'I feel incredibly used, hurt, and discarded': Woman cuts off childhood friend after paying $350 to attend her bachelorette but didn't get invited to the wedding

Author image for Isabella Penn
Isabella Penn
Jul 15, 2025 5:00 PM EDT

Bachelorette parties can get expensive. Between flights, Airbnbs, matching outfits, meals, drinks, and splitting the cost of the bride's share, you're easily looking at hundreds of dollars. But when it's your bestie getting married, you don't even think twice. You show up. You Venmo. You pop the champagne and scream in unison when the waiter brings out a sparkler with your overpriced bottle service. Why? Because that's what you do for your closest friends.

Usually, bachelorette parties are reserved for the bride's inner circle. Typically the girls who will be standing beside her in matching dresses on the big day. So if you're attending the bachelorette, you're probably going to the wedding.

And by "probably," I mean I have never heard of someone being invited to the bachelorette but not the actual wedding… until now. This woman learned the hard way that $350 doesn't even guarantee you a seat at the ceremony.

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  • Did we mention we have receipts to expose the toxic bride? 

  • Hey this is probably going to be awkward and I wanted to avoid this situation but we're both and I noticed you adults. RSVP'd to the wedding but we didn't send you a wedding invitation... so I know we were friends and close at one point but we haven't spoken in months... It's only going to be our close friends and family there so I hope it's no hard feelings but it's a set guest list. Thanks for understanding, and I'm sorry. Hope you're doing good.
    via Tabbs9

  • Stick around until the end for an update on how the woman responded to this bride's audacity, but first, let's get into how we got here. 

  • "Attended the bachelorette…. Didn’t make the cut for the wedding"

