When you marry someone, you marry their whole family, traditions and all!

This inevitably leads to some awkward situations, especially when one of those traditions is giving half of your wedding gifts to your in-laws!

This user found that out the hard way, when they were asked to give 50% of their cash gifts from a Wedding they barely wanted in the first place!

Check it out!

AITA if we decided not to give 50% of the wedding cash gifts to my in-laws and offer an apology after?

We eloped a few months ago, super short ceremony, photos and that’s it. We have a business that’s growing pretty quick and we wanted all our savings to go towards it, reason why we decided not to go for a wedding party.

Nevertheless, my in-laws wanted a party because of their traditions (middle easterners), after back and forth, we agreed on it with the condition that we were not giving them money, which they agreed to.

If I got half of all my relative’s cash after a wedding, I’d never miss another wedding for the rest of my life!

We went and check out the event center in which the wedding party will be taking place and we discussed no money will be received from our side, my husband’s dad joke about giving his wife some money from the wedding gifts in which she said “NO, this is y’all gift”.

My mother-in law (which I will be forever grateful) was in charge of everything, as expected, we only showed up for the wedding. The wedding was FULL of their family and friends, which was okay with us, as that was not our money.

Seems pretty fair, if they were the ones who wanted the Wedding ceremony, they can invite whoever they want.

Like OP said, its not the couple’s money. Right?… Right?

Wedding day goes by, two days later we meet up with them to count the money and write how much each guest gave (again, middle eastern tradition). After we finish counting, we ate and left.

The crazy part comes now: as we leave, the mom closes the door so hard that my husband and I looked at each other as wtf? Two days later I’m COVID + same as them, so my husband texted and called them with no answer or response.

Seems like the in-laws might have been expecting that money regardless of the agreement!

A text from the mother-in-law confirmed this soon enough.

Few days later, we were informed that they are mad at us because we didn’t give them money “as agreed”, I was like wait a minute. I made sure before we agreed to the party that they understood that there was no way they’ll receive money from us. Today, his brother calls and told him that they are waiting for an apology, like ummm whyyy?

You definitely don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with your in-laws, but claiming that the couple “agreed” to paying them is absolutely ridiculous!

The whole reason they didn’t have a ceremony in the first place was because they wanted to save money!

Reddit agreed 100%, with this Middle Eastern user warning OP that she should only continue to expect this delayed outrage in the future!

This commenter thought that OP’s husband should have expected this, as knew his parents and their unspoken expectations better than his wife!

OP’s cash conflict reminded this commenter of her coworkers, who had similar unspoken yet deeply held expectations for paying and offering to pay.

This Redditor said that she’s facing a lose-lose situation for her, and that the best course of action was to ignore their outrageous behavior.

And finally this user agreed that the husband should be the one to deal with the issue, and to establish with him that his family cannot keep treating them in this way.

Tough situation, but at the end of the day if they were the one who insisted on a ceremony, they should have been prepared to pay for it, like they had originally agreed to!

Never go back on your promises.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.