Brother‘s Wedding and step-Kids

[ByScott]

I am a 42 year old man and have created an account as I have no one to talk to in real life.
My wife is perfect and has not asked me for anything in 10 years. On Boxing Day she asked me to refuse to be best man and not to attend my brother’ Wedding.
My brother is in his late 30s is marrying for the first time, a good 10years older than when my cousins and I first got married. My mother did have a cry when her sister wasn’t invited. Over Christmas the invitations were given. My wife and children are invited but not my step-children. They are 13 and 15 and have lived with me for 8 years.
I did speak to my brother but he said he couldn’t justify inviting steps and not aunts and cousins. I cannot imagine my own kids refusing to go. I am shocked by my brother not including them and shocked about my wife‘s stance.

@incywincybitofa

I'm neither the bride or the groom. I'm just applying common sense and understanding......that the bride and groom are entitled to invite those who they have some kind of friendship or other relationship with.

The stepchildren do not fall in either category. I'd be well pissed off if a stepchild got an invite and I didn't to my niece or nephews wedding as in this case the Groom's mother's sister is not invited.

The fact that this happened here is indicative of the guests being carefully selected.

@Professionalmum1

All the little people under his roof are his responsibility!
You dont marry a woman who has kids and not take the kids on as your own.

A stepchild is NEVER the same as your own IMO.

How you treat the children within your home is one thing, but you
cannot demand that other people treat or consider your stepchildren as yours just because you do.*

If the OPs parents leave money in their will to their grandchildren, is the OP to demand the stepchildren get the same and be treated equally?

Adopted children are absolutely not the same. I have a nephew that was adopted. He's treated the same as all my nieces and nephews.

An adopted child doesn't have other parents in his life...as the adoptive parents assume full parental responsibility.

Someone is going to get offended somewhere along the line but it absolutely shouldnt be a child.

At the end of the day... to the stepchildren.. this is the wedding of their stepdad's brother, who they clearly don't have a relationship with. So they shouldn't be upset. They're 13 and 15. Not babies and need to become resilient.

Do you think the OPs children get invited to every wedding or event that comes from their stepmother's side of the family? The relationship is exactly the same.

I don’t think cost is an excuse. You wouldn’t, say, invite all married couples but not those ‘living in sin.

Actually this does happen. A female relative was in a long term relationship...we all knew she wanted to get married. Her DP was stringing her along as far as we could see.

So friends and family started only inviting her to weddings without him. They decided that he clearly didn't value marriage, so he wasn't going to get to come to theirs.

She said he wasn't happy about not being invited to a few of the weddings. He didn't know the reason why.

She ended up meeting someone at one of those weddings who she is now married to. She still doesn't know it was a set up to this day.

That doesn't make any sense, though, as the OP himself said that she had never made a fuss about anything before. He had no reason to make that one up.

There’s a first time for everything. The OP has also said she was ‘sobbing’ about her children not being invited, to the point that her husband was prepared to skip being best man for his own brother. Then lo and behold, when he gives in and says he won’t go, she oh-so-graciously tells him he can go without her. She gets to look magnanimous when actually she’s been completely manipulative.

You really are determined to see her in the worst possible light, aren't you? Do you have something against stepmums by any chance??? If you look back through the OP's posts, she gave in when he told her how unhappy his DC were about him not going. (The 17 year old had said he would feel humiliated.)

You really are determined to see her in the worst possible light, aren't you? Do you have something against stepmums by any chance??? If you look back through the OP's posts, she gave in when he told her how unhappy his DC were about him not going. (The 17 year old had said he would feel humiliated.)

Why are so many people on Mumsnet determined to find absolutely any other explanation for someone disagreeing with their point? Within the space of a couple of pages I’ve been accused of having some weird issue with stepmothers and even being the bride in disguise! Anything other than a truth you and one or two others find unpalatable - that I don’t believe the OP’s wife is the wounded angel some have painted her to be.

I don’t have any stepparents so have no issues there. I just believe there is a lot of manipulation and emotional blackmail going on here. You say yourself she ‘gave in’ - like it was an enormous concession to ‘let’ her husband attend his own brother’s wedding.

@samdy I think that’s a very weak argument - that the bride and groom just invite people that they have a relationship with - when it comes to couples or family units or children.

So it would be ok if you knew one girl in a family but not the boy, to just invite the girl?

So it would be ok if you were friends with your brothers wife, but not your sisters husband, to just invite your brothers wife?

So all babies are out, they aren’t your friends?

So all kids that you found annoying were out?

So all adoptees fine, but not foster kids?

So if you didn’t like step mum she was not invited? (Read the boards, that’s happened!)

There is a line of etiquette and human decency here. That’s not excused by saying you can invite who you want. The wedding couple crossed it. And sister in law is irrevocably hurt. It’s caused serious rifts in their marriage. The brother is basically saying loud and clear that his brothers wife and the kids they feel are in their unit are excluded, irrelevant, outsiders and don’t matter.

But that were true, then surely there would be other examples of her manipulative streak, and the OP would have brought them up in a halfway 'drip feed'. He didn't, so it would seem out of character for her to behave that way.

No, I'm not saying she's an angel, no one is tbh. She was unreasonable to say he shouldn't go. I suspect that she realised it when he told her how upset his DC were and hence backed down.

I think that's a more likely interpretation of her switch, as it fits with how the OP described her, that she'd 'never asked for anything before'.

Different step families function in different ways. The ages involve work differently as well. OPs wife obviously felt they were integrated enough as a unit that they would all be invited. The brother and or his bride doesn't.
The OP seems confused by the responses on both sides, his brother and his wife.
So he asked.
I err on the side if it would be more reasonable to invite the step children and more respectful to Op and his wife that their whole family is invited as a unit.
The aunt is a red herring it's not like her husband is invited but she isn't.
Op married a woman with two kids they come into the family with her. No one is talking about inheritance or anything life changing just whether you do the wife the courtesy of accepting she comes with two children and so feeding them a meal along with other family and I presume friends.
The wife's hurt feelings are either understandable or irrational.
If the tables were turned would the OP have done the same to his brother? He seems genuinely fond of his brother so would he not want to ensure his brother and family were welcome to celebrate his day.

@SandyY2K

I would exepect any child under my roof, regardless of age to be treated like my own children and how do you know they dont have a relationship with the rest of the family? I dont remember reading that in the OP.

Also thinking up random senarios about inheritance and the like, just to prove your point, is not helpful.

90% of the comments say that the groom is being unreasonable and, therefore, so are you. Its not, however, unreasonable for people to think you have some sort of personal connection to this particular post.

90% of the comments say that the groom is being unreasonable and, therefore, so are you. Its not, however, unreasonable for people to think you have some sort of personal connection to this particular post.

Really? Out of how many millions of active users, you think there’s more chance of Sandy being someone with a connection to their OP than of her simply disagreeing with your view?

By the way, 90% is massively pushing it.