10 year old snubbed at wedding

Why is it damaging to a child to consider her feelings as important?

This is true. People can only decide to blend the parts of the family they're in charge of.

I'd personally have taken 2 photos, to spare a 10 year old's feelings. But it doesn't surprise me that the bride didn't give much thought to the stepchild of a cousin on her wedding day (what is that, step cousin once removed?). It's just not a particularly close relationship.

And you really need to get a hold of yourself OP. There are many accounts on here of DHs getting pissed off when their DW manages to complicate their bio child's extended family relationships.

I think your mil sounds quite mean. Your daughter has known them since she was 3 and she doesn’t give her a birthday present. In her position I would 100% include her. They are failing to look at it from your daughter’s position as all she remembers is them being in her life. I would be stepping back from them tbh. They are being unkind to a child. I would hope your dh could back you up on this but he seems to be choosing his family.

I think for your oldest daughters sake I’d give up the pretence that your husbands family care about her, they clearly don’t.
They know they’ve upset you and instead of saying… Were sorry, we didn’t mean to leave a ten year old pushed aside they’ve doubled down with snide comments and birthday parties she’s not invited too.
You’ve sound realistic to me.. You don’t expect these people to love your daughter like a biological granddaughter, your fine for example knowing she isn’t included in there will. You just don’t want her feelings hurt on occasions like a wedding, it would have made know difference to let her in the photo, or at least tried to be more tactful.
Let your daughter know you’ve got her back but unfortunately some people are to stupid and mean to be around so going forward she won’t be made to attend events where she isn’t treated kindly, the same goes for you.
You can’t stop your husband taking your younger daughter separately but I hope his family realise that they risk their granddaughter growing up with the opinion that they are complete dicks for making her mum and big sister feel unwelcome.

Which only goes to show you should count to ten first. Unless exiting pursued by a bear, of course. 😀

Wasn't talking about the incident itself; was more referring to OP taking a stand over the shoddy treatment of her DD.

I'm sure everyone would rather the situation hadn't occurred. But OP was merely doing what felt right in the moment.

Not sure how any of this means that OP's MIL should view her sons's step-daughter as her own grandchild.

You can't force anyone to consider you family. The OP was the one to marry her DH. If she wanted his family to treat her daughter exactly as if DH was her father and not step-father, she should have checked beforehand.

The eldest DD is unlucky that her bio dad and his family are so useless. It's not DH's family's responsibility to fix though.

I do agree with this 👆
edited for typo

It’s not the same as that tho.

if OP and her husband split up they would potentially not see OPs first child ever again.

I can sympathise OP with why you got upset it seems pretty harsh. Is this one of many examples or are they generally inclusive of your daughter? I’d take guidance from that as to how to move on but to be honest if this is typical of them then there’s probably not much you can do to improve things. And if this is a one off and they were just thoughtless then there’s probably not much you should do as I don’t think you should make a big deal. Especially as it sounds like your daughter wasn’t too bothered by it.

Presumably that's what they've done, or the kid wouldn't have been invited? OP's overreaction at a photo might risk all that, and the husband's relatives might think it might not be worth reactions like that in the future.

And this is why it's so, so important to establish the lay of the land before blending families / going on to have blended families. As with every thread like this, people have strongly held and completely contrary views. Personally, I don't think any of these views are unreasonably held (everyone loves their children, nobody wants to be deliberately cruel to any child). But clearly people see things differently, so when getting together with a new partner it's so important to establish compatibility not just of the two people in the couple, but of the wider families, including any children.

I disagree.

I can (to an extent) understand excluding non related adults. No one wants a random ex boyfriend or girlfriend in a wedding photo at the end of the day, but a child… it’s a child?? Have one with and one without if you must, but excluding children is flat out mean. There’s kids in my wedding photos who I probably couldn’t pick out of a line up now. Doesn’t matter though because they look happy and cute in their little outfits.

Hard disagree. I think this viewpoint is extremely damaging, including to the child in question let alone her sister or any child-aged step-cousins.

Except apparently the feelings of the children, including her own ironically enough, that were upset when OP decided to create a scene in front of them.

The world, and entire family, and a wedding does not revolve around the feelings of one particular child.

But I’m cases like that, they are still family.

You're right, I did miss that bit. My bad.

In that case, OP's DH was completely in the wrong as well for going along with it and OP has every right to be hurt and disappointed that he didn't.

Everything I said still stands. My post was (quite obviously, I think) against people choosing not to treat children equally within families, not "against women".

Thats very sad, and I feel for them but surely people realise this can happen with biological family too? There was a research paper (i'll link yo it if I can find it) I read a while back that said that in the event of parental seperation over 40% of Grandparents lose contact with biological grandchildren. In some cases they may be able to take the parents to court to request access but this is a lengthy and expensive process with no guarantee of success. So by that logic no one should risk getting attached to their GC, blood or not.

For my wedding, the photographer advised that we have official photos both with and without steps, partners etc as you never know what will happen to relationships in the future. If you and your husband split, you could walk out of their lives completely with your child and they might never see her again. I understand them wanting photos without her, but I would also have done photos with her too as well.

How hard is it to just include everyone ffs. Spiteful cunts

A step-daughter in Elizabethan times would not have a living father to provide for her - re-marriage was to widows/widowers, divorcees were vanishingly uncommon. That aside, yes you are right though among the aristocracy illegitimate children were frequently included and used in the marriage stakes as well (a man who did not take care of his bastards was badly thought of). Most illegitimate children would end in a foundling home of some sort, of course.

God no I don't think everyone carries on like this.

Inlaws had Ukrainian refugees living with them for several years amd while there have been no weddings during that time, they absolutely would have been invited if there were. They might not be part of the family, but they were part of the household.

In total agreement with this

It's a reasonable view. Although I respect anyone who thinks through what they actually do to keep everyone comfortable whatever's "normally done".

When I got married, having been to some uncomfortable (for various reasons) weddings we did some things differently and one of them was a roving photographer to avoid all the photo awkwardness and hanging about hungry.

What comes through in the OP's post is the hosts weren't very interested in her feelings or her daughters' (plural) and no the event wasn't about her, but it's now really awkward on all fronts and blended situations do require tact.