Imagine planning a small wedding. If your family offered to give you money so you could afford a bigger wedding, would you take it?

What if taking it meant they also wanted to control a lot of details about your wedding?

In this story, one couple is in this exact situation. They were happy their families wanted to help them at first, but now that the money seems to have strings attached, they no longer want it.

Keep reading for all the details.

AITA for telling my family that if they gift us money for our wedding, there will be no “strings attached” or we will politely decline it?

Wedding culture is horrible.

My fiance and I thought we would escape the drama and money by having a small thing.

Well, family started trying to throw money at us to make it bigger and more spectacular. We were surprised, but it was a good surprise.

The money seemed to take away their freedom.

Then the demands started coming out.

They wanted this, they wanted that, they wanted this person to come, these colors, dresses can’t do this, this person has to be flower girl, this person HAS to be a groomsman, etc etc.

Suddenly it didn’t feel like our wedding, but an excuse for our families to have a family reunion.

They offered to give back the money.

We put our foot down and said:

“Thank you all for your kindness and generosity when it comes to our wedding. Unfortunately, it looks like we may not have been on the same page as the rest of you. When we were offered money for this wedding, we did not realize it came with strings attached. With so many requests and so many demands from people we didn’t expect would think they had a say in our wedding, we have decided to give everyone their money back. Our understanding of what a gift is must be very different. If you would like to give us money without strings attached or requests or demands, we will gracefully accept it. But if you believe a gift should come with stipulations, we must regretfully, and politely decline.”

Now, there’s even more drama.

This has caused an epic storm.

Such to the point where I have people saying they will never come to our wedding (honestly, not the worse thing in the world), that we are spoiled, we’re jerks, etc etc etc.

My parents are rather upset about it, but hers (who never made any demands and gave us a small cash gift) said we did the right thing.

We are halfway to canceling the whole party and just absconding into the wilderness to do the wedding the way we want.

AITA? (Are We?)

His family sounds like a nightmare. The bride and groom should have the wedding the way they want it. In this case, it might be best to go back to the original plan of something super small and inexpensive.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person points out the best part of the story.

Another person points out a problem in what he told his family.

Yet another person is bothered by what he told his family.

This person laughed.

The perfect wedding might be the less expensive one.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.