Group holidays with friends can be a lot of fun.

But for the person planning them, they can also be pretty stressful.

Handling the logistics of a big group traveling together is way more difficult than just taking care of one or two people.

So when the friend of the guy in this story suddenly, just a month before their trip, invited someone else, the group understandably flipped out.

Read on to find out all the details.

AITA when my friend invited his brother on a trip without asking others?

Five years ago me, my brother, and two other good friends we’ve known for 20+ years planned a big trip to ski in Europe.

A year ago we started talking about doing it again for my 40th birthday, but this time we’d go skiing in Japan.

We also decided to open up the invite to a specific few others that we all knew well from college, and who wished they were invited on the last trip.

With these two committed, our group was now up to six people.

Read on to find out how their plans ended up way more complicated.

A couple weeks ago one friend, Payton, asked my brother Johny (who was planning the entire trip) if he could invite his half brother.

Johny told him a polite no, because nobody else knew him and adding a 7th would mess with logistics (guides, dinner reservations and hotel reservations).

The vibe would be different having someone there that nobody knows.

Payton wasn’t happy and said, “but I thought we were opening up the trip to others” to which Johny reminded him that was only two specific people we’ve all known since college.

Let’s see how Payton responded to that.

Well a week later Johny told people that nobody can back out at this point, because our most expensive hotel reservation was becoming non-refundable.

Everyone confirmed that they were not backing out.

However, four days after this – a month before the trip – Payton told Johny and myself that his half brother is coming, and he’s not going to be rude and uninvite him.

He said that we are being jerks for saying he can’t come.

Uh-oh. This situation only continued to get worse.

He apologized for misunderstanding that we only opened up the invite to certain people, but refused to un-invite his half brother.

We told him that if he’s truly sorry, he’ll tell his brother it was a miscommunication and he’ll do another trip with him.

However, he refused and said that he and his brother are coming on the trip and following the exact same itinerary whether we like it or not.

And then the rest of the group got involved.

All five other members of the group called him and told him that what he’s doing is very socially awkward, and that it’s selfish for him to bring this all up after flights and hotels were non-refundable.

He still refused to change course. So we changed our logistics now to expel him from the ski group with guides, and we aren’t letting him stay in the rooms we booked.

We plan to not hang out with him on the trip, but he and his half brother will be on all the same flights and likely staying at same hotels which will be awkward.

Now I’m wondering who is in the wrong here and how should this situation be handled?

AITA?

Yikes, this situation has gotten pretty messy!

Peyton was totally in the wrong to invite someone and not confirm it with the group until this late stage.

However, it’s not cool for them to completely exclude them from the group either. For the half-brother, this is a truly horrible situation.

Let’s see what the folks over on Reddit made of this.

This person could totally empathize.

And others suggested that it should be on Peyton to find a solution.

But this person suggested being a bit more pragmatic about the whole thing.

His friend is ruining their travel plans.

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.