Bride REFUSES to pick up her own wedding merch before wedding. AITA?
When this bride is annoyed with her tasklist for her own wedding, she asks Reddit:
"AITA for refusing to drive 1.5 hours round trip to pick up personalized water bottles for my wedding?"
I’m (26F) getting married in a week (yay!) to my partner of 8 years (26M). We wanted a relatively small wedding, but it’s kind of blown up a bit. My parents are paying for almost everything which I’m grateful for, but I also feel occasionally tricked into thinking I want things that I don’t actually want.
Cue the start of the chaos. One of those things were “welcome bags” for out of town guests. It’s a nice touch, but I’ve been really overwhelmed since our sign/invitation designer dropped out last minute meaning I’ve had to create, design, and print a million signs.
She insisted that we should do it, so we agreed. As part of it, she said we should give them water bottles. My partner and I didn’t feel comfortable passing out a bunch of plastic water bottles, so he suggested we create personalized reusable water bottles that our guests can fill up.
Well, all my mom heard was “personalized”, and she ordered plastic disposable water bottles with a personalized label, which is probably worse honestly. They’re cute, but we don’t need to be creating unnecessary trash like that.
To be fair though, I didn’t push back much. I didn’t have the energy and decided it wasn’t worth it and just let her do her thing. This was a mistake. She ordered the water bottles but for some reason it couldn’t be delivered to us, so she delivered it to my aunt who lives 45 minutes away in a condo.
It was delivered a couple days ago, and she’s going to be out of town for a couple more days. She asked me to come pick them up today because she’s worried about that amount of boxes taking up the lobby space.
Here’s a bit more context: I’m a private at-home music teacher. I drive house to house teaching voice and piano. Sometimes, I drive up to an hour away from my apartment.
It’s technically part time, but it doesn’t feel like it. I wake up, prep for lessons in the morning, eat lunch, then leave for my first lesson at around 12/1. On a good day, I’m home by 7:30pm but on bad days, I’m not home until 9pm.
Then I eat dinner, have maybe a couple of hours of me time or recently time to go through the wedding to-do list, and then I go to bed and do it all over again. I drive a lot and when I’m working, I’m WORKING.
I can’t get the occasional thing done for the wedding during the day like many people with office jobs. Both my mom and my aunt haven’t had a job in probably 20 years.
I’m going to be in the area on Monday (today is Friday), so I asked her if I could come by then and grab them. Her response was essentially “why can’t you come get them today?”
I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I’m a bit frustrated because I didn’t ask for this and I’m so burnt out from driving and overwhelmed by all the wedding things I need to catch up on now on my day off.
I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable because I am offering a solution, but maybe I’m an AH because I could probably find the time today if it really needed to happen. AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
rb137 writes:
ESH, Everyone Sucks Here. The post from start to finish has examples of you "not wanting" but then also "agreeing" to things. Learn how to advocate for yourself and say NO. So own your part in creating all this aggravation for yourself.
Don't pick up the water bottles, fine. Your mother or Aunt will either deal with it or just say "screw it" altogether and it sounds like you don't mind either solution.
repulisvestate6 writes:
NTA. I'm sending you strength to deal with these people. They are planning the wedding They want and expecting you to run around making it happen. I would dump this firmly in your mother's lap. Tell her you don't have time, and she will have to sort it. Be strong! Start saying no!
wildheron writes:
YTA. If you didn't want them, then you should have told your mother not to order them. Right now your possessions are inconveniencing someone else. Either pick them up or tell your aunt to trash them.