“Dis-Invited” Guests Furious With Couple After They Booked Nonrefundable Travel for Canceled Destination Wedding

Whether you’re planning a destination wedding or attending one as a guest, you know the importance of booking flights and hotels as early as possible. That’s why a woman acted quickly after learning about her husband’s niece’s engagement and ensuing far-flung wedding plans roughly 14 months before the event was scheduled to take place; she was even urged by the bride to do just that. Naturally, she—and the rest of the wedding’s guests—were shocked when they learned just a month out that the big day had been completely canceled, and that the engaged duo had had a much smaller celebration in a different location without telling anyone on their now-defunct larger guest list to adjust their travel plans. The disgruntled, dis-invited attendee took to Reddit’s “Wedding Shaming” thread to share the tale.

The woman set the scene by explaining that the bride-to-be was adamant about guests getting all flights and accommodations squared away stat. “My husband’s niece, whom I will call Jennifer, announced her engagement about 14 months before her wedding was to take place,” she wrote. “It was to be a destination wedding, and the guests were advised to make all reservations early, as hotels, etc. at the locale would fill up quickly. So we went ahead and reserved our hotel room, bought plane tickets, etc.”

About seven months before the scheduled wedding, the woman and her husband received a save-the-date in the mail. “It reiterated the importance of booking everything ASAP, which we had already done anyway,” she wrote. The woman had marked her calendar and thought nothing of it until the big day drew closer—which is when everything got turned upside down. Just a few weeks before the couple’s wedding, the woman learned that her careful plans and preparations had been for nothing: “The father of the bride mentioned, in a VERY offhand manner, that Jennifer had gotten married during the previous weekend,” she said. “Albeit in a new destination and with a very scaled-down number of guests present. Until this point, we had never been apprised of any new developments or changes to the original plans! No card, no email, NOTHING!” 

Since they were so close to their trip’s departure date, the woman wasn’t able to make adjustments to their itinerary. “It was too late to cancel our reservations and/or change our flight,” she wrote. “Consequently, we were out quite a bit of money!” Despite her frustration, the Redditor was understanding of the couple’s situation. “The thing is, I understand that life happens, and sometimes plans change,” she explained. “In this case, Jennifer and her beau actually had a valid reason (it’s a long story) for doing what they did.” 

What the woman couldn’t understand was “why we weren’t told about the change in plans before the actual new wedding took place!” she said. “I think even letting us and the other dis-invited know via a mass email would have been better than NO communication at all. Breach of etiquette, inconsiderate, and yes, tacky!”

The woman’s fellow Redditors were shocked by the tale—and noted that it was lucky that the woman had spoken with the father of the bride. “Yeesh, what would have happened if you hadn’t run into her dad? Or if he hadn’t bothered to mention it?” they wrote. “I wonder if there are still guests planning to go with no idea that the wedding is off now.”

Others hoped the woman and her husband were still planning to make good on their trip and turn it into a vacation—and also commented that the couple actually completely misused their save-the-dates. “Hopefully the ‘wedding’ destination is somewhere you would like to travel to anyways…this sucks, sorry it happened to you,” a user wrote. “A save-the-date is supposed to be part of the invitation process, where you give additional planning time to people to work their calendars and finances around being in attendance. It’s not an ‘FYI we are planning a wedding’ where they are sent out to everyone you know and then scaled back later based on your finances/venue limits, without any regard for the cost and inconvenience caused when you drop potential guests from the invite list after they have made plans and booked nonrefundable travel and lodging.”