Reddit Stories - GENEROSITY Tested_ Lavish WEDDING Gift Sparks SIBLING Rivalry_

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #generositytest #lavishweddinggift #siblingsrivalry #familydrama #weddingdilemmaSummary:A generous wedding gift sparks sibling rivalry as one sibling feels overshadowed by the lavish gesture. Tensions rise as jealousy and resentment come to the surface, causing drama within the family.Tags:redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, generositytest, lavishweddinggift, siblingsrivalry, familydrama, weddingdilemmaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Covered the expenses for my sibling's marriage location as a present. Presently, my additional privileged sibling is requesting that I do likewise for her, and our guardians are accusing me of being egoistic. Refusing. I, 32, female, have two younger sisters. Let's call them Michelle and Denise. Michelle is 30 and Denise is 27.

Denise and I don't really have a good relationship and we hadn't been on speaking terms. for the past couple of years after an incident at the Christmas party that I had hosted. Three years ago, my mother wasn't feeling well so she had asked me to host the family for Christmas, and since it was my first time I was trying hard to make everything perfect. My husband and I worked really hard on the arrangements and everyone actually seemed impressed with it, but for some reason, Denise made it a point to make fun of everything that we had done for the party. She kept making insulting jokes, I've forgotten what exactly she said, but she was really getting on my nerves that day.

And so after a while, I decided that I had had enough and told her to shut up or just leave if she didn't like what I had arranged. We got into a bit of a fight and she ended up leaving and we didn't speak to each other after that. Even when we would meet at parties or other family events, she would give me the cold shoulder and I would ignore her as well. Our parents tried to fix things between us several times over the years

but instead of telling her to apologize to me for her behavior that day, they insisted that I reach out to her. Apparently, I was older and I should be more mature about these things and not let petty fights get in the way of our relationship. Michelle was on my side and told me that I had no reason to apologize to her because her behavior at the party had been pathetic and anybody in my place would have reacted the same way. The truth was that Michelle and I were both well aware of how spoiled Denise was

and how our parents enabled her bad behavior. And this wasn't even something new, this is how things have been ever since we were kids, which is probably what led to Denise becoming such a brat. My parents always favored her because she was the youngest and spoiled her rotten. Even when she would behave badly or act out in public they would just laugh it off but never reprimanded her. Michelle and I had been raised really differently and were a lot more well-behaved than she was. So we never behaved the way that she did because as kids, we didn't get away with any of that like she did. It was like she had been raised by different people altogether, and that's

how she had turned out to be such a menace. Michelle and I tried our best to be friends with her and make her a decent person, but it never worked because she was just too stubborn and ill-mannered. Unfortunately, the world didn't care about Denise the way that our parents did. She had been fired from a bunch of jobs for being rude to colleagues and occasionally even clients. Throughout her adult life, everyone had termed her difficult to work with and that had earned her a pretty bad reputation. She barely had any friends because of her nasty attitude and after our fight, even Michelle, and I stopped speaking to her because we could tell that she was just never going to change. She thought the world of herself but nothing of anyone else and we were

not ready to put up with that kind of behavior anymore. We were all just too old to tolerate it. So no matter what our parents thought, we were not going to force ourselves to be on good terms with her just for their sake. But then last year, Michelle got married to her boyfriend of seven years, Andy. Michelle and Andy had been together for a long time and I knew the guy really well since he and I had gotten quite close while they were dating.

He and I had really similar personalities and a lot of common interests and Michelle and my husband often joked that we were more like siblings than Michelle and I. So it's needless to say that we knew each other quite well and got along. So when Andy proposed, I decided that I was going to pay for their venue

and that was going to be my wedding gift to them. This was supposed to be private information, but my mother had found out about it while they had been planning and Michelle had been discussing the wedding expenses. We didn't think that it was going to be a big deal, but now it's come back to bite me. My parents said nothing about me paying for the wedding venue for Michelle's wedding at the time. But now that Denise is getting married as well, she wants me to pay for her wedding venue as well and my parents think that I should do it because otherwise it would just be unfair. Denise had reached out to me a couple of months ago when she first got engaged and said that she wanted to apologize to me for the way that she had behaved with me, not just on the day of the Christmas party but all through our lives.

