Wanting It Both Ways
A groom uninvites the friend he grew up with, one week before the wedding. And then finds out the free wedding food left with her.
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Wanting It Both Ways
Episode guide
Four stories this morning, and one move repeated in every one of them: somebody wants the thing, and also wants to not be the person who did it.
A wedding where the free catering leaves with the guest who got uninvited. A family dinner that ends with a restraining order. A fortieth birthday that gets settled at the dishwasher. And a message to an Instagram model that the man who sent it cannot remember writing.
These are anonymous posters' accounts, paraphrased to protect identifying details. A Reddit post is one person's version of events rather than independent proof of every claim, and a comment section is a crowd of readers reacting, not a verdict. All four stories surfaced on 5 October 2026, on r/AmItheAsshole, r/BestofRedditorUpdates and r/relationship_advice. Where a poster reports what somebody else said or thought, this piece repeats it as the poster's account.
The free catering that walked away
She grew up with Ryan. Their parents were close friends, which means the two of them were raised in each other's houses, and the family jokes about them ending up together started early and never really stopped. She says she did have feelings for him once. Then college happened, he moved to another state, and it stayed a friendship — these days they mostly send each other videos. When he got engaged she was fine about it. 1
The wedding is back in their hometown, and her family is doing the catering as a gift — no contract, no invoice, just food from people who have known the groom since he was small. Then, one week before the wedding, Ryan called to uninvite her. His fiancée was not comfortable with her coming, he said, because she knew the poster used to have feelings for him and thought she might cause drama. The poster told him she had never done anything to any of his relationships. It did not change anything.
She told her mother. Her parents decided they were not going either — which meant the catering was cancelled. Her mother told the couple, and Ryan called back, furious: he called the poster petty for taking back the family's gift, said they had no time to find anyone else and no money to pay one, and said his fiancée had been right about her after all.
Eight and a half thousand upvotes and about 1,400 comments, and the thread is not divided. The top reply grants that all she did was tell her parents she had been uninvited, and that they cancelled the catering themselves. Another reader asks the practical question: what did they think would happen to the free catering when they uninvited her? One commenter does defend the fiancée, pointing out that two families spent years joking that these two would end up together. No update has been posted. The wedding is in a week.
The family dinner
This one surfaced on r/BestofRedditorUpdates, which reposts an r/aitaweddings post from 21 September 2026 and the update that followed a week later. 2
Three years ago she was engaged to Jake, and she had met him through his older brother Ethan, who was her friend first. A mutual friend was getting married in Italy; she could not go because of work, so Jake went without her, and so did Ethan's fiancée, Holly. Holly had always been overly comfortable with Jake — hanging off his arm, long hugs, leaning on him for no reason — and the poster had raised it more than once and been told Holly was just affectionate. On the last night of the trip, she says, Jake and Holly got drunk and spent the night together. She left the engagement.
Ethan and Holly broke up as well. Over the next two years, Ethan and the poster leaned on each other as friends, and then it turned into more than that — which is what the post is really about, because some of her friends think dating her ex-fiancé's brother makes her the asshole.
Then came a family dinner. Holly found her in the hallway and told her she had ruined the family, that she was a stain on them, and that she should walk away from Ethan and stay away from all of them. The poster tried to leave; Holly followed her, and when the poster turned round to say it again, Holly grabbed her hair and yanked her backwards. Ethan, Jake and their parents walked in at that moment. Ethan got between them, the parents went at Holly, and Jake — who had said nothing for three years — cut Holly off, told her she had no excuse for putting her hands on anyone, and ended things with her that night. The poster left before dinner and has since filed for a restraining order.
Fifteen hundred upvotes and 400 comments. The top reply is the thing everyone was thinking: people were against the poster and Ethan, but Jake and Holly were actually together and nobody objected to that. Another reader just asks why the boyfriend's ex-fiancée from two years ago was at a family dinner at all. In her update, she and Ethan decided to let the romantic part rest — still close friends, both in therapy, and the poster is taking a break and travelling.
The birthday that ended at the dishwasher
He is in his forties, and he wants it on the record that he made his wife's fortieth birthday a good day. He told the two children under ten to let her sleep in, and they did, and decorated the door themselves. Breakfast was eggs, hashbrowns, bacon and toast, with hers served with a Diet Coke while she was in the bath. He cleaned the kitchen, ran the dishwasher and tidied the front rooms. A friend came over with her family for a few hours. Dinner was her favourite: tri tip, baked potato, corn on the cob and a salad she had specifically asked for. Then homemade cake with the youngest two, ice cream, cards and presents. 3
Two and a half hours later the children were going to bed badly, and he stepped in to handle it. That is when his wife started yelling. The presents were not put away, the dishwasher was not unloaded, the decorations were still up. Then it went further: the gifts were not enough, she had expected presents from the children, nobody cared about her, she was not appreciated. She loaded and unloaded the dishwasher as loudly as she could and told him to stay away from her.
The gifts were special popcorn, slippers for her plantar fasciitis, and the promise of a console table once they found the right one second-hand. The children made handmade cards over two nights. They are a one-income family and money is tight.
A thousand upvotes — and 1,600 comments, which tells you what kind of thread it turned into. One camp says that is a lovely day and they would have been pleased; the other reads the gift list and asks why a fortieth birthday got popcorn and slippers, and why he could not have scraped together the price of a dinner. A reader in the middle asks the sharpest question of the lot: if he cleaned the kitchen in the morning and ran the dishwasher, what exactly was his wife loading at ten at night? The line that best sums up the whole thread, though, is this one: "I would love to hear her version of this special day." No update has been posted.
The message he does not remember sending
She is 31, her fiancé is 38, and they have been engaged four months. The day before she posted, they were house hunting. 4
He came home from golf drunk — she was already unhappy about his drinking — and passed out on the couch. Something made her check his phone. An hour earlier he had messaged an Instagram model with a million followers, telling her that he was sure her inbox was ridiculous but that he hoped for a reply, that he liked what he saw, and asking how her evening was going. Then she found the rest of it: he had asked ChatGPT to help him write the message, to make it more confident and to "humanise" it.
She threw a pillow at him to wake him up. His response, while she held the message up in front of his face, was to deny it — "what are you talking about?" over and over — and then to suggest he simply could not remember. She has said this was a boundary she had already told him she would count as cheating.
Six hundred upvotes and 300 comments, and the thread is close to unanimous. One reader says that if something made her check his phone, she already did not entirely trust him; another asks whether this is the first time he was caught; a third suggests being glad this happened while she is a fiancée and a prospective homeowner rather than a wife with a joint mortgage. The comment that lands hardest points out that she could maybe get past the infidelity, but not the ick of a man who believed a million-follower model was going to reply. No update has been posted.
Your group chat this morning
Ryan wants the wedding his fiancée wants and also wants a family he has known his whole life to cook the reception for free. Holly wants to be the wronged woman in this family and also wants to be the one grabbing hair in the hallway. The birthday wife wants a whole day of somebody else's effort and also wants to stand in her own kitchen and say nobody cares about her. The fiancé wants to have sent that message and also wants it never to have existed.
None of them is a cartoon villain, which is what makes it good gossip — each one has a version of the story where they are the reasonable party. They just never checked whether anyone else could see it.
References
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