Reddit Stories - BETRAYED by my GUARDIANS_ The stolen WEDDING fund that saved my sister_

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #weddingfund #betrayed #guardians #familydrama #savings, #relationships, #family, #betrayal, #wedding, #weddingfund, #money, #trust, #financialissues, #emotionalstory, ...#redditcommunity, #revengeSummary:In a tale of family betrayal, a Reddit user recounts how their guardians stole the wedding fund meant for their sister, only to later suffer the consequences of their actions. The emotional story delves into trust, financial issues, and the impact of deception within a family. Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, weddingfund, betrayed, guardians, familydrama, savings, relationships, family, betrayal, wedding, money, trust, financialissues, emotionalstory, redditcommunity, revengeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I hope you enjoy this story. My guardians informed me that they used up all the money set aside for my wedding to support my sister's failed venture right before the wedding, despite my prior arrangements. Paid for it. My parents are pretty well off. They have a construction business and my sister and I have grown up pretty comfortably. She's always been a lot more spoiled than I have, though, probably because she's the youngest and my mom had her pretty late.
Starting point is 00:00:27 For context, I am 29 and she turned 19. just a couple of months ago. She, let's call her Lucy, is the textbook definition of a spoiled brat and that's why she and I have never gotten along. I don't mind it either, since we are ten years apart and it's not like we have a lot in common to begin with. But recently, she's been totally insufferable and in spite of her ridiculous entitled behavior, my parents have never stood up to her or tried to discipline her. In the past few years, her grades have been slipping and she's never tried to do anything about it. All she does is hang out with a bunch of her cronies and spend our parents hard-earned money without a care in the world and she's either
Starting point is 00:01:05 shopping or out with her friends. She's not taking her life very seriously and it used to get on my nerves because that's not how my parents let me live. They were pretty disciplined and strict with me but with her, there were just no rules. And then, last year, she said that she did not want to go to college, but she wanted to start her own business. Instantly, anybody, would know that it's a terrible idea because first of all, she's barely qualified and it's not even like her business idea was very new or exciting. She wanted to start a denim apparel business with her own designs, and I don't want to be mean, but they were not very original or even good. But her friends had drilled into her head that she was brilliant, and this is what she was destined to do,
Starting point is 00:01:47 so she was not budging on it. Eventually, my parents had to agree to let her start her own business and invest in it. It was probably the weirdest thing. It was probably the weirdest thing. thing that they had ever agreed to do for her, and I told them that this venture was definitely going to fail because she was not even willing to take the advice and was bent on doing everything her own way. Which definitely could not have worked out for the best because she had absolutely no experience in business and yet, she felt like she was above everybody. Anyway, I warned my parents, but they didn't pay me any heed and went ahead with their plans full throttle. Eventually, I just gave up trying to make them see sense because it was obviously not going
Starting point is 00:02:25 to work. So I just talked to them about safer topics whenever I would meet them and then, recently, I got engaged a couple of months ago and since then, I've been planning my wedding. I planned it with my wedding fund in mind, knowing that my parents would cover most of the costs because they had been putting aside money for me ever since I started dating my fiancé five years ago. But only three days back, they told me that they didn't have any wedding funds and there was just a week to go before the wedding. The problem here right now is that I've already paid for everything. I've organized a huge grand wedding because I had always assumed that my parents were going to
Starting point is 00:03:01 cover the cost of it. That's what they had told me, I'm not even being entitled. For years, and even for the past couple of months, they had been telling me and reassuring me that they had the wedding fund ready and all I had to do was pay for everything right now, they would reimburse me for it afterward in one go. It seemed believable and reasonable enough. It seemed believable and reasonable enough. so that's exactly what I did. If I had any clue that they did not have any funds for my wedding, I would not have gone out of my way to make this such an extravagant event. I've invited many people, rented a massive venue and even the catering is going to be insane. The only reason I went all out was because I had assumed that my parents were going to be contributing to the wedding
Starting point is 00:03:41 expenses, and of course, my fiancé and his family are going to be contributing. But it's not going to be enough to cover the cost of everything. And neither do we feel comfortable asking his parents to contribute more than they already have because, unlike my parents, they are not that rich and have already done the best that they can. Besides, it shouldn't be their responsibility to clean up the mess that my parents have made. We have already been paying for a lot of things out of pocket, believing that we would be reimbursed by my parents, but now that that's not going to happen, we are finally realizing that this is going to create a huge dent in our savings. We cannot afford this kind of wedding right now, but like I said, it's just one week ago,
