“My Best Friend’s Wedding is Wreaking Havoc on My Family”
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When the invitations arrived in the mail, my brother noticed that everyone except him was invited, and now my whole family, aside from my sisters, is threatening to not come to the wedding because they feel that it’s classless and tasteless to invite everyone in a family except for one person. My brother said that he wouldn’t have gone even if he had been invited but is insulted that he wasn’t and is creating all kinds of drama I don’t even want to mention. He’s telling me that Jane isn’t a true friend and that I should tell her how rude she is and what a terrible situation this has put me in, but I don’t feel it’s necessary to bring this up to the bride seeing as how my brother and I are not that close, and she has only met him a handful of times.
Jane is my best friend, but she’s never really been close to my family and she already had to cut off quite a few people from her personal list of friends as well as her fiancé’s in order to invite everyone whom she did invite. Was it really “rude” and “classless” of her to exclude my brother? I just don’t know how to handle the situation. — Bridesmaid with a Rude Brother
I’m not sure what you think it is you’re supposed to be “handling” in this situation. Everyone who might want to attend your best friend’s wedding got an invitation. Someone who did not want to attend the wedding did not get an invitation. So… the people who got invitations and want to go, should go. And the people who got invitations and don’t want to go, don’t have to. And the person who neither wants to go nor got an invitation should find a fucking hobby and stop trying to create drama where none exists. (And, honestly, if your parents — the only two people who are threatening not to attend the wedding — actually skip it because their pitiful son is throwing a hissy fit, then THEY are the rude and classless ones, not Jane.) Don’t worry about your dopey brother and your enabling parents. They are adults and can figure this one out on their own. You don’t need to “handle” them. Your job is to support your friend and have fun at the wedding. Everything else is someone else’s problem, not yours.
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Yes it could be construed as slightly rude of her to exclude your brother. Maybe she forgot you even had a brother! haha! but if your family wants to “boycott” jane’s wedding because of it, let them. And they can be the ones that explain why they aren’t coming if she asks (which they probably won’t). Trust me, Jane probably won’t even bat an eye if they aren’t there cause she has a million other things to focus on.
I’m curious as to why people are down thumbing this so much. It’s essentially what Wendy and like everyone else said…
The first rule of the thumbs is that if you talk about the thumbs you get downthumbed. 🙂
You talked about it, so I had to down__________ you. Don’t talk about Thumb Club!
Dang it!
It’s curious. I don’t like this picking-on-Kerry thing. Kerry’s the bomb!
Don’t worry, I’m not affected by strangers on the internet disliking me 🙂
You’re a stronger woman than me! Except I’ve been spared from the asshats for awhile now and I don’t want to jinx it so shhhh.
Gave you a down-thumb just for that! 🙂 And because I always wanted to…
But kerry, how will you find validation in life if not through near-meaningless thumbs on a website? I’m worried for you, girl!
What I would like to know is why I don’t even see thumbs! Am I the only one whose ability to view the site is way worse since the last upgrade? It’s like this on my computer at home and at work, and I use two different internet browers, so I guess I’m just unlucky.
Also, I’m kind of intrigued by the drama of the situation. Did Jane and the brother secretly sleep together??? Did they make out in the woods as teenagers? Or is Jane a bigot and the LW’s brother is gay or transexual? (yes sadly some people actually do not extend wedding invites because of other people’s sexuality/gender).
Why does there have to be a big dramatic reason? Maybe she just doesn’t know him that well? Or..maybe she doesn’t like him because he’s a brat (as evidenced by this fit he’s throwing).
oh yea, what was that thing you taught me recently? about the simplest answer is usually just the answer, no need to make up elaborate stories?
That sounds very boring katie.
well we cant all live the crazy lawyer lifestyle, ok? geez.
And frankly lacks creativity.
Haha, I just feel like if there was some obvious reason the LW would have said “My brother thinks she excluded him b/c he’s gay” or whatever. Like that would be a whole other problem.
Occam’s razor?
yess that one!
