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A couple tried to get their money back for a bachelorette party gift from a family friend who had not been invited to the wedding.
In a post on Reddit's Wedding Shaming forum, one woman wrote that she had attended her friend's son's bridal shower and bought him and his wife a spice rack as a gift, adding that she had provided them with an Amazon receipt in case the couple wanted a refund. But that wasn't her only contribution to the bridal shower — she noted that she had spent “over four hours” preparing 10 pounds of potato salad and 4 pounds of pasta.
“The bachelorette party ended up being one of the most awkward experiences of my life,” she wrote. “The groom is incredibly quiet and introverted and the bride didn’t approach anyone she didn’t know. You could tell she felt like it was her mother-in-law’s thing and she was doing the bare minimum to participate.”
Even though she had been recruited to help with the bachelorette party, she was not invited to the wedding. At first, she thought she had not been invited because she thought it was an “intimate” ceremony. She also attributed her lack of invitation to not knowing the couple as well as she knew the groom’s mother.
Two months later, she got a surprise when she saw the wedding photos.
“Two months later, I was shocked to see a bunch of wedding photos on my Instagram feed from a pretty big wedding,” she recalled. “I definitely felt a little cheated by how the wedding was presented to me when I was only invited to the party. It started to feel more like a gift than a proud moment for mom.”
But to make matters worse, two weeks later, the groom's mother asked him to review Amazon's refund policy, as her son wanted a refund for the spice rack she gave to him and his wife.
“Imagine how I felt when a few weeks later my friend told me her son was trying to return the gift on Amazon and had an issue and asked if I could look into it,” she wrote. “Keep in mind it had been almost 3 months and this was a ‘food’ item so Amazon’s 30 day return window was closed. All I could imagine is that they waited until after the wedding to see if they could get a spice rack they liked better.”
She added that she felt in an awkward position where they expected her to reimburse them for the gift she gave them, even though they had the audacity to not invite her to the wedding.
In the comments section, many theorized that the entire bachelorette party issue was the fault of the groom's mother, who may have pushed for the bachelorette party to feature many of her friends.
“This sounds like [the groom’s mother] “The bride and groom didn’t know you and rejected the proposal, forcing them to go to a party so that removing their friends from the list would be a bigger deal,” one person wrote. “I understand why you would be offended or see it as an attempt to steal gifts, but there is another reasonable explanation.”
“Sounds like [the groom’s mother] “She basically forced them to have a specific event just for their friends,” another added. “The groom didn’t want it, and the bride DEFINITELY didn’t want it since she doesn’t even know these people and has enough of her own stuff to worry about, you know, planning a wedding and all that.”
