Groom wants to hire 'fake guests' for wedding, says, 'fiancé's guest count is too low.'
When this groom feels embarrassed by his bride, he asks Reddit:
'AITA for offering to hire seat fillers for my wedding?'
My fiancée and I are getting married in a few months. My side of the family is huge. I'm one of 8 children, and my parents have 6 siblings each. I've also done a lot of very community based work, and have a lot of close friends from there. My side is 150 confirmed people.
For several complicated reasons, she is only in contact with about 7 of her relatives (I use this term extremely loosely here), and one has already refused to attend the wedding. The rest of her family is dead or estranged.
She has friends, but including them and the bridal party, her side only has 16 people MAXIMUM. I've asked her if she knows of any relatives who may put aside old angers to come to a wedding or if she wants to invite coworkers, but she doesn't. I've trimmed my groomsmen so that the wedding party matches and we'd have more people sitting on her side, but I don't know what else to do.
I feel like it's going to look ridiculous and so unbalanced. I've offered to have seating that's not divided, but she says that her relatives would have an issue with that as they don't like having to interact with 'new people'.
One couple refused to come unless we had a gluten free option, which we relented to. We paid for three of her people to fly out, because they couldn't come otherwise and we couldn't afford to lose anyone.
I offered to hire some students (grad and undergrad) to be seat fillers. I figured they'd do it for cheap if they got a meal out of it. She got very upset about this and said that not everyone is 'Mr. Popular' and accused me of thinking that I was a better person because I am on good terms with more people. AITA?
Let's find out.
disregardable writes:
YTA awful suggestion. It’s gonna look like exactly what it is. That’s what you signed up for when you invited 150 people to a wedding. Not sure what on earth you were thinking.Just give her family the front three or four rows on one side, distinguish it with some ribbon and signs or something.
elanorkonik writes:
YTA for making such a big deal out of the fact that she's got a smaller social network than you. Paying for random people to attend so it looks like she has family to equal yours is a huge waste of money and makes it seem like her situation is shameful instead of different. Don't assign seats by 'side' of the room at the venue and no one will care about the wedding attendance being 'unbalanced.
mlucaswalker writes:
YTA, but only because you seem overinvested in seating arrangements. If your SO's family don't want to sit by new people, but you want the seats to be filled reasonably, scratch a seating plan. Guests can sit where they want, and then if the in-laws complain, it's nobody's fault.