Woman Can’t Attend Wedding, So Friend Sends Her $75 Bill For Uneaten Meal To Recoup Loss

Imagine yourself in this scenario: You’ve invited tons of people to your wedding, have everything perfectly planned, the tables set, and the meals ready to be served. And then someone cancels.

It’s an unavoidable circumstance, this missing guest tells you — the babysitter cancelled.

So, what do you do?

If you’re a person up to date on your etiquette, you get over it, forgive this inconvenienced friend, and have a nice wedding. What you don’t do is what happened to a Minnesota woman named Jessica Baker.

Weeks after her friend’s wedding, which she had to miss, she received a bill in the mail for the meals she and her husband never ate.

That’s right — a bill for $75.90.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she told KARE. “It listed, we would have had two herb crusted walleye and there was also a service and tax charge.”

The bill was for the “amount paid by the bride and groom for meals that were RSVP’d for, reimbursement and explanation for no show, card, call or text would be appreciated.”

Baker posted the bill on Facebook and received tons of sage advice from ticked-off strangers.

“So do you get your money back that you spent on a gift when they divorce a year later,” said Deb Larson Yepsen.

“As a planner of many events, having no-shows is part of the process. This situation should have been considered long before the wedding ever took place; unfortunately the (poor) sentiment expressed by the wedding couple after the fact may cost them even more than the dinner did–and may be a troubling indicator of their ability to handle situations in the future,” added Jo Baecker.

“Lol sorry but if they’re able to spend 36.50 per person at their wedding… I doubt they’re hurting for gifts or money. D-cks,” Laura Reed chimed in.

The best response was the simplest, from Erin Walczak Wheeler: “Entitled and rude.”

Here’s what happened that night. Baker and her husband were perfectly prepared to attend their friend’s wedding, but there was one hitch: Children were barred from the festivities, and Baker has kids.

She RSVP’d and arranged for a babysitter, her mom, but as life goes, something came up and her mom had to cancel. Since Jessica was prohibited from bringing her children, she had to stay home, much to the chagrin of her friend.

The cancellation was so inconvenient that she sent off a bill to recoup her losses. But the joke’s on the bride and groom — Jessica has absolutely no plans to pay the bill and hasn’t given them a gift card or a gift, WHBL added.

Clearly, this bill was improper according to public opinion, but an expert in wedding etiquette is also appalled. The editor of Minnesota Bride magazine, Sarah Baumann Rogers, said she could see the couple’s reasoning. They spent a lot of money and likely Baker wasn’t the only guest to back out.

But even though people should RSVP for a wedding right away, she said this couple should’ve been prepared for a couple people to have a problem making their way to the nuptials.

“Under no circumstances should you choose to follow up after the fact… kind of questioning why they couldn’t attend or much less sending a bill. General rule is prepare for about 10 percent of overage or underage when you’re planning a big event like that and catering companies are well aware of this.”

So what do you think? Should Jessica pay the bill? Or is the couple way out of line trying to recoup the loss of her last-minute cancellation?

[Photos Courtesy Facebook, Pinkyone, melis / Shutterstock]