Starting point is 00:04:22 the invitations have been sent out and everything has already been organized and paid for. This close to the wedding date, we are not even going to get any refunds even if we do try to cancel, so that's going to be pointless. It's extremely frustrating because we had calculated that after we were reimbursed by my parents, we wouldn't have to worry about money, but judging by the situation right now, we are going to have to live extremely frugally and save every sense that we possibly can for the next few years to make up for this kind of expenditure. Obviously, I'm really mad at my parents because they could have avoided this disaster by just
Starting point is 00:04:55 being up front with me, but for months, even while planning the wedding, they did not breathe a word of this to me. They chose to stay silent on purpose because, to them, their pride was more important than the practicality of the situation. If they had just been honest with me right from the get-go and told me that they didn't have the kind of money that they had promised me, I wouldn't have planned such a grand wedding and I would have planned within my personal means. That way, nobody would have been hurt. But they didn't do that, they led me on and lied to me for months until finally, three days ago. They realized that they couldn't let this go on and at some point, they would have to come clean to me.
Starting point is 00:05:32 They called me and my fiancé over for dinner and during dessert. They just dropped that bombshell on us and expected us to be fine with this. Their logic was that since we had already paid for everything, it's not like we couldn't afford it. I tried to explain to them that we had paid for everything out of our personal savings, hoping that we would be reimbursed, but now that that money was gone, we hardly had anything saved up for the immediate future. For some reason, my parents really didn't understand what the issue was and kept telling us that it was going to be fine, and that we had nothing to worry about. I was still trying to reason with them when I finally found out from them where exactly
Starting point is 00:06:09 they had spent my wedding fund and after that, I knew that there was no point in talking to them. As you guys may have guessed by now, yes, my parents invested all that money into my sister's flop business. Lucy's business hasn't been doing too well, which is not a surprise because neither is she very good at the designing part of it nor does she have any business acumen at all. surely it couldn't have come as a shock to them and when they realized that this was not going well, they should have put an end to it, but instead, they indulged her even more and kept giving her money to keep her business afloat. And at one point, without even realizing it, they had given away my entire wedding fund to Lucy to invest in her business. And by then, my fiancé and I had
Starting point is 00:06:52 already been engaged for a couple of months and they had promised me that they were going to cover my expenses, so they couldn't bring themselves to back out. They told me that it had become a matter of pride for them, which is why they had kept silent for so long. But now, they felt like they had to be honest with me and they actually thought that I was going to be understanding about the whole thing. So they were talking to me very casually as if this was absolutely no big deal. At that point, I knew there was no talking to them anymore. So I just smiled and I told them that it was fine. My fiancé seemed a little shocked, but I guess he realized that I knew what I was doing,
Starting point is 00:07:29 so he didn't say anything about it later on either. We left as soon as possible, but as soon as we were in the car, I told him that I was not going to let my parents off the hook for this one. In the past, I had always put up with them because regardless of their behavior and partiality when it came to Lucy, they were still my parents and I didn't want to hurt them or let go of them. But it was becoming increasingly obvious to me that when it came to Lucy, they were ready to hurt whoever it took.
Starting point is 00:07:56 And I was personally sick of letting things slide when I came to my parents, So my fiancé and I went back home and then, we made a post on all my social media platforms, putting my parents on blast for what they had done. I didn't hold back at all and it felt like years of penned up frustration and anger were just bubbling up to the surface, which was something that I desperately needed. So I made that post with every single detail of what had happened and within a few hours, people started texting me to console me and some people even offered to help us with our finances. In short, everybody was pretty upset with my parents,
Starting point is 00:08:29 especially given the fact that everyone knew that Lucy was not well equipped to handle a business and yet, they hadn't thought twice before spending my wedding fund on her business and then going on to promise me stuff that they knew they could not live up to. After I had made that post, I knew that either Lucy or my parents would try to contact me, so I had already blocked them. For the past two days, they could not get in touch with me, but today, I heard from my parents' lawyer, and he told me that I could either take down that post or my parents would be slamming me with a lawsuit. and I would have to lose even more money to pay them back in reparations for all the emotional distress that I had caused them with my post.
