You do have a tiny little faux pas, but it has already come back to bite you in the ass - don’t discuss such plans where the non-invited can hear you. But how rude to invite yourself into someone else’s vacation!
But you can just use the line about not being comfortable with people you haven’t known for long.
Personally I would just go and suck it up, since I don’t know the family is bad yet, and insist on the money ahead of time. However I understand how that is difficult.
We all have to learn to say no gracefully sometime - this might be a good time to practice.
More than “tiny” in my estimation. This problem would not exist if the discussion had been diverted to “let’s talk about it when we get home” in a timely manner.
I think you should have a heart-to-heart with Family #2 and see if they’re really into Family #3 joining in. Express your doubts, and why, and let them know that your preference is to make it just a two-family vacation. If they agree, then you can together come up with a nice way of telling Family #3 no thanks. Problem solved.
If they are really into the other family joining you, then you have a decision to make: Bail on them or go along and hope for the best.
If you go along, who knows? You may end up making lifelong friends, esp since the couple with teenage kids will soon be empty-nesters and more apt to travel/do last minute things in the near future than the parents with younger kids.
One other thing to consider is having Family #2 reserve a larger boat, while you keep the reservations on the smaller boat up until the date you can cancel without penalty. Assuming a 6 or 3 month cancellation policy, that’ll give you a few months to get to know this other couple, and their kids, before making a final decision. If at the end of that time, you feel comfortable with this other family, cancel the smaller boat. If not, bail and offer up your reservation for the other two families.
OR, cancel with Family #2 and just invite another family along!
Thanks everyone for the advice. I don’t think the deposit for the boat covers the whole cost. I believe it is 50%. Ergo, even if they do flake and there isn’t a whole lot of ugliness with them not getting back their deposit, we still end up forking over more money for the boat on a per family basis, plus the extra gas to move that bigger boat through the water.
I don’t know that I’ll ever get to meet the mysterious teenagers since the first wife of the guy seems to have them whenever he and the second wife come to these events. Still I would think I would have met them by random chance by now. It almost seems suspicious that I haven’t.
I think I will still do the “forget to invite them” thing and hope they forget to mention it again if I never bring it up. But then I will have to be honest and simply say I don’t yet know them well enough and haven’t met their kids so we didn’t feel comfortable doing it if I get pressed on the matter. I do like “perhaps next year” angle though, because perhaps by then I really will feel differently about them.
I really didn’t think making plans at a campout in front of other people was an invitation for other folks to invite themselves along, but I guess I will be more mindful of that in the future. Family #2 seems cool with Family #3 joining other than the potential extra cost if they flake, but they are more easy going than I am. I’ve basically made my feelings known to them and they don’t seem at all bummed out about it because of the extra risk of having this family along.
My gf and I use each other as an excuse. We enjoy vacationing alone. If someone suggests a group vacation to her, she says, “Kayaker doesn’t like vacationing with others”. If someone asks me, I do the same, blaming her. It has worked so far.
So many good suggestions here, starting with **Todderbob. ** I just want to point out that each one is only one or two sentences long, includes the word “sorry” and doesn’t offer an opportunity to debate.
Goodness, no! What the other family did was very rude, and cannot be excused. What you did was only a little rude, but rude it was, and ill-advised. Rude because it is rude to make plans in front of people who are not invited at all, and ill-advised exactly because of what happened.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re not talking about deposit for the boat – that’s between you and the boat rental place. We’re talking about a “trip deposit” TO YOU. Make sure it’s enough money so that if they bail out, it ends up costing you not one cent more than if they’d never stuck their nose into this in the first place.
Invitation to invite themselves along, no; invitation to disaster, yes. The next step is to gush about the great party that they are NOT invited to. :rolleyes: There’s bound to be negative fallout. The people who overhear are likely to figure that either A), they are included, because you’d never be so rude as to discuss it in front of them if they weren’t; or B) you’re rude as hell for doing so. I don’t agree that this is a “tiny” misstep – I thinkg it’s hugely rude.
