weddings

'My in-laws invited 10 of their friends to my wedding… without telling me.'

What would you do if your wedding was gatecrashed by a plus-one? What about a plus... 10? 

It's an unlikely scenario that ruined a bride's wedding after one of her guests invited almost a dozen of their friends to the reception without telling her. 

What's worse? The 'wedding guest' was one of her new in-laws. 

Watch MM Confessions: My biggest wedding regret. Post continues below. 


Video via Mamamia.

The bride explained the disastrous situation in a recent Reddit post on the subreddit "Am I The A**hole?", and it sparked one of the most spirited discussions on wedding etiquette we've seen in a while. 

"I married my husband last weekend after about a year of planning," the bride wrote in her now-viral post. 

"The ceremony went off perfectly even with kids in the church. The formal photos weren't delayed. No one got drunk and wrecked anything. No one insisted on bringing their emotional support goat."

But despite it being basically perfect, it was almost ruined by a few uninvited guests.

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"The only hitch was that my in-laws invited about 10 extra people without telling us," she continued. "Not relatives or anything – just friends of theirs we did not invite since we don't know them."

The bride explained that the extra guests went unnoticed at the ceremony, but the newlyweds quickly became aware of their presence at the wedding reception when there were no seats for them.

"Our best man and groomsmen found a folding table and chairs for them to sit at. There was food, we went with a buffet, but since we sent the tables to eat by number and they didn't have a number they were sent last after everything had been picked over," she recalled.

Her in-laws hadn't notified either the bride or the groom about the extra guests, leaving them "embarrassed" that their friends were put in an awkward position.

"I very politely asked them what they expected when they invited people without telling the people planning the wedding," the bride recounted, before adding that her parents-in-law demanded she apologise to the wedding gatecrashers.

"I said I would, but I would also explain that they had not actually been invited. If they wanted their guests told anything else then they had to go explain," she wrote.

Following the incident, which left the bride's new in-laws unhappy, the gatecrashing guests uncomfortable, and the groom clearly... uninvolved, the bride says there is now a lot of tension in the family.

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"They are upset with me. My husband has my back 100 per cent. I think I could have been more gracious, but I also think it should not have fallen on us to deal with it," she concluded her post.

The post immediately received thousands of comments from people who argued it was impolite for her in-laws to invite so many people.

While there were plenty who felt the bride wasn't in the wrong, though, bride-to-be and wedding writer Jessica Patterson tells Mamamia she would have never told guests they were not invited... even if they technically weren't. 

Jessica Patterson is getting married in February 2024 and says she wouldn't be overly concerned if an uninvited guest (or 10) showed up to her wedding reception. Image: Supplied.

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Patterson also pointed out there was a key detail missing from the story that stopped her from forming a proper opinion. 

"Who is paying for this wedding? Because if it is your in-laws, then I think it's not your problem if they've invited extra guests. It's not like I'm paying for the extra heads," she explained before adding that inviting an extra 10 people could cost at least $2000-3000.

"I'm actually going through something like this where my fiancé and I have negotiated with both our parents how many people they can invite," she explains. "It's strange the in-laws have invited so many people last minute and without telling anyone, but I also wouldn't care.

"I would tell my in-laws, 'You can deal with that problem because it's not my problem'."

We'd love to hear your thoughts about this wedding dilemma! Let us know in the comments below.

Feature Image: Getty.

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