Jamie Wolfer defends charging $10 per guest at his canyon wedding near St. George, Utah. Park rangers required a headcount under 100 people, so the flat fee was the simplest way to track attendance. He acknowledges the backlash but says it was about logistics, not profit.
Am I the a-hole for asking my guests to pay $10 to come to my wedding? Reddit says you are. Info/update: 1. No, it's not a national park. It's just a canyon near our hometowns. We talked to the rangers for a state park. I don't know why you call them. They said it was fine as long as we didn't go over 100 people. Perfect. Okay, so you're allowed to have this there. 2. I didn't realize posting your registry to social media was such a faux pas. Everybody posts everything nowadays online, and many people who already knew they weren't invited asked me about the registry, so I posted it. 3. Yes, we talked to the rangers. We asked them if we could buy passes or slips or give them a list of names ahead of time in order to pay for our guests, but none of those solutions worked. We decided informing our guests that there would be a $10 fee as a heads up would be the best way to go. I guess we should have been more creative, but we already sent out the invites, so there goes half the suggestions. That's fair. We're taking some of the other ones under advisement, probably going either an usher or a bus at the gate. Those were good ideas. So he's probably just getting a bunch of advice like, well, you shouldn't have done that. Okay, well, it's already done, so like, what do we do now? Thank you. Thank you. Either let me know if I'm the a-hole and give me formative advice, or just don't comment, "You shouldn't have done that." I don't know. I just don't— Well, I guess if you're coming to a Reddit thread and asking if you're an a-hole, you are kind of inviting this kind of feedback. That's why we're here. 4. When we said small dinner, we were referencing the size of the afterparty or lack thereof. No reception, not the amount or quality of the food. But thanks again for your judgment. Listen, you brought yourself to Reddit, Boo Bear. Like, you just knew that you were opening yourself up. How have you been here before? Do you know how this works? It's not great. It's not a place if you want to be scaffolded or supported. Okay? It's just not. 5. I accept the judgment that I'm an a-hole, but 23 is not that young to be getting married. It wasn't about the money. It was about the logistics. And none of this has any bearing on if my marriage will succeed or fail. You don't know our relationship, so please stop. This is what I'm talking about. Now, I'm not giving Redditors permission to behave or talk like this, but it's a dark, scary place. Okay. 6. All our guests other than our parents and my sister and my fiancé's 3 sisters are outdoors-type college friends from the area, so it's not a big deal. P.S. Also, it might just be a cultural thing because 2 people guessed Utah/Southern Utah and we are from right near St. George, very outdoorsy towns, so maybe it's all just cultural.
