Sibling’s secret wedding

I think they are very unreasonable to have been.shouting at you and letting rifts develop. It should have been accepted graciously that you couldn't attend.

That said, their wedding was announced right after your save the date. You hadn't spent all the money yet so the potential to have put some aside to attend their wedding was there. It sounds like you plain old didn't want to (fair enough, i might not either) so didn't prioritise it. That is going to lead to disappointment for everyone else even though you aren't unreasonable to not go. My guess would be the way that was all discussed/handled may be part of the issue. Also, you do sound very dismissive of your sibling for the fact it is their second marriage, the way their first ended etc. Is it possible that sense of superiority came through when talking to family? If it did then it might be the real reason for the rift, it's just not very tangible so things like 'you didn't care enough to come' get focused on.

I wouldn't focus on the legal ceremony at all. They didn't want people to think of that as their wedding which is their prerogative.

Two failed marriages and a family rift that developed when a sibling didn't want to attend their second wedding... I would imagine that your sibling has some personal.issues going on, and might carry a lot of shame and feeling inferior.

@IsitanIssue Do you think your brother is finding it difficult to let go of this because he is ashamed/embarrassed that his second marriage has failed?

If I try to imagine myself in his shoes. I've already been married once and it ended badly. A relatively short time later, I decide to get married again, and this time I'm so sure of myself that I ask all my loved ones to fly to the other side of the world to celebrate with me. Only my sister, recently married herself, declines to come. She claims it was a financial decision but I don't have sight of her bank accounts, I get the impression that she's judging me a bit for it being a second marriage, and I interpret her decision not to come as a vote of no confidence in my second marriage. Then my second marriage fails and in my head my sister becomes the person who correctly predicted that it wouldn't work out. And because I'm ashamed/embarrassed that I made the rest of my family spend all that money to celebrate my incredibly short lived marriage, I can never admit that my sister actually made the right call not to come, so I have to remain angry with her about it. (As do other family members who possibly regret spending all that money but can never say so, and prefer to focus their ire on my sister who saved herself thousands of pounds.)

Well, you can learn from your awful behaviour and not make the same mistake again when you are invited to their next wedding.

Then you can say you've been to the majority of their weddings, or that two out of three isn't bad, etc etc.

I’ll level with you - I hate abroad weddings because there is so much expense that people expect from their guests. I’d be really annoyed if I’d spent it and then the whole thing broke down straight away. But the OP seems to be using the fact that it was a second marriage to help prop up her argument to not go (well in advance of any split unless OP can see into the future).

I just think that if my sibling had implied in any way that my wedding wasn’t worthy of as much effort because it wasn’t my first marriage, I would be pretty upset.

Its an invite not a summons, nobody 'has' to attend a wedding.

If the wedding is the 'legal' signing of papers or not does not matter one jot.

Stop being so judgemental and trying to 'cheapen' their day as 'lesser than' yours to justify your lack of attendance to yourself.

You didn't go... its done, doesn't really matter and won't change but trying to drag them down certainly won't make you come out on top.

It's mind boggling to me that your sibling is niggling about you not attending their wedding abroad when they are now divorced. Do they have nothing else to talk about ?

this is why me and my DH went off and just got married! when we got engaged we were so fed up of family telling us what we could and could not do.. all the adults kids wanted new outfits for them AND their partners, we were given a date by one sister as that was the only date she was available.. we had the whole 'i'm not going is so and so is going' and the 'you'd better not sit us next to so and so'... in the end we just upp'ed and got married.

i do regret some of it.. some of my own family refuse to speak to me still (11 years on) because they didn't get THEIR wedding invite!!

Wait, so your brother is still giving you a hard time for not getting into financial difficulties to fly to the other side of the world and watch him marry a woman he is now divorced from (and had, in any event, secretly married close to where you live beforehand, without inviting you)?

"It already has failed!"

Missed that bit but am unsurprised. Even more reason to celebrate not going to their fancy abroad wedding that was fake and also ultimately failed.

What's done is done. Let it all blow over now, and in time the other relatives will realise that they have been unreasonable towards you.

As for your sibling - well just keep as far away from them as possible.

It already has failed!

Sometimes you just can't figure out a way to be there if it will cost thousands of pounds that you don't have.

And frankly, thank goodness they didn't say, "fuck it" and whack it on a credit card, because it sounds like they'd still have been paying for it after the not so happy couple had split up.

Your sibling is feeling sensitive and defensive because it is a second marriage and the first one ended quickly due to an affair. They interpreted your non-attendance as judgment.

So I think YANBU and can ignore their drama. If they cared about you being there, they'd have invited you to the local wedding.

What a pair of dicks. No idea why your wider family are endorsing their nonsense. You'll have the last laugh when it fails.

They could have invited their UK based family to the legal wedding though, rather than give them the option of spending thousands to attend the abroad wedding or missing out on all of it.

You mention they were residents of the other country. Does that mean they lived there at the time of the wedding or just that they had citize ship? If the former or if a significant portion of family lived there, I would not count it as a destination wedding. It would simply be getting married where they live or in their hometown.

we went and had our wedding ceremony in our hometown. It was easier for us to travel than more of our relatives. We got legally married where we actually live because it was simpler and saved on travel days. We didn’t tell anyone because it wasn’t relevant. The spiritual celebration with friends and family is not that closely linked to signing a document in a government office.

if your sibling had a wedding where they live as opposed to a destination wedding, I’m not surprised by the rift. The end result is the same, you need to travel, but only one is done out of pure self-interest. Sometimes you just have to make an effort and figure out a way to be there.

Hi OP. I think the UK marriage is a bit of a red herring. There are lots of couples who get married abroad who would undertake a UK wedding here first- it prevents any of a number of legal issues emerging later. I think it is generally accepted that if a wedding takes place abroad then there will be some people- even close ones who simply cannot go due to cost, health, time of work and other issues. So I think not going was ok. However, I have also heard some people planning an overseas wedding where the bride has added- and these will tell us who are true friends are- which is just wrong in my head. I think just distance yourself?

Also, just to add- the ‘secret’ legal wedding isn’t the issue

Hmm, the title of your thread suggests otherwise.....

The context that they have since split up is relevant though, isn't it? I hate to think how much money all these family members spent flying to the other side of the world to attend this wedding when the marriage was so short lived. If I were the OP I certainly wouldn't be spending a lot of money to attend his third wedding.

I don’t think it matters that they got legally married locally, they considered their abroad wedding the proper one.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable you couldn’t attend for financial reasons. Did anyone try to help make it possible for you to attend?

I find it quite grim that you’ve basically written that your wedding was the more important one because it was your siblings second marriage. It obviously didn’t diminish how important it was for them, and I’d have shouted at you too if you made me feel like you wouldn’t attend my wedding because my first marriage didn’t work out.

So it's not even that your sibling getting married shouted at you for not going? It's because other family members who for some reason conducted a 'heated debate' about you not attending the overseas wedding would have been less 'heated' had they known the legal wedding had already taken place?

Surely that's on these other family members for pitching a fit about a non-event, not on your sibling and the person they were marrying?

I mean, are you all terribly hot-tempered, liable to hold grudges, and involved in one another's business or something? It just sounds a bit mad, all this 'heated debate' about someone else's wedding.

You also do sound slightly as if you're determined to make this your sibling's fault, with all that extra information about it being their second marriage, the result of an affair, and that their previous wedding had been less than five years earlier, and it being your first marriage. Look, you declined to go to your sibling's wedding, whether it's because you couldn't afford to or just didn't want to. Own that.