AITA for sending an invoice to my wife’s cousin after she “didn’t have space for us” at her wedding?

A Reddit user explains how they printed and designed wedding materials worth $2,000 for their wife’s cousin, only to find out they weren’t invited to the downsized wedding. Feeling hurt and financially burdened, they sent the cousin an invoice to cover material costs, sparking outrage from her and other family members.

‘ AITA for sending an invoice to my wife’s cousin after she “didn’t have space for us” at her wedding?’

I own a printing company that I run with my wife. Her cousin came to us and wanted us to do all the signage, banners, guest books, life-sized cutouts, etc for her wedding. We do this all the time for friends’ weddings and events, and we never charge. We’re happy to help out and it’s usually a lot of fun working together to make some cool stuff.

A few weeks before the wedding, her wedding planner tells us they need all the items by X date so they can set it up for the wedding. At this point, we hadn’t received our wedding invitations and didn’t even know when the actual wedding was.
My wife texts her and tries to clarify when the wedding is and if we missed the invitation somehow. Her cousin replies and says “Oh we downsized the wedding and we decided to have like a close friends and family thing” and that they didn’t have space for us in the small venue.

My wife and I are pretty hurt and insulted. And on top of it, we’ve spent close to $2000 on all the materials. Her cousin and the wedding planner kept making tiny revisions to the artwork, had us print samples to see how it would look in person, resized several of the items a few times, etc. All that cost a ton of time and money. And we’re a functioning business, so we either had to delay other orders or stay late and print her stuff on our own time.

So I went ahead and billed her for our cost and said we needed payment before delivery because I’m not going to chase her for payment for months/years after the wedding. We’re not making money on it, just charged her for the cost of materials. So far we’ve gotten threatening calls from the cousin, her fiance, some random members of my wife’s family that I don’t know, some of the groomsmen, etc essentially calling us assholes.

After the harassment, I’m considering charging full price or else we won’t deliver the items. Are we the assholes here? Sorry but I’m not going to waste my hard earned time and money on someone who doesn’t even consider us “close friends and family”

These are the responses from Reddit users:

Braign −  “sorry, we had to downsize the discount to cover close friends and family only”. NTA.

Few-Entrepreneur383 −  NTA they can’t expect a wedding gift from people who didn’t make the cut. Once you & your wife were cut, it became a business transaction & you have every right to bill them & receive payment before delivery.

poweller65 −  NTA. Tell her it’s only free for “close friends and family”. Because she has established you don’t fall into this category, distant family pays materials costs (or full if you choose to charge that).

ereignishorizont666 −  NTA. Ask them when was the last time they gave $2,000 to a couple whose wedding they weren’t close enough to be invited to.

tatersprout −  NTA. They used you. Look at how much money they saved. $2000 is not a normal wedding gift. I suggest from now on you ask to be paid but give a discount. You shouldn’t end up in the red because of a gift unless you can write it off. Ask yourself if they never intended to invite you and just wanted free services.

CrystalQueen3000 −  NTA. Your wife’s cousin is displaying peak choosing beggar behaviour.. F**k that for a laugh. Can’t fit you into the wedding? Oh well, then she’s not getting thousands in free printing work.

Fantastic-Focus-7056 −  NTA. They deliberately didn’t tell you that you weren’t invited so that you would do all that work for free. Not to mention, even if you were invited, they would be super rude to keep demand so much of you!

PrimalSeptimus −  NTA. “Close friends **and family**.” You are family, but they see you as a vendor. Well, vendors charge for their services.

Anonymous3105 −  NTA, document all those calls and texts… Tell them the more you get harassed the price is going to continue to increase…. Also what is your wife’s stance on this (since it wasn’t mentioned)? NTA regardless.

GremlinAtWork −  This sort of stuff really needs to be hashed out before money is spent and materials are used. Friends and family are the WORST for this kind of thing – people find all kinds of ways to justify taking advantage of relatives and loved ones because “family” is an excellent guilt tool. That said, NTA. Never work for free. Absolutely charge them full price.