And she wanted to make a fresh start, now that she was getting married. I had forgiven her, not thinking much of it because we had to see each other at events anyway and I wanted to avoid the unnecessary awkwardness around her. It also seemed to be a genuine apology at the time and she was my sister, so I wanted to give her a chance and try to make things right with her. But I had absolutely not expected things to turn ugly so soon after our reconciliation. Denise and Michelle had already made up last year, around the time of her wedding. But that was because our parents had emotionally manipulated Michelle to invite her to her wedding.

Michelle was a lot softer than me so. She invited Denise to the wedding, but she had discussed it with me first. I told her to go ahead and invite Denise because they didn't have any issues and Michelle had only stopped speaking to her because of me. I didn't want that to become a bone of contention because that would just make me feel like the two of us were ganging up against her and that wouldn't be fair. So I reassured Michelle that I wouldn't mind if she invited our youngest sister to her wedding and even encouraged her to do it as a sign of goodwill to keep the peace of the family. So Denise had attended Michelle's wedding and had actually been quite gracious about it.

It had been kind of awkward but she didn't do anything attention-seeking or mean at the wedding and just sat through everything quietly. She didn't speak much and left quite early, but at least she had attended and she had been willing to put everything behind her. So that made me feel like she had grown up in the couple of years that we hadn't been speaking to her, which is why I decided to forgive her

at the beginning of this year when she contacted me to make amends with me. We had been in touch on and off for the last couple of months and it had been nice reconnecting with her and getting to know her as a new person. She had really convinced me that she had turned over a new leaf and was no longer the spoiled, entitled, and brady girl that we used to know. She also told me a lot about her fiancé Hank. Apparently, they had met through a dating app last year,

but she had been so in love with him that they moved and together within a month and were so sure of each other that they had decided to get married after just a year of living together. I personally thought that they were rushing into it, but it was not my place to say anything because they really seemed to be in love, so I kept my opinions to myself. But then Denise asked me a couple of weeks ago if I could pay for her wedding venue, just like I had done for Michelle. No prizes for guessing what I told her when she asked me that.

I had obviously declined because the circumstances of Michelle's wedding were really different from hers, and I didn't think I was willing to spend that kind of money on Denise's wedding. When I declined, she didn't argue with me and just disconnected the call without saying goodbye. So I had no idea about what was coming. Within an hour of that phone call, I received another phone call from my parents and to say that they were furious would be an understatement. They were freaking out at me for saying no to Denise because apparently right after that phone call, she had called our parents up, crying because now she had to change her budget for the wedding. She had just assumed that I would be paying

for the venue since I had done that for Michelle and now she was accusing me of being snarky to her on purpose just because I had a favorite among my sisters. I did have a favorite and it was because she was the only one who had bothered to be nice to meet all throughout. Unlike Denise, who had been horrible to both of us and had always tried her best to put us down. Even on the day of the Christmas party, she had been trying to put me down and it wasn't even the first time that he was doing something like that. All the other times, we would just ignore it because we didn't want to indulge her and create drama because that would be playing into her hands and giving her just the kind of attention

that she wanted. But the one time that I stood up for myself, we ended up not even speaking to each other for the next couple of years. So of course I had a favorite and it wasn't Denise because she was the one who brought this on to herself. I didn't see any reason for me to feel bad about it and I told my parents that they couldn't guilt trip me into paying for the wedding venue. Denise and I had just started reconciling but we still had a long way to go before our relationship was actually fixed and I was not paying for her wedding for no reason. I also explained to them that I had known Andy for a much longer time than Hank, whom I had met only twice at lunch with Denise. And both times, we had barely even said anything to each other. But with Michelle

