Everyone’s always getting married when you’re in your 20s.

The obligations stack up multiple times a year.

And so do the $$s.

The entire economy around weddings has bloomed to be an almost unsustainable financial situation for a lot of people.

And especially when you take into account the long distances people move away from each other in their 20s.

This short story is about a young woman trying to wrestle with those issues.

And there’s no easy answer.

WIBTA if I tell my friend that if she doesn’t pitch in, her bridesmaids will not be at her wedding?

Three friends and I (27F) were invited to a high school friend Rene’s (27F) wedding. R is currently based in California, and we are all based overseas.

Rene wants us all to be bridesmaids and is also expecting us to plan the bachelorette party.

While we were all close friends in high school, we have all grown a bit apart, and are not in frequent contact with Rene.

While we all love her, our relationship has changed a bit from the “best friends that are constantly together” friendship that we had in high school.

A natural drifting apart will happen, especially when you move overseas!

OP explains the rough estimate cost for a long distance wedding for each of the bridesmaids, and yikes.

Did you have this amount of money to drop at 27 years old?

We calculated the cost of this wedding and have concluded that it will roughly take 3-4K USD overall for the trip, which would be minimum 5 days due to travel time. Rene has not offered to help us with the cost of the trip, and if we all go this will be a huge hit for us financially, and we would have to take multiple PTOs as well.

If Rene is not willing to pitch in, we realistically cannot go, but Rene seems to think that since we have been best friends for so long, we should be there for her special day. She has talked about wanting to have her wedding in California since we were teenagers, and we all know that her dream included us as her bridesmaids.

She explains that, even though out of genuine love for their friend, this wedding will not be feasible for them to attend.

And she explains a few times, how they kind of expect their friend to front some of the tab…

We plan on telling her that while we love her, we cannot afford to go financially.

We are worried that she will get offended that all of her bridesmaids do not think that her wedding is worth the time and effort.

She also comes from a very well-off family, as does her fiancé. She is currently in grad school and does not have an income.

She has mentioned the fact that she is “poor” to us multiple times, but as she does not have experience working or growing up with an average income, she does not seem to understand how significant the cost of this trip would be for us.

Now OP does realize what this kind of ‘ultimatum’ could come across looking like.

And it’s just not an easy road to travel.

We don’t want to offend her or ruin our friendship, but our friendship is also not at a state where we can happily dish out 3-4K USD for her.

I feel like putting this ultimatum on her, especially for something as important as her wedding, could be an jerk move, especially as she does not have an income at the moment.

WIBTA if I tell my friend that if she doesn’t pitch in, all of her bridesmaids will not be able to go to her wedding?

Reddit had some great advice for this situation.

And was actually pretty split.

One person gave some pretty specific real-world advice to potentially be applied:

Don’t use ultimatums on friends.

Another commenter conveyed a wise angle to the whole situation: be truthful.

While one Redditor gave the YTA tag, noting it’s not her place to be the spokesperson for a group of adults.

I feel like a phone call could solve a lot of this, no?

Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.