Starting point is 00:09:07 He told me that he was calling because my parents had instructed him that I was to be given one chance and if I didn't take that post down, then they would be left with no other option, but to take this up legally and sue me for defamation. I was shocked that they would even suggest something like this, so I decided to unblock my parents and give them a peace of my mind after speaking to the lawyer. but that didn't exactly go as I had planned. When I called them, I had every intention of telling them a new one and letting them know that they couldn't just threaten me with their lawyer and expect to get away with what they had done.
Starting point is 00:09:39 I called my dad's phone number, but instead of my dad, my mother answered and before I could say anything, she told me very coldly that after I had put up that post, my dad had suffered a heart attack. She told me that they had never been humiliated like this on a public platform and neither had they expected me to do something like this because it was a low blow. They told me that if I had such strong feelings about what they had done, I should have been honest about it and confronted them about it to their face instead of pretending that everything was fine and then going back home and posting about it on social media for sympathy.
Starting point is 00:10:12 I was shocked because I had no idea that that's what had happened to my father and neither did anyone else. I tried to talk to my mom and tell her that I didn't know that that's what happened to my dad, but she told me that she really didn't care because it had already happened and I was the one who had caused something like this. So now, I could either take that post down and apologize or I could live with the knowledge that I had done this to my dad and try not to care about it.
Starting point is 00:10:36 She also said that she knew that what they had done was messed up. They should have been honest with me, but if I had really considered them family and respected them as my parents, I would have been honest about my feelings, but now, they believe that to me, their money was more important than they themselves. And I don't know what to say about that, so I just hung up and now, of course, I feel incredibly guilty about whatever has happened.
Starting point is 00:11:00 The fact that a post like that could give my dad a heart attack. I had never even thought about it, but I have to admit, I didn't know that my dad had heart problems. I'd been feeling helpless about it, but at the same time, I really don't want to go back on my word and apologize publicly because, for some reason, I just feel uneasy thinking about it. I talked to my fiancé about it a couple of hours ago and even he was at a loss for words, so we've been finding it very difficult to come to a conclusion about what we should do. We do feel bad about what my father is going through, but at the same time, I don't think that we need to apologize for anything that we said or for talking about this incident in public. Ida for not wanting to apologize to my dad for
Starting point is 00:11:41 humiliating him on social media even after he had a heart attack. Update 1, so I just found out that my parents made everything up. There was no heart attack. My dad is perfectly fine and they lied to me just because they wanted a public apology from me so they could guilt-trip me into letting them get away with this. I can't believe that people would stoop to such levels, and I'm really lucky that I decided to try and get an update on Dad's health because otherwise I never would have found out about their lies. Three days ago, I had made that post and afterward, I tried to get in touch with my mom several times because even though I was still upset about the whole wedding fun thing, giving somebody a heart attack had never been on the cards. And I felt
Starting point is 00:12:22 really bad about what I had done, even though I did not feel like I needed to apologize to them on a public platform. I had taken the post down for a short time after hearing about the heart attack from my mom, but now it's back up again. While I had been trying to contact him in the past two days, my mom had been rejecting all my phone calls and ignoring all my messages, and last evening, she sent a message after I had tried calling her three times in a row, saying that she was not ready to talk to me until I apologized publicly. If I was not ready to do that, then there was nothing that she or my dad had to say to me. I tried to argue with her, but she didn't respond to me. So out of desperation, I decided to call my dad's physician, let's call him Uncle Ron. He's not just
Starting point is 00:13:06 my dad's physician, but has also been an old family friend for a really long time, so I know that even if my mother did not want to talk to me, at least he would know about the situation and I thought it was worth a try. I hadn't done that earlier because it hadn't occurred to me since I was quite distraught with everything. Anyway, when I called Uncle Ron up, I didn't even wait for him to say anything, and I just launched into my questions. I asked him a bunch of stuff about how my dad's health was doing now, whether the heart attack had been serious or not, whether he was still in the hospital, or if he was at home. After I had gotten it out of my system, Uncle Ron just sounded very confused and he told me that my dad was perfectly fit and fine and told me that they had met over dinner and
