Man Discovers His Cousin’s Wedding Wasn’t a Legal Ceremony. Now, He Wants Her to Give Back All Her Gifts

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

He took to Reddit’s “Am I the A——” forum to ask whether he would be wrong for demanding that his cousin reimburse everyone who attended 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, hosted a large wedding nine months ago. Friends and family spent significant amounts on food, drinks, decorations, and gifts. The poster and his girlfriend alone contributed over $2,000 in gift cards.

Recently, while talking to his cousin about her “serious relationship issues,” she accidentally revealed that their wedding ceremony wasn’t legally binding.

“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 confirming for a second time that her “marriage isn’t actually legal anyway so she could just leave,” she laughed off his 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 had planned to eventually make their marriage legal, their “relationship issues came faster.”

“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, he’s debating whether to ask his cousin to “reimburse” him and his family or to “just leave it alone.”

Most Reddit users sided with him, saying 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 encouraged him to try to recover his money and warned that she should tell her wedding guests the truth.

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

Another commenter noted, “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.”