AITA for sending an invoice to my wife’s cousin after she “didn’t have space for us” at her wedding?

A person on Reddit shared their experience of creating wedding stationery, valued at $2,000, for their wife’s cousin. However, they were excluded from the smaller wedding ceremony. Upset and facing a financial loss, they billed the cousin for the cost of the materials, which led to anger from the cousin and other relatives.

‘ AITA for sending an invoice to my wife’s cousin after she “didn’t have space for us” at her wedding?’

My wife and I operate a printing business. Her cousin approached us about creating all the signs, banners, guest books, life-size cutouts, and other items for her wedding. We frequently provide these services without charge for friends’ weddings and events. We enjoy contributing and typically have a great time collaborating on unique creations.

A few weeks before the wedding, her wedding planner tells us they need all the items by X date so they can set it up for the wedding. At this point, we hadn’t received our wedding invitations and didn’t even know when the actual wedding was.
My wife texts her and tries to clarify when the wedding is and if we missed the invitation somehow. Her cousin replies and says “Oh we downsized the wedding and we decided to have like a close friends and family thing” and that they didn’t have space for us in the small venue.

We, as a couple, feel quite wounded and disrespected. Furthermore, we’ve invested nearly $2000 in supplies. Her relative, along with the event coordinator, continuously requested minor changes to the design, asked us to produce physical proofs for visual inspection, and repeatedly adjusted the dimensions of several pieces. All of this incurred significant expense and consumed considerable time. Since we operate a legitimate company, we were forced to either postpone other customer requests or work overtime to fulfill her requests.

I proceeded to invoice her for what we spent and informed her that payment was required prior to delivery since I don’t want to have to pursue her for payment indefinitely after the wedding. We aren’t profiting from this; we simply billed her for the price of the supplies. Since then, we’ve received intimidating phone calls from the cousin, her fiancé, unfamiliar relatives of my wife, some of the groomsmen, and others, all of whom are essentially labeling us as jerks.

Following the upsetting behavior, I’m thinking about demanding complete payment upfront, or we’ll withhold delivery. Are we in the wrong? Frankly, I’m unwilling to spend my valuable time and resources on someone who doesn’t even view us as “close friends and family”.

These are the responses from Reddit users:

Braign −  “sorry, we had to downsize the discount to cover close friends and family only”. NTA.

Few-Entrepreneur383 −  NTA they can’t expect a wedding gift from people who didn’t make the cut. Once you & your wife were cut, it became a business transaction & you have every right to bill them & receive payment before delivery.

poweller65 −  NTA. Tell her it’s only free for “close friends and family”. Because she has established you don’t fall into this category, distant family pays materials costs (or full if you choose to charge that).

ereignishorizont666 −  NTA. Ask them when was the last time they gave $2,000 to a couple whose wedding they weren’t close enough to be invited to.

tatersprout −  NTA. They used you. Look at how much money they saved. $2000 is not a normal wedding gift. I suggest from now on you ask to be paid but give a discount. You shouldn’t end up in the red because of a gift unless you can write it off. Ask yourself if they never intended to invite you and just wanted free services.

CrystalQueen3000 −  NTA. Your wife’s cousin is displaying peak choosing beggar behaviour.. F**k that for a laugh. Can’t fit you into the wedding? Oh well, then she’s not getting thousands in free printing work.

Fantastic-Focus-7056 −  NTA. They deliberately didn’t tell you that you weren’t invited so that you would do all that work for free. Not to mention, even if you were invited, they would be super rude to keep demand so much of you!

PrimalSeptimus −  NTA. “Close friends **and family**.” You are family, but they see you as a vendor. Well, vendors charge for their services.

Anonymous3105 −  NTA, document all those calls and texts… Tell them the more you get harassed the price is going to continue to increase…. Also what is your wife’s stance on this (since it wasn’t mentioned)? NTA regardless.

GremlinAtWork −  This sort of stuff really needs to be hashed out before money is spent and materials are used. Friends and family are the WORST for this kind of thing – people find all kinds of ways to justify taking advantage of relatives and loved ones because “family” is an excellent guilt tool. That said, NTA. Never work for free. Absolutely charge them full price.