A dad on Reddit revealed why he is withholding previously promised wedding funds from his daughter after she eloped with her longtime partner.
The man explained that when his daughter and her partner of five years got engaged, he and his wife were elated and began saving money to help cover the cost of their wedding.
They offered the newly engaged couple $15,000 to use toward their big day and were looking forward to having the whole family included in the celebration. But that never happened.
“…Last week she tells me she has an announcement and that they actually eloped together because they decided they didn’t want the big event with all the attention on them,” the man wrote in his post.
While he and his wife were disappointed, they understood. “She’s never been the type to want to be the spotlight, so while we weren’t expecting it, it wasn’t the biggest shock in the world,” he explained.
However, they were shocked when their daughter asked for the funds they had put aside for her wedding. She told them she had hoped to use the cash to cover the cost of a month-long sabbatical and honeymoon.
“My wife and I told her the money we were prepared to give her was for a family event, not just for her to do as she pleases. If she didn’t want a traditional wedding, that’s fine, but we never told her we were just giving her, say, [$15,000] for the act of getting married,” he continued.
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The father explained to his daughter that they were willing to pay for the event so she wouldn’t have “to spend a ton of her own funds on a wedding” and so their entire family could celebrate with low financial stress on the couple.
“Two of my nieces have gotten married in the last couple of years, and it’s a family event to us, not just about the two people getting married,” he shared, asking Reddit if he was wrong for “not just giving her the cash we would have paid?”
In the comments section, Reddit users backed the dad’s financial decision.
“Your expectations and conditions are entirely reasonable. It was unreasonable for her to assume that she could simply take the ‘cash option’ here,” one Reddit user commented.
“I have to wonder if the daughter would have asked what the budget was, spent less on the wedding, and then asked for the remainder. It seems plausible with her line of thinking,” someone else wrote.
“You were willing to spend $15k to help her host the family and her friends, not just give her a gift of $15k cash. That’s fair,” another weighed in.