Your presence might be the gift — but it’ll still cost you.
A woman was left flabbergasted after receiving a friend’s birthday party invite that requested a $499 entry fee for the two-hour celebration.
The anonymous Reddit user posted a photo of the digital invite, which required invitees to pay the supersized sum to attend the party. It also stipulated that it would cost an additional $250 to bring a plus-one.
“Friend got elected for city council and purchased a new home and somehow this makes sense to her,” the user scoffed in the online forum. “Gotta pay the mortgage somehow.”
Commenters called the outrageous pricing “bonkers,” while a few others mused that it could be a fundraising event disguised as a birthday celebration.
The invite didn’t disclose whether the entry fee included unlimited free alcohol and food.
“On a Monday afternoon too!” one person snarked. “There are no people ever I’d pay that for.”
“It’ll be a text message from me with a cake emoji LOL,” another Redditor wrote.
“And the party is only 2 hours,” scoffed a third. “B—h if I’m paying $500 it better be an all-day banger with free everything.”
“Contact your friend and notify them that someone must have hacked their account because it’s asking for a lot of money to attend a birthday party, which is clearly a scam,” joked another.
This isn’t the first time birthday bills have caused division among friend groups.
A viral video posted in 2023 sparked raucous debate over splitting the check at group dinners after friends got into a heated debate about whether to pay equitably or equally.
One friend who ate and drank very little argued that he should only have to pay for what he ordered, while the rest of the group demanded the bill be split into equal parts.
“Because I only ordered $24.85 worth of food, why would I or should I have to pay more than what my meal cost?” TikTokker Victor Christian said at the time. “I never agreed to splitting the bill and I stood my ground. I told them that I wasn’t going to split the bill.”
