The wedding was going well until the bride’s cousin walked up to her table and said nine terrifying words: ‘you’ve put the wrong bank details on your invites’ which ‘killed the mood instantly’
A bride discovered a stranger would be getting all her honeymoon money during her wedding.
Getting married is a joyous, momentous occasion but it brings with it a lot of stress. The costs associated with getting married rise more and more each year, with happy couples often having to fork out thousands and thousands of pounds even for a small wedding.
For Claudia Postigo, the founder and head wedding planner at The Planner Co, all the minute details and plans for a recent wedding had gone off without a hitch, until the bride’s cousin made the shocking discovery that the bank details listed on the invitations were wrong.
Lots of couples choose to forgo wedding gifts in favour of monetary contributions towards a honeymoon or house fund. Claudia explained: “Picture the scene – after a beautiful wedding ceremony, we were halfway through the reception. Cocktail hour and pictures had come and gone, speeches had been successfully given, and guests were just finishing off their desserts.
“I was pretty confident everything would continue to be smooth sailing as everyone hit the dance floor. It was the perfect reception – until the bride’s cousin walked up to her table and said nine fatal words – ‘you’ve put the wrong bank details on your invites’.”
During her career with The Planner Co, a boutique wedding planning agency that specialises in creating destination weddings across Spain, Claudia has dealt with many wedding emergencies but this was her first time dealing with this particular problem.
She continued: “Apparently, the cousin and his brother had agreed to help their parents make a contribution to the honeymoon fund while they were all together around the table. One brother had brought up the details on the couple’s wedding website while the other had taken a picture of the paper invite for reference. On comparing the details, they realised they didn’t match.”
A devastating mix-up had occurred – while the bride and groom’s correct bank details were posted on their wedding website, they had put a complete stranger’s information on the paper invites.
“This revelation killed the mood pretty much instantly,” said Claudia. “The couple immediately began freaking out, worried that half the guests’ gifts had gone astray. It was up to me to restore calm and boost the mood again.”
First, Claudia quickly Googled what to do in case of sending money to the wrong person. She found that guests would just need to contact their banks, informing them of the mistake, and they would handle it from there. She said: “I told the couple to put it out of their minds and go enjoy their first dance, and I would take care of it.”
After the dance, Claudia went around and caught as many people as she could, informing them of the mistake. “I didn’t want to just ask people if they’d made a contribution, as I thought that would seem invasive. Instead, I simply explained the mix-up, letting them know what they would need to do if they had used the details on the paper invite.”
Although the mistake caused a moment of panic for the couple and a headache for Claudia, the whole story had a happy ending. She added: “All the guests who had sent money to the wrong account managed to get it back and sent it to the right bank account, so it was all sorted out in the end.”
The etiquette surrounding gift giving at weddings has changed in recent years, as more couples live together before getting married so they don’t require the usual home-building items from their wedding guests. Cash is now much more preferable and standard.
On Reddit, people weighed in on this. One person said: “According to economics, giving cash is the most efficient gift. Not weird IMO.”
Another said: “Money is extremely useful and it’s more thoughtful in some ways because why would you buy someone a crappy gift they probably won’t even use,” while a third commented: “Honestly, the married couple probably appreciates the cash more than any extravagant gifts they get. Money given is actually more of a tradition than the gifts.”