Starting point is 00:13:48 drinks just the other day. That was pretty bizarre because I really thought that my dad was suffering, and I insisted on it until he finally told me that he was positive that my dad was perfectly fine because they had recently met, and even if my dad had suffered a heart attack since then, he would have definitely told him about it, but he hadn't. He told me that I must be confused and since my wedding is coming up, I'm probably just frazzled and then he hung up. He probably did figure things out on his own but didn't bring it up because it was only going to lead to drama. And I'm really thankful for that, but after speaking to Uncle Ron, I decided to go visit my parents and see for myself if my dad was actually fine or not because this was getting
Starting point is 00:14:28 ridiculous and confusing now. It was a great deal of trouble because I'm getting married tomorrow and today, my fiancé, and I had to drive to the hotel in the morning. But I still made the trip to my parents' house just to confirm what I already knew. I hadn't done that early because I had been busy with all the last-minute wedding prep and also because I was kind of afraid of seeing my dad in a bad state, knowing that I would be responsible for it. After my conversation with Uncle Ron, though, I knew that I had to go and just as I had expected, my dad was completely fine. I guess my mom hadn't expected me to show up, so when I rang the doorbell, she refused to open it, but then, I told her that I was not going to leave until she let me see my dad. She tried to
Starting point is 00:15:11 argue with me, but I just kept banging on the door until she finally opened it looking very annoyed, and told me that I had no right to harass him like this, but I didn't care. I just pushed past her and walked in and there my dad was in the bedroom, looking perfectly healthy and sipping on wine while working. As soon as he saw me, he started fumbling and tried to tell me that it had been a while since his heart attack, so he could drink now, and regardless of that, he was feeling much better. My mom also came up to me and told me that it was really disgusting of me that I had come all the way here to actually confirm whether they had been lying about the heart I knew that they had. Right from the way that they were
Starting point is 00:15:49 speaking, I could just sense that they had been lying all along, and now, they could try to live up to that, but there was no point. Now that I knew the truth, I was so disgusted that I just walked out without even saying anything. I went back home, unarchived the posts that I had made, and just tried to calm down to the best of my abilities. After the whole incident with the wedding fund, my expectations with my parents had been pretty low already. I did not think that they were wonderful people, I already knew that, but this recent thing, lying about the heart attack and stuff, that was just disgusting. I cannot imagine something more vile than that and the fact that they only wanted an apology from me, which is why they lied about something as big
Starting point is 00:16:31 as this, I can't even wrap my head around it. Obviously I feel bad that my parents turned out to be like this, even though I'm not really shocked. They had always been very concerned about their image and reputation and stuff, so naturally, they could not stomach it when I posted about the whole wedding fun thing on a public platform because it must have been quite humiliating for them. Even though they totally deserved it for lying to me for so many months and creating so much trouble for me. Even before that, I knew that they had a favorite, and it was Lucy. And they always went out of their way for her, but I never let it hurt me too much because I knew that she was a lot younger than me and my mom had her when she was in her
Starting point is 00:17:09 late 30s, so she had taken quite a risk, giving birth to her and I tried not to hold a grudge against them. I had always tried to be a good daughter to them, but yesterday, I just realized that there was no point. They were never going to be good parents to me and I was done. After I put that post back up, I spoke to my fiancé about everything and he comforted me and decided to just focus on the wedding for now. We are in the hotel right now. We drove here in the morning and most of the guests have also arrived by now. We spent the entire evening entertaining our guests and that helped me take my mind off of things. But now that my fiancé is asleep and I'm alone in my room, I just felt like I needed to vent
Starting point is 00:17:50 things out so that I don't feel perturbed by any of this tomorrow. Because tomorrow is the day that I have waited for so many months now and I don't want to let anything ruin it. All the worries that I have about my life, about my finances and everything else, that can be the day after tomorrow, but my wedding day is going to be all about me and my fiancé. So I'm just getting everything off my chest right now and honestly, it feels good. I know that the circumstances which my fiancé and I are getting married under are not exactly we have a lot to worry about in the future, but for some reason, knowing that I'm going to be spending the rest of my life with him, everything just seems a bit less bleak.
