“My Best Friend’s Wedding is Wreaking Havoc on My Family”
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 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 grown son is throwing a tantrum, then they’re the rude 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. 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
*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.
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.
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!
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!