'AITA for not replacing $400 worth of flowers at a wedding?' 'I went home pissed.'
"AITA for not replacing $400 worth of flowers at a wedding?"
So this happened back when I was 22m. My good friend from childhood was getting married. I was invited as a guest, and was really excited to go. My friend invited me to his apartment the night before to get hammered and have one last hoorah before he got married the next day.
At about 11:00pm the night before the wedding, the future FIL calls my friend and says “hey so I need you to come over tomorrow at 8am or so to help me prepare the yard for the wedding reception.”
So then me and the other friend that was at the groom’s apartment end up getting roped into helping with chores the next day. I could have refused but said yes to be nice because it was my first time being a guest at a wedding and I thought it wasn’t abnormal to ask for help.
I’ll admit I was slightly annoyed because I was under the impression I’d be able to roll out of bed at 9-10am and would have plenty of time for some hair of the dog and getting ready for the wedding. If I knew I’d be waking up at 7 am to do manual labor, I wouldn’t have gotten so drunk.
We wake up hungover the next day at 7am and go to do the chores. The FIL has a whole list, including sanding his benches, weed whacking and cutting grass, trimming hedges, and a bunch of other odds and ends, making me realize we were going to be there doing hard sweaty manual labor while hungover all for free for the next 2 hours minimum, the morning of the wedding I’m supposed to be a guest at.
The FIL asks me to trim his flowers. I said I didn’t know how to trim flowers. He said “please, it’s not hard, just cut anything that looks dead.” And hands me a pair of trimmers.
I proceed to spend the next 30-45 minutes trimming up his flowers, cutting off everything I think looks “dead." So in my mind, I'm supposed to be cutting off everything that isn’t attached to the flowers and their petals. I cut off all the vines and weeds.
FIL sees how much I trimmed off in the trash can and investigates the job I did. He immediately starts making outbursts about how I “butchered them” for cutting off the weeds and vines.
At this point I feel bad and say I’m sorry, that I just did what he said and cut off everything that didn’t look like it was an alive flower, just as he requested. He condescendingly made comments about how “what adult doesn’t know what a vine is” and how I should know that flower weeds are a “healthy part of the entire plant."
Anyways I just chalked it up to him being stressed, apologized again, and we finished helping him with other things. Finally we go home and I get ready for the wedding. As more people arrive, the story about the flowers starts spreading around.
The FIL/MIL makes a big production about dragging a bunch of people to the local flower shop and replacing all of the flowers in the backyard, totaling about $400, and makes it a point to tell everyone at the wedding (including the photographer and musicians) about me being the guy who ruined the flowers.
The whole day the family just kept talking sh$t about me to other guests and giving me dirty looks, and I kind of became the running gag of the wedding. I went home pissed because it ruined my experience at the wedding, especially considering I did all this free labor for the guy THE DAY OF THE WEDDING THAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO JUST BE A GUEST AT.
I told him I wasn’t a florist and was hungover and didn’t know what I was doing, but he insisted. A couple weeks went by and my friend’s wife messaged me through his phone that I owe her family the $400 and she’s going to sue me if I don’t pay up.
I laughed and said good luck getting my money and then proceeded to not really talk to my friend for the next 3 years. AITA for not paying the $400, or was it the FIL fault for not hiring a florist or doing it himself?
Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:
cutecupcake24 said:
NTA - wow I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Kickapoogirl said:
NTA, but they all are. Prep like that should have been done by qualified people, not hungover guests of the wedding.
Own_Breakfast_570 said:
NTA but has your friend ever reached out to talk or did he give up trying with you too cause of his new family?
Sea-Ad9057 said:
Tell them you will refund all the money they paid you to do the job.
ahf&ckinegg said:
Should have said "I'm invoicing your father for $400, that's my $200/hr emergency/weekend rate for yard work, so everything is square, right?"
PotatoMonster20 said:
Lol. NTA. The FIL hired you, at a rate of $0/hour to do a job you weren't trained for. He knew you didn't know how. Because you told him. If he's unhappy with the results, that's fine. You can give him back all of the money he paid you. Hell, just to be generous, you can pay him back 5x the amount he paid you.