Starting point is 00:18:28 So that's what I'm holding on to, that's what's keeping me sane. Update 2, Hi, Guys. I got married three days ago and it was honestly one of the best days of my life. I had spoken about how I had planned everything extravagantly and invited a bunch of people and of course, everyone attended in spite of the drama surrounding my wedding. Everyone remembered the post that I had made and there were a few references to it, but, thankfully, nobody made that whole day about that or discussed the drama at length, with me at least. People were respectful, nobody brought up the fact that my parents and my sister were
Starting point is 00:19:04 absent and it wasn't even awkward. In short, I had a lot of fun and everything went smoothly. But the best part was that I didn't even have to worry about my finances anymore because of my wedding gift. So the thing is, nobody stuck to the registry and I think for once, a bride is going to be more than happy that they didn't. Instead of the gifts, all my relatives who had read my post about my parents decided to contribute and pull their money together to write me a check for a huge amount of money that's definitely going to cover the cost of the wedding. It wasn't a big deal for most of my relatives because I come from a generally wealthy family, but even then, for them to do something like this was so incredibly heartwarming that both my husband and I ended up tearing up at the
Starting point is 00:19:45 gesture. I don't have to worry about my finances anymore because of their generosity and they didn't even make me feel like it was charity or something. It felt like there were a bunch of people who genuinely loved me and cared for me and nothing in the world can replace that feeling. So I would say that my wedding went pretty well and I'm very happy about the way things turned out. I'm even happier that my parents and Lucy decided to stay away because, for a while, I had actually been afraid that they might show up and had tightened the security at the venue. But as it turns out, I had nothing to worry about because as it turns out, they had been vacationing as a family at the beach while I'd been getting married.
Starting point is 00:20:23 I found out about it from a couple of my cousins because Lucy had posted a bunch of photos of her with our parents chilling on the beach and staying at some expensive resort and captioned it as much-needed family vacation to get away from all the drama. The funniest bit was the hashtag she had chosen, hashtag Not Our Fam. It was really cringe-worthy, but I received the message loud and clear, I was not a part of the family anymore, and honestly, I couldn't have been happier about it. I can't do anything about the fact that I'm related to them biologically, but at least socially, we can stay the heck away from each other now.
Starting point is 00:20:58 Update 3, almost six months have passed since I got married and I've had virtually no contact with my family. The rest of my relatives have filled me in on what's going on with them, though, and that's how I found out that last week, Lucy finally shut her business down and decided to go to college to get a business degree. Maybe after that, she's going to go back, but for now, she's going to go back. but for now, she's out of business. I found it very ironic that this is happening after my wedding when so much drama could have been avoided if she had just come to this conclusion
Starting point is 00:21:28 earlier. Anyway, my parents have decided to send her to one of the top business schools in the state and I'm pretty sure that they are buying her way in because there's no way that she got in on her own with the grades that she had. She has been posting about it nonstop on her social media and has been bragging about how it's such an elite institution. It's very shocking that they seem to have whenever it comes to Lucy, but for me, they were not willing to make a sacrifice. Again, I'm not shocked because that's just the kind of people that they are and now that I have finally taken off my rose-colored glasses, I can see that I should have taken offense at their behavior a lot earlier than I did. That was my bad though, but whatever. I'm very happy with how
Starting point is 00:22:09 my life has turned out. My husband and I recently found out that we were pregnant and in a couple of weeks, we are going to make the announcement. It feels like everything is falling into place and I couldn't be more grateful for what I have at the moment. I know that after my announcement, my parents might try to get in touch with me or they might try to do that after the baby is born, but one thing is for sure, if they find out that they are having a grandchild and they definitely will try to get in touch with me, but unfortunately for them, I'm not going to be open to that. I've moved on and I have no expectations from my parents, so I think it's only fair for them not to have any expectations from me either. I'm in one of the best phases of my life right now and I don't
Starting point is 00:22:49 want to let my parents ruin it, so they're going to have to stay away for good now onwards. My husband also agrees with my decision and that's all I honestly need. He's good, I'm good, and soon enough, will be a family of three. That's all that I need to be happy. My parents are just no longer important to me.

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