Online War Erupts as Bridal Couple Rejects Gift

As a young bride, Janet, a 54-year-old medical practice manager from Maryland, sent back a wedding gift -- a small oval framed picture in a gilded frame -- under pressure from her mother, who thought it was "cheap."

"It embarrasses 35 years later," said Janet, who was 19 at the time. "My mom hated it ... and I took her advice and sent it back. I learned a life lesson and would never do it again.

"At my mom's suggestion I wrote a thank you note and let the giver know that it did not go with any of the decor at our home," she said. "I felt bad about it for years and never saw the woman again."

Her mother was under the false impression that "people should always give a gift that pays for the wedding," said Janet.

Volunteers use wedding registries to help hurricane victims.

Just this week, a similar story about a bridal couple who insulted their Canadian wedding guests went viral. They received a hamper filled with tasty delights: Sour Patch Kids, Marshmallow Fluff, croutons, cookies, olive oil and pasta. The note attached to the gift read: "Life is delicious. ... Enjoy."

But the same-sex couple, who were European, didn't like the gift and sent a text the next day asking for a receipt so they could get reimbursed. A subsequent series of nasty text and Facebook messages were published June 11 in the Hamilton Spectator, a Canadian newspaper:

Bride: "Heyyy I just wanna say thanks for the gift but unfortunately I can't eat any of it lol I'm gluten intolerant. Do u maybe have a receipt"

Guest: "Ahh sh*t! Really!? ... We had a great time. Thank you again for allowing us to be a part of the celebration."

But the conversation quickly disintegrated.

The bride's wife wrote, "I'm not sure if it's the first wedding you have been to, but for your next wedding ... People give envelopes. I lost out on $200 covering you and your dates plate ... And I got fluffy whip and sour patch kids in return."

In a note sent out a day later, the ungrateful bride wrote, "Thanks again for the $30 gift basket ... you should be embarrassed for being so cheap," the bride sniped.

The Emily Post Institute, based in Burlington, Vt., has been inundated with calls about when it is appropriate to return an unwanted gift.

"I read the whole exchange and there were many things wrong on both sides," said Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of the doyenne of American etiquette.

"We don't have a winner here. Some people are a little closer to the right idea than the other. But both people really failed in how they expressed themselves."

Re-gifts, bagel guillotines and over-sized metal encrusted vases were just some of the gifts that readers told ABCNews.com they had received at their weddings and wanted to return.

Jerry Berger, a public relations director for a Boston hospital, said that he, too, received an unwanted gift when he was married in 1977 -- a bounced check in foreign currency.

"It technically did not bounce, but we could not cash it, and I believe we paid for the privilege of finding out," said Berger, 61. "No bank wanted to deal with it."

Post said that the choice of wedding gift is "always up to the giver. Period. How much you spend on that gift -- any gift, for a birthday or christening or graduation. It's only based on the giver's budget and their relationship to the recipient and what they think the recipient might like in good faith."

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Widowed in Their 20s, Couple Finds Love Again

When Jordan Rice saw Jessica Moreland's wedding photo posted to her blog, "One Day at a Time," he was moved not only by her "raw, wild smile" but the tragedy she had endured.

Jessica's husband Jarronn was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2009, just two and a half months after their wedding.

Jordan, too, had been widowed in his 20s and also blogged. He lost his wife Danielle to a rare heart sarcoma in 2011, a little more than two years after they were married.

Mutual friends suggested Jordan, a lawyer turned New York City pastor, and Jessica, a marketing specialist from Washington, D.C., meet because both had shared overwhelming grief at such a young age.

"Jordan and I talked about this the first time we met -- never feeling like we could be excited about a person again," said Jessica, now 30.

"We knew we would meet someone, but it would never be the same, and nothing could reach the pinnacle that it was before."

But on June 22, they married in a simple ceremony in Baltimore that friends say even included the families of their late spouses and brought all to tears.

"There wasn't a dry eye in the room, even the waiters," said the bride, who is now 30 and Jessica Rice.

"I liken it to being a parent," she told ABCNews.com. "You love a child to death, but when you have a second child, you don't love them less."

The couple left this week for a honeymoon in Italy, but the video of their story, which was shown at their wedding, has gone viral with nearly 18,000 views.

"This story could have been scripted for a Lifetime movie," said Jordan's best friend of 13 years, Justin Jones-Fosu, who is in theological school in Mississippi. "They are handsome, beautiful, intelligent, quirky -- but their relationship is really awesome.

"The fact that God could bring them together is almost too good to be true."

Jessica met her husband Jarronn in 2004 when they both worked at Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey. They married in 2009 and relocated to the Maryland area.

"We were everything I could imagine as soul mates," she said.

But just months after they married, Jarronn went on a short motorcycle ride with friends and ended up in intensive care, fighting for his life.

"His injuries were so serious that the blood had drained out of his body," said Jessica. "There was too much strain on his heart."

She was widowed for three years and dated others.

"One guy was great, but it was always really challenging for him to understand my history, and I think he really struggled with the idea that I could expand to love someone else," Jessica said.

Meanwhile, Jordan, now 31, who grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., met Danielle, a math teacher, and married her in 2009. "For the first six months, it was marital bliss, very much the honeymoon phase," he said.

Soon she began to feel ill, and the couple thought she might be pregnant. An X-ray later revealed Danielle had fluid around her heart that appeared to be a virus.

"She started really getting worse very quickly," said Jordan. "Within four days, she couldn't walk anymore. Her resting heart rate was around 140 beats a minute -- lying down."

Surgeons removed the pressure from around Danielle's heart, but five days later, while sleeping in the hospital waiting room, Jordan was awakened to startling news: Danielle had a rare and deadly form of cancer, primary cardiac angiosarcoma. She died 10 months later.

"I was miserable," he said. "I felt out of place … a 27-year-old doesn't die of cancer. It was very unfair and challenging on every front."

Jordan eventually dated, but said, "I thought I might meet someone cool and nice and sweet, but I don't know if I would be madly in love with this person and feel deeply for them."

In 2012, Jordan's friends were in New York and mentioned a girl, "Jessica," who had also lost her spouse. Like Jordan, they said she was a blogger and had written about her experience.

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