To drop out of hen weekend?

[emmam25]

An old school friend is getting married and when she first asked about her hen weekend I agreed to go, paid £50 deposit. Since then I have had a baby and my OH has lost his job. This week I had an email about the hmmm weekend saying it would cost another £300 which I simply cannot afford, paying our bills has to come first. So I have had to say I cannot go. I did this the same day as the email arrived saying the cost of the weekend. The bride-to-be has sent a very snotty email saying that I should have said sooner as everyone else now has to cover the cost of my place on the weekend. But I only dropped out because it is so much more than I had anticipated and the full cost was only mentioned now, previously there had only been talk about "keeping costs down" and I'd expected half what it's costing. Am I being unreasonable considering the total cost has only just been revealed?

I think finding out you were pregnant was the time to tell her you may need to back out. That in itself was going to be costly and, what about childcare? Is your dp confident enough to do it for a newborn?

Having said that she shouldve given you a clue what she was doing or else, why ask for £50? What was going through her mind, did no-one else ask?

"But a weekend away? Nah." You reminded me of Michel Roux Jnr then, Obsidian. "Vanilla with pork? Na."

DP and I "nah" each other all the time.

I guess if they spoke of keeping the cost down this was vague as everyone has different budgets. I'm still surprised there was no discussion at all about where you'd go and what you'd be doing, which would have given you some clues about likely cost

Let this be a lesson to all brides / bridesmaids out there planning hen nights. Be up front about your plans from the start

Right... ring bridzilla and ask where the venue is. Tell her you will speak to venue and try to cancel so that nobody else has to contribute extra at all. Bride then in theory be over the moon that you are sorting yourself out and she doesn't have to.

How far in advance have you actually pulled out? Other than Easyjet or Ryanair flights, I can't think of anything where you would still have to pay the full amount as long as you gave them more than say a week's notice. Most hotels are 24 hours' notice.

Has she booked flights in your name?

Hope she hasnt done anything daft like pay for it all on her credit card.

I am really struggling to think what you could be doing that would mean everyone else has to pay for you dropping out.

katktya - even then she could still cancel and get a refund, surely?

I don't think it can be flights abroad. Bride would have told everyone to have passports right at the collecting deposit stage surely?

Even if she did - its her own stupid fault.

Good point nightsky

Oh come on OP throw us a bone.....

She's being a bit Bridezilla. These hen weekends/weeks/months have all got a bit excessive.
I never go on them because i detest and am embarrassed by the whole cackling drunk group of women thing. Many cities hate them.
I take the BTB out for a calm meal or film or spa a few weeks before in the hope of achieving a quiet space amidst the madness.

Can't you bake her a lovely cake as a pre wedding gift? Or buy her a lovely leather luggage tag for her honeymoon/hen week luggage?

Just a little token along with a handwritten note explaining your circumstances and wholehearted wish that they have a lovely time?

Im now starting to find it all abit strange that no-one had an inkling as to what this £350 weekend entails.

Its really down to the OP now to find out the details. We all agree that theres nothing that cant be unbooked with afew phonecalls.

I've just had another thought! If she took the £50 deposit before you found out you were pregnant - alarm bells should have started ringing for her straight away!

If I'd taken a deposit from a friend, who then announced her pregnancy, I'd have been in touch with her straight away. 1. To congratulate her and 2. to find out if she thought she'd still want to come away!

Very young babies and hen weekends don't mix and I would have been thinking of her at this time of her life not me.

OP has she really not told you anything about the hen do? Do you not know if it's UK or abroad based? (thinking you might not want to tell us the exact details for fear of being outed!)

If she really wanted you there she'd down scale the whole thing and make it cheaper

I can't believe the organiser (who shouldn't be the bride, is that part of the problem, or is she just trying to pull rank?) didn't give a pretty good idea of what the activity and likely cost were going to be before taking deposits.

Or that people just handed over £50 without any idea of what they were commiting to. Everyone's idea of 'keeping costs down' and what a hen weekend should comprise is different and depends a lot on peer group, so is much harder to get right amongst a group of people who don't know each other well, as is usual for some participants at hen parties.