No I don’t think it’s a big dramatic reason, I would just LOVE if it was. I like a juicy story is all. Like soap operas! (fun fact, I spent most of my childhood watching soap operas from 1-4pm with my grandma)
Oh, well in that case, it’s probably because he screwed Jane’s sister while their evil step-cousin was in a coma. Or something.
hmmm.. imma say that the bride accidentally slept with the brother thinking that it was her fiance, because THEY are evil twins of each other. so now the brother has to be shunned because if he showed up the pastor might accidentally marry him to the bride… which would make for the perfect set up into the next episode!
But don’t forget the bride’s cousin, who is secretly in love with her fiance. She’s planning on drugging the bride so the bride doesn’t show up to the wedding in the first place, and she can console the groom in his hotel room later that evening.
AND THEN both stories come together in the epic season finale when the bride’s cousin is married to the LW’s brother in a completely legal wedding where all the guests are dumbfounded as to who the two people standing up are anyway. no one figures it out until the alcoholic/meth addict best man gives it all away during the toast.
Is that a flying apple Cassie?
At first I thought, yea, should’ve just invited the one other family member, but really, there’s nothing wrong with what she did. I have some friends who are close with all but one of my siblings and I can’t imagine my brother pitching a fit over this. Its kinda weird your brother cares so much. Anywho, WWS.
yea thats really the odd part. why does the brother care so much? he doesnt even know her…? why does he care about being invited to a wedding of someone he doesnt even know? like, there are weddings that happen everyday, all over the world. i am not ever mad im not invited to them. i dont get it.
I think he cares so much because by sending everyone else in the family an invitation but not him, Jane is sending the message that he is being purposefully excluded. If the invitation had gone only to the sisters, say, then maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal. But Jane evidently invited the parents, too, to whom she is “not close”. I get having to cull the guest list, but if you’re going to invite members of a family to whom you are not close, you should invite all of them in order to avoid hurt feelings. If you care about their feelings, that is. If I were the brother, I’d feel very hurt. I probably wouldn’t insist that Jane be told how rude she is, because she probably wouldn’t care, to be honest. I’d just get on with my life, but I’d still be hurt. The decision to boycott the wedding is the parents’, not the brother’s, so he shouldn’t be held responsible for that. But Wendy is right that the LW should make her own decision whether or not to go to the wedding and do whatever she decides.
But he doesn’t know them. I get the obligatory parent invite, and she knows the sisters, but why invite someone you don’t know and who doesn’t know you? Maybe if he didn’t say he wouldn’t have done regardless, I’d feel a little sorry for him, but he sounds ridiculous.
see, i disagree that he is being “purposefully excluded”- you cant exclude someone you hardly know that you werent going to invite in the first place. this goes back to me saying im not hurt because im excluded from all the thousands of weddings that happen everyday. im not actually excluded, i would have never been included. thats different.
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i also think its weird or odd or whatever to invite her parents, but i could see doing that too? like, even though i might not be “close” to my friends parents, i still know them well enough to want them at my wedding. and maybe that wasnt even her call, maybe that was her parents wanting to do that or something…
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i dunno, just overall i cant see getting worked up over not being invited to a wedding i didnt even want to go to of someone i had only met a few times, even IF my whole family was invited. sometimes you just have to suck it up and realize the world doesnt care about your feelings? you know? your not important all the time. its fine to realize that and put your energy somewhere else. it would have been so easy for this guy to just be like, oh cool, have fun guys, and move on.
I think it comes down to personal baggage. I worried a lot about people’s feelings when sending wedding invites so I would have probably invited the brother and hoped he didn’t come. Or not invited the parents. One or the other, to ensure that nobody got their feelings hurt.
But if you’re not obsessive about FEELINGS like I am, then you probably wouldn’t think twice about it. Which doesn’t make you a bad person. It probably just makes you a well-adjusted person…
The brother is definitely off his rocker for acting this way. Even if someone does hurt your feelings, like.. just build a bridge buddy.
I was close with one of my groomsmen’s parents. So we invited them to our wedding. We also invited their daughter, who was 16 at the time, since she was still living at home. We didn’t invite the middle child, who was already married/moved out and we weren’t particularly close with. And you know what, all of the people we invited were happy to attend, and the one who wasn’t invited was perfectly fine with that too. I highly doubt anyone was offended by our decision (although, if they were, no one mentioned it to me because I only hang out with cool people).
