AIBU to want to tell my selfish sister in law exactly how selfish she is?

[childminder90210]

We are having a meal to celebrate parents in law golden wedding. We have to travel a fair distance to attend and sister in law also coming over a fair distance. I assumed meal would be on day of actual wedding anniversary but sister in law has said she wants to go out with friends that evening to a reunion of friends from years ago with some coming over from Australia instead and the meal will be the next night. Now the friends reunion is actually happening both nights but she wants to go on the anniversary night as more friends are attending. I am really angry at her selfishness, we re celebrating 50 years of her parents being married, thats a fairly big deal in my book, so I think she is being selfish buy insisting its not on the day of the wedding anniversary or am I just being petty?

If you opinion is just based on this one event (no history) then I think your views are unusual - a lot of people tend to celebrate big events on the nearest weekend to the actual event.

In this individual incident I don't think she is being unreasonable. If there are people coming to the reunion on the first night who she hasn't seen for years and who live in Australia so she won't have the chance to see again for several more years, then it's not intrinsically unreasonable to plan her parents' anniversary celebration for the next night.

But I gather there's a history here with this SIL that is colouring your judgement of this particular incident.

Are you going to be with your PIL on the actual date of their anniversary? If so, instead of wasting any more energy being pissed off at your SIL, why don't you and your DH focus on what you can do to help your PIL celebrate?

PIL dont want to do anything on the actual day as we will be having the celebration the following day already suggested that. She does have a history of getting her own way no matter what and usually that means my DH has to fit in with her and her plans, no matter how that affects him, I just figured this one time her Parents would be more important and we could all work together to make it a great night.

YABU. It doesn't sound like anybody has been put out and lets face it the most important people in that regard are her parents, it's their party after all. If they are happy then everybody else should be happy.

(OT - AccioPinotGrigio, I think you have my new favourite MN username)

i think yabu aswel, if your pil's dont mind i dont see why you should. My mum and dad celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary a few years ago now, it was arranged for the day after as they wanted something more intimate for the 2 of them on the actual day.