AIBU?
to have to stay in expensive hotel for sister's wedding even tho' we've got a cottage 15 mins away
hex · 05/06/2007 21:14
Sister's getting married...demanding we all stay in the mansion hotel she's marrying in - at £145/night. We've already forked out £280 for flights and a cottage (£870) fifteen minutes away from hotel. Our dd (aged 2) will want her bed at 10pm latest - so we'll be in our room from then - and we won't see them at breakfast cause..well..it's been their wedding night and our kids wake at 6am so we eat early. Am I being unreasonable to think she's being totally insensitive to our financial situation (only one of us works)?
LemonTart · 05/06/2007 21:20
no! Stick with your plans - put your child and common sense first. Just be tactful about how you tell her - pick the right moment etc etc Ok so she is being unreasonable but emotions and common sense can vanish when people get tied up in their wedding plans - try to be a little understanding of her madness! She is your sister.
Just tell her that you think it would be better for your daughter to be settled in one place rather than a hotel and a cottage and that you are sure she will understand why DD has to come first!
It could be a comfort security thing wanting everyone around her on her special night - also wanting it to go on longer and longer into the next day helps make it feel "bigger". Also, if she is talking big figures on dresses, flowers, catering etc 145 a night might not seem a lot right now in her head - we know it is, but in perspective it might not..
hatwoman · 05/06/2007 21:32
why does she want you to stay the night? if it's because she doesn't want you to go back to the cottage at 10pm could you just say that dh/p will take dd back and you'll stay late? and/or if it's because she wants people round at breakfast just tell her you'll pop up to the hotel for coffee. she is being totlaly unreasonable btw - in fact bizarrely so imho, and these suggestions are not intended to be ideas for compromise or appeasement but just things you might do anyway which will highlight how ridiculous she's being getting at all het up about where you actually sleep
hex · 05/06/2007 21:34
mum's on her side (she has fantasies of wanting us all to be like the Waltons - even tho we're not that close and I don't really get on that well with sister who's always very cool...like, this is the one who couldn't be ar**d to send a congrats card to me on the birth of my dd, despite multiple IVF attempts and emotional agony for years...)..if we can't face the confrontation, do you think it's acceptable to forego on the wedding present then?
hex · 05/06/2007 21:38
I think what might be going on is that she and her dp have agreed with the hotel that they will fill it and if they don't, they have to pick up the tab..in fact b-in-law said sthg about this so it deffo is the case. Think it might be a smallish hotel - boutique style which has about 10 rooms or so (just enough for family)..but I think it's abit of a cheek really. We've rented the cottage cause travelling all the way down from the North to South coast is too far just to stay one night..so it's ended up being our summer holiday...not somewhere we would have chosen ourselves but we didn't have much choice
Aitch · 05/06/2007 21:38
what has she said when you've explained that you'll have to go upstairs and stay with your child anyway, hotel or not. (recent events, etc... )
it's just ridiculous, you'll be back at the hotel in the morning before any of them have surfaced, i'll bet.
but seriously, if you can't bear that confrontation then you'll never take the heat on the present...
hex · 05/06/2007 21:43
apparently there's 80 people in the evening so you think there'd be SOMEONE who wanted to drink and not drive home (could always auction the room on the night I guess...recoup some of the expense we've forked out!). With the present, they've asked for Debenhams vouchers, so the coward in me wonders that by the time they've opened all their cards and vouchers, we'll be long gone
Sparkletastic · 05/06/2007 21:51
HATE the vouchers thang too but best not get everyone started on that . Have had similar pressure from friends / family wanting to book out all rooms to bring their costs down. They should have bluddy well checked with everyone 1st if that was the plan IMO!! Bridezillas have to be restrained at some point in the proceedings otherwise it'll just go from bad to worse...
hex · 05/06/2007 21:52
The booking is being done via them so we have to tell them whether we want a 'small' standard room in which we can squeeze extra bed and cot(£135 plus £15 for a bed (for dd1 aged 6)...so can't just go at 10pm...aitch is right..it's obviously to do with money and not family..hadn't got that far in my own muddled outragedness..
Aitch · 05/06/2007 21:56
i'd just say that you understand that they're watching their costs but tbh so are you. better that they offer the room to one of their 80 guests and manage their own affairs and leave you right out of it, because you've got accomodation sorted, thanks.
and yes on the vouchers front, So rude. and debenhams shite imo...
hex · 05/06/2007 21:57
hate vouchers too...in fact this will be the seconf family wedding in 6 weeks - just back from my brother's (cost us £200 then to stay in their mansion hotel) and he said he wanted Thomas Cook vouchers cause they wanted to take their kids on holiday later in the year??!! You know, far from me being unreasonable, I'm starting to think I'm the only one who's sane in my family!..or am I totally out of touch with what people expect from others at their own wedding these days. I remember being really sensitive to people's differing financial needs and asked my family only to club together to buy me a pressure cooker (lol!! seriously!!) It cost them about a fiver each! I obviously really short-changed myself!
EllieK · 05/06/2007 21:58
we had this with SIL's wedding a few years ago, her and MIL wanted all the family to stay in the hotel so it 'looked good' and they looked 'well off' to the grooms family (only his parents were invited to stay at the hotel, not his 3 siblings )
we had just moved in together and i was still at college, exP would not stand up to them so in the end I did, told MIL there was no way we could afford it, and if we had the £10 a week she suggested we save, it would be going towards things we needed, not a hotel room when we had a perfectly good house 20 mins away.
in the end she decided to pay for it for us, just to 'keep up appearances'
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