I think you should find a way to give them a chance.
You said that in the past they’ve just flaked out on BBQs, not a big trip. Smaller functions are much easier to bail on. If they do flake at the last minute, just deal with it and then you have a solid reason for not inviting them along in the future.
Fair enough. I didn’t realize this might be considered a rude thing as it was a conversation the other couple overheard. It was not a general announcement to everyone there. Couple #3 used to own a boat and like boating, so a houseboat trip sounded attractive to them.
Gary T - I’m not sure how I ask for a trip deposit for me without making making the situation far worse. “Well, the actual deposit for the boat is X as you see on the website, but because I’m scared you are a flakey piece of shit who will saddle us with a bigger boat than we need, I’m going to charge you Y, because it removes the risk of you bailing out last minute. If you turn out not to be a piece of shit, then I’ll give you the difference back, which of course means you should trust me with your money even though you don’t really know me either :D”
Bob Ducca - I’m not willing to risk hundreds of extra dollars and/or a miserable trip on the fact these people might be cool. My feeling is, if they want to come, I welcome them getting their own houseboat (and invite a family they like to go along to defray their costs) for the same weekend. Then I can see what they are like without extra cost or burden if they flake. And if they or their kids are total jerks, we can agree to split up and go different direction in our boats. No harm, no foul.
I think PunditLisa is right that you have to find out what Couple#2 thinks. It’s their vacation too, they may be thinking ‘more the merrier’. If that’s the case then you do have the option to give the 2’s an “out”, and tell them it’s fine if they go with the 3’s and you’ll understand. If they take you up on it, well, then this really is what they wanted to do. It’s a vacation, nothing’s been booked, no one should do something they don’t want to do out of obligation. If they decline then you’re all on the same page, you can tell the 3’s the same story if it comes up again.
I agree that it wasn’t a great idea to talk about this at a group outing, in front of people you had no intention of inviting. If you do that then I don’t think you can be surprised when other people overhear and assume it’s open to everyone. You can say No, of course, but you can’t really be surprised that they would even think such a thing.
I’m now envisioning the scene from “Master & Commander” where they built a decoy ship from barrels & spars with lanterns on it, which they set adrift in the night so they could escape from the enemy ship. Make sure to tie a rope to the poor mid who lights the lanterns.
I think that it was a mistake to talk about this in a group meeting, unless you were in a place or time when you were reasonably sure that you weren’t going to be overheard, and couple #3 were eavesdropping. It’s possible to hold a somewhat private conversation in a group setting, depending on how the group is set up. I think that it would have been better to try to get the details straight in a more private setting. However, couple #3 had no reason to assume that they would be welcome on a private trip. I would argue against including them on a trip, because one of them, at least, has boundary issues. Space is at a premium on a houseboat, and if someone doesn’t have the social skills to know when he’s not invited to join into a private conversation, then I would not want to be on a houseboat trip with that person. Assuming that I would ever agree to go on a houseboat outing, but that’s another issue.
I’d tell couple #3 that you just want to chill with couple #2, and feel that six people on one houseboat is more than enough. Some people honestly feel that having more people is always better, and so you might not be able to get them to understand that you DON’T want a bigger gathering in general and don’t want them in particular. But I would not want to be in close quarters with these folks, even if money is not a factor. They just don’t strike me as being good candidates for living in each others’ pockets for a weekend or longer. The point of going on the houseboat is to relax, and if you’re always butting heads with another person, you can’t relax.
I disagree that it was somehow wrong to discuss the vacation at the gathering. This is not first grade, where if you invite one person to your party you must invite everyone. If they were discussing an orgy or something, then privacy would be advised, but there is nothing illicit about discussing a joint vacation in a convenient venue.
If the place is crawling with rude people, the discretion might be advised, but that is an unfortunate result of the rudeness of some attendees.