Weddings are about the couple first and foremost. Still, the guests are important. Couples should consider them. If you aren’t going to concern yourself with a guest’s experience, eloping would be a good option.
For a wedding to be truly successful, guests and hosts need to be mindful of one another. When they aren’t, drama ensues and you have stressed-out brides writing in to Reddit forums asking complete strangers if they’re being unreasonable, such as one bride who is completely incensed after her mom invited a ton of extra people to her wedding.
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The bride was very clear about her rules.
Recently, a bride asked the Reddit community if she was being an a–hole for refusing to pay for her mother’s additional wedding guests. The bride wrote that she is in the midst of planning a wedding for 200 people. “At the beginning of the planning process, I told my parents that they could invite 20 guests each,” she explained.
The bride also told her parents that if they wanted to invite additional people, they would be responsible for the costs ($150/person). Sounds pretty clear and fair. It could have all been so simple.
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Her mother decided to invite 30 extra people.
“My mom ended up inviting 50 guests,” the bride wrote. “Meaning I would cover the costs for 20 of her guests but she would have to cover the costs for 30 of her guests.”
Now, vendor payments are due and her mother is refusing to cover her portion of the costs — the 30 additional guests. The bride writes that her mother is playing the victim and saying all types of things.
Mom is saying she can’t afford to pay for the 30 additional people.
The mom said she would ask the 30 extra guests to pay for their own costs. Then she upped the ante, claiming that she doesn’t believe she’ll enjoy the wedding so the bride should remove her AND her guests from the list.
Later, in a bit of flip flop, she said she is applying for a loan from the bank to cover the $4,500 price tag. Lastly, and most dramatically, the mother of the bride said, “[The bride has] killed all her excitement and spirit.”
The bride says she’s really at a loss. “Our budget has already gone way over and I can’t stretch myself to cover these unexpected costs,” she explained.
Redditors called the OP's mom manipulative.
The Reddit community assured the bride that she wasn’t the one being the jerk. Instead, her mother should hold that title.
“She’s just trying to show off to all of her friends using your wedding, which is not cool,” someone wrote.
Another commenter hopes that the OP sticks to the initial rules she outlined. “She’s betting that OP will back down and go into debt to finance her guests,” the person wrote. “I’m hoping she’s wrong. She will never stop stomping boundaries if she gets away with this.”
Someone provided a bit of a script for the bride.
Another commenter outlined a response for each one of the mother’s gripes:
- she can’t afford to pay as agreed – Not your problem
- she will ask each of her 30 extra guests to cover their own costs – Not their problem
- She does not think she will enjoy the wedding so I should remove her AND her guests from the guest list – Sounds like a plan to me
- She is seeking a loan from the bank to pay for those costs – up to her but needs to do this NOW
- I have killed all her excitement and spirit – no she killed her excitement and spirit trying to pull a fast one on you
The person concluded by suggesting that the OP needs to give her mom a firm deadline. If she’s not able to come up with the money by then, her extra guests must be uninvited. Users explained that the bride’s mother was being manipulative and reminded the OP that this is her day, not her mother’s.
