Me and My Fianceé Gave Back the Money Our Parents Gave Us for Our Wedding — They’re Devastated

Planning a wedding is a stressful time, and can be so both for the couple and those close to them. Unfortunately for a woman and her bride, it also meant a blow to their relationship with their parents. After fighting over details of the ceremony, they’re now unsure whether they were too harsh to their parents, and one of them turned to social media to tell the whole story and ask for advice.

She wrote:

“I’m engaged, planning on getting married next fall to my fiancée. We want something very small, we have a guest list of 11 people, and we want to wear clothes we already own (when we first met she was in a suit, and I was wearing a white dress). We have a mutual best friend who is helping us design custom rings, and we want a short ceremony where we just sign the certificate, and we’re done, followed by a meal at our favorite restaurant.

My parents transferred me £10.000, and her parents did the same. We did not ask for this.

We both called our parents and explained that we were fine for money, but they said it was a ’wedding gift,’ so we thanked them and agreed with each other to put both amounts in our savings account.

My mother-in-law wanted to know how we were doing the outfits, and we told her that I’d be in a dress and my fiancée would be in a suit. She has spent 2 weeks trying to convince my fiancée to wear a dress so she will look ’pretty’ for the wedding. Every time either of us has tried to say we’d already chosen our outfits and explained why, she insisted that we both had to buy wedding dresses.

My parents, meanwhile, have been nagging both of us about our guest list. We said small and intimate from the start, but they’ve given me an expanded guest list, which includes cousins/uncles/aunts I’ve never even met. When we tried to reinforce the ’small and intimate’ aspect, they brushed us off.”

“We met both sets of parents for lunch earlier. They said that there was a miscommunication and the money from her parents was actually a ’dress budget’ for both of us, meant to only be used on dresses, and the money from my parents was for ’the guest list’ so it was meant to cover venue and catering for an expanded guest list.

We both went away from the table to talk. We discussed it and agreed that the money wasn’t worth it, so we brought up our banking apps and transferred the money back. Then we went back to the table, sat back down, and told them what we’d done.

They responded that we were acting like children, and we said that we wouldn’t be told what to do. My mom and my future MIL promptly burst into tears, and both fathers looked pretty angry. They told us that the money was meant for us, and we said that we wouldn’t accept anything from them that came with strings attached. We repeated that we had all wedding elements, including our outfits and guest list, already decided.

We said it was final, and we wouldn’t be taking suggestions, to which they said we were being unfair by not giving them a say. We then thanked them for the meal, put down a £20 each (our meals came to about £15) and left without another word.

We felt justified at the time, but since then we’ve both gotten messages from our siblings, saying that we were rude to our respective parents when they were just trying to do something nice, and now we feel like we went too far. Did we?”

People in the comment section of the post immediately jumped to the brides’ defense:

• No no no.
  Your wedding. Have it the way you want it. Their gifts came with conditions. Therefore, they weren’t gifts. And your siblings need to get some perspective because what your parents did was wrong, and then they’re guilting you at lunch for not bending to their will. Now they’re sending people to get you to do what they want.
  You’re right. Do the wedding you want. Not what they want. © mamatoots19 / Reddit

• You decided what you wanted. Stood your ground and didn’t let money buy you. Your parents should be embarrassed — they gave a gift planning to hold it over your heads.
  Your siblings should be told, “You weren’t there, we were not rude. It is our wedding, and we want it our way. We returned the money when we realized that the parents meant it for something we were not going to do.” It’s honorable, actually.
  Why should their feelings matter more than yours? You have now made it clear you can make your own decisions and will not let them take control. You will be glad for this little lesson when you have kids. Congrats! © LESSANNE76 / Reddit

• A gift with expectations isn’t a gift. It’s a bribe. © hicccups / Reddit

• This might be the most beautiful thing I’ve seen online. Firm with your conviction. Significant others standing firm with each other and presenting a united front. If the respective parents want to plan a wedding, may I suggest the parents renew their own vows, then they can have complete control over the festivities. © SpiritualPrize / Reddit

• You did not go too far. They, however, did.
  If this is how you and your future wife handle life on the regular, you are looking at a very long and happy marriage! Your actions were perfect, start to finish. It sounds like your and her parents colluded with one another before the meeting. © SwiggyB***l*** / Reddit

All families have to deal with conflicts and figure out the best way to overcome them. Unfortunately for a woman, she decided to trick her stepmom into buying something she didn’t want to teach her a lesson. Now, her stepmom isn’t talking to her.