I've pulled out of a hen weekend because of cost, after initially expressing interest, as soon as the activity and cost were explained, so before committing to anything. No problem at all.

It might have helped if you'd asked questions once you knew you were pregnant or that your financial situation was changing but, really their responsibility to have kept you informed and avoided getting themselves into such a mess. If you can help the poor disorganised fools out of it by speaking to the hotel or whatever, that might be kind. It may be that they've realised their error, are now terrified that others will pull out too and are getting defensive and trying to avoid being the ones to have let down the bride.

I can see both sides (sort of) - but think the bride has only herself to blame for taking deposits without giving any inclination of what was planned or what the final costs were. £300 is a lot of money for most people to find without warning and a totally silly amount, per person, for a hen night.

People's circumstances do change but surely, if you are organising this sort of event you keep everyone updated? Even if that means a series of emails over the months that share the plans and include with a complete breakdown of costs.

To drop a demand for £300 upfront and then get sniffy is unhelpful. So YANBU.

Newmummy, as I said earlier, doesnt that work both ways. If you discovered you were pregnant less than a year ago you would know that a newborn baby would be around at the time of the hen weekend? wouldnt that put you off committing to a weekend away? It sounds like there has been little communication between both parties tbh. I hope its resolved with minimum falling out.

I think it's an old fashioned notion that the bride doesn't organise her hen night Lottie
In the days of wetherspoons and a stripper maybe but these extravagant weekends have to have some input from the bride these days

Fair point Katkitya - but I think (from experience on both sides) that when planning a wedding you do just that - and think about all situations that could arise (I worked from lists upon lists! ), but when pregnant all I could think about was getting through the day without being sick/falling asleep so hen do's would be the last thing on my mind.

I think both sides need to admit there are faults on both parts and agree to disagree ... and hopefully stay good friends.

Woah! "keeping costs down" would mean £20 to me! Who's got £350 disposable income just floating around even when one has been made redundant?!

YANBU at all! Plus people drop out of these things all the time, especially when the initial invitations were a year ago! Seriously not your fault, people need to budget. I bet she calculated figures so she wouldnt have to pay for herself, so now she'll have to. Not your fault.

I honestly know nothing more than it is UK and hotel booked and that is it. There are other things but they are a surprise. I'm a very peripheral friend so not been included in any plans/ideas etc I suspect I am making up numbers tbh as we aren't great friends now though we were at school.
I don't feel I can ask more now as I have said I'm not going!
In her defence she did ask when I announced my pregnancy and I said I would still go because, naively, I thought I would be able to still do things like weekends away! (I know I am ridiculous but it is my first!) But I didn't know oh would lose his job at that point or that he would find it so hard to find another one. And I didn't know how traumatic my pregnancy would be and how much I would have changed since little one was born just before Xmas.

Agree:
-Offer to try and talk direct to company - you really need to hear it from the horses mouth in this case and then you can probably be much clearer about your actions/feelings
-This situations are what deposits are for.
-I have to say I'm afraid that it did pass through my mind that she's using some of this money to cover her wedding. I know its a horrible thing to think but something doesn't quite add up about the deposit obviously not being a deposit.

-If what the bride is saying is true and the other monies will have to be covered there is no way in the world that I as bride would be asking other members of the party to cover your £300, and would cover it myself if I'd been so disorganised and untransparent about letting people know the full financial contract in time.
-I'd feel sad that friend showed no compassion to the redundancy

and finally unless all your friends are mega wealthy I think it is incredibly self-centred and thoughtless to put on a hen do that costs so much. I know people have the right to say no if they are invited but I just think it is plain spoilt bride to be behaviour. rant over.

I agree with youoldslag

OP, I have to admit though I am surprised that you paid up £50 without having a clue about what the weekend consisted of. And also like others have said, it sounds a bit fishy. Surely the bride/organiser didn't need to collect deposits off everyone if they didn't even know where they were going yet? Why would they need to pay a venue they hadn't decided on? And why did they decide £50 as a figure as if they hadn't decided anywhere then surely they wouldn't know what deposit was required? I would want to know what my £50 had been doing for the past year tbh.

then I would ditch the bride as a friend for being so self-absorbed and selfish.