Aftermath of brother’s wedding

[HuxleyDog]

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It turned out my father who is divorced from my mother had withdrawn funding from their wedding when he found out my husband and baby were banned from wedding.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.

Parental contributions to weddings are optional. Effectively excluding a sibling from a wedding because of a newborn baby is disgusting behavior. Your father did the right thing by refusing to contribute to a wedding where that was going to happen. There should be no apology.

Your dad doesn't sound very nice. I don't know that you've done anything wrong but you should have insisted on sitting at the back, knowing that bride's wishes and the carfuffle if your baby has woken. In your place I would have gone alone to the ceremony. I do feel a little sorry for the bride.

Everyone involved in this seems to have come straight from a soap opera whose writers are fighting a dip in viewer figures by wringing all possible melodrama out of a minor situation.

De-escalate, OP. Disengage. If there’s any sorting out to be done, it’s on your brother, surely.

Never mind the wedding, it was two years ago, you haven't really seen her since.

What on earth were you thinking to rush straight round after her dad just died??

No wonder she went mad. It really isn't all about you. She doesn't like you. You are not her friends. Her father had just died. It's really nasty to do that, very cruel.

The SiL's recent reaction is unhinged, but then grief at the loss of a parent will do that to a person.

Her father died and someone she doesn’t get on with (you) turned up straight away?

I don't particularly get on with my SIL she had the photographer cut me out of all the official wedding photos! but I was really upset and pissed off that she didn't make any effort when my father died. It wasn't just me it affected, it also affected her brother (my husband) and her supposedly much loved nieces. It's normal and arguably expected for family to be present around those sorts of times unless you're already in conflict with them. The OP didn't know she was in conflict with SIL and her brother didn't give a heads up that was the case.

No matter what happened at or around the wedding you were being spectacularly insensitive to turn up at the house of grieving person you know you have a difficult history with. I mean, what did you think would happen? She’d welcome you with open arms and all would be forgiven? Deluded.

The baby was due just before the wedding and was in the event premature. When op posted 2 years ago she was heavily pregnant and the brother and sil basically expected op to leave her newborn at home and walk 12 minutes alone to the church so that her dh and the baby were nowhere in sight.

Op’s sil is totally unpredictable and volatile. Her brother it appears does his wife’s bidding. Had they stayed away after her mother’s death it would have been unfeeling. It simply isn’t possible to please some people because the person trying to please isn’t at fault.

As for op’s father, that is not her responsibility.

I think you all need to step a very big step back from the drama. Your DB is completely right in saying to leave it.

Just keep in touch with your DB, and let the dust settle. Having lost my own Dad recently, I can say that nothing about grief is logical - she was probably in shock, and deeply upset so perhaps was very rattled by your presence. Leave her to grieve her Dad, and see what time brings.

The OP didn't know she was in conflict with SIL and her brother didn't give a heads up that was the case.

If only she’d had some clue, like her SIL avoiding her for the last two years…

You answered your own question. Because it’s disruptive, and what bride who has spent months and lots of money planning her wedding wants disruptions? If it wasn’t seen as such, why would your SIL bother quieting your niece for age appropriate behaviour?

Not to mention that during a wedding ceremony, a loud child might make it hard for other guests to hear what’s being said, or get captured on audio and then the happy couple’s official wedding recording has a wailing infant at key moments instead of “I do.”

I have family I've not seen in 2 years. I'm not in conflict with them.

We decided to sit at the back but my dad insisted we come to sit with family.

Your father really hasn't helped this situation at all. He flexed a lot of muscle around this wedding - showing everybody who was in charge and this was him - and as ever it's the women who end up carrying the can for that behaviour. (Much the same as when a woman marries into a family, the responsibility for any consternation between her husband and his FOO is usually blamed on her).

If SiL feels really bitter about this situation I can see her perspective. But if anyone needs to be mending fences here, your father needs to be doing this with your brother.

Given DB has just lost his FiL, right now would be bad timing. In the meantime, SiL has made it clear she doesn't want her in-laws around, and has blocked you.

There is nothing you can do but respect her wishes.

