Getting married is certainly a milestone part of the American dream, right? Unfortunately, that dream ended for one woman three weeks before the wedding after she found out that her fiancéwas cheating on her. Furthermore, the woman's sister, who helped her plan the wedding, was engaged as well and instead of canceling the wedding like she was asked, took over and made it hers!
The woman posted a lengthy rant on Reddit, asking how she was supposed to handle the situation. Does she let her sister take over her wedding or does she cancel and get all of the money back? The wedding was intended to be a small gathering with the money initially put up by the soon-to-be wife. However, the woman's parents offered to scale up the wedding and offered to chip in. By the end, the woman had put up 60% and her parents paid the remaining 40%. Cheating kind of threw that plan out of wack, leaving the bride with a paid wedding dress, venue, cake etc., while the fiancé walked away (he was supposed to pay for the honeymoon).
The woman's story, posted in the Am I The A**hole community on Reddit, has received nearly 14,000 upvotes with many agreeing that she was in the right to cancel the wedding. Read the story below.
The woman continued the Reddit rant stating that her sister had taken over the wedding and informed family members before informing her.
I called off my engagement less than 3 weeks ago. I am a f*cking mess. I reached out to my family to help me cancel the wedding, and my sister is planning to take it over instead.
My sister has rung round our family explaining that she's taking over before she told me this. They are all attending. Her fiancé has contacted his family and given them the date he will be getting married. I found all this out TODAY. She asked me if I was okay with this, like she hadn't already arranged everything. I told her to go fuck herself.
I have until the 23rd to cancel things and get the money back. There's a couple of things where I won't get money back at this stage but over 2/3 of it is still refundable. The money will be refunded to the card it was paid by, so both me and my parents will get the correct amounts back. Everything is shut right now but it's the 21st tomorrow. As I've not been in contact with these companies and it's my name on all the contracts, I have full power over this wedding. My sister said she'd pay me back eventually but knowing her I'll never see that money again.
WIBTA if I rung round everything and cancelled?
Ultimately, the woman attempted to give the wedding to her sister and allow her to pay her back. Unfortunately, the plan didn't work seeing as the sister asked to pay her back over a 10-month period.
Update: I talked to my sister and explained how upset I was and how hurt this made me feel and she said that this was a good thing, and it would be therapeutic for me to see good come from bad. I said that is really not what it's feeling like on my end, and to me it feels like I got cheated on a month before my wedding and my sister said she would cancel everything for me and then decided that getting married in my dress in the venue my ex and I picked out together on my anniversary date, and this did not feel good.
I said if she wanted to buy the wedding off me then I needed payment in full for my 60% by the 23rd, and I wanted to switch out our names on the contracts. She said she was hoping for closer to a payment plan, where she paid me back 50% of the 60% I put down in monthly installments over the next TEN MONTHS. She wanted to pay me back 5% PER MONTH for 10 MONTHS. AND I STILL WOULDN'T GET ALL MY MONEY BACK.
She then decided that the best course of action for herself would be to cancel the wedding and get her money back. Only issue is that she canceled after the two-week notice mark and ended up getting even less money back.
I've made calls and cancelled everything. Everything was paid for by me and my parent's money paid primarily for upgrades to the things I'd already bought. The money will be refunded to whoever paid for it, so myself and my parents will all get the correct money back, however, with some, like the caterer, we've lost the deposit entirely, with some, like the venue, they kept part of the money (average 50% but some kept more and some kept less) and with some, like the baker who was a family friend and hadn't started on the cake yet, they completely refunded it. I think the fact that I was open that the wedding was off because he cheated made them feel bad for me and probably made a few of them more lenient on refunds (didn't just bring it up for the sake of it, most of them asked if I'd wanted to reschedule). On the whole, I've gotten a little over half back, which is not as much as I thought. Really annoying thing is that I put these cancellations through on the 21st, and if I'd done it on the 18th (2 full weeks notice) I'd have gotten more, but they waited until the 20th to tell me.
The dates are now open, the plans are now there, if she wants to rebook everything in her name she is welcome to. She helped me with a f*ckton of planning, knows the details better than I do, and she can easily rebook the exact same thing and will probably be doing the vendors a favour considering how close we are to the big day.
Some refunds will be instant, some will take a bit of time (longest is 2 weeks), and I'm no longer going on my honeymoon so once all the refunds have come through I might book a week away somewhere. Not sure what's happening with my sister/mother/family at large.
The woman agrees that if she just let her sister have her wedding, she'd have gotten more money back. However, would it have been worth watching her sister wed in what should have been her wedding?
In total, I would have gotten more back from my sister than I would from the venues, but it would be a year wait on her repaying me vs a few weeks on the venues.
Currently drafting a facebook post to tell the family what happened without me looking like a total bitch. I have a feeling they've already guessed what went on but only one way to make sure.
What do you think about this? Would you have given your sibling the wedding?