The only person putting you in a bad spot is your brother & the family members who are perpetuating the whole “tasteless, classless!” thing. I mean, yeah, I understand maybe a double take at being/knowing only one member of the household was excluded, but it makes sense why she would exclude him? She’s not close with him; she’s close with you & your sisters. There’s no reason anyone should be creating drama over this.
I swear the word “wedding” is mentioned and people loose their minds.
LW, Jane may have made a faux pas but not inviting your brother, but this is really too much. Tell your parents they are bonkers. Is it possible Jane overlooked your brother accidentally, or that his invite was lost in the mail? (assuming she sent him a separate one- we had thank you notes never arrive which was frustrating.) IDK, I’d tell your parents (and brother) to grow up, and continue on being a supportive friend.
GG, do you have a brother? 😉
Sorry, I had to! I love you!
I do have a brother! But LW isn’t me, we don’t have any weddings to go to for the foreseeable future 🙁 This whole situation is more nuts than my sick self can handle.
haha, LW- even GG thinks your brother is over the top!!
I don’t know why people go so bonkers over weddings, LW, tell your family to stop acting silly, and let them figure it out for themselves if they’re coming or not.
I honestly was so, so surprised by the people who were pissed off that they weren’t invited to our wedding. ALL people that neither my husband or I had seen in 5 – 10 years. LW, you shouldn’t have to deal with this and your family needs to unbunch those panties. Focus on your friend and having fun being a bridesmaid.
How do people have time and energy for this level of drama and anger in their live?!
This family sounds totally exhausting, and not unlike my husband’s extended family.
Perfect answer Wendy!!
I can definitely understand why your brother was hurt, and I guess your parents are trying to be protective Mama Bears here. My brother is excluded from things ALL THE TIME, and it hurts him pretty badly. I think your brother needs some loving kindness from you and your parents rather than vindictiveness over the invitation. Let your parents skip the wedding over it if they want to. It doesn’t sound like they’re close to the bride anyway, and she would probably appreciate the extra guest spots.
Either way, its ridiculous to put this much on the bride. Her guest list choices don’t reflect her character. That is absurd. Remind your family how hard it is to plan a wedding, tell them to stop complaining to you about it if you like, and just go about your bridesmaid stuff as usual.
Why can’t it be papa bears ta? Whyyyy? God you’re sexist. And I need to lay off the coffee.
Hahaha
Well. Generally speaking, male bears are pretty crappy parents. If they don’t leave the little family group, sometimes they get all ragey and eat their babies.
Nature is amazing.
So now we’re stereotyping bears? Great. What has DW come to!?
Bears are nature’s jerkfaces.
http://video.disney.com/watch/bears-trailer-4e3dbde9026c2dae09ee0e8b
I don’t believe you.
Yeah, I kind of feel like the family should skip the wedding just because it sounds like they aren’t really close enough to the bride to be taking up the space. Sure, she invited them to be nice, but it sounds like the kinds of people that get invited out of perceived obligation but that you don’t really expect to attend…
I know that probably sounds kind of cold, but I know there’s some people I’d invite to my wedding because I “had” to who I would be fairly shocked if they actually showed up (partially out of concern for their boredom…).
I prefer not to be invited to weddings because they’re boring and you have to buy a stupid gift and I’d rather eat cake and drink too much champagne in sweatpants on my couch instead of stuck in nice clothes for 2-3 hours at a boring reception. So I assumed I was doing a lot of people a big favor by not sending them a save-the-date (it’s too early for invitations) to my wedding (which is going to be really, really small). But maybe I’ll be writing to Wendy in a few months asking why everyone hates me because they didn’t get an invite… Anyways, I think this bride did herself a huge favor by not inviting the brother if he’s this much of a bother.
Oh! I just thought of making the wedding “pants optional”. Now people are totally going to be upset that they’re not invited.
I’m totally on board with a pants-optional wedding, except there are certain relatives of mine I don’t want to see sans pants. Maybe have a ‘sweat pants encouraged’ wedding instead?
Good point. Also, we’re having a llama at the wedding (actually, Mr. LP would probably prefer that I say that *I’m* having a llama at the wedding), so inviting people to a pants-optional wedding with a llama in rural Vermont would probably give people the wrong idea.
