You may have seen this story in the news lately. Long and short of it is a wedding guest RSVPd then no-showed for a wedding after her babysitter canceled. She later received a bill from the wedding couple for ~$80 to cover her dinner they still had to pay for.
Sending a bill tacky? Yes.
The article doesn’t say but I assume the guest being a no-show never sent a gift (actual or monetary) after the event (I can’t imagine they’d still send her a bill if she sent a gift).I find this tacky on her part.
If I RSVPd for a wedding and had a gift in hand, then had to cancel at the last minute, I’d be damn sure to get those people the gift I had intended to give them knowing they were stuck with having to pay for my food.
If you no-showed for a wedding does that automatically get you off the hook from giving a gift?
First of all, weddings are not business transactions. Your guests are never billed for their meal, and the gift is not in exchange for the meal.
Second, whether you should give a gift to the newlyweds is 100% independent of whether you go to the event. If you think it appropriate to give a gift to the couple, then you should do so regardless of whether your babysitter cancels. If you don’t, you should refrain from doing so even if you attend the event.
Similarly, the value of gift is up to the giver. The guest who gives the couple an all-expenses paid cruise for their honeymoon is no better or worse than the guest who gives them a matching set of salt-and-pepper shakers.
That money was spent whether or not the guests showed up. I’m finding it hard to understand why it would be considered appropriate to send a bill for not being there.
If I’d already bought the gift, I’d still give it to them. But I would have doubts about any friendship beyond that.
Totally inappropriate to send a bill, yes.
But I’d also find it inappropriate to attend a wedding and not give the couple a gift.
This is exactly what Shit Express is for.
I actually would not assume the no-show guest did not send a gift. I could totally imagine a situation where they sent a gift but the bride and groom (or maybe parents who hosted?) decided it wasn’t a good enough gift/didn’t make up for being a no-show. I mean, since they are tacky enough to send a bill, it’s not much of a stretch. Or, maybe the guest didn’t send a wedding gift, but had already spent $100 on a bridal shower gift and decided to just leave it at that.
That said, if we had a baby sitter cancel last minute then there would not be two no-shows. Whoever knows the couple better would go to the wedding, the other parent would stay home with the kids.
If I accepted the invitation, I’m giving a gift if I’m there or not.
Since I’m a woman I “get” to go to wedding showers, where I give a gift.
I never used to think gifts AT the wedding applied to me, and was always curious how gifts like coffee makers and dinnerware ended up at the wedding itself because…didn’t they already have a shower?
Anyway, as I got older and had more disposable income I started giving a monetary gift to at least cover my dinner. When the couple is very young and just starting out, I give double that.
I digress. Uhm…so yeah if I was for some strange reason going to give a physical gift of course I’d send it. And if I planned on giving a monetary gift I’d send it as well.
This, 100%.
I had never heard of giving a gift expensive enough to cover her meal until my sister got married in 1977 and her mother-in-law was talking about it. A gift is a gift, and you are ever required to give one.
Required, no.
But if you go to someone’s wedding and score a free meal and fail to reciprocate with any type of gift you’re a pretty lousy friend/relative.
No, I won’t be sending you a bill but I will be making a mental note not to invite you to any future parties I throw.
You have to expect several no shows at wedding even with RSVPs due to people or their kids getting sick, or having other unforeseen disasters in their lives. How about a car crash or break down on the way to the wedding?
Usually I send a gift in advance though the registry because I want to get them what they actually want in the style they want and make sure it’s not a duplicate. Besides, who wants the headache of bringing the gift to the party? The in person gifts that we received at our wedding, other than cash and checks, were invariably all returned if they weren’t off the registry. In some cases, they were ‘custom’ gifts, where the thought was nice, but left us saying “WTF?”. One guy gave us a weather vane that he had welded together himself. It was big, ugly, and at the time, we were living in an apartment. When we did buy a house several years later, not surprisingly the homeowner’s association wouldn’t allow a weather vane, not that we planned to put it up anyway…
I have had to no show at a wedding before due to a disaster at work that I had to deal with which prevented me from going out of town, but I had sent the gift in advance anyway. I let the bride and groom know as soon as possible so they could hopefully let their caterer know even though it was only two days before.
Miss Manners says that, according to tradition, people have up to a year to send wedding presents. Not that anyone is likely to be happy with that.
I do know it’s damn frustrating to give out invitations to an event that you have limited budget for, that cost good money, that you have had to decide who and who not to invite, then those people who dont show and your stuck seeing those 2 sports go to waste when you could have given it to someone else.
Cant say I would send a bill though.
Under the described circumstances, I would absolutely send a card with a check (the only non-cash wedding gifts I’ve ever given were to my brother and to my sister) and my sincere regrets for missing the event due to unforeseen circumstances. Unless I received an invoice from the hosts first. I would throw that shit away and blacklist the couple permanently. Delivering an invoice for a missed wedding is a passive-aggressive “fuck you” on the order of launching thermonuclear ordnance on a sovereign nation in global politics.
Unfortunately, the recipients of this bill were invoiced by family members (probably one new family member) and so the blacklist is probably not enforceable. I’m not sure what I would do. I would probably either pay the invoice to the penny (maybe with 7,590 of them in a canvas bag) or I would send them a check for $500 with the most dickish letter possible.
Either way, the person who sent this invoice is a World Class Asshole with the social graces of a shit-flinging monkey.
I agree with that, too, and have never attended a wedding, shower, baptism, graduation party, etc. without sending a gift. But it’s my choice.
Ignoring the sending a bill thing…
As for sending a gift, it would depend on who’s wedding it was. If it was a friend/relative’s wedding and I was really disappointed that I couldn’t make it, yes I’d still send a gift. If it was just some wedding I was going to, maybe just ‘that girl from the office that gave an invite to everyone’ or ‘a friend of a friend’ or ‘a friend from college that I haven’t seen in 10 years’, I probably wouldn’t bother with it. Basically, if it’s a friend, yes, if it’s ‘just somebody’ probably not, or maybe just a token $20 gift from Target/Kohls etc, but not some $50-$75 thing that I’d get for a good friend.
Part of my thinking is this someone I’m going to see on a regular basis going forward or someone I haven’t seen in years and might never see again (or not regularly)? Did I get the invitation and say ‘look, Sara’s getting married!’ or did i say "Sara? Ooooh, Sara, why did she send me an invitation?’.
FTR, yes, if you go you need to give them something if you don’t go, it’s up to you. But if it was a close friend or relative, I would. How about this. If it’s someone that you’d (even consider) inviting to your wedding, send them a gift.
I’d pay them. In Monopoly money.
It’s frustrating, but life happens. Babysitters flake, cars break down, flights get canceled, people get sick. If your budget is so tight that you begrudge your guests for having human events that cause them to miss your party, then you probably shouldn’t be throwing that big a party to begin with.
But I say this often about weddings. Couples (or their parents) spend $10,000 or more to make a big party, which could be used to pay down their student loans or put a nice down payment on a house then get downright mercenary about getting gifts that are of sufficient value to allow them to “break even” on the cost of the guests’ meals. It’s an entirely inexplicable practice.
I agree. Plus look at the divorce rate.
These people have essentially valued their friendship at $75.90, because it’s over.