30th birthday dinner, who should pay?

gettingtheresometime

Good to hear it was resolved amicably

buildersdaughter

Thank you so much for letting us know.
Yes, clarity is important. I think especially so when someone is communicating in another language. Sometimes it can be worse when a person is obviously fluent in (say )English, you forget that they sometimes miss / misunderstand something. I am sure that you used a phrase that your partner misunderstood, and you thought nothing of.
We have to be careful around some members of our 'family by marriage', who believe that everyone should 'pay their own way' or not tun up to things, whereas I come from a family who would not invite anywhere if we couldn't afford to pay for our guests. That could mean that we pay when we invite them, and we also pay when they 'invite' us! We make it work though!
What a lovely example of good communication and sorting things out as a family you have given us. I wish you all the best for the future.

maman

Thanks for getting back to us. Obviously a misunderstanding that worked out fine in the end.


I can't help thinking though that it was a bit presumptuous of your partner to organise a party including travel expecting someone else to pay.

Spendless

maman wrote: »

I can't help thinking though that it was a bit presumptuous of your partner to organise a party including travel expecting someone else to pay.

How I'm reading the last post from the OP is that she started organising it and finances hadn't been discussed and then she thought OP had said 'I'll take care of it'.

This resonates with me, several years ago we agreed for personal reasons my DH would go away for a week with his mate, that hol fell through for reasons I won't go into here. Fast forward a few years and the hols is back on. The week they had booked to go away, I was working long hours as we were short staffed, my DD was going on a school residential and things needed sorting out for that, my eldest was taking one of his GCSE exams. As more and more things were getting on top of me, , I asked my DH how it had come about that he was going away that week and pointed out he hadn't even asked me if I'd mind. He hadn't realised he hadn't and had no idea how the hol had come about.

After that I noticed that you could say the slightest thing to DH's mate and he would quickly 'snowball' the conversation along and it was done so quickly you didn't even notice it growing until too late. Now I have noticed, I nip in the bud quickly the 'we could...' conversations to a much slower pace.

I might be completely wrong, but I wonder if the same sort of thing has happened here.

maman

Spendless wrote: »

How I'm reading the last post from the OP is that she started organising it and finances hadn't been discussed and then she thought OP had said 'I'll take care of it'.

This resonates with me, several years ago we agreed for personal reasons my DH would go away for a week with his mate, that hol fell through for reasons I won't go into here. Fast forward a few years and the hols is back on. The week they had booked to go away, I was working long hours as we were short staffed, my DD was going on a school residential and things needed sorting out for that, my eldest was taking one of his GCSE exams. As more and more things were getting on top of me, , I asked my DH how it had come about that he was going away that week and pointed out he hadn't even asked me if I'd mind. He hadn't realised he hadn't and had no idea how the hol had come about.

After that I noticed that you could say the slightest thing to DH's mate and he would quickly 'snowball' the conversation along and it was done so quickly you didn't even notice it growing until too late. Now I have noticed, I nip in the bud quickly the 'we could...' conversations to a much slower pace.

I might be completely wrong, but I wonder if the same sort of thing has happened here.

Yes, I think you're probably right.


She must have been pretty pleased when she thought her partner had volunteered to pay for everything though.:D

annie_d

I also live in Manchester and my daughter in Brighton. Her husband is 30 in the summer and she is paying all of the costs for all of the 30 people to attend. Yes, i think it is madness but that is what she wants to do.x