A seemingly disgruntled couple decided to tack on a $200 wedding entrance fee for their wedding guests, and the timing is pretty suspicious. A group of friends decided that they would bring small gifts to the couple’s wedding shower and bring larger cash gifts to the actual wedding. The morning after their wedding shower, the couple suddenly sent a message to their friends saying “to attend the wedding it would be $200 per person and would not include drinks.”
The bride and groom’s wedding invitation didn’t mention a fee, which made their friends think they decided to add this entrance fee because they weren’t satisfied with their shower gifts. Yikes.
The wedding guests weren’t sure about gift etiquette.
In a post on Reddit, one of the wedding guests explained that their group of friends had never been to a wedding shower. The person added that most people in the friend group are on student budgets. Ahead of the wedding shower, the friends asked the bride and groom about their gift expectations. The couple said they’d “prefer cash but anything would be appreciated,” which seemed simple enough.
They decided to bring small gifts to the wedding shower.
Because the bride and groom were kind of “vague” when they answered the question about gifts, the group of friends decided they would bring small gifts to the wedding shower and bring cash to the actual wedding. The friend who explained the situation on Reddit acknowledged that their wedding shower gifts might’ve seemed “cheap,” but each friend planned on giving cash to the couple on their special day. Besides, the couple had made it sound like their expectations weren’t incredibly high.
Clearly, not every gift was appreciated.
Things took a dramatic turn when the couple sent a text about the $200 wedding entrance fee. To the friends invited to the wedding, this sudden fee seemed quite “offensive,” especially because it was added right after the wedding shower.
The Redditor explained that even if the couple thought that their friends were being “stingy,” they could’ve spoken to them about it instead of sending a message about a “passive-aggressive fee.” They decided to confront the couple about the entrance fee.
“After some deliberation, we decided we would not be paying this and sent a collective message that the $200 fee feels offensive,” the person wrote. Later, the couple responded and explained that the entrance fee was added because their friends “cheaped out at the wedding shower.”
“I guess they wanted to make sure we’d actually bring cash to the wedding?” the Redditor added, noting that none of the friends are attending the wedding now. To make it even worse, the bride and groom removed themselves from their friends’ group chat (after eight years of friendship).
Redditors largely sided with the wedding guests.
To many Redditors, the bride and groom sounded tacky, awful, and greedy. Some people even wondered if they were hoping to profit from having a wedding.
“Were they trying to make money off of getting married?” one person commented. “The point of a shower is to get everyone together, not to bleed your friends dry. Also the point of hosting a wedding is to have a party where people have a good time, not to make a profit off of family and friends.”
In terms of gift-giving etiquette, one Redditor added that the bride and groom should absolutely not “demand gifts.” The commenter continued with this: “If people point blank ask what they can give you, you can reluctantly give an idea or two, always being generic enough to leave them an out. Have a registry if you want, but know that people don’t have to get you things from the registry. They literally don’t have to bring you anything at all.”
Although one person wrote that maybe the friends were a bit stingy or cheap when it came to their wedding shower gifts, the commenter still thought the bride and groom’s behavior was “atrocious.” After all, not everyone knows proper wedding gift etiquette, and the wedding guests in question were the couple’s friends.
“If there’s ever a time to extend grace to guest faux pas, it’s a wedding (not everyone has money for a subjectively ‘proper’ gift, nor knows the ever-changing rules of etiquette),” the Redditor explained. “And yet, instead of excusing your friends for what you see as an insult, the couple went 0-60 with the pettiness.”
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
