A groom recently hopped on Reddit to wonder if he was in the wrong for using trickery to get his parents to be on time for his wedding.
Redditor u/PinDry258 had the perfect plan to get his chronically late parents to the church on time: lie. To his parents.
Here’s his story:
My (M33) parents are late for everything. Like everything. Both of my sister’s and myself have been disappointed so many times.
Graduation ceremonies, birthday parties, even my father’s retirement dinner. It is completely my mother’s fault. She is a wonderful mother and I love her dearly, she just does not understand the concept of punctuality.
OP says he loves his parents dearly but they are late to EVERYTHING. Graduations, parties, everything.
I have seen her talking to her sister on the phone and reminded her she needed to be at my baby sister’s dance recital. She waved me off and arrived after my sister had danced.
It’s so common that everyone in the family is just used to it; their dad has given up. But…
We are all used to it. My dad is just done trying to get her to be on time for anything.
OP is getting married. And his wife does NOT want his parents to be late to this ceremony. So OP came up with a solution.
My now wife (F28) told me in no uncertain terms that if my mother was late for our wedding she would do terrible things to me. She was only half joking. But she was a witness to my mom and dad arriving halfway through my cousin’s quinceañera.
So here is what I did. It is completely on me. Me wife was not involved. If there is a dick move it was completely mine.
He had the printer make a faux-invitation: one set got the time starting an hour earlier than the actual ceremony.
When we were getting samples for the wedding I talked to the printer and had one special invitation printed with the time on it stated as being one hour earlier than the actual start time of the ceremony.
My mother was beside herself apparently when they left the house and thought they were going to miss the wedding since she was a part of it with her and my MIL lighting the candles we would use to light the unity candle and stuff.
Mom was running late. And Mom was part of the ceremony. So she was stressed. She got there as other people were just arriving and figured things were starting late.
When she arrived and noticed other people were also just arriving and parking she was so relieved that we were starting late that she just went with it.
The ceremony went off beautifully. And so did the wedding pictures and the reception.
Everything went beautifully. Until a family dinner last week, when one of her kids told her they knew “she was always late”.
The problem came last Sunday. My parents came over for a big family dinner and we didn’t bother starting the grill until they showed up. She asked why everyone wasn’t eating and we just said we knew we would be waiting for them since they are always late.
She said that she was not always late and had been on time for my wedding. She hadn’t been. They arrived 45 minutes AFTER the time on their invitation.
Mom said she wasn’t always late; she pointed to OP’s wedding as an example.
My idiot cousin John, real name because it’s common and he deserves people to know he is a dolt, snorted at her statement. A few other people giggled or smiled at this and she picked up and asked what was so funny.
People started to laugh and OP came clean about the special invite. Mom got mad.
I came clean and told her about the “special” invitation.
She is pissed at me for not trusting her and making her look foolish in front of everyone. If my cousin had just controlled himself she never would have known.
AITA,?
OP adds that she also framed the invitation, so the trickery is there in black and white.
Part of the reason she is mad is because she had her invitation framed. To be honest I was already planning a heist with my sisters to replace it with the real one in case she ever noticed the discrepancy between hers and the one we have framed in our home.
Yeah we are Latinos. And no I do not in any way consider it racist how many of you guessed that. I have been to Spain and it’s an issue there too. And the Philippines. Basically anywhere those guys were in charge.
Stop defending John. He and I have spent thirty years messing with each other. I have an AITA story that ends with me getting an offensive tattoo ($5,000 for removal) and him getting a body cavity search at the Mexican border. I would post it but it happened like ten years ago.
So. How did Reddit weigh in?
