This is why I never attach myself/my family to a group. Tell me when and where and I’ll make it happen. Or I won’t. Either way, we’re not inconveniencing them, and they’re not inconveniencing us.
Keep the peace? Wait for others? I thought this was a vacation?!?!?
Yeah, my wife and I have done most of our "fun" vacation trips with other couples or family the last few years and, while it took my wife to come to the conclusion longer than me, we have recently agreed that our "fun" vacation trips need to be just us or just our immediate family (i.e. kids coming along). It's just too much stress , unnecessary potential drama, and, at the very least, some inevitable inconvenience or foregoing of an activity to include even the best friends and family (which, to be clear, are who we are vacationing with).
We went back and forth on this a couple times, and now we have 3 kinds of group trips:
1. Group trip, shared burden. You're assigned a part of the trip to plan, and if we didn't plan it, we won't complain about it. If in planning you want advice or to ask opinions, we'll happily provide. When it's our assigned day or whatever, I expect you not to complain or I'll let you know sarcastically that you could have planned the whole trip (which my friends would not be surprised by). Fortunately, my wife and I are both extreme over-preparers, so things we plan tend to go off extremely well and are often met with much happiness. E.g., we went to Argentina last spring with like 3 other couples and a coupe single folks and each couple planned the itinerary for one of the cities we stayed in.
2. We do an anniversary trip every year that is fully planned by us (we take turns, e.g., this year is my turn). We very clearly lay out itinerary, cost, what's optional, what's provided, and what's on you (from food to housing to transit and whatever else). It's pretty take it or leave it.
3. We're going on a trip, we made our plans, and we'll happily tell you our plans and you can figure out how to fit into them if you want but we made our trip planning without other people and you showed up later or freed up an that's cool, but it's not going to cause any headaches for us. Join when and where you'd like. E.g., we went to NZ this fall/winter and some friends found out like 2 weeks before we left (we'd planned for like 6 months) that they'd be there too for like 10 days. So we gave them our itinerary, said "tell us when you'd like to join up," and that was that. We spent a few days together and it was great!
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