Eldest Child and In-Law Wedding

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Brother-in-law split up with a long-term Partner at the beginning of the pandemic because of his unwillingness to get married. I think he was shocked that she left.

He is now marrying someone else. She seems a lovely woman; but consensus is he is marrying her as he doesn’t want to lose her.

DH is best man but children were not invited. MiL went batshit and I was upset. I think DH had his ego bruised that the kids weren’t invited. I said nothing and while I was upset thought it was their wedding.

They had a site that they signed up to and the bios of the wedding party were on and lo and behold there were a flower girl and ring bearer.

DH and MiL spoke to BiL and he seemed scared to rock the boat but on Friday invitations arrived for our youngest children that I share with DH. My eldest who is 12 is not included. MiL is not willing to intervene and DH spoke with BiL who absolutely won’t as bride.

DH has asked me to ask their dad to have her.

I am going to decline wedding. DH refuses point blank to let me decline for all the children. He wants his children there and thinks we will look stupid anyway if we now decline their invitations after all the fuss.

I didn't write the post. Jeschara did. Regardless, every word they wrote was true. The poor 12 year old is being let down by everyone around her.

I'm not making this up, it's there in black and white.

Yes, so we can see which bits you are rewriting.

Sorry, could you tell me what exactly you think I have rewritten?

You're free to reach a different conclusion about the situation from the one that I (and many other posters on this thread) have reached, but there is no point in arguing that I've made things up when the evidence is all there in the OP's posts.

How does the ex who he didn’t want to marry feel now he’s getting married to another woman?

If this is the way he treats his brother's family, in her shoes I'd be relieved.

My DH treats my daughter the same as her siblings in our house but doesn’t see how his family have to.

When his gran was 90 I was literally crying my eyes out when my daughter innocently skipped up to the photo opportunity and was turned away. I was in the vestibule sobbing with my then two kids and I was telling them I was ill. My husband couldn’t believe I was so upset. He said she was wasn’t descended from his gran and she knew that and just couldn’t understand what the fuss was about as she had been in other photos.

He is very black and white how he sees things. I know he loves my daughter but doesn’t see the issue with his kids going because they are related to the groom and she isn’t. I don’t know what I would say to the younger two if i stopped them going.

As I said when he spoke to BiL he talked about The kids meaning all three of them my MiL meant all three as well as her sister’s grandchildren.

I didn’t mention my upset about the original child-free wedding except to my husband and only said I was upset when MiL was ranting.

There is no right and wrong here. People have very different ideas about blended families. The plain truth about blended families is the tie is far more fragile than a nuclear biological family. They haven't known your eldest since she was born. If you divorced they would likely never see her again. Of course they want some photos without her in them. She will likely never be the same to him as his own children. He sounds like a very loving stepdad day to day and when challenged you said you have no complaints about how he treats her. I really wouldn't fall out over this. It just is what it is. Personally I wouldn't be attending. I would stay with my eldest on the day and do something nice.

This is a shitty situation OP.

I don't think I could have any respect for a dh who treated one of my children in this way.

It's great that he treats your eldest well generally but when push comes to shove, he's shown what his limits are.

He's left out your dd.

He's put you in a difficult situation and doesn't seem to understand why it would be difficult.

This kind of thing will happen again in the future.

I just couldn't be bothered with him.

I'd take your eldest daughter away for the most amazing time, maybe a weekend abroad in a hotel in the sun, or sightseeing maybe or even Disneyland Paris, something that she'll always remember doing, so whenever the wedding topic came up, she would always have happy memories and not a memory of being excluded. To leave one child out of 3 at home is awful and to remove a child from photos is despicable.

You still haven't answered though, how do you plan on telling a 12 year old who understand it was a child free wedding. Now its not but she still isn't invited but her siblings are?

As for what you tell the little kids the reason for not going. It's child free. They don't need to know any different.

If he can't invite all of them, then none of them go.

