SIL tells bride who eloped she shouldn't expect people to be as generous with their wedding gifts. AITA?
"AITA for telling my sister-in-law that she is an idiot for expecting her family to be as generous with gifts for her marriage as they were for mine?"
When I married to my husband, we had a smallish wedding. 150 guests. Trust me that's small for our families. We paid for everything ourselves. All together we spent about $25,000. It was in our budget and we had saved up for it. And that included everything.
My dress, the wedding party's dresses and tux rentals. Catering, you name it we paid and came in under budget. Our guest were family and close friends. The way it should be. And they were generous with gifts, both from our registry and cash in envelopes.
When everything was said and done, our house was filled with great stuff we needed. And our savings was several thousand dollars over where we started before we paid for the wedding.
My husband's sister just eloped in February. And nobody found out about it until early April when she sent out links to her wedding registry. Not too many people have bought anything off of it yet. And she is getting upset about that.
All she talks about whenever we speak is how cheap everyone is. Every conversation leads back to the same topic. After more than a month of this I have had enough. I asked her if she understood why we got gifts when I married her brother. Like at our physical wedding that took place at a church and then a reception at a rented ballroom.
She said I was treating her like an idiot and that she understood the difference between our weddings. I asked her why she would expect the exact same treatment for two very different events.
I said that only an idiot would think the outcome would be the same in both situations She is mad at me. My husband said he was also frustrated with her stupidity but that I should apologize for calling her an idiot.
Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:
No_Lavishness_3206 said:
NTA. Ask her if she sends gifts to all the birthday parties she isn't invited to attend.
Old_Satisfaction2319 said:
NTA. Most of people are not going to buy a gift for a wedding they were not invited to. So a person gets married, I am not invited to anything, not even to a sad Coca-Cola, and I am expected to buy a gift?
If I am incredibly close to that person, maybe I would buy something small, but if not, I would only offer some congratulations and she can thank her lucky stars that nobody have answered sarcastically to receiving her registry.
Signal_Permit_8940 said:
YTA - only slightly- but only because I don’t understand why you felt the need to interject into her pity party to call her an idiot. To be clear, she is an idiot, but you could’ve kept that to yourself. If being around her complaining was too much for you, then you should’ve tried spending less time around her.
cbm984 said:
ESH. It wasn’t nice to call her an idiot but I get being tired of hearing her whine when she clearly doesn’t understand people don’t generally give gifts when there’s no celebration. But I would like to know how you pulled off a wedding with 150 guests on $25k. I spent $30k on my wedding with half as many guests (and it wasn’t at all lavish) so I’d really like to hear how you budgeted this.
•
NTA. They're called wedding gifts, not marriage gifts. No wedding, no(minimal) gifts.
fromhelley said:
I eloped. We got gifts from one sister, and his niece made us a beautiful cake with a wedding couple on top (she was 12). Ditched the hubs long ago, but kept the cake topper. Loved her for that cake. Never expected anything from anyone. Why would I when I eloped!? Nta!