Not invited to best friends daughters wedding, asked to look after her dog!

[Lorrymum]

My friend of almost 40 years" daughter is getting married in the next few months. We have been very close, Christmas, birthdays, family bbqs etc.
Having spent months hearing about venues, dresses, menus etc. I have discovered I am not invited to the wedding. Fair enough, its her daughters wedding and she probably has no say as to who is invited.
Today my friend rang to ask a "huge favour." Would I look after her daughters dog during the wedding and the festivities? Not just pop in to walk and feed him but sleep overnight for 2 days?
I am now really cheesed off. Not good enough for the wedding but good enough to look after the bloody dog!
I don't want to risk our friendship but am trying to think of a plausible excuse. Wedding in 5 months.

@deciduouspants

The fact that you were invited to take care of the bride's dog shows how highly thought of and trusted you are. Given that the dog is not friendly this would be a great opportunity for you and the dog to bond.

If your friend of nearly 40 years knows the real you I'm sure she will not be
surprised by your attitude.

LOL... Are you the OP's 'friend?' If not, which member of the OP's friend's family are you?

Why the F does the OP need to BOND with the 'friend's dog?! Jeeeeeeez! 😂

If I were the OP, I would be giving this 'friend' a very wide berth from now on. Some friend!

When I was getting married, lots of people very helpfully tried to solve issues without me asking them to. I mentioned briefly to my mum well in advance of the wedding that I needed to figure out who would feed the cats while we were at the wedding and by the time I'd got around to prioritising forming a plan for it, my mum had come back with a whole list of solutions and had checked with some of her friends.
Obviously no way of knowing if that's what happened here, but it could just be that mum is trying to find a solution to the problem while the daughter is working through the billion other issues she has to deal with.

When I got married we had 3 horses on DIY livery , we planned the wedding around giving time for my dad and one of my sisters ( and wedding guests from the yard) to go up and put the horses in for the night and feed the teas . Had I had a dog , sorting him out would have been my priority before I booked anything .

I misread the beginning of this as you having arranged your wedding around the participation of the three horses, eg you had arrived on one, while the groom galloped up on the other, and the third bore the rings, or gave you away or something...

Can’t you just book a holiday for that weekend? My mum and dad weren’t invited to my cousins wedding and were extremely hurt about it because everyone else was invited. In the end they fell out with almost the whole family. They all refuse to accept that it wasn’t fair. My mum has always treated them all the same. So whatever anybody says about being ridiculous etc., if you’re not feeling it you aren’t obliged to do it.

I don't blame you for being cheesed off in these circumstances. You've known the bride all her life and are close family friends. The dog can spin too😂

I think it's fine that you're not invited to wedding and it's also fine for you to say you're not dog sitting in their house for 2 days.
Just send a nice wedding card but no gift. They'll get enough gifts from their guests!

Very much the same for my moms best friend. We visited and stayed with her as kids, grown up seeing her as an Aunty. And if she was alive today and I was getting married, I would absolutely invite her as she was like family.

So I can totally see why this would hurt OP. And then being asked to look after the dog instead, feels like a complete kicker.

I do get fed up of people on MN telling others they don’t have a right to feel hurt about not being invited to a wedding of someone they thought they were close to.

Of course nobody is obligated to invite anyone to their wedding, but that also doesn’t mean someone’s feelings about it are completely invalid. People are allowed to feel hurt by what is simply a feeling of rejection.

100% this. My friend is very hurt, after discovering this past weekend that she is not invited to the wedding of her daughter's husband's mother and partner - (so her daughter's husband's mum and step-dad.) This couple have been together for 6 years, and my friend has known them for 5 years (since her daughter met her husband.) They have met many times, and spent all day together at the wedding of their daughter and son last summer, and been out for meals a number of times, and are friends on social media etc...

This couple (in their early 50s) are inviting some 150 people, including half a dozen (new) work colleagues that they have known for a couple of months, several friends they have known for less than half a year, and a few neighbours they have known since January this year, when they moved into their new home! PLUS lots of other work colleagues and acquaintances. Yet their son's wife's parents are not invited. (My friend and her husband.)

She is very hurt and upset, but if she posted on here, she would be torn apart, and told she has 'no right' to be offended, because 'their wedding, their choice, la la la...' I think my friend not being invited is a disgrace, but I am sure some mumsnetters will disagree, and say she is being unreasonable! She hasn't told her daughter and son-in-law how upset she is. She said there is no hope if they don't already KNOW.

