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Original poster

Aftermath of brother’s wedding

373 replies

HuxleyDog · 20/04/2023 10:11

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4222570-Am-I-selfish-Brother-s-Wedding?postsby=HuxleyDog

I have tried to post a link to my only ever mumsnet post from 2 years ago.

After I posted my little boy came in early July following a good bit of drama. My brother relented and allowed all of us to come to his wedding however we chose to only go to the ceremony and he did seem pleased about this. On three occasions between birth and wedding my brother had the same conversation about what would happen if the baby cried. It got a bit heated. We decided to sit at the back but my dad insisted we come to sit with family. My boy slept throughout. Family did come to fuss but there was no distractions from wedding.

They now have a lovely five month old baby!

Relationship between us and sister-in-law has changed and we are not as close as we were, but my brother still comes round. I have stopped asking about her as he always seems embarrassed.

My sister-in-law’s father died a month ago very suddenly. My mother and I went round immediately but SiL was out with her mother. When she came in she screamed at us to get out saying it wasn’t about us and we’d ruined her wedding. She claimed that we didn’t care for her father but we should be happy we had saved money on the band. We had no idea what she was talking about.

It turned out my father who is divorced from my mother had withdrawn funding from their wedding when he found out my husband and baby were banned from wedding. When we were invited and my dad tried to pay Sister-in-Law’s dad wouldn’t take the money.
None of us knew this. My mother swears she knew nothing.
I texted my sister-in law apologising and saying that we knew nothing. It’s obvious that I am blocked. There’s nothing I can do is there? My brother just said to leave it. My dad is genuinely upset but still thinks he did nothing wrong especially as baby slept throughout.

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https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4222570-Am-I-selfish-Brother-s-Wedding?postsby=HuxleyDog

OP posts:
fhillipefloppe · 20/04/2023 10:33

I have read your previous posts. How did it end up that the baby attended the ceremony?

Not inviting your DH was spiteful but the baby is understandable.

Honestly they sound unhinged

QueenSmartypants · 20/04/2023 10:45

Didn't read the responses when I looked at your old thread but fairly certain this all comes from your sister in law. Jealousy and resentment.

You've done all you can and she isn't prepared to let it go, I think you need to come to terms with it and stop apologising to her now.

Maintain kind and civil behaviour - as I think you have done - but also keep your own boundaries and distance yourself emotionally from both of them. This way you protect yourself and your relationship with your brother while giving her no grounds for complaint (although she will anyway). She is not going to forgive.

Good on your parents for standing up for you - I don't often see that and i'm sorry because I know it hurts.

Mirabai · 20/04/2023 10:51

Life is too short for twats such as this. Your parents seem like decent people, I admire your dad’s balls. Stick with your parents and don’t bother with your bro and his moll.

MatildaTheCat · 20/04/2023 10:52

Someone so unreasonable is very unlikely to become reasonable after a major bereavement. Leave her to it and maintain your relationship with your DB as best you can.

shintyminty · 20/04/2023 10:57

MatildaTheCat · 20/04/2023 10:52

Someone so unreasonable is very unlikely to become reasonable after a major bereavement. Leave her to it and maintain your relationship with your DB as best you can.

This.

ImAvingOops · 20/04/2023 11:00

Maybe someone should ask sil how she would have felt at being told she couldn't attend her own siblings wedding with her newborn baby and was expected to leave him behind. If she would genuinely be okay with that, then fair dos, she can say it wasn't appropriate for you to bring yours. But I suspect she very much wouldn't have been okay with leaving her baby behind or having her own husband uninvited.

Your dad meant well but shouldn't have intervened and made his contribution linked to your attendance. Sil now feels she was manipulated into doing something she didn't want to do (even though what she wanted to do was rude and divisive). It's tainted her memory of her wedding. I've got some sympathy with that tbh, because my own in-laws didn't cover themselves in glory at my wedding and it does affect how I remember it.
But it wasn't your fault. Your brother should have ironed all this out - either stood by their initial wishes completely or told sil it was important to him that you and your dh and baby be invited. The to ing and fro ing hasn't helped.

Not sure this is fixable tbh. At least your brother seems to think she's being a bit ott and is still in contact.

drpet49 · 20/04/2023 11:02

Mirabai · 20/04/2023 10:51

Life is too short for twats such as this. Your parents seem like decent people, I admire your dad’s balls. Stick with your parents and don’t bother with your bro and his moll.

