A couple tried to get a bridal shower gift back from a family friend they had not invited to their wedding.
In a post on the “Wedding Shaming” forum on Reddit, a woman wrote that she went to her friend’s son’s bridal shower and bought him and his wife a spice rack as a gift. She added that she brought an Amazon receipt in case the couple wanted a refund. But that wasn’t her only contribution to the bridal shower. She mentioned that she spent “over four hours” making 10 pounds of potato salad and 4 pounds of pasta.
“The party was one of the most awkward experiences of my life,” she wrote. “The groom is incredibly quiet and introverted and the bride didn’t approach a single person she didn’t already know. You could tell she felt like this was her mother-in-law’s thing and she did the bare minimum to attend.”
Although she was recruited to help with the bridal party, she was not invited to the wedding. Initially, she was under the impression that she was not invited because she thought it was an “intimate” ceremony. She also attributed her lack of invitation to the fact that she did not know the couple as well as the groom’s mother did.
Two months later, she was surprised when she saw the wedding photos.
“Two months later, I’m surprised to see a whole bunch of wedding photos on my IG feed from a pretty big wedding,” she recalls. “I definitely felt a little cheated when the wedding was presented to me when I was only invited to the party. It felt more like a gift steal than a proud mom moment.”
To make matters worse, two weeks later, the groom’s mother asked her to look into Amazon’s refund policy because her son wanted a refund for the spice rack she had given him and his wife.
“Imagine how I felt when my friend told me a few weeks later that her son had tried to return the gift on Amazon and had a problem and I could take care of it,” she wrote. “Remember, it had been almost three months and it was a ‘grocery’ item so Amazon’s 30-day return period had expired. I could only imagine that they had waited until after the wedding to see if they had gotten a spice rack they liked better.”
She added that she felt in an awkward position because they expected her to return the gift even though they had the audacity not to invite her to the wedding.
In the comments, many theorized that all the chaos at the bridal shower was the fault of the groom’s mother, who may have pushed for the bridal shower event in order to invite many of her friends.
“It sounds like (the groom’s mother) wanted you and her other friends on the guest list, the bride and groom don’t know you and declined the proposal and forced her into a party to make leaving her friends off the list a bigger deal,” one person wrote. “I understand why you’re offended or see it as a gift scam, but there is another reasonable explanation.”
“Sounds like (the groom’s mother) basically forced her to organize a special event just for her 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 to worry about, you know, with wedding planning and all.”
