Spending the day celebrating your friend's pregnancy should be a happy time for the both of you, but let's not kid ourselves: Baby showers, gender reveals, and buying teeny, tiny onesies can get expensive. That is why one woman who was tight on cash was livid when her friend not only sprung on her a second celebration to welcome baby but decided to ask all of the guests to pay an entry fee to the party.
The woman explained that she's a full-time student and works full time, so she's short on both cash and time.
In a post on Reddit, the anonymous woman shared that despite her circumstances, she was determined to go to her close friend's baby shower. "I went ahead and told her I would request off work and definitely be there," she wrote. She even allocated money to splurge and by her friend some nice baby gifts.
But then her friend suddenly changed the plan. "About a week before the baby shower I get a text from her saying this party would actually be a gender reveal party and they were having a separate baby shower three-weeks later that she wanted me to come to as well," the woman continued. "I was slightly annoyed because I knew I was going to have to request off work again and buy another gift. I told her I would try my best to be there but I couldn’t make any promises.
"Two days before the now 'gender reveal' party she texts me in a group message of people and says there’s an entry fee of $20 to the party!" the woman continued. That's when she got angry. She texted her friend privately and told her that she didn't have an extra $20 to spend on the gender reveal event.
Her friend said she couldn't make an exception for the fee and reminded her that she had already told her she'd be there. "I didn’t reply, and didn’t show up," the woman added. "She texted me a few days later informing me I was disinvited to the future baby shower and how she was appalled I couldn’t even send a message to let her know I wasn’t coming after I said I would be there."
The woman is now confused on whether she did the right thing; was she wrong for not telling her friend that she wasn't going to attend?
Most people were in agreement -- the Original Poster's friend stinks.
"You can’t afford what you can’t afford," one person commented. "And yeah, an entry fee for that sort of party sounds super insane to me. Who does that?"
"Holy (expletive), some (expletive) people," another person agreed. "A cover charge for a gender reveal party? How did we get to this point in society?"
"I could afford to pay $20 to go to a party, but I still wouldn't because that's tacky as hell," a third person agreed. "I don't think you did anything wrong and frankly, this isn't someone I would want to remain friends with."
Some people thought the woman was wrong for ghosting.
Although one person agreed that an entry fee was "tacky," they thought the OP had bunked it up by not explicitly telling her friend she wasn't coming.
"I do feel like you left it open ended about coming to the party. You told her no, and she said 'Right, you promised to be there,'" the person wrote. "You ended the conversation with her clearly expecting you to show up. She potentially bought food or gag gifts based on your attendance so your no-show may have cost her money. You should have been clear with her that you would not be attending."
"Your friend was beyond rude to invite people and then — after people had said they were coming — spring an entry fee on them," wrote someone else. "You weren't rude at all to decline, but you should have told her you weren't coming."
"You promised you would be there assuming that it would be like most parties and not charge an entry fee (that's really weird, btw). That being said, you definitely should have told her that you weren't planning on attending after she texted saying she wouldn't make an exception," another person commented.
In an update to her original post however, the woman explained that her decision had made her feel guilty. "I always let people walk all over me and I felt extremely guilty considering maybe she had got goodie bags or something for me and I didn’t technically tell her I wasn’t attending," she wrote. "I found out today through a mutual friend that only 11 people showed up out of 30 + she invited."
She added, "I feel so much better knowing I’m NTA."
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