Man leaves niece's disorganized wedding reception, takes gift back. AITA?
When this man is annoyed with his niece's wedding and makes a scene, he asks Reddit:
'AITA for leaving my niece’s wedding reception early and taking my gift back?'
I’m 45 M and I have a niece who is 22 and just got married last weekend. The family is blowing up with drama right now because of what I (and my wife) did. I must preface this by saying my family can be pushovers, they really all hate conflict and will definitely let themselves be run over by someone else in order to not cause a fight. I am not this way.
The wedding was on Saturday. Catholic ceremony in a church that was at 3:30 PM. The reception area was at a brewery about 15 minutes from the church. The reception was set to start at 5. Maybe this was stupid on the venue people, but they wouldn’t open the bar or bring around the appetizers until the bride and groom arrived.
Service ended around 430 and everyone was told to go to the reception. The wedding party had a limo to take them and a separate limo took the parents, grandparents, siblings.
The couple is young and decided against family in the wedding party lol. It was 4 sorority sisters and fraternity brothers on each side.
My wife and I drove. We got to the venue around 4:50 with the first family limo arriving around that time. By 5 I’d say all 150 guests were there..but no bride and groom. The wedding coordinator was getting pissed as it’s now 5:45 and no wedding party. We are all just standing around with no food or drinks.
Someone was able to get ahold of the MOH around this point and apparently the bride and groom told the limo driver to stop at a liquor store and then drive around on the highway for an hour so the wedding party could get trashed. At around 6 the MOH said they should be arriving in the next 20 minutes.
My wife and I looked at each other and said we are out. We thought it was horribly disrespectful for them to do that to all their guests. I told my brother (FoB) that we were leaving and taking the gift with us. He tried to plead by saying “they’re just kids let them have fun” but I was having none of it.
A few days after, I got an apology text from niece followed by an ask for the gift again. I said that I felt very disrespected and I didn’t want to give a gift anymore. She snapped and called me an AH. AITA?
Let's see what internet users had to say.
empresssictia writes:
NTA. While I would have probably left the gift I don’t blame you for taking it. What they did was incredibly selfish and disrespectful. I think the fact that she immediately took back her apology and cursed you out when you didn’t give her the gift speaks volumes about her character. That wasn’t an apology.
curiousglance writes:
NTA. Guests come to weddings and bring gifts as a nice thing for the couple, attending a wedding is rarely a treat for anyone. It’s special for the couple and mostly an obligation for the guests.
You go because you love and support whoever it is and it’s kind to help them celebrate their love, not because everyone is super into weddings.
Drinks and dinner, and the reception, are the “thank you” for the guests for giving their time and money to take part in the couples celebration and giving them a gift for their new life together.
If you’re inconveniencing and mistreating them, you’re doing it wrong. If it was 15 or 20 minutes I’d say “let it go, it’s their day,” but two hours was deliberately rude.
somethingclever0 writes:
ESH - I don't understand the venue not starting service. When I got married we set up and paid for service to start at a set time and it would've started with it without us.
Most weddings I've been to the cocktail reception starts pretty soon after the ceremony because the couple are off doing pictures. There has to have been some miscommunication there.
Walking out and taking the gift...I mean sure, you're well within your rights to do so technically. And I get being tired of waiting, but this whole thing seems to have been a miscommunication and not the couple purposely scre*ing over their guests.
Bride shouldn't have apologized to try to get the gift back then gotten mad when you said no. I do genuinely wonder if this was a venue screw up though.