Wedding Guests Billed $75 for Missing Nuptials

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Quinn Dombrowski / Flickr

A Minnesota stay-at-home mom of two said she was billed $75 for missing a distant relative’s wedding in California after she and her husband failed to show up because they couldn’t find a replacement babysitter in time.

“We were excited to have a night out and we got a call from my mom saying that my brother’s daughter was sick with hand-foot-and-mouth disease, and my mom had been exposed and didn’t want to expose my kids,” Jessica Baker, 33, told ABC News. “She needed to be with her and she wouldn’t be able to make it.”

Baker said she was “just shocked” to receive the bill for $75.90 for two servings of “Herb Crusted Walleye,” which included a “Service & Tax Charge” and tax. She took the photo and posted it to Facebook, where it went viral with thousands of comments and shares weighing in on the situation.

ABC notes that the wedding couple said they waited three weeks to receive some sort of correspondence from the Bakers and received nothing, which caused them to act on emotion and send the bill.

Baker said she and her husband were not slighting the couple by not calling, but had decided against phoning to cancel their RSVP, because they did not want to bother the the soon-to-be-wed couple on their wedding day. She also said they had not heard from the couple in the 12 years she and her husband have been married but for the wedding invite, nothing that they were distant relatives.

Additionally, Baker told ABC that the wedding invitation specifically stated children could not attend, and therefore they had no choice but to stay home.

In the end, Baker says she’ll likely “repay” the cost with a donation to a charity and send the receipt to the bride and groom.

Meanwhile, social media responded to the news with diverse reactions:

I think sending the bill to the wedding no-shows was tacky.

— Cock McStuffins (@CorporateBarbie) October 1, 2015

A guest gets a bill for a meal cause she didn’t show up to a wedding. I think I’ll send out a bill every time someone doesn’t star my tweet

— MarMar (@pinningnut) October 1, 2015

Big office debate here, wedding guest who RSVP’d and didn’t show up gets a bill from the bride & groom. Would you send that bill? Thoughts?

— Robin Roberts (@RobinRoberts) October 1, 2015

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz and on Facebook.

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