Am I unreasonable to be p***ed off with my daughter and her wedding?

[kathycraig79]

My daughter's wedding is this summer, we've been planning it together for months and we have genuinely had a good time doing so. However, my daughter is a vegan, and she is adamant that the wedding also must be vegan. This is fine with me, I support her wish and this is for her to decide. We sent the invitations (and I thought it would be a good idea to include the information about vegan catering on the invitations) and we have had many RSVPs basically saying they will not be coming if the food is vegan. I have to say this was unexpected, many of the family are quite traditional, meat-and-two-veg, but I did not expect this to be such a problem.

The thing now is that many of the guests are refusing to come, and my daughter is not willing to budge. I personally don't see the big deal in catering for everyone's tastes, it was a bloody nightmare to book the vegan caterer. I'm really getting frustrated, yesterday my daughter said she was thinking of cancelling the whole thing and thinks the guests are being unreasonable. Maybe I should not have put this information on the invitations?

Nickname
But I still maintain that this is down to bad press and prejudice.

Agreed - much of the dissent will be psychological. I think the best way of dealing with that is to offer some sort of buffet, or selection of items - it would be difficult for even the most cynical guests to object to every item and people will feel they are exercising preference, and have some choice, rather than feeling obliged to eat certain dishes. I also think it's very different, and much easier, to choose food by sight, rather than react to something unfamiliar on paper.

Menu sounds fab! Can I come please!

We had a vegan wedding. No way would I compromise my ethics for people who want to dine on the carcasses of slaughtered animals. No one who knew us (husband also vegan of course) would have expected anything less than veganism from us either.

Bet that was a blast, Lentil

Seeing the lukewarm reaction to the menu across the board how is your DD likely to react OP if people are just pushing the food around the plates? With a smallish wedding it's going to be more obvious than at a big do - although people will generally tell you it was lovely out of politeness. Not saying that she shouldn't have the food she wants but I imagine you both would be upset if it was obvious that people had brought their own food/needed to get food afterwards. It isn't clear whether the menu was devised by a caterer without much vision or if it is what the bride would normally want to eat (other than the specially requested halloumi dish).

A buffet sounds like a great idea.

Lentil just out of curiosity, what was your menu? There have been loads of really tasty suggestions on this thread. Id love a soup starter and a vegetable wellington. I agree that if you are a vegan host, the guests can eat vegan for one day. It wont kill them, but the menu is unimaginative and frankly bleugh for meat eaters. Its the caterers that havent dont their job properly here.

I always like a buffet. Otherwise a pasta dish would be good for sit down. You can cheer everyone up with gorgeous puddings.

Kathy. They don't sell it on. It was explained on a recent thread but the DM apparently get this for free and use screenshots so they don't have to pay the source. I'm not sure of the details.

Funny, i've been following this from the start and just had it come up on my facebook and thought it sounded familiar.

www.mamamia.com.au/vegan-wedding/

Just to confirm, the menu was not included on the invitation (it has still not been finalized), we just put a little bit at the bottom which said "Please be aware that the wedding meal will be vegan, which means that no animal products will be used. If you would like to find out more, please visit chooseveg.org". The website was my daughter's idea, not mine, I just wanted to simply state that the meal will be vegan.

If anyone can take a photo of the article in the paper I would be very interested to see it. I had no idea that journalists could just take threads and profit from them by directing traffic to their site. I never have liked the Daily Mail but I respect them even less now.

It doesn't matter ONE SINGLE JOT what the menu is.

You don't refuse to come to a wedding because you don't think you'll like the food being served. It's really simple. Anyone who thinks behaving like that OK is a colossal twat and the bride and groom are better off without them.

Just to confirm, the menu was not included on the invitation (it has still not been finalized), we just put a little bit at the bottom which said "Please be aware that the wedding meal will be vegan, which means that no animal products will be used. If you would like to find out more, please visit chooseveg.org". The website was my daughter's idea, not mine, I just wanted to simply state that the meal will be vegan.