You have mentioned this wedding llama before, and now it’s a pants-optional/sweatpants-encouraged wedding?! I am going to be very offended if I don’t receive an invitation (even if I don’t actually know you) and am excluded from this event. Then I will make my sibling write a letter to Dear Wendy on my behalf asking how he can handle me. I think that’s the life lesson I got from this letter today.
I’m so excited that my wedding llama is going to generate a letter to DW! Hooray!
And then I’m going to crash it and kidnap the llama, and you’ll have to write DW and ask her what you should do about this stranger in sweatpants who is now demanding ransom.
Adding that to my dream wedding pinterest site.
I obviously love this idea.
Maybe etiquette is to invite everyone in a family, but to not invite someone who doesn’t want to go, when you’ve already invited people that you probably are not close enough to actually want to spend tons of money on their attendance is not a big deal. To be honest, if I were her, I wouldn’t have even invited your parents or sisters, unless I was close with them, too. Leaving one person out is probably something to be avoided, but it’s not grounds for everyone acting like spoiled brats.
This is silly. If your brother doesn’t even really know her then he isn’t owed an invitation. I blame this on the school’s “if you hand birthday invitations out at school you have to give one to everyone in the class” rule. Sometimes you don’t get invited, big freaking deal. Grow up and move on.
oh good call. geez we teach people this behavior from so young!
Yup, special snowflake syndrome.
Oh no! I love the invite everyone rule, which apparently doesn’t exist anymore.
Really? I hate that rule. Why should a kid have to invite a kid who picks on them to their birthday simply because he’s in his class? Why should kids expect an invitation simply by showing up? What about the parents who can only afford to have a couple kids over? Why are we trying to shield kids from ALL PAIN EVER when situations like this are perfect age-appropriate lessons that the world doesn’t revolve around you, sometimes you get left out and that is okay.
When I first read this I thought “nah, ‘invite everyone’ is a good rule for school kids!” But damn, you make a good argument, lemon!
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Except what irks me is when all but a few are invited. Especially when those few are excluded for bad reasons. Like, when all the kids in class but the black kids get invited. (That happened once in the 6th grade; a friend invited me and all the other girls in our class to her sleepover except the 3 black girls in our class.) Or when the only kids excluded are the chubby ones, the nerdy ones, or the socially awkward ones – the ones that get bullied. I’ve seen that happen before too. And those situations break my heart!
I hate people who hate that rule, so there.
Seriously though, have you ever been the kid who was left out? Its a terrible feeling showing up to school on Monday and everyone’s talking about super fun party time and you realize you weren’t invited. If you have a party where only a few of the kids from class are invited, that’s one thing, but to leave off 1 or 2 kids is mean I think. I hadn’t thought of it as inviting a bully, but more like the bully not inviting you.
Sure, you can use it as teaching your kid that sometimes you get left out, but its still mean and it still makes the kid feel like shit. It doesn’t have to be shielding the kid from ALL PAIN EVER.
Yeh I don’t know why, but I was usually part of the 1 or 2 girls who was excluded from a party invite. This happened a lot 3rd-5th grade. Maybe it’s cause I was young for my age and probably socially immature, I don’t know. It wasn’t cause I was picking on other kids. But it fucking sucks when people hand out invitations IN school and only 1 or 2 people aren’t invited. That’s awkward. So I understand the rule of “if you are going to hand out invitations in school, invite everyone or mail the invites to people’s house”.
I’ll even say I think its fucked up that parents allow this to happen.
Yes, definitely. I was excluded a lot, and it was always easier to deal with when I could just deal with it at home. It’s humiliating on top of hurtful when you’re excluded in front of everyone, and everyone knows you’re excluded, and then your exclusion becomes a topic rather than just a hard thing to deal with.
oh well this would be greatly alleviated by parents not letting their kids be assholes. haha.
I passive aggressively called out a parent on this recently (as if you couldn’t tell this happened to Lil recently by my comments haha). Don’t be all friendly and sweet to me when last weekend you made my kid cry because your daughter is a bitch and you’re ok with it.
Tell us what you said!
They started chatting with me, so I “apologized” for Lil missing the party but she must’ve lost the invite. So they awkwardly said she wasn’t invited, so I said OH, I told her the invite must’ve been lost. Let’s keep this between us since she already cried over missing the party when she thought she WAS invited.
