A wedding guest is second-guessing her choice to alert the bride’s mother after worrying that a bartender might have pocketed the cash gift she brought for the couple.
She shared her dilemma in a letter to the Dear Abby advice column, published by The Mercury News on Tuesday, Dec. 2. In the letter, she explained that she and her husband had traveled to a destination wedding for the daughter of a close friend a few years earlier.
The pair decided to give the newlyweds $300 in cash. When she walked over to place the money into the “big wooden box” set out for cards and gifts at the reception, the bartender stopped her and said the bride and groom had already taken the box up to their room. He then offered to take her envelope and promised he would see that the couple got it — so she handed it over.
Six months later, she still hadn’t received a thank-you note, and her uneasiness grew.
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“So I asked my friend [the bride’s mother] if the couple had gotten my gift,” she wrote. “I told her I was concerned because it was cash and I had given it to the bartender.”
The bride’s mother checked with her daughter and confirmed that the couple had indeed received the $300.
Even so, the guest said that raising the issue appears to have changed the dynamic of her friendship.
“Since then, my friendship with this friend seems to have become very distant,” she wrote, asking, “Tell me, was I wrong?”
Columnist Jeanne Phillips reassured her that she hadn’t crossed a line.
“Considering the odd circumstances, you did exactly the right thing by asking if the cash had been received,” Phillips wrote, before offering a possible explanation for the chill in the friendship.
“Your friend, however, may have interpreted your question as criticism of her daughter because, after six months, you hadn’t received an acknowledgment of your generous gift,” she concluded.