Without wishing to condone your family's actions (because I agree that they are being very U and rude), this is your problem.

It's been well-established upthread that it was probably an error to include the vegan nature of the event on the invitation. However, the vegan website which your daughter wished to include makes it sound like she is proselytising, and your guests may well suspect that they are going to be preached at.

Blimey, this thread has reached Australia then!

It is very irritating OP, I agree with you. As a matter of fact, I have a wedding dilemma (I'm a guest at one that is happening in the next few weeks) and I honestly don't know whether my feelings on what I'm being asked to do are unreasonable or not. However, the dilemma is so identifying I just can't post about it because I would be mortified if any of the bride or groom's family spotted it. It's far too obvious and I can't take the risk it might end up in the DM!

"However, the vegan website which your daughter wished to include makes it sound like she is proselytising, and your guests may well suspect that they are going to be preached at."

I'm afraid that I agree with this. That was a mistake.

SapphireStrange
It doesn't matter ONE SINGLE JOT what the menu is.

In an ideal world, no it shouldn't. But there are ways to minimise unrest over the food, so that it's not an issue, and doesn't detract from the couple's/guests' enjoyment of the wedding.

Ooooh ok. I have to agree with others that including the link to the vegan website, with all its pictures of cute, sad-looking animals maybe wasn't the best idea. That does sort of make it seem like she's using her wedding, or at least its invitations, as a platform for getting a certain message across.

I still wouldn't turn down a wedding invitation because it it, though!

LOL the DM missed a trick by covering the story when they did. They'll have to print an update to cover the link to the vegan website

It doesn't matter ONE SINGLE JOT what the menu is

You're correct but whatever is served should be enough to fill a wee gap, as well as being enjoyable. But unfortunately it would seem the OP has been let down by a caterer doing the equivalent of an omelette as a vegetarian option.

fascicle, the fact that we don't live in an ideal world is the exact reason why the notion of good manners exists and why they should be adhered to. Behaving in a well-mannered way includes NOT having a strop and threatening not to attend a family wedding because you think you might not like the food.

jellybelly, nothing about that menu suggests to me that it wouldn't fill a wee gap. As for being enjoyable, well, that's a matter of individual taste, but again good manners applies; and it's nothing to do with this menu being vegan either. God knows I've politely eaten enough piss-poor meat/fish dishes at weddings in the past. The operative word being 'politely'.

I'll say it again: you're better off without anyone who threatens not to come to a wedding for this reason.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3623961/Bride-s-family-refuse-attend-wedding-vegan-menu.html

Here you go, kathy!

This wedding seems to have degraded into a case of two parties either for or against veganism or omnivorism. Offering a link to a website may have been interpreted as a way for the bride to confront meat eaters for political/idealistic reasons even if it weren't intended in this way. Many people refuse to engage with Jehovahs Witnesses knocking on their door in much the same way.

If you genuinely want these people to come, perhaps one solution may be for you op, as the person, who is ultimately responsible for the catering and satisfaction of the guests to contact those guests and temper their frustrations. Concessions on both sides may be now be required to avoid Wedding gate. However, I think the most important thing would be for these family members is to be heard.

It's outrageous that the DM has this on their website, (a) without approval from the OP and (b) without checking their facts - it could be a made-up story for all they know. Aren't journalists supposed to check their sources??

Twoweeks they don't need to ask the OP's permission to cite a thread on their website. It's in the public domain. MNHQ have commented on a few threads saying this (and of course it's massively in MN's best interest for the DM to be publishing these stories) Of course they don't give a shit whether it's factual- no names are published so it's not like anyone can sue!

It's just click bait, they run these shitty stories that are written by interns to get people to their site, they know it's not 'real' journalism but know people will read take a break like stories.

I think the menu suggested looks lovely. It is exactly what I would love to eat, so much nicer than the dried up chicken dinner you get at most weddings.

Thank you for the explanation NerrSnerr.
And I suppose if a thread like this did turn out to be untrue, they'd just make up some crappy "story" about that too.
Shabby in the extreme.