Bride Wants to Charge Wedding Guests for Not Showing Up to Her Wedding After They RSVP’d
An Australian bride sparked a conversation after 10 guests canceled their RSVPs just one week before her wedding
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Wedding tableAn Australian bride’s dilemma sparked a wider conversation online about the high cost of weddings — and the responsibility of being a guest.
A bride submitted a question to Australian podcast She’s on the Money which the show’s co-hosts Bec and Jess discussed at length as they tried to help the bride navigate the tricky situation.
In her DM, she explained that she was a week out from her wedding which was “interstate,” meaning it was a destination wedding of sorts as it required the guests to travel to a different state within Australia.
She had given out a save-the-date more than a year and a half ago, and sent formal invitations in January, so guests had ample time to plan for the event. The bride was in a quandary as she had heard from 10 guests who’d previously confirmed their attendance that they were no longer going to make the wedding. All of the guests cited that it was “too expensive for them to travel interstate,” and she said she was “scrambling to cover their seats.”
The bride had already “given the confirmed numbers to the venue and paid the outstanding amount,” which was a total of over $12,000, so she was concerned about wasting the seats that had already been paid for.
She posed a question to the hosts of the podcast as she pondered what to do about the 10 empty seats. “Is it reasonable to request that they cover these costs themselves? How do I ask them without sounding like an asshole?”
One of the podcast hosts called the last-minute cancellations “not okay” and “quite rude” in response to the DM.
“I just don’t think canceling that close to the wedding, anywhere it is, no matter what the situation is, is ever really okay. It just doesn’t feel good.”
She advised the bride to ask the question of the guests who pulled out to see if they’d be willing to contribute to the cost. “See what they say, you never know,” she said.
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The other host pointed out that the guests must have left things to the last minute if they were suddenly unable to attend the wedding after having more than a year’s notice.
“I would’ve thought that you would kinda be planning and preparing a lot sooner, to the point where you would’ve known a lot sooner if it wasn’t going to work,” she said.
She also advised the guests who canceled to at least offer to make a contribution to the wedding cost or to give a cash gift.
“It would be the first thing that I would want to say because, to me, I would want to be communicating to the person getting married, ‘I don’t want to put you out. I understand that you’ve paid for me,’ ” she said. “There is an element of responsibility if you have committed to going to something, they’ve invested in it financially, too”
The podcast’s audience also chimed in on the situation and voted on what they would do if they were in the bride’s shoes. 51% of respondents said the guests who canceled should pay the bride and groom, while 49% said they don’t need to pay.
However, of those who voted that the guest should contribute, 63% said that if they were the bride, they wouldn’t ask for the money. Only 7% of respondents said they’d ask the guest to pay for the cost of the seat.
As for what listeners would do if they were the guest in question who canceled with a week to go, 53% said they would pay the couple, while 47% said they would not pay the couple.
A few alternatives were suggested too, including that the couple could extend an invitation to some other friends to fill the empty spots, as well as that the guests who were no longer attending could still give the couple a wedding gift to help make up for it.
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