kit Barrus said. “Apparently she was livid because I didn’t buy her boyfriend, who I’ve spent no time with, a ticket also.”
Despite all this, Kit Barrus accepted her invitation to the bachelorette party, an all-expenses-paid trip to Mexico. The bride had around eight to nine bridesmaids, but Kit Barrus was the only non-bridesmaid.
“They’re all talking about going to the tailor and the bridesmaid dresses and all these different things they’re doing for the wedding, and I’m the only non-bridesmaid,” she said. “Nobody wanted to talk to me about work.”
According to Kit Barrus, she even went out of her way to make her friend feel special, decorating her cabin door and bringing a whole basket filled with bride gifts.
“She was like, ‘I really want to decorate the door. I want to do this. I want to do that,'” Barrus said. “So, I brought everything to decorate her door. I brought her a whole basket of, like, bride-to-be, like, all this stuff. And I was not even a bridesmaid.”
Additionally, Kit Barrus drove the other bridesmaids and paid all the gas money and $100 for parking. On top of that, she booked a private cabin so she could continue working and creating content while on the trip, which only increased tension since the other bridesmaids were sharing smaller cabins.
Money was again a source of conflict on the trip. During one lunch in Mexico, the whole group got a $277 bill, mostly due to the tequila shots. Kit Barrus says she ordered only two tacos and a glass of water, totaling around $20, but still felt like she had to pay much more than that.
“They had a $277 lunch bill in Mexico,” she said. “I ordered two tacos and a water, which totaled perhaps $20 of this bill.”
Kit Barrus says she offered them $50 in cash, but they still had trouble splitting the bill until another guest charged it.
“It felt like weaponized incompetence,” she said. “They wanted me to handle it somehow or something.”
Kit Barrus also says she felt like she was supposed to pay for lunch since she was an influencer.
“I felt like I was there to fund certain things,” she said.
Another instance where Kit Barrus says the bride got upset was when she lost a $10 shirt from H&M, which required them to stop and search through the bride’s luggage to find it.
“She was like, ‘I have to find this shirt right now. Where is it?'” Barrus said. “I was like, ‘It’s just like a $10 shirt.'”
Kit Barrus explained that the bride felt offended when she said she could replace the shirt since she had enough money to do so.
“She was like, ‘Well, not all of us have money like that to just get new stuff,”‘ Kit Barrus said.
Fed up with her friend’s behavior, Kit Barrus offered to replace the shirt herself. “I ended up looking at her, and I was, ‘You know what? Then I’ll buy it for you. Let’s keep moving.'”
Besides money issues, Kit Barrus claims the bridesmaids’ behavior made the trip harder for her. One evening on the cruise, Kit Barrus found herself sitting in a chair against the wall while all the bridesmaids turned their backs to her.
“They put me in a chair, like, up against this wall and then all turned their backs to me,” she said. Kit Barrus says that she filmed the incident and sent the video to one of her friends.
After returning home from the cruise, she says that the bridesmaids immediately started talking about organizing a sleepover right in front of her, but that none of them expected her to join.
“After Kit drops us off, you guys should just stay, and we’ll have a sleepover,” Kit Barrus remembers her bridesmaids saying.
Kit Barrus says that she tried connecting with the bridesmaids individually, but they just started ignoring her more and more.
“She was so nice to the other girls,” Kit Barrus said.
During one of the excursions in Mexico, Kit Barrus says that she grew so uncomfortable that she returned to the cruise by herself. Only one of the bridesmaids asked her where she was going, and none of them asked how she was after she got back from the excursion.
“I went down, and I got a drink, and I hung out in the main foyer, and I read Invincible comics on my phone,” she said. “This is the most fun I’ve had this whole f***ing trip.”
The situation changed completely after Kit Barrus uploaded a light-hearted Instagram Reel in which she joked about traveling solo instead of in a group.
The video, captioned “POV, you’re used to solo traveling,” shows her walking slower, waiting for others, and carrying other people’s bags.
According to Kit Barrus, the video was not meant to offend anyone, and she had warned the bride about creating content before the trip.
“I had told her before the trip, ‘By the way, I’m never not working. So I’m going to get my own room so I can still be making reels,”‘ Kit Barrus said.
However, her friend’s reaction to the video was quite the opposite of what Kit Barrus expected. “She was like, ‘How dare you?'” Kit Barrus said. “I thought this was relatable, but I guess if you’ve never solo-traveled, you wouldn’t really get it.”
According to Kit Barrus, the video was never meant to mock the other bridesmaids, but they took it personally. She deleted the video after seeing how mad they got, but it was too late.
After the trip, Kit Barrus says her friend messaged her, saying the video was inappropriate and that she was no longer invited to the wedding. After 17 years of friendship, there was nothing left to say anymore.
“I just never replied,” she said. “There’s really nothing to say to that.”
A few days later, her friend blocked Kit Barrus on social media. According to Kit Barrus, one of the bridesmaids started leaving comments under her Instagram Reels, suggesting the group paid for her lunch, which Kit Barrus found ridiculous since she had offered them money for lunch.
Instead of feeling sad about losing her friend and not being able to go to the wedding, Kit Barrus feels relieved. By the end of the trip, Kit Barrus had already decided not to go to the wedding.
“I got back, and I was talking to my other friends, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how to not go to this wedding. I don’t want to go to this wedding. This person is horrible. I want nothing to do with her,” Kit Barrus remembers. “And then the next day she uninvited me, and I literally did a victory lap.”
“Thank God, thank God.”
The whole experience cost Kit Barrus a 17-year friendship and around $3,000, although she managed to earn that amount while making content during the trip. Additionally, the incident ruined her last high school friendship, and Kit Barrus sees no reason to try to fix it.