Lil didn’t really cry but whatever. F those people.
How old is Lili? Cause I have to say if she is in middle school/junior high then it is more than appropriate to be able to invite who you want , and know who you like and don’t like, and act accordingly. Forcing young people together beyond the toddler/setting up playdates for them age just sucks IMO.
Even if invites are handed out outside of school the event will still be discussed on Monday… whether it was a birthday party, concert, camping trip, whatever. At what point do you think it is appropriate to let kids decide for themselves who they want to spend their time with? seems like a good empowering lesson to learn – instead of the you must still keep inviting the bully who you hate who treats you like shit to places…
No, not in middle/jr high school yet. I would agree with you if she were.
I remember the first time a classmate lied and said that my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. I knew it was a lie but just kind of went with it.
Then I’m almost certain I turned around and used that excuse on the only girl in my grade less cool than I was.
CATHOLIC SCHOOL IS A NEST OF BEARS AND HORNETS, LBH, SAVE YOUR DAUGHTER.
Hahaha. So she had a party last weekend for a public school kid (gasp! haha) and honestly, what a nice group of kids. Different vibe than the parties with kids from her class. I don’t know if its just her class or this year where they are learning to be bitches, but man. I really liked the parents too. She’ll be checking out the public middle school in April, which is where all these kids will be headed in Sept.
I liked this b/c I went to Catholic grade school (family not Catholic – random reasons), and I had a similar experience: we were jerks. Once I joined up with the public system in junior high though, I had a lot of fun.
I have been left out and it does suck. I’m sure it sucks seeing your kid being the one left out too. Yes, the 1 or 2 kids left out situation is wrong and that should be addressed on a case-by-case basis, letting the parents know that what they did is not okay. I imagine that situation is pretty rare though (class sizes here are 30-35 kids, who can afford those parties??) I don’t think that kids should be unable to hand out invitations at school to avoid those occasional situations the same way I don’t think all schools should get rid of the monkey bars because occasionally a kid breaks an arm.
yea i mean your kid -everyone’s kid, everyone in general- is going to be left out at some point in their life, multiples times. i would almost invite that experience so it isnt such a shock when it happens over and over for a kid?
Yea, I am only talking about the 1 or 2 kids left out. And I agree on the monkey bar thing, and even the trophy thing, this is just mean though.
I think the best thing to do there is to call the parents out on it. The teachers should say to the parents that excluding just one or two kids is unacceptable and if that is what they want to do then it those invitations should be handed out outside of school. The parents who allow their kids to act like assholes aren’t be called out on it if no one can hand out any invites at school and those kids won’t get the intended message.
Isn’t that only dealing with it after a child has already been hurt though? Birthday parties only happen once a year, so theoretically, this would happen year after year to some kids that way. The rule is a way to prevent people from being assholes. I guess I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
You can’t prevent all pain though and you aren’t teaching your kids how to cope in the world if you try to. I am all for preventing children being severely bullied but IMO these are great age-appropriate lessons in that sometimes people suck and you have to not place your self-worth in their actions. Kids need to fall down before they learn to pick themselves up and as hard as it is to watch, this is them falling down socially.
First, in general I completely agree with you that kids need to learn how to cope with nastiness, bullies, pain and not placing their self-worth in others actions.
HOWEVER, I don’t think making a kid invite everyone to a school-aged birthday party, or wanting all the class invited to a school-aged birthday party means you are trying to prevent your kid from EVER feeling pain or not letting them EVER learn how to cope.
Kids are assholes to each other every single day at school. They have plenty of chances to learn and cope.
You don’t have to invite everyone. You just can’t invite anyone at school without inviting everyone. They can just do the invitations after school hours. I love that rule, because more often than not, kids bully by exclusion.
Assuming your kid is the one being forced to invite a bully, why not use that as a learning experience for your kid. I’ve had Lil invite the bully before and told her maybe they are bullies because they are constantly excluded from things and feel defensive and left out. Once a kid is labeled a bully, they are fucked with that label. Why not turn it around to explain why some kids bully – because more often than not, I think its because they have bad home lives or no friends. Give them a chance to not be the bully, but to be included and have people be nice to them.
