Groom's mum not on first row...

[kittykitten]

Hi everyone

I just wanted to get some advice on this matter.

I am feeling very upset and tearful over the last couple of days as I have just found out that my 31 year son who is getting married in a civil ceremony at a hotel is placing me, his step dad, my 93 year dad, his uncle, his step brother and sister on the second row for the wedding ceremony.

We had met up a short while ago and I had asked about the seating and would my dad have plenty of room for his legs, etc and he just said it was very stressful organising everything and he needed his groomsmen and best man close to hand for the service.

I accepted this and thought he was putting his best man and groomsmen on the front row and his bride would be doing the same with her matron of honour and bridesmaids. I just said as long as my dad was seated comfortably that was fine, however, I have been now informed that his front row will consist of his dad, his dads girlfriend, his dads mum, best man, best mans wife and their daughter & baby.

I asked if any of his brides parents were going on the second row to be met with a torrent of abuse about how selfish I am and he needs these people close to hand as the little girl is a flower girl and his dads GF is a witness and I am on the second row its not a million miles away, etc.

However, I just feel really upset I always thought your mum was on the front row. I really want to see him get married but I feel humiliated sitting behind his dads girl friend....

I just expected that the row of six chairs would consist of his dad, GF, his grandad (my dad), his grandma (his dads side), myself and my husband and his uncle (my brother) his half sister and brother on a subsequent row.

I feel so uncomfortable and have messaged (he doesn't like speaking over the phone) everything is done via message. I even mentioned the order above or whether just me and his grandad could be on the first row but he says he can put whoever he wants where he wants and I am making a drama out of it and it stays as it is. He says he won't discuss anymore and that he will see me at the wedding...

The messages are quite nasty and i just feel that does he even really want me there, if he really wanted me on the front row he could have made it happen.

I really don't know whether I can go - I know I should swallow my pride to see my son get married but I am torn up with being made to sit behind his dads GF.
I hold nothing against any of the people on the front row, I have know his BM since they were 7 years old. I just thought it should be his mum with them on the front row.

He has always lived with me and when I left his dad and met his step dad he then lived with us from the age of 7 to 28 when he moved out. We used to be so close.

In that case the OP should just sever the relationship altogether if she can't forgive him. What she can't do is demand to be sat on the front row and pretend that everything is ok and that she's just being blamed instead of choosing to protect her daughter.

Like I said If he was a teenager she wouldn't have been able to kick him out. No matter how uncomfortable daughter was she'd have to live with it.

You have to pick a side either this ism unforgivable and so there has to be no interaction or it is. Not just when it suits OP.

Also @crumblingschools at the end of the day neither of us are there. But also, we don't know what each side thinks.
I agree that the remarks are unacceptable.
I agree that the DIL should not be pushing OP's daughter for acceptance
Given what we have so far:
I disagree that OP's son should have been told to leave.
I disagree that OP deserves a front row seat.

If she says she does love him unconditionally although the remarks are unacceptable how has this been communicated.

I suppose she did pay for his wedding suit.

My point is, I don't think it's as simple as OP has done the right thing all the way and son is just being a rude, ungrateful twat. There is misunderstanding on both sides.

It’s not about you. Plain and simple. I got married recently and my DM had several strops in the run up and on the day because she wasn’t centre of attention. She was sat in 2nd row as the bridesmaids/groomsman were on the front rows. She was pissed off because my DF walked me down the aisle and was actively involved in the ceremony and she wanted to walk down the aisle with an escort.

I’m still annoyed about her stropping months later and it has made me withdraw from
her a bit.

My advice - it’s your sons wedding, not yours. You’ve had your weddings, let him have his.

I agree with what @crumblingschools just said. It sounds like you are minimising just how offensive the girlfriend's comment was.

Kicking her son out has to be seen in the context of the fact that he was moving out anyway. Imagine he had not had any plans to move out but the OP had said, "Can you go and stay with your girlfriend for a couple of weeks and give your sister some space to cool off a bit?" Would that have been so bad? I think it is the fact that it was the very last week of him living under the OP's roof which makes it sound more significant, i.e. "the OP threw him out of the home he had been living in for 20 years", when actually it should have been less significant, i.e. "his planned date of departure was brought forward by a week following the argument".

What if the OP had reacted differently? What if she had not asked her son to leave?

Perhaps her daughter, an innocent party in all of this, would have felt that nobody was prioritising her feelings and that her mother preferred to brush everything under the carpet rather than stick up for her properly. Perhaps that would have then damaged the relationship between the OP and her daughter.

Perhaps the son and his girlfriend would have assumed that, their apology having been accepted, it was all forgiven and forgotten about, when the younger sister was still feeling a great deal of pain which she now felt unable to talk about. Perhaps they would have minimised it in their own minds as an off colour remark, maybe a bit offensive but not really that bad, and considered that everything was fine now. Until a few months or a year later when the girlfriend let the mask slip again and made another similar comment to or about the OP's daughter. Then what? You go absolutely apeshit the second time when you smoothed everything over the first time?

I don't think it was unreasonable for the OP to take her daughter's side, draw a very clear line in the sand and say, "THIS is unacceptable in my house. You cannot say things like THIS and expect everyone to just forget about it and move on once you've said sorry. You need to work to repair the damage you have done to this relationship and that takes time."

