Bride charges £1,000 'no show fee' to wedding guests

A bride has sparked a debate online after planning to charge absent wedding guests a £1,000 'no show fee'.

In a viral post shared to Instagram, the Aussie candidly shared a screenshot of what appears to be a WhatsApp conversation.

The bride-to-be sent a message in July to say she couldn't wait to see her friend on the big day but was later disappointed by the December response which said she could no longer make it – a week before the wedding.

"I'm so sorry, I know we RSVP'd yes and the wedding is next week but we just can't afford to travel interstate at the moment," she wrote. "Hope you understand, would love to have been there x".

The bride asked She’s on The Money podcast whether it was reasonable to charge the woman a no-show fee, saying: "It's now one week out from the wedding and I have already given the confirmed numbers to the venue and paid the outstanding amount, which was $18,600."

"Within the last week ten guests, who had previously RSVP’d that they were coming have now cancelled citing that it's too expensive for them to travel interstate," she said.

"I am scrambling to cover their seats, otherwise I’m effectively wasting $2,000," the bride-to-be continued. "Is it reasonable to request that they cover these costs themselves?"

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The post was soon flooded with comments from fellow Instagrammers, with one jumping to the bride's defence.

"Isn't it etiquette that you still send a gift to a wedding that you can't attend? Surely if you are cancelling last minute you could pay for the seat instead of sending a gift? Or maybe gift something decent," they said.

Meanwhile, one wrote: "No way. You would have paid the seat even if they came or not; so it doesn’t make a difference from a budget point of view if they don’t come since if they came there wouldn’t have been an expectation for them to pay on arrival."

They went on to say it's "not fair" to penalise someone if they can't afford it in the first place.

Another said: "I find it very odd that people would expect someone to pay for their seat when they can’t afford the travel."

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