This. Good for your dad standing up to your brother and his wife.

CantAskAnyoneElse · 20/04/2023 11:18

Just leave them alone.
Sounds like they have been trough enough without you forcing a relationship with them.
I know MN goes crazy when babies aren’t invited, but I don’t see that they did anything wrong, then you very being drama queen and entitled, your father sure did not help and they didn’t get the wedding they wanted - which is, or should have been the only thing that matters.

I’m sure your pleased since you got your way and now can play even more of a victim.
Also, why did you went to her house after SIL losed her father, surely you and your mother had to know she wouldn’t have wanted to see you? After a sudden and huge loss?
Seems like you two wanted to create a bad situation/hurt her even more.

Just leave the poor woman alone.

Spcd · 20/04/2023 11:21

I can't help wondering if you/your Dad have form for making occasions where you should be nothing more than a supportive bystander about you/you're husband, and if that's what precipitated the original decision that your baby wasn't invited.

You or your husband obviously should have sat at the back with the baby in case the baby woke. That's just basic decency at a wedding. Instead after multiple arguments and endless stress about it in the run up to the wedding, the bride, as she's walking up the aisle will have seen you sat there right at the front with the baby. You say the baby slept through it as though that makes it ok, the bride will still have felt a rush of anxiety over whether the baby will wake in the middle of the ceremony and, no doubt, anger that you couldn't do the one basic thing you'd said you'd do - which frankly shouldn't even needed to have been asked for, just when she should have been feeling nothing more than happiness and the normal anxiety at having to stand up in front of a lot of people and say your vows. Your job as the future sil was to try to ease sources of anxiety - not create them.

Then you decide to go round uninvited to the house of someone who clearly doesn't like you the moment they've suffered a major bereavement?! What on earth made you think that was a good idea?

WomanStanleyWoman2 · 20/04/2023 11:23

I know it won’t be a popular opinion, but I think what your dad did was incredibly manipulative. You either want to contribute to your child’s wedding or you don’t. You don’t threaten to withdraw “funding” like you’re withholding pocket money from a naughty child.

It’s a bit late for your dad to be “genuinely upset” now - especially given that he’s standing by his manipulative behaviour. Clearly no lessons learned here.

HappiestSleeping · 20/04/2023 11:27

Mirabai · 20/04/2023 10:51

Life is too short for twats such as this. Your parents seem like decent people, I admire your dad’s balls. Stick with your parents and don’t bother with your bro and his moll.

This 👆

Life is definitely too short to deal with that's. Remember, they can't get your goat if they don't know where you tied it.

ejbaxa · 20/04/2023 11:29

It’s a wonderful thing that she’s avoiding you op - job done for life. Just see your brother on his own.

OhmygodDont · 20/04/2023 11:30

I think you/your dad made this problem to start with.

It’s fine to not want babies/children at wedding.

Your dad pulled funding because you/him couldn’t get your own way, you where then meant to sit at the back but again your dad pulled you to the front, then a women you know clearly isn’t keen on you father dies and you and your mother go and sit waiting in her home and expect her to be happy to see you.

Just leave her alone. You got what you wanted isn’t that enough.

WandaWonder · 20/04/2023 11:31

Why does a baby have to go to wedding? I had no issues if my baby was invited or not, if one of us couldn't go the other stayed home

Father should have given money or not and not dangled it with 'it has to be my way'

See the brother but just leave the rest, Leave the drama

ejbaxa · 20/04/2023 11:31

It’s not fine not to want your sibling’s days old baby at your wedding. It’s fucked up, self absorbed and immature.

Tigofigo · 20/04/2023 11:34

CantAskAnyoneElse · 20/04/2023 11:18

Just leave them alone.
Sounds like they have been trough enough without you forcing a relationship with them.
I know MN goes crazy when babies aren’t invited, but I don’t see that they did anything wrong, then you very being drama queen and entitled, your father sure did not help and they didn’t get the wedding they wanted - which is, or should have been the only thing that matters.

I’m sure your pleased since you got your way and now can play even more of a victim.
Also, why did you went to her house after SIL losed her father, surely you and your mother had to know she wouldn’t have wanted to see you? After a sudden and huge loss?
Seems like you two wanted to create a bad situation/hurt her even more.

Just leave the poor woman alone.

