Couple Invoicing Bride $2,000 After Being Uninvited to Her Wedding Praised

A post about a couple who decided to charge a family member for their wedding printing services after finding out they were not invited to the nuptials has gone viral on Reddit, where it has received 25,600 upvotes.

The Redditor wrote that he and his wife run a printing company and they agreed to do "all the signage, banners, guest books, life-sized cutouts, etc" for the wedding of his wife's cousin, free of charge.

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But, a few weeks before the wedding, the couple realized they were not invited to the wedding and later decided to charge the bride for the service.

According to a study of more than 15,000 couples who got married in 2021, conducted by the wedding-planning website The Knot, nearly 50 percent reduced their guest count (compared with 80 percent who did so in 2020) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The overall average guest count was 105 in 2021, "though this number varied greatly by time of the year, we also saw large variation based on region, as restrictions were quicker to be lifted in certain areas," according to The Knot.

An October 2020 survey by Zola, another wedding-planning website, which looked at 2,223 couples with weddings scheduled between March 2020 and December 2022, found that just under a third (28 percent) reduced their guest list to keep their ceremony and reception on their original wedding date.

The study also found that the top priority for couples was to have "most (but not all)" friends and family at the wedding.

The user in the latest Reddit post wrote that he and his wife do free printing services "all the time for friends' weddings and events, and we never charge. We're happy to help out and it's usually a lot of fun working together to make some cool stuff."

When his wife said to the cousin that they had somehow missed the wedding invitation, the cousin said they "downsized the wedding," deciding to make it "a close friends and family thing." The bride "didn't have space" for the couple in the small venue.

Feeling "pretty hurt and insulted," especially after having spent close to $2,000 on all the materials for the printing services, the Reddit poster wrote that he billed the cousin for the cost: "We're not making money on it, just charged her for the cost of materials."

The original poster wrote that he received threatening calls from the cousin and her fiance, as well as "some random members of my wife's family that I don't know, some of the groomsmen, etc."

The Redditor wrote: "I'm considering charging full price or else we won't deliver the items... Sorry but I'm not going to waste my hard earned time and money on someone who doesn't even consider us 'close friends and family'."

Several Redditors supported the couple's decision to invoice the bride, but is it just a mean and petty gesture? What is the correct etiquette in this scenario?

Speaking to Newsweek, Poppy Sienna, a luxury wedding and event planner based in the U.K., said that the situation in the latest Reddit post is "tricky" because weddings are expensive for both the bride/groom and suppliers.

"So I can completely understand why the couple feel as if they can't justify spending all this money on the stationery when they are not invited."

Sienna believed that the couple perhaps offered the service to the cousin "under the (obvious) pretense that they'd likely be invited to the wedding."

The expert said: "Of course, the cousin can invite whomever they would like to their wedding." But "if someone is offering to do something like that for free, the most obvious 'thank you' would be an invite to their wedding."

Sienna added: "I would assume that the cost to invite the couple would be around the same or even less than the cost of the stationery.

"I think it is fair for the couple to charge, although I understand why the immediate reaction would be to judge them because it does, on the face of it, seem very unfair.

"I would say, the only potential thing they could do to keep a good relationship with their cousin would be to offer the stationery at a discounted cost," the wedding expert said.

Several Redditors shared messages of support for the couple, praising them for their actions.

In a comment that received 46,800 upvotes, user Braign wrote that the couple should tell the cousin: "Sorry, we had to downsize the discount to cover close friends and family only."

BullTerrierMomm commented: "This really is the best response to them," while user haillordvecna wrote: "That's what got me. They're close enough to ask for this work as a free favor, but not close enough to invite them to their wedding?"

Redditor DiamondKitsune posted: "Add a note to the invoice saying "full charge includes the ramifications for the verbal abuse from your 'close friends and family'"

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment.