Bride Refuses BFF’s Wedding Gift That Excludes Other Guests: 'I’m Not Gonna Charge My Friends To Sit With Me'

After refusing to accept a wedding “gift” from her best friend, a soon-to-be bride is wondering if she did the right thing.

The woman, 29, explained her reasoning for refusing the gesture in a post on Reddit's "Am I the A------" forum on Tuesday, Jan. 14, starting with details about her upcoming nuptials. She is getting married in Las Vegas in August, and the wedding festivities will extend beyond the ceremony, with a “weekend celebration with all kinds of activities leading up to the big day.”

One of the planned activities, the original poster (OP) explained, is a “brunch/pool party spot where you have to pay to rent cabanas and chairs.” Wanting to pitch in, the bride’s best friend decided to, along with her boyfriend, rent the couples’ a cabana as a “gift.”

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"I put ‘gift’ in quotes because in my mind, when you give something as a gift, you relinquish all control over that item,” the OP wrote, “and the person you gave the gift to has complete control over what they want to do with said gift. So since she said the cabana was a gift for me and my fiancé, we said that we don't mind sharing it with the rest of our guests.”

But the BFF does not feel the same, and is instead “really adamant about my other friends/guests not being able to join us in the cabana unless they pitch in some money,” leaving the bride with a sour taste in her mouth about the whole situation.

Given her insistence upon keeping the gifted cabana exclusive to herself, her boyfriend, and the bride and groom, the OP said she assumed that “if she's trying to control what we do with the cabana, then it's really HER cabana and she's just sharing with us.”

“So I told her that I appreciate the gesture, but I'd rather rent my own cabana and share with everyone because if I'm going to have a huge cabana anyway, I'm not gonna charge my friends to sit with me,” the OP wrote. “I don't mind sharing with my friends.”

Elaborating in a comment, she added, “If we have our own space at the party and my other friends are excluded if they don't pay, it comes off as ‘cliquey’ to me, which I'm not trying to do.”

"And,” her original post continued, “I get that my friend group is not affiliated with her, she doesn't owe them anything and that's fine, which is why I told her that she can go ahead and get her own cabana and I'll just get my own that I can share.”

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Now, the OP said, her best friend is “disappointed” by her refusal and “arguing that her intent was not to ‘buy her own cabana’ but to buy it for me and my fiancé.”

Wondering if she mishandled the situation, the OP asked if she is in the wrong, but most responses agreed that she is “not the a------,” and that her friend’s “gift” was actually “selfish” and a “power play.”

"She only wants to pay for food and libations for the four of you,” one user explained. “This is not a gift; it's a pool parking spot with optional catering.”

Another user wrote that the bride’s best friend “fails to understand (1) you're a part of different friend groups as well, and (2) want to celebrate your special day the way you want it- and she has no right to control how you plan your parties.”

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“Your interpretation of what a gift is and what it means is spot on,” another echoed, adding that “it sounds to me like she wanted to have a nice experience for herself” and simultaneously cover her wedding gift.

Still others, however, agreed that the OP was valid for her reaction, but argued that her BFF’s intentions were less sinister than meets the eye.

“[Not the a------] but I don’t necessarily think your friend is either,” one user wrote. “I think she had decently good intentions but executed them poorly. Really her gift to you was more so an activity for y’all together, so it wasn’t really just for you.”

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