Huh? Are you the SIL?

OP offered to go without baby (ignoring that people who won't allow a baby literally weeks old are IMO ridiculous)

They disinvited OP's DH!! That's just fucking rude.

Wenfy · 20/04/2023 11:37

Your sil sounds unhinged. You can’t argue or reason with crazy and you have no idea what her last conversations with her Dad were like. It’s very possible he stirred the pot when it came to your family and now he’s dead he will always be right.

It is up to your brother to rescue his. Nobody else. If he’s too chicken shit then cut down on him too.

WomanStanleyWoman2 · 20/04/2023 11:38

Huh? Are you the SIL?

Why does someone ALWAYS do this on divisive threads? MN has millions of users; even a largely one-sided debate (which this isn’t), there’s usually at least someone who goes against the grain. The likelihood that the actual SIL just happened to be on MN within an hour of the original post, rather than it just being another user who disagrees with the OP, is minuscule.

Plus, there’s the minor detail of the SIL being ever so slightly distracted at the moment given her father has just died.

IhearyouClemFandango · 20/04/2023 11:42

Wowsers, I’m not overly surprised she’s pissed off tbh.

Wenfy · 20/04/2023 11:43

OhmygodDont · 20/04/2023 11:30

I think you/your dad made this problem to start with.

It’s fine to not want babies/children at wedding.

Your dad pulled funding because you/him couldn’t get your own way, you where then meant to sit at the back but again your dad pulled you to the front, then a women you know clearly isn’t keen on you father dies and you and your mother go and sit waiting in her home and expect her to be happy to see you.

Just leave her alone. You got what you wanted isn’t that enough.

The baby was a few days old. The stupid shit of a sil and brother expected a woman who had given birth just days previously to do a 12 min walk every time she wanted to see her newborn on the day. They wouldn’t even let her DH wait outside with the baby in case he upstaged the bride.

If anyone made this a problem it was the sil and brother.

OhmygodDont · 20/04/2023 11:46

Wenfy · 20/04/2023 11:43

The baby was a few days old. The stupid shit of a sil and brother expected a woman who had given birth just days previously to do a 12 min walk every time she wanted to see her newborn on the day. They wouldn’t even let her DH wait outside with the baby in case he upstaged the bride.

If anyone made this a problem it was the sil and brother.

Show quote history

The op has the right to just not attended if she didn’t wish to without her baby. Her brother and sil would have had no right to be mad at her.

The father shouldn’t have got involved via his cash.

Baby wasn’t a few days old in the end either as the baby came earlier.

Point is they didn’t want the baby regardless, in the end they where relented after having funding removed and then that still wasn’t enough because op baby and dh where meant to sit at the back to make a quick run away if needed yet plonked bums right at the front.

WimpoleHat · 20/04/2023 11:50

It’s not fine not to want your sibling’s days old baby at your wedding. It’s fucked up, self absorbed and immature.

I must say that I agree with this. Weddings are great opportunities for families to get together- that’s why there’s traditionally been a parental contribution! I think your dad showed real balls in standing up to your brother and SIL, honestly. Just leave them to it; doesn’t sound like they’re any great loss…..

FrustatedAgain · 20/04/2023 11:52

I don't think what your dad did was entirely unreasonable. When you accept monies from parents towards a wedding I believe they are within their rights to have some input into that day. I don't think your brother and SIL should expect him to give them money when his daughter, grandchild and son in law were being excluded from the day. If you want your wedding 100% on your terms you need to fund it 100% yourself.
Your SIL is never going to let this go, she sounds like she is just generally an unreasonable character. I'd just be guided by your brother here, he seems to want to be able to maintain contact with you so just let him do so.

Bunce1 · 20/04/2023 11:52

They had a terrible attitude to the baby coming. A new new born! Ridiculous!
They will be mortified when they have a baby of their own.

your dad behaved badly with the ££. That’s poor. But also not your fault.

sil sounds like hard work.

Sittingonabench · 20/04/2023 11:53

Well I have some sympathy for her. It sounds like her wedding had quite a lot of stress imposed on her (despite quite a lot of it also being made by her). I understand families sticking together but it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s off to a good start and likely that even once things move on this will not be forgotten. But I wouldn’t take too much of what she says to heart right now - she’s grieving and she’s venting about things she feels she can be angry about because it’s a simpler emotion than dealing with the grief.