and Andy, it was really different because he was also a good friend of mine, not just my sister's partner. So I treated that as a wedding gift for them and they didn't even have to ask for it because I wanted to do that for them. But with Denise and Hank, I don't think I owed it to them to pay for the wedding venue or even contribute to their wedding in any way, shape, or form. I could buy them any gift that they wanted from the registry, like the other guests, but I wasn't going to shell out more money to pay for her venue. It sounded mean, but to be perfectly honest, she and I were just not as close as Michelle and I are. And I don't even know her fiancé, unlike Andy. But my parents were not happy with that explanation and decided they were going to

fight with me until I agreed to cover for Denise. They started arguing with me and said that I couldn't pick favorites because it was problematic and they didn't want me to hurt Denise just a few months before her wedding because that would mean the family falling apart once again and they didn't want that. They told me that they had very narrowly avoided having problems during Michelle's wedding and had made her invite Denise so nobody would ask questions so we could at least all put up a united front and they were not going to let me ruin that this time. So it became very clear to me that it was more important for them to keep up the appearance of us being a normal and happy family and that was even more ridiculous to me.

So I doubled down on my decision and I told them that I didn't care what other people said. Our relatives and others could gossip about us if they wanted to, but the fear of that wasn't going to make me pay for the venue. My mother almost started crying after arguing in circles with me for a while and my dad told me that I was being incredibly selfish and entitled. I almost started laughing when he said that because it was obviously Denise who was being entitled here.

When I told him to elaborate, he said that it was a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of it was entitled of me to expect the family to still keep in touch with me if I wasn't even prepared to act like it and step up and be there for my little sister. I had to try really hard to take them seriously at that point since it was really obvious to me that they were grasping at straws to get me to agree. So I told my parents that they were free to cut me off because there was no way that I would be contributing to Denise's wedding and that means sacrificing my relationship with them, so I'm willing to do it. I was honestly just getting sick of them constantly trying to manipulate us into going easy on Denise. This time they were asking for way too much

and I was putting my foot down. So if that made them mad, then they'd just have to deal with it or cut me off like they had said they would. I wasn't going to fight it anymore because that would just lead to more arguments and I didn't want that because I was just sick of fighting with either them or Denise. And even if we didn't fight and decided to make up, that would lead to more manipulation in the future which is also not something I wanted. So they could either have a relationship, with me on my terms now or just leave. I had given them a very pretty clear choice and now it was up to them if they wanted to still keep fighting with me for Denise or they could just let it go and not jeopardize their relationship with me. So they obviously chose the former because,

to them, it was more important to spoil her than to be actually good parents to all of their kids. They cursed at me on the call that day and said that they never wanted to speak to me again. I only wish that they really hadn't spoken to me after that. after they hung up that day, I didn't think they would call me back any time soon because the fight had been a bad one. But they called me the very next day to tell me that they had made up their mind about what they wanted to do and said that they were going to cut me off since I wasn't acting in the best interests of my family. That was just a fancy way for them to say that they thought I was being selfish. I believed that they had thought that the threat of them

cutting me off would scare me into contributing to Denise's wedding but like I said. I didn't care anymore, so I told them to go right ahead and even offered to block them myself so they wouldn't have to put in any extra effort in order to cut me off. They were really mad at me and told me that I was a really selfish brat and I was going to regret this in the future when I didn't have any family to think about me. I didn't pay much mind to them because honestly the drama was getting under my skin and I hadn't signed up for any of this. So I told them to stop bothering me because no threats were going to make me contribute to the wedding and they might as well give up trying since at this point they were only just making huge fools out of themselves.

