'AITA for making my sister cry at her bachelorette party?' UPDATED

"AITA for making my sister cry at her bachelorette party?"

My (26F) sister, Bella (32F) is getting married next month to Charlie (43M). It's about a month out from the wedding and we're pretty much putting finishing touches on everything. The wedding is very extravagant and my parents paid for most of it - I organized things like catering, photographers, etc.

Now I'm not trying to complain, I'm very happy for my sister and happy to help her in whatever way possible, but I'm getting quite exhausted from the whole thing. I've taken time off from work, given up on outings with friends, even cancelled date nights with my husband to get everything ready for this wedding.

Bella is busy with her dress fitting, it's custom made so there's a lot of trips and whatnot and arranging things for her bridesmaids. Bella had her bachelorette party recently and ordered a cake for it. She asked me to pick it up - not a big deal because the bakery is 5 minutes from my house and I can get it on the way. So I pick up the cake and arrive at the venue.

The cake was in a pink box, so I couldn't see inside and I didn't bother opening it up to look. I'm at the party, everything's fine, but then my sister calls me up into the kitchen. She opened the cake and the bakery wrote the wrong name on top, say for example instead of 'Bella's Party', they wrote 'Jessica's Party'. Oh well, mistakes happen but she went off at me, saying I should've checked before I brought it.

I didn't want to argue with her so I just said maybe she can cover it with sprinkles or something, but Bella said that would ruin the look of the cake. At this point, my mom showed up with snacks and things and she saw the cake. I said it's not my fault the bakery wrote the wrong name, but she just said I should've looked at it while I was there and they could've fixed it.

At this point, I had enough and snapped at both of them, saying I worked my ass off for a wedding that wasn't even mine and I can't look after everything while Bella sits back doing nothing. Bella got super defensive and said that she wasn't doing nothing, the wedding is very stressful and she's got to organize everything.

I laughed and said what is she doing? I'm organizing a large portion or things and our parents are paying for most of it, and she should be grateful she has family who cares about her enough to put up with her sh!t. She started crying and I walked out of the party (I just said something came up at work if anyone asked).

My mom later called me and said I was being a bad sister for making Bella cry at her bachelorette. I repeated what I said, that I sacrificed a lot for this when my mom just said that "everyone's doing a lot" and that "I should be more understanding". I just told her I'm done with this BS, I'm probably not gonna show up at the wedding and I hope Bella has a great time on her big day.

My mom said "I was being disappointing" and hung up. Now I'm thinking if I went too far with what I said, not just to my mom but to Bella at her bachelorette party and making her cry? AITA?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

Expat_89 said:

NTA. It’s not your job to correct a bakery mistake. It’s natural to assume the decorator completed the job as requested. Having to double check someone’s work is stupid. Before that cake was in the box, presumably the decorator and more than one other person checked to ensure accuracy. Not your fault at all. Your family sounds horrid. Just a btw.

vague-vague said:

ESH. "This is too much, I'm already stretched pretty thin," at any point instead of the big explosion. Your sister sounds exhausting, but honestly, seems kinda like a family trait. Not trying to be a jerk, this is the dynamic between my sisters and me, too.

I'm the helper sister and I've had to learn to say, "y'all are expecting too much from me." Or simply, "no." In order to avoid letting it build until I blow up or go too far in stress. Saying you won't be going now is a tad far down petty lane.

BeneficialDark1662 said:

Mild YTA. Your sister sounds entitled as F - it’s her wedding, why did she shove organisational stuff onto you? But you should have spoken up a LOT sooner, instead of letting your frustration build to the point that you exploded.

ShoddyBookkeeper said:

ESH. Your sister isn't the only defensive one. She should be grateful you've done so much, truly. But expecting you to have checked the cake before leaving the bakery is not unreasonable either.

SunnyRose57 said:

ESH - I think the stress is getting to everyone. You should have checked at the bakery (always check every order. Ordering burgers to go at a fast food place? Check it, mistakes happen so often, if you catch it at the store, it can be corrected). She should have rolled with it and laughed.

You shouldn't go nuclear over a cake. If this was your last straw, you should have communicated that before now. Take a deep breath, cool off for a week or two and then make up. This isn't worth not going to the wedding. Down the road, you'll kick yourself.

Pretty clear you should step back from doing so much for the wedding though. If she can't find time to do something, it can't be that important.

Dangerous_Prize_4545 said:

In my experience it's really standard to sign off on cakes both when you order and when you pick it up. I've never gotten a cake where I wasn't shown it as they handed it to me. So they all have a point you should have checked it. That's a pretty big error, not like Candy's Party instead of Candi's Party. Otherwise, really sounds like everyone's stressed and NAH.

She later shared this edit to her post:

Honestly where do I start? I didn't put it in the original post because of the character limit, and I didn't really want to go off on a tangent. My mom and Bella have just been piling things on me to do for the wedding. As I said in the post, I didn't mind, but it's gotten to a point where I'm more of a servant than anything else.

I've actually already said no to quite a few things, but not without a huge guilt trip from them and even when I try to talk to them about it they basically have one thing to say, that I should be more understanding and be there for Bella.

My parents are paying for like, 90% of the wedding when the only thing they paid for at mine was my shoes and purse. Now I didn't ask nor expect them to pay at my wedding, so it's not a fair comparison I'll admit but they're bending their backs catering to her every demand.

And the cherry on top is that my husband went to the same college as her, and she had a crush on him and accused me of "stealing her love" when we got together. (I had no idea that she liked him nor did he even know her outside of a couple mutual friends because he was a year younger).

She didn't attend my wedding. This was all a few years back and mostly been settled down now, but I think I just let my built up rage get the better of me when I snapped.

UPDATE:

Yesterday, I met up with my mom and Bella to discuss everything. I gave some background info above so I won't bother repeating that here, but basically I said that I was overworked and tired. I apologized for blowing up at the bachelorette party but I mentioned that I meant what I said -

I feel very underappreciated and they're piling things on me, when Bella didn't even attend my wedding, let alone help. I remained calm and tried to explain my side of things.

Honestly? Waste of time. Bella said that she was "angry at me" and she didn't want to help/attend because she didn't feel I "deserved it", but it's my "responsibility" to help at hers since she picked a "regular guy" to marry.

I brought up the money thing, my mom and Bella both kept repeating that she (Bella) and Charlie plan to have kids soon so they need to save money and be stable enough for that, whereas I'd said that I plan to stay child-free. Bella also mentioned that I never outright asked for anything whereas she is and our parents are fulfilling it, and maybe if I asked they'd have done the same.

That is technically true (that I didn't ask) so sure, I'll accept that. But the rest of it I truly can't. It's gonna take a long time if I start typing my entire life story on here, but I've pretty much had it with my family's BS over the years. This is something I should've done a long time ago.

I told them that I'll attend the wedding if they wish, for the sake of keeping face in front of family/friends but I'm going LC, possibly NC. (My husband and his side of the family is already LC with my parents + Bella because of their shenanigans, and he wasn't planning on attending the wedding anyway).

Of course my mom started her spiel, I wasn't being understanding, overreacting, yada yada so I just said that I'll transfer all the details of catering, venue etc. to them and they can continue on from where I've left off. I also asked that they let me know whether they'd like me to still attend the wedding, but that's pretty much the only contact I'm expecting from them in a while.

So yeah, that's the update. Thanks everyone for commenting and hopefully I can chill out a little bit now.