Yeah to this day I love the more the merrier philosophy. I’ve been shamed before for inviting everyone to everything when some people apparently don’t roll that way. They want to separate their friend groups and all this other weird shit.
im a more the merrier kind of person too, but… i wouldnt want to invite my whole class to my birthday. im a more the merrier person with people i like. lol
From personal experience, I can tell you it is unlikely that Jane will be the one who looks bad in this scenario. I teach in a very close-knit department, and we have a co-worker, Crazy Cathy, who is forever getting into feuds with the other teachers whom she feels have wronged her. Her most recent beef is with my aforementioned co-worker, Director, and his wife of two months, Mrs. Director, who teaches in our department as well. I’m friends with them, but not best friends, and I was a little stung but not entirely shocked that they didn’t invite me to the wedding, and I also kept my damn mouth shut because I am a classy bitch and I know there’s a shit-ton that goes into invitations besides simply how the couple feel about someone. Of the seven of us who are in the department who aren’t Director and Mrs. Director, three were invited. Two were in the wedding party, and one has been a friend of the family Director’s entire life. The only one who got butthurt about it was Crazy Cathy who has now decided since the Directors purposely cut her out just to hurt her…and it has gotten truly insane. She doesn’t know them that well, nor does she spend very much time with them, and yet she is somehow so exceptional that she above all people should have been invited??? Director has told me about all the drama and told me that of anyone he didn’t invite, he felt the weirdest about me given that we spend 50% of our work lives together but knows I don’t take much personally, and I told him I figured there were a million reasons that went into my non-invitation that had nothing to do with how much he and Mrs. Director consider me a friend. And it turns out that yes, that’s precisely the case. And it was one day, and it’s over, and the only one who looks silly is the one who has made it a Bug Fucking Deal that speaks to how the Directors have never liked her.
Look, people who look for reasons to be hurt will find them. You don’t have to join them on the hunt.
Classy bitches for the win. 🙂
For some reason your comment reminded me of that episode of friends where Monica gets upset about not being invited to a cousins wedding when Ross was. So she makes Ross take her as his plus one, then finds out the groom was her ex.
*big fucking deal. Bug fucking deal would be a little gross.
So your brother wouldn’t have gone if invited and your best friend isn’t close with your family, but somehow everyone is mad? I don’t know. Weddings really do equal crazy sometimes, that’s why I had one and only one. I’ll elope if marriage number two happens for some reason.
For my own wedding, I invited my second cousin, her husband, and her one daughter because we were close in age growing up and spent a lot of time together growing up. She had another daughter who was in and out of jail for numerous things and who I talked to maybe once in my life who I didn’t invite. It wasn’t on purpose but we just weren’t close because she was always in some constant cycle of being arrested and my grandmother threw a fit. You can’t please everyone and invite everyone but you can support your friend, and that’s all you need to do in the matter. Let everyone else do whatever silly, wedding related drama stuff that they choose to do and stay out of it.
When we made our wedding guest list, we had the people who we really hoped would be there (close friends and family), and the people we were obligated to invite (extended family, parents’ friends we don’t know well). We didn’t have much RSVP drama, but what little we did came entirely from people who got courtesy invitations (i.e., people whose presence was of less importance to us). Funny how that is.
LW, your parents got a courtesy invite. The bride will probably not care if they are there or not. For them to attempt to manipulate the guest list by threatening to boycott is misguided — they are way overestimating their importance on guest list.
If they are determined to take it personally, there isn’t much you can do. I would just encourage them to make a decision and RSVP on time. If they decide not to go on account of your brother, that’s fine, but under no circumstances should any of you bring that up with the bride, and your parents should get over it.
People got super uppity about invites at our wedding. Other people created a ton of drama surrounding who was invited and who wasn’t. People RSVP’d back for people who weren’t invited… It was crazy. And I had a guest list of 200 people. In some ways I took it as a compliment because they knew my wedding was going to be so awesome, but mostly I thought it was petty and obnoxious.
In this case, I would tell your family to lump it and stop being so ridiculous. If this is all they have to worry about in their lives they are pretty lucky. And definitely don’t bring this up to Jane because frankly, the people who caused guest list word for me at my wedding? I look at them a little differently now.