My parents stopped calling after that, but there was always Denise to replace them and she started calling me to tell me that the way I was treating her was really mean-spirited. She even tried to play the victim and said that the reason she had always been mean to me and Michelle while we were growing up was because we would treat her like an outsider in our own private little club and that made her feel alienated. Honestly, that was just a bunch of bologna because we always wanted to include her in things,

but she was the one who would turn up her nose at us and that's how we started treating her like an outsider. Because she would act like one, so I was not buying the whole victim thing and I reminded her that she couldn't just gaslight me into believing her BS. I blocked her personal number but she just found other ways to contact me like from her fiancé's phone or from her friend's phone numbers and I didn't even have those saved so I couldn't even ignore all of it. I was getting impatient because I just couldn't tolerate this level of annoyance and so the last time that we spoke a couple of days ago, I said something and that really hurt her.

Yet again, she was harping on about how I was hurting her feelings and that I owed her this because I had contributed to Michelle's wedding. So I snapped on the phone and told her that I owed her nothing because she wasn't as close to me as Michelle was. Since she had never treated me with respect or love and she always took us all for granted because that's how she was raised. I told her that had she ever bothered to put in the time and effort to be nice to us, then I would have gladly contributed to her wedding and she wouldn't even have had to ask, I would have just done it. But it's really tacky, the way that she has been behaving for the past couple of days and acting as if I owe it to her to pay for the venue. I told her that her

behavior has been nothing short of ridiculous and entitled and it's getting on my nerves now. She still had a chance to back down and let this go, but instead, she decided that she was going to argue with me and make things worse. She told me that the only reason she expected me to cover for the venue was because I had done it for Michelle, but she should have known that I was too insecure and jealous of her to let her have a beautiful wedding. Because that would mean that all our relatives would only be talking about her wedding and she would win again and of course, we couldn't stand that, which is why we were not okay with her getting married the way that she wanted to. It was straight up just absurd because nobody thinks like that. We're all adults here, except for her, I guess. So to retaliate,

I told her that maybe the reason I didn't want to contribute to her wedding was just because I didn't like her and also because I didn't want to throw away my money on a marriage that wouldn't even last long, given how she is completely crazy and can manage to drive anyone away. So it doesn't make sense for me to waste money on a short-lived marriage. She lost her mind after that and started screaming at me, but I didn't wait around to hear what she was saying and hung up. But things have become kind of chaotic after that because my parents and a couple of my other relatives have contacted me to tell me what I said was out of line because now she's really

miserable and believes that saying her fiancé would leave her was a low blow. So I'd have for telling my sister that her fiancé would leave her because of her crazy behavior? Update 1, hi, so I went through the comments here and most of the people here agreed that I didn't say anything that was out of line. And if she didn't want me to lash out at her, then she probably shouldn't have been trying to insult me even as she was trying to ask for help. And I guess it's true, I have no.

reason to feel bad just because my parents and a couple of other relatives are supporting her. Michelle and Andy don't think I said anything wrong and neither does my husband. And nor do most of you guys here so I don't think I need to apologize to her for anything. I honestly just wish that they would understand this because things have gotten really out of hand. My parents have been constantly trying to get to me so I can apologize to Denise and take back what I said because apparently she is hurt by that. I don't even understand why that's hurting her so much. If she has any faith in her relationship, then she won't let my words bother her.

I don't even know them that well, so my comments should be pretty much irrelevant to her. The only reason that I can think of is that she isn't really confident about her relationship, and that's why she is letting my words get to her because I guess I hit a nerve with what I said. It's just a thing, but it might be true given how she has reacted to it. I can't think of a single other reason why someone would take this. so hard. It might be for attention but I think she receives enough of that from our parents already and she hasn't gone public with this yet, so it seems unlikely. Either way, I'm definitely not going to apologize to her because she doesn't deserve it so she can continue to cry about

this. It's not like she is going to cancel her wedding just because I'm not paying for the venue, that's still going to happen so I really just don't understand what the fuss is all about. I had been feeling really bad about the way that my family was treating me just because I refused to go along with what Denise was telling me but now it's clearer to me than ever that my parents don't care about anybody apart from her. She is always going to be their first priority, no matter how old she gets. They will continue to enable her until the very end, so it doesn't matter what I say. She is just going to remain the same person, incapable of change. Update 2, okay, so the invitations to Denise's wedding were recently just sent out, and guess what? I didn't receive one and neither did

