My fiancé and I booked a destination wedding in the Caribbean for 2021. We paid for ourselves, both sets of parents and both our brothers/sisters and their kids. We checked they were all up for it before booking and they were. All booked and cost us an absolute fortune.
We 100% wanted our closest family there, hence why we paid for them, but for more distant family and friends we thought we'd invite them but have no expectations and explain that we knew it was a big ask. I know the mumsnet consensus is usually very anti destination weddings unless you're eloping but we thought this was a fair way of getting the wedding we wanted.
We were surprised by how many of our friends were up for it and theres now about 40 of us booked. It's a gorgeous resort and most people have decided to go for two weeks to get a holiday out of it.
I've had a response from my cousin however, absolutely furious. She's getting married next year and she's saying we're so selfish to book something like this knowing full well that she's got a massively expensive wedding next year and that she obviously wouldn't be able to attend. I apologised and said there was no hard feelings, we knew when booking most people wouldn't come and we understand completely and she replied saying "there's 40 bloody people but I have to miss out! It's just embarrassing that everyone will know I'm not there because I'm too poor to attend" I just replied saying I'm sorry and that no one will think anything of the sort. She text me again this morning saying seeing as we've paid for 'everyone else' will we pay for her, we've spent a fortune already and have five cousins and we can't afford to pay for all of them. We only paid for closest family, so I said that won't be possible and now she's even more raging at me.
AIBU? Or is she being a bit unfair? We aren't putting any pressure on her to attend if she can't afford it..