Planning a wedding is stressful enough: venues, seating charts, family dynamics… and apparently, surprise Airbnb hosting duties?

This woman and her fiancé are mid-build on their first home, juggling full-time jobs and an upcoming wedding, when they catch wind of an unspoken expectation: they’ll be hosting five overseas relatives during the wedding festivities. No timeline, no logistics, just vibes and assumptions.

Add in language barriers, no extra cars, a large dog, a packed house, and the idea of coming home post-wedding to a full house of guests…yeah, not exactly newlywed bliss.

So now they’re stuck asking: are we setting a boundary, or starting family drama?

AITA for refusing to host overseas family at our home during our wedding?

My fiancé and I are getting married in just over a year, and we have indirectly found out that there is an expectation for us to host extended family members of my fiancé’s family when they visit to attend our wedding.

For context, my partner’s maternal family are from South-East Asia, and we would be expected to host five family members (with the remaining four family members staying at my fiancé’s parents house).

Flights are yet to be booked, and we still don’t know for sure exactly how long they would be staying.

Sounds like a full house.

For further context, me and my partner are currently building our very first house which is expected to be finished in the next few months (so roughly 10 months before we get married), which adds further stress of having to make sure our house is fully furnished and ready for hosting.

My fiancé’s family don’t speak the best English, and they will not have access to a car due to us needing them for work (nor will we have the time to be driving people around).

My sister-in-law is far better at speaking the language than my fiancé is and she has a car and license, so we thought it would be helpful for her to stay with us (and she is happy to do this). however, my sister-in-law would have just started her university degree and is also in the bridal party and realistically I think it would be a lot of pressure for her to have to manage this.

Yikes.

Also, my fiancé’s parents’ house is going to be about a 40-minute car drive from our house, so it’s not like his mum can pop over that regularly.

I feel overwhelmed at the thought of having eight people (this includes us and my sister-in-law) as well as our large dog (his family don’t have experience with dogs and they have a five-year-old child) in our house leading up to the wedding and potentially afterwards.

We are not going on our honeymoon until a few months after we get married so after our 2 night hotel stay, we would have to come home as a freshly married couple to a full house of people.

Sounds like the dream first days as newlyweds…not.

After thinking about it and upon discussion with my fiancé, we have decided that we are going to tell his mum that we will not be hosting anybody at our house due to the stress of the wedding and us still working full-time.

This is yet to happen, and my fiancé is extremely nervous to have this conversation and he feels as though it is a burden on his parents – which I totally disagree with.

I am also extremely annoyed that this is just an expectation, and we haven’t even been asked whether we are okay with it (nor have we been directly told).

Totally.

An arrangement we will be suggesting instead would be to have my fiancé’s sister and brother stay with us instead, freeing up 2 bedrooms in his parents’ house, but this might look offensive, as though we have something against his overseas family.

This would also mean that my fiance’s parents would have 9 family members from overseas at their house (excluding my fiancé’s brother and sister).

So, AITA for refusing to host my fiance’s family at our house?

Reddit largely agreed NTA, emphasizing that hosting is something you offer, not something that gets assigned to you, especially during a major life event like your own wedding.

This person says to look into AirBnBs.

This person says NTA, though she could do something…

And this person says her idea is great, and not to feel bad about suggesting it.

Moral of the story: If you’re planning a wedding, you shouldn’t also be running a full-service hotel.

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.