Michelle. Now I can understand why she wouldn't want to invite me but the fact that she didn't even invite Michelle, even though she had attended her wedding, is just ridiculous. When it was Michelle who didn't want to invite Denise to her wedding, our parents made sure that they talked her into it and made them reconcile. But all of a sudden, they don't care about appearances because clearly what Denise wants is far more important than what Michelle wants at her wedding. The double standards are honesty just sickening and it makes me so mad. Michelle and I met for lunch the other day and she told me that our parents had even texted her to let her know that she could still get an invite.

As long as she promised to cut me off and never speak to me again until I apologized. She told them to leave her alone and said that they were the worst parents on the planet so they started arguing with her and accused her of being my minion. They were really vicious and said that at this point, they only had one daughter and that was Denise. Apparently, Michelle and I are really selfish and don't deserve to be related to them, because we are clearly never going to make any sacrifices for our family. It's ridiculous how entitled they sound and they don't even realize it

because they think letting them walk all over us is the only way that we can prove that we are indeed loyal to our family. It's crazy how their minds work and the mental gymnastics required to make us the bad guys for simply not wanting to waste our time, money, and efforts on someone who will never appreciate them. We have given Denise several chances to improve her behavior and act like a normal person around us. But she just refuses to grow up and be a decent person, so I don't understand why we are expected

to put up with it constantly and pretend that she is a nice human being when she obviously isn't. It's not our fault that she never learned how to be kind to other people and not treat them like utter garbage. And the credit for all of that goes to our parents because they made sure that they raised their youngest daughter to be the most insufferable and annoying person on the planet at any given moment. They were the ones who spoiled her and I would honestly say that they ruined her life by making her so entitled because now nobody likes her and she can barely even hold down a job, thanks to her horrible attitude. They certainly didn't do her any favors and are still continuing to enable this behavior. It's just sad and pathetic at this point.

Update 3 So, They're Married Now. Denise and Hank got married a few days ago and obviously, I was not invited but I did see a lot of photos because it was all over my social media. and I realized that they got married in my parents' backyard, probably because I didn't pay for the venue. But they seemed to have fun so I don't even know what they were all so mad about earlier. They could have just adjusted their plans accordingly instead of throwing a tantrum and making a big deal out of nothing. But well, what's done is done now. I'm just happy that they're married. And I, unlike them, don't want to waste any more of my time talking about them to other people which they did at their wedding. A lot of relatives reached out to me afterward to ask if it was true that I had promised Denise

that I would contribute to her wedding by covering the expenses for the venue but I backed out at the very last moment which is why they had to disinvite me and also changed the plans to get married in my parents' backyard for free. So that's the version that they're going with. But it was pointless because I obviously told my relatives the truth and they believe me because everyone knows about the reputation that Denise and my parents have, so they were not going to buy that version anyway. Their attempt to save face was pretty useless if you ask me. I haven't spoken to any of them ever since the last fight that we had and I don't really think that we can ever get back on good terms again after this. Way too much time has passed and honestly,

unless they can really prove to us that they have changed, I don't see myself having a relationship with any of them in the future. Michelle and I have tolerated a lot of disrespect over the years, but that has finally come to an end now. Earlier my parents, could just manipulate us and guilt trip us into forgiving her but now that we are not on speaking terms with them either, they can't do that to us. And I, for one, am glad about it because sometimes things just become too much to handle and that's exactly what happened with my family. Sure, it's not like I don't miss speaking to my parents because we did have a lot of good times and they were nice to us sometimes as well. But in comparison to what happened recently,

I feel like cutting them out of my life was the best decision that I could have made. I had been a little down in the dumps the day the photos of the wedding were posted. But I soon realized that I wasn't wanted among those people anyway, so it was best for me to just stay away and so that's what I'm going to do now.