It seems you have went from all 3 of your children being left out of a special occasion to worse one out of three being left out. Age 12 is old enough to know if you are welcome. Stand firm my husband was working away once and his lovely family suggested I stay home and they would take our children to wedding. I made it clear our children were not attending any wedding invitation with neither parent there. I attended with the children we had a lovely day and I was not home leaving husbands family to tell other guests whatever they had plotted to say as to why I wasn't there . Family you can't choose them but you cannot take insults you would not tolerate from strangers either.
Interesting my SIL spent entire day pretending her son was at the dentist and grabbing my children for every photo I do not speculate but the link was pretty obvious.

Mil and Dh were wrong to push for the dc to be invited but for bil and sil to only invite 2 out of your 3 dc is absolutely disgusting behaviour! None of my dc nor myself would be going if this happened in my family!

So rude to exclude one child.

Neither I nor my children would be going.

I will have to tell her with as little drama as possible that only biological family are invited and we can now do something good because we won’t have little ones with us.

I am going forward, going to stress that these people are only related to the younger two. She doesn’t have to bother with them.

When I asked what I would tell the other ones it was related to them finding out they were invited and I wouldn’t let them go because their sister who isn’t related wasn’t invited.

As someone said it is what it is. There is no chance the younger ones won’t go to a family wedding on their side. I am just very upset and can’t see anyone changing their mind.

The DH didn't cause this mess. His brother being thoughtless and it's forced an unpleasant situation. If the DH tried to discipline or have a day in his stepdaughter's upbringing he'd be told to step back and that she has two parents. You can't have it all ways!

20 years into being part of a blended family we’ve learned to pick our battles.

We’ve seen it all. My DH family embraced my 4 as their own, my late MIL and FIL were fantastic grandparents. My kids were treated identically in their wills.

My FILs sisters didn’t get it and when when their mother died, mentioning her great grandchildren in the will mine were excluded because unless blood related the law doesn’t count them. My darling FIL put my kids share in himself so they didn’t feel differently.

My own family.... slightly weird. My own step kids not treated the same by my parents. My brothers step kids fully embraced.

My DHs ex wife expected him to take day trips with just his children and couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t endorse that.

We now have step grandchildren of our own, and they’re treated alike because we’ve had years of experience of blending. We have custody of 2 of my bio grandchildren, and you’d not know they weren’t biologically related to my DH because we simply never make a thing of it.

People don’t always understand how it should work, and that’s ok, sometimes we still fuck up. It’s a learning process. The immediate family unit is the important bit.

If asked we have 6 kids. 10 grandchildren. Our kids will say they have 5 siblings. The word step rarely makes it unless clarifying when asked. The little ones are all ‘cousins’.

so long as OPs home unit is secure and they are happy in it then that’s all that matters.

Sad update but I hope it works out for oldests sake.
My DH and I have 2 together and I have 1 from a previous. I would genuinely be taking my kids to stay with my family the weekend of the wedding. And have a really nice special weekend together.
'Step' word doesn't happen in our family. And the people who do make that an issues aren't part of our lives.
Its no negotiable for DH and I.

calm, sensible post

Enjoy your day with just your eldest, I suspect you'll have a lovely time with her. I wouldn't want to look after small kids at a wedding, it's always a bit of a pain in the arse imo, I'd rather leave them with grandparents! So now that's your DH's and MIL's job, whilst he also tries to juggle best man duties. Serves them right really.

This sort of thing is why I think blended families are so often cruel for children, especially when there’s only one child that’s not biologically related to the wider family. It may be in the parents’ interests to have a new family and more babies but it’s shit for the eldest child.

You’re dealing with it as best you can OP.

This - I feel sorry for your DD too. Poor kid really is a 2nd class citizen in her own family.

Threads like these make me wonder how on earth anyone in good conscience can lay claim to loving their kids and yet letting them be treated so poorly in their own homes. Step families are the worst when you read threads like these & it's always the kids that suffer.

Agree.

For God's sake don't take DD to Disneyland to make up for not being invited to her step uncles wedding! That's a whole other MN thread and world of pain right there.