Man Discovered Cousin’s Wedding Wasn’t a Legal Ceremony, Wants Her to Give Back Gifts

A man is furious at his cousin for pretending her wedding was legal when it wasn’t.

The man asked Reddit users in a post on the platform’s “Am I the A——” forum whether or not he would be in the wrong for demanding that his cousin reimburse everyone for her “fake” wedding.

“I just feel like this was extremely disrespectful to make people think you’re getting married and accepting gifts if it’s not true,” he wrote.

The man explained that his cousin, 44, and her partner, 40, threw a “big wedding” nine months ago. At the time, the bride and groom’s friends and family members shelled out “a good amount of money” for food, drinks, decorations and gifts. The poster and his girlfriend spent more than $2,000 combined on gift cards for the couple.

Recently, the man spoke with his cousin about her “serious relationship issues,” and “in the midst of ranting” she accidentally revealed that her wedding ceremony wasn’t legal.

“My cousin let it slip that they are not actually legally married, it was just a ceremony they wanted to have,” he wrote. “I’m upset and thinking about telling her to reimburse me. Not sure if I should tell the rest of my family.”

After the cousin confirmed for a second time that her “marriage isn’t actually legal anyway so she could just leave,” she started to laugh off the man’s visible concern.

“[She] asked what the big deal was since ‘everyone had a good time,’ ” the man recalled. “That’s not the point though. Everyone put in a lot of time, effort and money into making that day special, and it wasn’t even real.”

Although the woman and her partner planned to eventually make their marriage legal, their “relationship issues came faster.”

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“I was immediately upset about it because my gf (girlfriend) and I took the time to get some really nice gifts for them. My mom and aunt spent a lot of money and time on food … for family, it was a complete waste of time,” the man wrote. “We made sure we had time off from work, we spent our energy doing all of this stuff for them… for nothing.”

Now, the man is contemplating if he should ask his cousin to “reimburse” him and his family for their wedding contributions, or if he should “just leave it alone.”

Most Reddit users commented that the cousin was in the wrong for “lying and manipulating” her friends and family into “spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a party.” They advised the man to try to get his money back, and told him to warn his cousin that if she doesn’t tell her wedding guests the truth then he will.

“What a crappy way to extort money out of your loved ones just to have a self-serving party,” one person wrote, with another individual agreeing, “She conned family and friends out of all this money for a party!”

Someone else commented, “What they did is called fraud. They received finance and goods under false pretenses. Give her 24 hours to tell everyone the truth, then tell everyone you know who was roped into the fake wedding.”