Man Refused to Play the Organ at His Sister's Wedding Because She Didn't Provide Vegan Food

Well folks, this is one "Am I the A-hole?" that you don't hear every day. A young man explains that his older sister got married about a week ago. He doesn't explain much about their relationship beyond, "She was rather mean to me growing up, and I still don't like her very much." OK. 

So a few months ago, he and his sister and parents were having a family dinner, and his sister asked him if he could play the organ at her wedding. She said that she couldn't pay him but that he could eat food at the buffet (which I guess she wasn't planning to provide if he didn't play the organ??). This seems like a strange family situation. But anyway.

I guess OP plays the organ professionally because he said he normally gets paid for gigs. Initially, he insisted he would only do it if he got paid. But then his parents got mad (it is his sister's wedding, after all), so he agreed to do it as long as there were vegan options at the buffet. She said she could manage that. 

If you're feeling like this is strange, I'm right there with you. My brother is a musician and he played and sang the first dance song at my wedding. There was never any question whether or not he would do it. He was happy to do it, and there was never any expectation that he would get paid (he did jokingly send me an invoice for $500 afterward, but it was a joke). 

Anyway, the day of the wedding arrives, and there weren't any vegan options at the buffet. His sister told him she wasn't able to get any, so instead she got him an Impossible Whopper from Burger King. He couldn't eat it, though, because it had mayo on it.

 It's not clear why his sister couldn't get one vegan meal on the day of her wedding and couldn't tell her brother until that day, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen. 

Because she couldn't get him the vegan meal she promised, he told her he wouldn't play her wedding unless she paid him $200 on Venmo right then. She discussed it with her fiancé and decided they couldn't do that. So, what did he do? 

He left the wedding, muted his sister, her fiancé, and his parents on his phone, and then he went to see a movie with his friends. They had no music for their wedding ceremony. When he got home later, his parents were obviously extremely angry with him, but he doesn't think he did anything wrong. 

He was promised a vegan meal in exchange for performing, and when he didn't get that, he bounced. Now, his sister wants him to reimburse her $2,500 for the organ rental and is threatening to take him to small claims court if he doesn't pay. 

I'm so confused. I understand not wanting to pay for a family member to perform at your wedding. But if you're not that close and they want to get paid, what is $200 on top of $2,500 you're already spending to rent the organ? I feel like there's so much about this family dynamic and this story that we are not privy to. 

Commenters were fairly split. Obviously, there is some familial tension there, but most people were united in the idea that he should have just played the wedding, not ruined her day, and brought it up afterward if he was angry. 

"Her literal wedding day was not the time or place to argue," a top commenter wrote. "You could have got your parents to pay you afterwards, or (heaven forbid) just played the organ instead of buying her a gift so that her wedding wasn't ruined."

"This dude is acting like a child," another person wrote. "This will forever be a stain on his relationship with his family." There's a lot going on in this situation that we don't understand, and it really does seem like his sister took him seriously. But he could have taken the high road and been the bigger person here. He just chose not to.