Yes to all of this. Granted, it’s only been four months since I got married, but I still avoid a lot of the people who gave me crap about our guest list. Many who were sweet as pie to me at my bridal shower, and then turned around and bitched about me to my husband and MIL.
One more thing: I also would caution your family against targeting their grumps directly at Jane. I certainly can’t speak for her weddng, but me, my husband, my parents and his parents all had a say in the guest list, and our final guest list was determined by our budget (like most). A few of MIL’s friends sent her passive-agressive emails, bitching about the guest list and ending with, “but we know the bride gets the final say, so we understand if we can’t bring our dog and ten grandchildren.” It was really hurtful at the time, especially since I had known some of these people for a long time, and they clearly were taking their crap behavior out of me and looking for someone to blame. It’s just so not worth the unnecessary anger.
YES!!! If we could afford it we would invite everyone, but we can’t. People think the bride is 100% responsible for all decisions when really it could be the groom, bride’s parents, or groom’s parents. The bride has enough stress planning a wedding so to bitch at her is really rude and thoughtless.
Definitely agree with this 100%. This whole topic is giving me wedding flashbacks.
THANK YOU. I can’t tell you how crazy I felt at certain points when everyone kept pointing fingers at me.
Ugh I hate the mentality that the bride is the only one making decisions. It drove me up a wall that every one kept saying that while we where wedding planning. So yeah LW, maybe it wasn’t Jane who excluded him from the guest list, maybe it was her fiancé. Or a total accident!
Sounds like a bride that went out of her way to be inclusive. I was friendly with the parents and siblings of some of my bridesmaids but I couldn’t afford to bring them all to the wedding. The fact that this bride tried to include anyone and everyone connected to her seems really generous to me. She doesn’t know the brother so she probably never considered.
I agree this is a mountain out of a molehill. I hope the bride doesn’t have to hear about it.
I haven’t read all the replies but will say that I am on the reverse of this. I am the only person out of almost my entire friend-group that is not invited to one of my best friend’s little sister’s upcoming wedding. She is not just my best friend’s little sister, I have known her for forever (and was actually there when she and her fiance first started to date) and when she graduated college she got incorporated into our friend group as did her now fiance. I know her family very well and her sister was my roommate for four years in college. We were on tons of co-ed sports teams together, went on many vacations, hung out pretty much every weekend, in short had the exact same relationship she does with all the other people she did invite to her wedding. She even mailed the invitation for my roommate to our shared apartment. I mean were my feelings a little hurt, yeah. Would I personally ever do something like that, no. Especially the invitation part, she is inviting my roommates little sister and mailed her invitation to their home address where my roommate is every weekend and could have easily sent them both, but whatever. Have I seen her and her fiance since then and been pleasant and kind to them even though things are a little awkward as their wedding (about a month away) is always the main topic of conversation, yeah. Do I think I was purposefully excluded, yes but it is their wedding and their money and it doesn’t revolve around me. My bitterness over this effects noone but me, so I choose not to be bitter and make a big deal of it, because that is dramatic and childish. Do I think sometimes that people get caught up in wedding stuff and don’t realize that what they are doing could be construed as rude, yeah. Sometimes people are thoughtless and sometimes it has nothing to do with you. Honestly LW tell your brother to suck it up. If he doesn’t care he wasn’t invited then no one else should, including your parents. If they are all that offended, then tell them they shouldn’t go and like others have said the bride will probably hardly notice and you will be so busy the day of it will probably be nice that you don’t have to worry about entertaining your parents who don’t know many people at the wedding.
WWS. And what everyone else said. Those parents should not be turning their response to an invitation into a statement. It was nice of her to extend a courtesy invite to the parents, and the sisters were invited because they’re friends of the bride and there were already significant others invited on top of that. An additional wedding invite to someone they don’t know and who wouldn’t have come anyway? So not important. And your parents are giving way more weight to their son’s feelings than they should.
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I don’t think you should have to deal with your family’s drama, but if you do, maybe point out that it’ll be a couple less people to invite when time comes for his wedding. Sometimes when my parents are invited to a family friend’s wedding or some friend of mine from growing up’s wedding and I feel a tiny bit excluded, I just remind myself I wouldn’t have put them on my guest list either, even if I might have invited their parents.
Oh and this is going in my list of reasons not to have a wedding. Thanks!
