Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Dear Aunty Pam,

 

I’m hoping you can settle an argument for me. My buddy is getting married next month for the third time in 20 years. We’ve known each other for 25 years and when he and his latest fiancé sent me a wedding invitation, I turned him down. He called to ask why I wasn’t coming, so I told him I was tired of coughing up a hundred bucks on a wedding gift every six or so years. He said that I didn’t have to send a gift and that he wanted me to be his best man. I pointed out that I’d already been his best man on wedding number one and asked him if he could find anybody else…he said no, so I said OK.

Then his fiancé emailed me to say she was told that I was going to be the best man and not bring a present. She said she just wanted me to know that they are spending a lot of money on this wedding with great food and drinks and I might feel awkward enjoying all of that while not bringing a gift. 

I thought that was really weird. 

So then I texted my buddy and said I changed my mind, I wasn’t coming to the wedding. Well, then he blows up my phone with a bunch of texts, yelling at me and telling me I had no right to pull out last minute and now his fiancé has been crying all night. How did I pull out last minute when I just accepted the day before? He said that everything was planned but now it’s all up in the air. And it’s my fault.

I don’t want to go to this wedding, but if I don’t that’ll probably be the end of our friendship.

What should I do?

 

Signed,

Carl 

 

Dear Carl,

 

Run. Run like the wind and don’t look back or you’ll turn into a pillar of grits. These people are crazy.

Who emails and issues a veiled threat in order to get a wedding gift? And I’ll bet my farm that your friend sat around and didn’t bother to get a best man until she found out, freaked out, and ordered him to get a best man, pronto. Thus, the last-minute plea for you to take the gig, and now he’s in big trouble because you pulled out.

I don’t think your life will be the worse for losing him as a friend. His might, if, for no other reason, he’ll be losing somebody’s couch to crash on when this marriage goes down in flames. Save your money and go fishing.

 

Cheers, dear!!

Aunty Pam