Personally, I can’t stand White Elephant holiday parties.
You might know this gift exchange better as “Yankee Swap” or maybe even “Dirty Santa”, but the premise is usually always the same: everyone brings a wrapped gift, and one by one each member of the party picks a random present to open. They can either keep that gift, or steal a gift from someone else, but they’re only allowed to steal once.
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And here’s the catch: people can just as easily steal your gift too, so even if you think you’ve ended up with a good one, someone can come along and, in true Grinchy fashion, steal it right out of your hands.
Let me just briefly explain why I absolutely hate these parties.
My family hosted one a few years ago with all my relatives, and it quickly turned into an absolute disaster .
First of all, no one really brought very good gifts. I think the hottest item was a cheap dartboard that my uncle had re-gifted from a different White Elephant party he’d been a part of. So people weren’t exactly thrilled with their options.
When the game began, all those folks who quickly became disappointed in the present they chose started to play dirty.
My cousin and her boyfriend teamed up to try and snag the dartboard, so they each spent their turn stealing it from someone and believed they’d secured the “top prize” for themselves.
But my well-meaning yet incredibly uncensored grandma who loudly announced during the middle of the game that “all these presents are s***”, then proceeded to steal the dartboard for herself, despite having zero use for it.
At the end of the game, the room was full of unimpressed faces holding mediocre gifts while my uncle, who *brought the dartboard*, ended up taking it home with him again since he’d snatched it last.
Maybe your family or friends have had better luck with the game, but in my experience there isn’t really much fun to be had in a White Elephant gift exchange, especially if the budget is too low and the people playing decide to start burn some bridges.
But another way to ensure a crummy White Elephant party is to bring a gift that will almost certainly leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths.
That brings us to today’s story, which comes courtesy of a bride-to-be who shared her unpopular gift idea on Reddit and received a ton of backlash for it.
Posted in the subreddit r/AmITheAsshole, the unnamed woman revealed she’s planning on going rogue for an upcoming White Elephant party with her coworkers by bringing an invitation to her upcoming wedding as her gift.
Before we share our YTA (You’re The Asshole) or NTA (Not The Asshole) verdict, we need to talk about *why* she figured this would make the perfect gift.
As she explained in her post , she’s getting married next year and has just sent out the wedding invitations, but has been feeling a little bad about the people who ended up being left out of her big day.
Specifically, her coworkers.
Apparently, a lot of people from her work, except for a select few, fell into what she called the “B” list of invitees.
Since both she and her soon-to-be-spouse have big families who live outside of town, they prioritized those people as guests rather than the people the bride works with.
But there’s still a chance for those people at the office on the “B” list to be able to attend.
It all depends on how many of their “A” list guests are available (and willing) to be a part of the big day.
“Once we get ‘no’ RSVPs from people out of town, we’ll replace those spots with work friends,” the woman explained.
So basically the “B” list means the “back ups”.
It may sound insensitive, but there’s nothing really out of the ordinary there. In fact, B, C, and D lists are pretty common when it comes to wedding planning.
As much as you might wish you can invite absolutely everyone in your life to be part of your big day, venues have limits, as does your own wedding budget, so it’s not exactly realistic.
Unless you’re someone like Kylie Kardashian who presumably wouldn’t have to look at her guest list, and then at her her budget, and make necessary cuts.
So yeah, alternative guest lists are normal. What’s *not* common is using your own invitations as Christmas gifts.
But that’s exactly the idea that this impending bride had when she realized she had an upcoming White Elephant party to attend with her coworkers.
It’s never explained in the post what the price limit for the gift exchange is, but I imagine it floated somewhere around the $20 mark, since most of those parties usually do.
Rather than head to Bath and Body Works for a candle, or maybe even hit up Starbucks to buy a gift card, the bride decided she has a much better gift she could bring.
And that gift is a rare, priceless, highly-sought-after invitation to what must be the event of the season : to her wedding.
I mean, why else would someone think that people would want to unwrap a gift and find an invitation to lose an entire Saturday inside?
Although the woman seemed pretty set on her brilliant gift idea, she did express some apprehension in her Reddit post.
As she wrote,
“I can see it either as a cute way to invite someone at an earlier stage… or it could highlight that some people haven’t been invited, make people feel like they have to beg and dance for an invite, and make people feel way worse if they don’t make the final cut.”
Since she said earlier than she’s only *just* sent out the invitations, it would appear that none of her coworkers know whether they’ll be getting one or (in most cases) whether they’ve been reduced to the “B” list.
But thanks to this bride’s brilliant White Elephant gift exchange idea, they’re about to find out, and all while trying to enjoy a delightful evening of holiday fun with some work chums. God bless us, every one!
At the end of the post, the woman asked Reddit one question: would she be an asshole if she follows through on her wedding invite idea?
The answer was a unanimous “yes”.
Most people on Reddit couldn’t get over just how much of a self-absorbed “bridezilla” the woman comes off as in her post.
“I seriously, seriously doubt that anyone who thinks people might ‘beg and dance’ for an invitation to their wedding will throw a wedding that is in any way enjoyable to attend,” this user wrote. “‘The final cut’? Get over yourself.”
Someone else added, “She’s acting like it’s an honor to go to her wedding, if I had to ‘beg and dance’ for an invitation I wouldn’t want to go.”
The majority of the comments were from people pointing out that if the woman did, indeed, bring the invite as a gift, it would almost definitely end up being the “hot potato” gift of the evening.
“It’d be kind of funny if she went through with this & all of the coworkers fight to hand off the invitation because no one cared about her as much as she thought they did lmao,” this person said.
Another chimed in, “I was just thinking of the look of disappointment on some innocent person’s face when they realize they’re taking home an invite to some entitled asshole’s wedding where they’ll likely know nobody else because all their other work friends are on the ‘B’ list and weren’t invited.”
What do you think of this situation? Is a wedding invitation ever an acceptable White Elephant gift, or should this woman give her contribution a bit more thought? Let us know!
