Woman stays with cousin for free, doesn't invite her to wedding; 'I don't know you that well.'
"AITA for 'ruining' my cousin's honeymoon after not being invited to her wedding?"
Mysterious-Froyo-887
I (27F) have a cousin (27F), we'll call her Kathy (fake name), who got married last weekend. For some background, two years ago I inherited a cabin in the mountains from my maternal grandmother after she died. This is not the grandmother Kathy and I share. It's in a peak mountain town with lots of activities around.
For the first year, I lived in it, fixing it up to eventually now rent as an Airbnb. During that time, Kathy would visit periodically and stay with me. Once I moved out and placed it on Airbnb, she would continue to ask for a week or so to stay in the cabin when it wasn't peak season.
She loved it so much. She asked if she could use it as her honeymoon location. I told her yes and blocked out the dates on Airbnb for her honeymoon, which would have been this week. I told her congratulations and that I'd stockpile the Airbnb with a bunch of romantic stuff (candles, rose petals, etc.) as her wedding gift. She was so excited. That was back in May.
However, three months ago, I got a call from my aunt. Apparently, my whole family and I weren't invited to the wedding. We were shocked as we had assumed we'd be coming. My aunt told us that my cousin said, "She doesn't know us well," and that "we weren't there for her childhood." We do live in different states. We didn't hear from my aunt or cousin again.
Instead for the weekend of Halloween, my family and I changed our plane tickets (they weren't refundable) and skipped a major snowstorm in our hometown to live it up in Florida for the week.
This is where I may have been an a-hole. For a while, I considered just leaving everything alone. But as of Nov. 1st, ski season starts and it would be a big week. Honestly, I needed the money.
So a week after I was told I wasn't invited, I decided to text Kathy that I was going to remove her reservation from my Airbnb unless she wanted to pay for the dates. I never got a response.
No, she didn't block me. I can see the text went through. I texted her one more time about two months ago before putting my Airbnb back online for that week. No response. It booked up within 24 hours.
The day after her wedding, she texted me and asked me when she could expect the cabin to be ready. I texted her back that I told her months prior that I was going to rent it out to someone else unless she paid. It's already booked and unavailable.
To say she was mad is an understatement. She cried and called me an a-hole. “This was supposed to be my wedding gift to her,” she yelled. I told her that only invited guests are supposed to give gifts and that strangers always have to pay to use my Airbnb.
Now she is calling out my family as a-holes for being upset about not having an invite. She's using her excuse that we weren't there during her childhood and that she deserves to use the cabin. My immediate family thinks I did nothing wrong, but the rest of my family said I should give in. I agree it was a petty move, but AITA?
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
Psychological-Bit430
NTA. Petty move? Yes, but she deserved it. It wasn't like you didn't tell her before hand.
rapt2right
Uhm.... She knows you well enough that she was a regular houseguest at your cabin & for her to feel comfortable with you providing a fairly extravagant wedding gift but not close enough to merit a wedding invitation? Interesting metric she's using. NTA.
ColdButCool33
It is strange that she appears to have not gotten your texts otherwise she would have responded earlier and she did sound very surprised when you told her about the change. Be that as it may, you assumed she had seen the texts obviously. Was it petty to take away the free AirBnb promise?
Maybe, probably it was because you two do have a relationship as you said she has stayed there before and visited you there sometimes. Why she wouldn't invite you to the wedding is strange, especially because you were handing them a honeymoon pad in a fun area which was very generous of you.
I guess she felt she couldn't single you out to invite as it may look bad to the rest of your family who were left out. The whole thing is unfortunate. But since you weren't invited to the wedding I don't think she deserved to have the cabin.
If you had known in advance that your family would not be invited you most likely would never have promised it to her. Weddings make people do strange things and she obviously doesn't see that you not being invited was hurtful because you are pretty close. She's still only thinking about herself.
Anxious_Plan5591
NTA. Not invited to the wedding = no wedding gift, that's just how it is. Besides that she had plenty of time to arrange payment for the cabin. Further she sounds like she's throwing a tantrum and being entitled, it's her issue not yours.
Future_Direction5174
NTA. She FAFO. She chose not to invite you to her wedding and STILL expected an expensive gift (a free honeymoon). You had even texted her to ask if she still wanted it, and she ignored you.
Trevena_Ice
NTA. You were not close, she said so. She was only close to you because of the cabine. And she wasn't able to talk about this like adults (like 'sorry, but I have to make cuts because of the price and I don't want to upset anyone by only inviting you from your family half - or something like that)
If she had called herself, you could have discussed it. So you let her know in advance that she can't have the cabine and she still thaught you would give in. NTA.