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Sure, your wedding might be a magical day, maybe even one of the best of your life. But planning for that wedding? Unless your passion is logistics and organisation – or you’re paying for a devoted wedding planner – it can be daunting at best.

Many couples understandably find planning – and paying – for their wedding to be an overwhelming experience, one that is stressful and full of tiny details that can be easily forgotten until it’s almost too late. And given how judgemental folk can be, especially at a wedding, not having an eye on all those little (some might say, unnecessary) details can feel like a whole lot to handle.

The couple in this story are looking forward to getting married, but since they’re paying for the entire thing themselves they’re being very budget conscious. This means limiting the guest list to people from very specific criteria, regardless of the difficulty of whittling down the list to see who makes the cut. Because it might feel difficult, but not putting themselves in financial difficulty is clearly the best thing to do.

However, their guest list is proving to be quite the source of drama – and after one particular exchange, it has left the couple feeling quite frustrated.

Read on to find out why.

AITA for refusing to invite my fiancé’s cousin after his aunt tried to “force” him onto our self-funded guest list?

My fiancé and I are currently planning our wedding. Because we are paying for the entire wedding completely on our own, our budget is incredibly tight.

We’ve had to make highly intentional, painful cuts to our guest list—including leaving out the vast majority of my own aunts, uncles, and all of my cousins just to make room for his side of the family.

For context, a wedding guest isn’t just a “plate.” We are paying for every single person’s chair, plate, napkin, cup, silverware, and meal out of our own pockets.

Because of this, we made the conscious, joint decision to only invite family members who have actually supported or been involved in our relationship.

Let’s understand how they made these cuts.

Enter my fiancé’s aunt, “Auntie B.” We sent an invitation to his other aunt, “K,” and her younger daughter. We deliberately chose not to invite K’s 20-year-old son, “L.”

Why? Because L and K have shown zero support for our actual relationship. They couldn’t be bothered to show up to my baby shower. They haven’t reached out a single time since our daughter was born over a year ago.

The literal last time we even heard from them was when K and Auntie B were hitting my fiancé up for money to help L move out of his mom’s house.

We literally had to cut out close, active friends we actually love to make budget space, so paying hundreds of dollars to host someone who treats my fiancé like a personal ATM was a hard no.

And this didn’t go down well with some family members.

Auntie B sent me this text: “Hey hon can you add K’s son L to her RSVP pls”

I replied directly with: “To be completely honest, we aren’t adding any more guests. As stated on the invites and website no additional plus ones.”

“We are paying for this entire wedding completely on our own and have already had to make incredibly hard cuts, including leaving out a huge portion of people including a large amount of my own family to accommodate his side of the family.”

“We are strictly keeping the guest list to the people we originally invited. Thank you for understanding.”

Let’s see how Auntie B responded to her message.

Auntie B’s response was a passive-aggressive: “Ok L lives with the family, he just wasn’t included” Mind you, Auntie B is the other aunt, she doesn’t even live with L or K!

I don’t have the bandwidth for passive aggressive guilt trips.

My fiancé is 100% on my side and thinks his family is being ridiculous, but I know the extended family is going to paint me as the “****** bride” for standing my ground.

AITA?

Sure, it could be the case that Auntie B thinks that the couple made a genuine mistake in forgetting L, but the truth is that if they’re not paying for the wedding, they don’t get any say on the guest list.

Folks forget – or simply don’t care – just how much money a couple (and sometimes their family) have to pay just to celebrate their marriage, and trying to force extra guests into the list is really presumptuous and unfair on them.

They’re just proving exactly why they weren’t invited in the first place.

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

This person thought she was right to stand her ground.

While others encouraged them to just invite close friends instead.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a brother who doesn’t want to help his sister cover their aging father’s groceries.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that it was her fiancé’s job to deal with his family, not hers.

Wedding guest lists are always going to be a contentious topic, one in which all those around you are likely to have their own opinions. And most folk aren’t shy about sharing those opinions either. But the truth is, only two people get to decide who is on the guest list – and those are the two people who are getting married. Sure, if parents are paying substantial sums towards the wedding it’s likely that they’ll get a say too, but really it’s only the couple who should get to dictate who is there on their special day.

It’s a shame that they are having to be so restrictive, but this is often the reality for folk who are getting married on a budget, and paying every penny themselves. Because when you have to fork out a load of cash for someone to be a part of your day, why would you want to pay for people who don’t really care about you, and who you don’t even really like?

So of course they’re right to not invite people because of budget constraints – but they also have to be prepared for the drama.