Bride Sends Tacky Bill to the Parents Who Bailed on Her Child-Free Wedding

When Jessica Baker was invited to a relative’s wedding recently, she was not worried about the fact that her children were not invited. Child-free weddings are great! Baker arranged for her mother to watch the children while Baker and her husband were at the wedding, and everything was just great. But then shit happened. Shit happens when you have kids, and as parents we just have to roll with it.

Baker’s mother was suddenly unable to babysit at the very last minute, and Baker and her husband were left with no real recourse besides skipping the August 29 wedding. It was too late to get another sitter, and bringing uninvited children to a child-free wedding would have been a heinous breach of etiquette. So Baker and her husband did what most of us would do, and they stayed home.

This week Baker says she actually received a bill from the bride, asking her to pay $75.90 for two $30 orders of “herb-crusted walleye” along with tax and service charge.

”This cost reflects the amount paid by the bride and groom for meals that were RSVPed for, reimbursement and explanation for no show, card, call or text would be appreciated,” the newlyweds reportedly wrote.

Baker was understandably shocked. Who sends a bill to someone who is a no-show at a wedding? That’s just astoundingly tacky.

If I were the wedding guest, I would be strongly tempted to send the bride a note saying that if I had been there I would have consumed way more than my share at the open bar, and thus I actually saved her money by not attending. I would tell her she could keep the difference and consider it a wedding gift. I have terrible manners.

Of course, this is one of those situations where nobody but the innocent children wind up looking good. Baker and her husband were right to skip the wedding after their sitter bailed. There is not much else a person can do in that situation! But it would have been nice if Baker or her husband had alerted someone before or after the wedding. A quick text to say, “Oh no, our sitter bailed! We are stranded home with the kids. We are sorry!” sent to a mutual friend or Maid of Honor would have been nice.

”We had discussed if we should contact anyone and decided against it because, coincidentally enough, we’d had people RSVP and no-show to our wedding and I knew when I got married I didn’t want to be bothered with phone calls on the day of my wedding,” Baker said to ABC News. ”I just assumed, I guess, that we’d let them know the situation later on.”

They never did get around to that, though, and they really should have. Alerting someone beforehand might not have been possible or tactful, but they should have sent a note afterwards instead of just ghosting the wedding couple.

Still, that in no way justifies the fact that the bride then lost her damn mind and sent them a bill. That’s just outrageous. As a host, one must be understanding if one’s guests suddenly cannot make it to one’s event. It is OK to be annoyed and gripe about it with your new spouse while you watch Netflix and drink champagne out of your new flutes, but under no circumstances can you send a nasty note to the people who did not show up, and you absolutely cannot send them a bill.

Of course, then Baker posted a photo of the bill to the Facebook page of her local news station, because that’s the world we live in these days. Because the note was outrageously rude, the story has since gone viral.

The newlyweds wish to remain anonymous, obviously, but they issued a statement to the Bakers through ABC News:

“We apologize for not being tactful in expressing our disappointment in your absence. We waited three weeks after the wedding for any correspondence and received nothing, this along with your last minute RSVP caused us to act on emotion rather than logic,” the statement read.

This whole story is just nuts. I imagine that Miss Manners is lying down somewhere with a cold compress over her eyes and a Dubonnet cocktail in her hand, because everything about this is ridiculous.

Baker says she’s considering making a $75.90 donation to charity and then sending the receipt to the couple, but that just sounds like baiting at this point. They should probably all just move on to the phase of their relationship where they ignore each other and make awkward small talk at family gatherings.