Something that would be unlikely and yet completely hilarious: if the brother were a backup invite and when the parents refused to go, that meant he got an invitation. I realize that isn’t likely, but still, SO FUNNY.
Eh, it was rude and exclusionary to invite all but one member of a household. Just a bit thoughtless, not a huge deal. This is probably why my mom has encouraged me to invite anyone and everyone in my (albeit small) family to my wedding. It’s just what you do in my family.
I’ve really enjoyed a fairly drama free engagement thus far, but it is startling how many brash opinions people have about weddings in general. Everything from random acquaintances knocking my wedding because my fiancé was once married, to my FMIL deciding to make my jewelry for the big day without asking if I was okay with that… everyone has a particular way they think a wedding should be. You can’t please everyone, so worry about pleasing those you care about.
I will say in my experience that the brides who are typically involved in this kind of wedding invite drama are often the brides who make a Big Fucking Deal about their wedding. Which is fine! But if you’re going to post a million updates on Facebook about your wedding, understand that people might actually care when they’re not invited!
Sob you need to update us on the in-law drama! You’re the worst at telling us just enough to get us interested and then disappearing. DISH!
Ha, well what would you like to hear about? I just took a trip to Utah (where most of the in-laws are located) and I’m scarred.
For starters, Nigel had a recent falling out with one of his cousins who he considered a best friend. They had a falling out a couple months ago over religious beliefs, basically, and cousin is a toxic, bitter dude. This cousin got married in hush-hush fashion a few months ago so that his now-wife wouldn’t feel guilty having pre-marital sex, but she didn’t want her parents to know that they eloped (because they would stop helping her financially) so they planned a wedding reception to take place in mid-April. Meanwhile, Nigel’s mom wanted to throw us an open house/wedding shower, so we traveled up there last week. As it turns out, after the falling out (and coincidentally after his mom announced the wedding shower date!) his cousin moved up his wedding reception to fall on the same day as our wedding shower. He moved it up 6 freakin weeks. So Nigel’s extended family (who I was supposed to meet while in Utah) had to pick between the two events. So, stupid drama.
ALSO I found out that SIL has talked a lot of shit about me to some of Nigel’s closest friends! Before I’d even met them! Ugh. That was the shittiest feeling in the world. Meeting my fiance’s friends and finding out they already had a negative perception of me. Luckily they told me about it (albeit after a few drinks) and told me that despite everything she’s said, they really like me. They told me that SIL seems to “thrive on drama” (ya think?). I don’t think anyone takes a shit-talker seriously, anyway, but still. The fucking gall. This is the 3rd time (that I know of!) she’s tried to paint me in a negative light to either Nigel, his friends or his family. It’s like Mean Girls all over again. Unfortunately this girl is so intertwined in my life, I don’t know what to do about her.
Yikes I will never understand her motives. You’d think she would want a good relationship as well. Does avoiding her help? Like if you two just don’t hang out with the BIL and her is it better?
Yeah, I don’t plan on hanging out with her after this latest incident. I’ve made so much progress with BIL, which is good, but I can’t TRY with her anymore. I approached her on 3 different occasions to try to get to the root of our differences and she played dumb every time. Just a couple months ago the 2 of us were hanging out and I said some drunken thing about how I just wanted to put everything behind us because it’s all so stupid and we’re sisters blah blah blah and her response was literally:
“Yeah, what happened between us?” asked in a ditsy voice. So finding out that she’s been spreading negative things about me while playing dumb to me is so infuriating.
But it’s so much more than hanging out. Especially since we’re getting married in 2 months. A lot of Nigel’s family is flying down in a month to attend a different wedding shower and it’s gonna be a weekend full of family events and I won’t be able to avoid her. All of 20 people are attending our wedding in Mexico and she’s one of them and it makes me sick. And she’s not just an almost-SIL. She’s the wife of my soon-husband’s business partner (a business that I’ve recently started playing a major role in). She’s my neighbor, too.
They’ve been out of town all week so I’ve had some time to process it before approaching her about it. Nigel is having some beers with his brother tonight and is going to bring it up. There’s a 90% chance BIL will not bring it up to his wife because he doesn’t want to deal with the drama, so maybe I’ll email her about it. I don’t know, I just don’t want to deal with her.