Thing is at no point has the OP said she’s told her friend how hurt she is. She’s kept those actual feelings to herself.

But apparently on MN you’re not even allowed to have any feelings about it. Otherwise you’re being ‘entitled’ if you have feelings 🙄

I don’t blame OP for not wanting to be the free doggy sitter after being made to feel so rejected. And again, she’s not telling her friend that she won’t do it because of her lack of invite to the wedding. She’s asked for advice on what excuse to give because she DOESN’T want to tell her friend how hurt she is.

Your friend's in-laws are being insulting by passing her over for virtual strangers. Shame on them. It means the friendship she thought they had, isn't reciprocated. Time for her to step back and find new friends.

This . MN is full of a lot of self intitles. A lot will be at the receiving end of whatever one day themselves. Their thinking will no doubt change!

No , it’s not bloody FINE! And why should she SEND a nice wedding card !

I probably would’ve said ‘Oh?? Am I not invited then?? Not even to the evening??’…. Then when she said no, I’d have said ‘Oh…. I can recommend a good dog sitter that I’m using for my nieces wedding.’…. And left it there.

And where is the wedding that she requires her dog to be looked after for 2 nights!! We spent our wedding night in a hotel, but has we had a dog we would’ve gone home after the reception.
i have 2 dogs now and anyone I trust enough with my dogs would 100% make any party / wedding etc list. Seems very very odd.
Glad you said no to having the dog, isn’t a nice feeling when someone over looks you but asks a favour…. And doesn’t even ask you themselves but gets their mum to!!

I would be cheesed off too.

Say no and get her daughter to find one of her friends to look after the dog.

Have people not read the OP? It clearly states the OP and bride's DM have been good friends for nigh on 40 years, so OP must have known the bride to be since she was born. She also says that the two families are very close.
If she is not invited to the wedding for reasons of cost and/or the B and G are set on a small and intimate occasion I'd have thought her friend would have told her exactly that.
As for the dog, no way. Tell your friend you've made other plans.

Just saw the update -- well done for declining the dog-sitting job.

@PrettyMaybug Thank you so much for joining me with such enthusiasm on my fishing expedition. I cast a line without a fly and you joined in. LOL, such fun.

The serendipity of your nom de plume, in this context, is wonderful.

I'm in no way connected to the OP. I'm just a fisherperson who enjoys "wetting
a line" occasionally.

'Sorry, but as we've discussed the wedding so much I thought I would be invited, perhaps this was unreasonable if your daughter and fiance are paying and have limited funds, so I do understand.
When I found out this wasn't the case, I booked a weekend away myself so afraid I won't be around to help out."
Maybe things are different now, but when I was a child I knew my parents' friends quite well, and it was usual for my parents to be invited to their children's weddings, and also for us to be invited as children.
My sister even invited parents' friends even though she and fiance were paying (my parents couldn't afford).
Now if for some reason the numbers are really limited, for example close family and friends only, I could understand not getting an invite.
But I do think it's insensitive to not invite you, then expect you to put yourself out in this way. There are boarding kennels. I am sorry your friend can't see this.

@Mainlinethehappy
'I think that this would by a nice gift for your friend and her daughter. I would never have thought to invite my parents' mates to my wedding, so I think you're making this very much about you, when it isn't.'

Isn't this interesting, how we all live in very different worlds? For me, parents friends who I grew up with were a very important part of my life, and much more part of it than many family members.
Fair enough though, if you only had a small wedding with close friends and family.
As far as the OP is concerned, the fact that she has been so involved in the process shows that she was considered important enough to be part of the planning stage, so it must be disappointing to not be given the chance to see the results.
As a grown up, even if the celebration is about me, I would be gracious enough to take into account the feelings of others especially those I'd known all or most of my life.
Obviously others just aren't brought up this way.

I would expect to be invited to a good friend's wedding but not those of their kids. I had four friends of my parents there at our wedding but people whom I'd come to regard as family over the years and we only have a small family ourselves so this was possible.

For others they may have to draw a line particularly at a smaller wedding and some only have family there or their actual mates, not the mates of their parents.

I'd also be happy to look after a friend's dog and wouldn't be offended in the circumstances if I were free that weekend.

I agree with discobeat 100%.

Did you have a relationship with the daughter when she was growing up? Do you like dogs?

Exactly. I said the same thing tons of pages back.

Just say 'sorry' and you've made other plans. Keep it simple and friendly.

There's no reason why you should have been invited to the wedding . Her daughter may just want her close mate.