    One of the craziest things happened to my friends and I this year. Last year we went to the bachelorette party for a mutual friend of ours. We've known her for years, have travelled with
    via Tabbs9
  • her, kept up group chats despite living in different. cities, and were excited to celebrate this. We brought gifts, drove hours to participate, and spent $400+ on this bachelorette each. (Side note: never
    via Tabbs9
  • doing a destination bachelorette in my life. I urge you all to never do that either... why are you financially punishing your friends ...) For added context, this is a wedding
    via Tabbs9
  • for two brides, so the Bach was a shared bachelorette for both brides. At the bachelorette, we weren't drinking and the other girls were. We thought this was fine and it
    via Tabbs9
  • was also explicitly understood before we went that we wouldn't be drinking much or at all in my two friends' case. Well..... halfway through the Bach party our bride comes crying to us saying the other bride is
    via Tabbs9
  • frustrated that she is not "spending enough time with her" at the bachelorette (She's going to be married to her for life allegedly....?) and i get the sense that it's because of this natural divide between
    via Tabbs9
  • drinkers and non-drinkers, with our bride having the non-drinkers and therefore needing to "choose." We also barely got to see each other due to living in different cities, but she already lived with her now wife. I am bitter about that
    via Tabbs9
  • obv. Girl.... You'll see her at home...mind you at a dinner once a girl from the other bride's side asks me outright why aren't you drinking? I found that classless and invasive. I'm
    via Tabbs9
  • not a sober person, but these friends and I don't drink when we're together. What if I was someone who struggled...? Why would you ask that?
    via Tabbs9
  • This Bach party was a year prior to the planned wedding date. We all had the date in our calendars and knew we'd need to travel to her city to be there, so began planning on that. The year passed
    via Tabbs9
  • with her not responding to two of us or reaching out.... I started to suspect something but we literally were at the Bach party and had the wedding date marked on our calendars. My twin was getting
    via Tabbs9
  • married this summer too and I explicitly told them that I'd like to avoid the overlap of weddings as they planned theirs, since I knew I'd be traveling for this one.......
    via Tabbs9
  • Girl.... The rsvp link drops to one of our friends out of the three of us. She shares it to our group since the wedding is extremely unstructured and she's sharing it to multiple other people. I RSVP "yes" ... I get this text....
    via Tabbs9
  • She doesn't reach out to our other friend at all. Literally at all. It's just expected that I communicate to her that she's also "not invited." See how she says she wanted to avoid the situation? The
    via Tabbs9
  • plan was to be radio silent all along? This is shocking to us. Initially, I responded like oh thats okay... but then reflected and realized this was a burning of a bridge moment because we are
    via Tabbs9
  • being intentionally shut out and wouldn't have been told if I hadn't RSVPd. Notice how the story is that it's close friends and family only.... come to find out 150 people were invited, one of the brides also makes a Facebook
    via Tabbs9
  • post calling out her HOMOPHOBIC cousin who got an invitation by ASKING TO GO ON FACEBOOK MESSENGER.. SO IN SUMMARY people who they didn't even know well enough to know were fundamentally misaligned. with their beliefs and
    via Tabbs9
  • values got a casual "sure" invitation via chat. We haven't hear ANYTHING from either of them since. I Venmo requested $350 back for a bachelorette refund but got denied it was to be
    via Tabbs9
  • petty but also like I legitimately want that back now. Unfortunately, we will probably never know the truth and never recoup our lost funds. I'll never again
    via Tabbs9
  • think of a bachelorette party invitation as an automatic in to the wedding party either, much less the literal event itself. Let me know if you have similar experiences, trade me ur own juicy stories
    via Tabbs9
  • Some added context: my uninvited friend and I were at the engagement. We were all traveling together the day they bought the ring and decided to get married. And yes, that's correct: they just decided one day to get engaged while we were all on vacation. You need to forget
    via Tabbs9
  • everything you know about structured and typical weddings when you engage with this story. My friend who shared the link thought that without a doubt we were invited. We were planning on staying at her house the week of the wedding. The bride also
    via Tabbs9
  • stated that she wasn't sending out invitations and that people would RSVP via the link and they were having trouble getting people to RSVP at all. Our bride hadn't given any clear indication that we were seriously uninvited. The only thing we were working with was a new distance in our
    via Tabbs9
  • group chats from her for a couple months. This is NOT enough to undermine years of friendship and travel people! This is NOT a clear "you're no longer invited to my major life event." AT MOST, that's going to make me assume you're working a ton or maybe detoxing from your phone. I do
    via Tabbs9
  • not assume it's personal unless I am straight up told it is. Here are the follow up texts. This wedding has passed and I obviously lost my friend...What's worse is that our other friend got absolute silence from the bride and lost her too.
    via Tabbs9
  • We have already discussed the fears some of you brought up. She told us at the bachelorette that we were "her only friends." I'm worried for her future and for this woman she's tied herself to. If she needs me in a few years, I'll be there.
    via Tabbs9
  • THAT SAID, I am allowed to be bitter and irritated. I also need to enforce standards for my own friendships. The money is hugely symbolic to me. When I look at all of this in
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  • retrospect, I feel incredibly used, hurt, and discarded. The money I excitedly and happily spent on them before I was ghosted is a tangible representation of that. Happy wedding season....Imfao
    via Tabbs9
  • Omg no worries, I kind of wondered about this and kind of figured that might be the case but I didn't want to assume!! Have a beautiful wedding HA HA Thank you ♥ I knew you'd understand I just didn't really know what to say so anyways. I really do hope things are good, I see you've got a man so keep him on leash girl. I wish we could be there to celebrate with ya but I respect your wishes Sun, Apr 20 at 3:50 PM You stopped sharing location Mon, Apr 21 at 2:42 PM Hi I have been thinking about you
    via Tabbs9
  • and I felt like I should be clear with you about how it reads to me like the ending of a friendship. I wish you the best and it seems so unnecessary and frankly random but I do take this as a clear indication that you'd like to kind of "burn the bridge" for lack of a better phrase. I'm so sad but it's fully your right to make that decision and moving forward I now won't plan for you to be involved in my life events too, just to be fair to myself and keep my expectations of my friends high. I thi
    via Tabbs9

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friendship rsvp text message bachelorette party uninvited friends relationships wedding breakup entitled people betrayal
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