Not really sure where to put this, but my cousin-in-law is getting married, with my husband as one of his groomsmen. I was invited to the wedding, but decided against going and just having my husband attend. I'm not terribly close to anyone in his family and usually spend the majority of my time with them running errands and keeping my mouth shut lest I make someone cry.
My thought he would go to the wedding, do the Disneyland thing with his family, spend time with them, etc. while I would stay home, thus leaving him a bigger budget to eat and have a good time than if I went with him. I thought it was a pretty good situation, but I'm now dealing with some backlash about it, where everyone is telling me that I should just go. See examples of similar things here:
http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/she-cant-afford-to-come-oh-really#axzz2k0aoYbT7. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that I bought a ticket to go on a vacation to Italy next year a few months ago. Granted, that purchase was a $500 round trip ticket 10 months in advance when I had ample cash and rewards points, but whatever. I'm not really sure it's relevant.
I just figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal since I'm not super close to any of the people and I could send them an amazing gift with half of what it would cost by me not going. Thinking back to my own wedding, there were very few people I actually wanted there and, no offense to them, my spouse's sisters and brothers in law were not really high on that list.
So, am I just being a b****? Yes, I could probably afford to go, but I can't see the value in having me spend $600 on something that will probably not make a huge difference to them. In a YMOYL analysis, this is just not worth it to me... Unless it's going to damage my relationship with my in-laws.
My original plan was to just send a card with a cash gift and an apology, but I'm second-guessing myself. Should I bite the bullet and go or should I schedule some huge meeting at work (I mean, I am slammed at work with a ton of deadlines coming up, but no official no leaving from my boss? How do those of the way of the almighty mustache deal with these types of scenarios without alienating friends and family?