A loving father recently took to Reddit to ask if he was in the wrong for telling his daughter that she shouldn’t be shocked at receiving less wedding gift money than her sister did.
This father’s story begins with his two daughters, 30-year-old Maddy and 28-year-old Jess. He loves them unconditionally and describes them as “beautiful young women with a lot going for them.”
Maddy married in the summer of 2021, while Jess married this past December.
Despite being sisters, the girls have very different personalities: Maddy is a socialite, but Jess has always been a more reserved person.
Maddy had always dreamed of having a traditional wedding with a big reception and the entire extended family invited. She had around 150 guests attend her wedding, and “it was a blast.”
Jess, however, always wanted a more low-key wedding (to match her personality). She’s never liked being the center of attention and has said many times in the past that spending a lot of money on a one-day event is unreasonable.
From the time his daughters were little, the original poster (OP) and his wife knew their kids would want different weddings.
Planning Maddy’s wedding was intense and a lot of work, so they were relieved when Jess told them of her plans for a lowkey wedding.
Jess ended up having a small wedding with only ten people invited and then rented out a space for a celebration dinner a week later with the extended family and friends.
She rented out a restaurant’s event space and put on drinks and hors d’oeuvres. It wasn’t a traditional wedding reception; there was no full meal, no dancing, no DJ, and no wedding party speeches. Her parents paid for it all.
Not as many relatives attended Jess’ celebration dinner, which her father put down to a few factors: the time of year (winter), not inviting people to the actual wedding, and Jess just being less of a social person her whole life, compared to Maddy.
The father explains that they have a large extended family, but Jess’s event had only about a third of their relative’s turnout compared to Maddy’s wedding. Due to this turnout, Jess didn’t receive anywhere near as much money as Maddy and her new husband did.
Maddy told her parents that she and her husband got around $25,000, which they put towards a down payment on a house. Meanwhile, Jess got some money but only a few thousand – mostly from her grandparents.
This did not sit right with Jess, and while hanging out with her parents this weekend, she couldn’t stop mentioning it. She kept saying that it was unfair how much “favoritism” Maddy received and that this was proof that her family didn’t care about her. She was irate, but her dad thought she sounded a little bratty.
What Jess didn’t seem to understand was that when people are invited to a wedding, they want to be part of the wedding: to see the exchange of vows and celebrate with the newly married couple.
Guests want to feel a part of the experience and help contribute to the costs through gifts. People have very different expectations for a celebration dinner, however.
People don’t tend to contribute regardless of the reason for throwing a party. Especially for such a bare-bones party like Jess threw. At the end of the day, she’d invited them to a party, not a wedding, so she shouldn’t have expected many monetary gifts.
Her father couldn’t bite his tongue and had to say something. He told her she shouldn’t be surprised that people weren’t as generous, considering she didn’t even invite them to the actual wedding.
He explained she should be grateful that people came at all and that he and his wife had paid for everything. He added that she should be thankful for having no expenses and still getting a few thousand dollars.
Jess did not take this well, saying her father was out of line and spent the rest of the weekend upset. Maddy sided with her sister and told her dad he was being a little harsh, even if his words were true.
He thinks she’s being overdramatic and will get over it, but he still wanted to ask the Reddit community whether she was wrong to do so.
Reddit users overwhelmingly sided with the dad on this one. The top-rated reply said, “Why would your family give money to a couple who didn’t even invite them to the wedding? The cash gift was just that — a gift. They are lucky to have received more than they spent on the wedding (which was paid for by parents.).”
Another Redditor’s verdict was, “Who seriously cries because they “only got a few thousand” as wedding money? That’s very spoilt and ungrateful. I can see why fewer people came and gifted her money.”
What do you think? Should her dad have told her she was ungrateful, or should he have just ignored her complaints?
The post Was He Wrong for Telling His Daughter to Be More Grateful About Her Wedding Gifts? first appeared on Mama Say What?!
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / Krakenimages.com. The people shown in the images are for illustrative purposes only, not the actual people featured in the story.
Source: Reddit