No one is saying the father HAD to contribute - but if he was going to, it shouldn’t have come with Ts and Cs and a massive dose of emotional blackmail.

I think it was a bit presumptous to call around to SIL immediately when she had just lost her Dad.
Would you not text beforehand to arrange a suitable time, rather than just drop around to the house like that? You can't really doorstep people like that, it's not fair and it's controlling to be honest.

Was that your mother's idea?

It sounds like your parents are quite controlling.

Your BIL has found a controlling woman to look after him and tell him what to do.
That tells us something about your mother.

Your Dad had contributed money to his son's wedding. Regardless of any squabbles he shouldn't have messed them about like that playing games with your brother and the money. That's emotional manipulation.

Can you not see how someone might not want a tiny newborn baby, probably the first grandchild or the only child in the church, sitting in pride of place when it's supposed to be the other person's big day? I sort of get where she is coming from.

Does your brother maybe keep trying to keep your Mum happy as well. He probably feels pulled apart at the seams trying to keep everyone happy.

Well looking at most posts deflection to past wedding issue and making someone's death about OP's family worked...

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. what a load of shite. It’s a day in the scheme of things having a baby at your wedding is entirely irrelevant, as for the poor SIL getting stressed wondering if her (me me me) day might be disrupted by the presence of a baby, she needs to get a fucking grip.

As for the OP going round after the bereavement, if she hadn’t gone round I imagine that would have been wrong as well.

If only people put so much effort into having a decent marriage as they do into the one day which brought them there maybe the divorce rate wouldn’t be so high.

I can't quite understand how on a site called Mumsnet people don't understand that a baby a few days old is rather difficult to leave anywhere so saying no to baby is also saying no to mother. At a few more weeks yes you have probably learned to express, baby might take a bottle etc but in the first few days it's all very unpredictable. Plus when it's a wedding all the people you'd leave it with are there.

But in response to the question today, send her a card or flowers with a nice message and then just leave it. You can't do anything else. Offer an olive branch but don't push anything.

Your brother and SIL were unreasonable for excluding your husband and baby. But everything since sounds like it’s on you - and your father. You pushed for an invite when you knew that husband and baby weren’t welcome. You then sat at the front to really rub it in, even though that could have caused a distraction. Your father was financially manipulative, which in turn made things awkward with SIL’s parents. And then you turn up for the drama around her father’s death, despite knowing she doesn’t like you or want a relationship?!?

Leave the poor woman alone. She might be weird about your baby (perhaps she has experienced loss that you don’t know about), but she isn’t the drama here.

Bridezilla vibes. She sounds jealous

Going to her house when her father had just died shows she's right and you do like to make things about yourself. I bet her side of the wedding story would be very different.

Just leave her alone.

I don’t really get excluding your own nieces and nephews from weddings. If one of my siblings (or DH’s) had a newborn it would never occur to me to ban them. It’s a bit mad tbh. I can’t imagine needing to be the centre of attention so much (or at all) that I would begrudge a baby meeting extended family at my wedding.

They were unreasonable and you should have checked with your DB if she was ok to receive you. I actually understand where your dad was coming from, they were trying to exclude part of his family while still expecting him to cough up. I wouldn’t want to pay up either.

Was there a massive row over the wedding of said family members two years ago? Because if not, this isn’t really a relevant comparison.

This

Sorry OP bereavement or not she sounds batshit

I haven't read your other thread so I can inly really comment on the issues,raised in ti's one. There may be more to it and your sister-in-law may be crazy. I don't know.

I think your dad was in the wrong to suddenly withdraw money he'd offered. That's so stressful. And then when he got his way to re-offer it again. I'd have told him where to stick it as well.
I wouldn't want a baby at my wedding either. They can be very disruptive, even if yours wasn't. At least you agreed to sit at the back to leave if the baby got disruptive and your dad overruled that too. Not sure how he got to be in charge of a wedding he didn't even pay for.

And when it was clear your sister in law has a problem with you, you went round in person to her house, rather than ringing her first. She's grieving. She didn't want to see you under normal circumstances so I think that's a bit full on going to her house. Even though it's clear you meant well.