But it sounds like the son and his girlfriend think it was unreasonable of the OP not to force her daughter to just accept their apology and move on.

Is everything so black and white to you?

Either you forgive and forget and you force your daughter to do likewise, or you go completely no contact with your son and certainly don't attend his wedding?

Can there be no middle ground here?

OK, so you don't get on well with either your son or his fianceé. Given that, I can't see why you would be in the least bit surprised that he's not seating you in the front row.

It does sound like the fianceé (and possibly your son) isn't a nice person - assuming that latest update is the end of the drip-feed.

You can choose to deal with the "not a nice person" thing, or not. But that is the problem, not anything to do with the wedding itself - let go of that, and decide (without considering seating arrangements or this being a slight on you) whether you want to miss the wedding of your son to someone who isn't a nice person. I'd personally say that the outcome is likely to be worse if you don't go - your relationship with your son will be damaged, and he'll need you if and when he realises his wife isn't a nice person.

his half sister overheard his fiancée call her an “autistic spastic”
Interestingly, when you'd mentioned his not being comfortable talking on the phone and preferring to do everything by message, the first thing that had popped into my head was "oh, some autistic people struggle on the phone". Is your daughter autistic? Is the son who's getting married autistic?

After reading your update I would
cur your losses and suck it up. I wouldn’t want to engage with ds or his dp. What your future DIL said about your DD is unforgivable and disgusting and you can’t blame ds for not wanting to have anything to di with her. They’re lucky she’s going to the wedding. Lucky that you’re going too. Keep your dignity, do your bit to ensure that the wedding goes of tremendously well.

After the wedding I suggest you harden yourself and detach from your son. At the very least the moment he swears at or disrespects you get up and leave and ignore all the insults that will ensue after you have done that. Make it absolutely clear that you will not tolerate any disrespect from him or dil.

Right. So as we all guessed, there's loads of back story, there's ill will between the son and the OP's "new" family, and frankly i think OP should be happy to even be on the second row.

Remember, as much as we all want to slag off the son, we are only getting one side of the story.

Just let it lie, grow up, go to the wedding then maybe have family therapy after its all done and dusted to improve your relationship in the future.

This!!! Why is it such a big bloody deal?

@PansyP I am struggling to see whenever using those words and particularly to a member of your future family could be seen as okay, so no matter we haven't heard the son's side, that language is despicable.

You son sounds like a nasty shit.

They're not OK, but what we don't know is whether the fiancee said that in a one-off moment of frustration, was mortified and has since tried to make genuine amends - or whether she said it out of contempt and it's part of a pattern of nastiness.

To be clear I don't think the sister is required to forgive her either way. But the OP does need to accept that the fiancee will be around long-term and act accordingly. If she wants a closer relationship with her son then she will need to forgive and forget with the fiancee, to an extent.

If the fiancee has consistently shown herself to be a nasty piece of work along those ablist lines, and the son has backed her all the way, I would not be tempted to mend the relationship though.

I'd like to know what 'mean to the cat' actually means.

The OP said she takes her son out for lunch every 6 weeks or so and always invites the fiancée but she never comes. So it sounds like the OP is trying but the fiancée doesn't want to know.

I also don't think the phrase "autistic spastic" is one that would come out of an otherwise kind and well-meaning person's mouth, even in a moment of frustration.

Yesterday a non-white man deliberately pushed in front of me in a queue when I had my baby in a sling and my toddler in the pushchair and then started having a go at me when I objected. I gave him both barrels but somehow managed to avoid using any racial slurs.

The hurt and disrespect the son and his fiancé has shown to the op is significant. If my child had done this to me it would be the ‘biggest thing’ for sure.

Where is your empathy here? I really don’t understand where hosting a wedding means people turn into arrogant selfish dicks and people like the op are talked to, and treated like shit. To me the whole day would be tainted by the kind of toxicity you display in this nasty post.

Fiancee is a manipulative one isn't she?

Insults her stbsil then turns it around when her apology isn't accepted so that she is the victim & can go nc with Op!

She sounds awful & your son not much better tbh.

At my wedding on my side I had mum, dad, grandad, brother and sister in law on the front row.
My bridesmaids the row behind with their partners. Our witnesses were my sister in law (bridesmaid) and her husband.

On my husbands side the front row was his mum, dad, nan, brother and his wife.

I think it’s really unusual to not have your mum and dad in a front row. I would be very upset too.

@kittykitten Damn, I thought early on it would be your son’s wife to be that was the cause of this rift.

The marriage may well not last the distance anyway.
Many marriages don’t- especially with such difficult wives.

Don’t try to buy your son’s affections
I hope you can get back your closeness again

Surely it’s better to see him alone rather than with the future wife?

She sounds unpleasant.
” Autistic spastic?”
She certainly isn’t very intelligent using terms like that as insults.

Replace the 's' word for the 'n' word and how many family members would be forgiving for that especially if it was addressed to a family member, or excused for it being used in a moment of frustration.

Ok, so the fiancée is the problem after all.

Take the higher ground. Go to the wedding. Don't kick up a fuss before or on the day. Don't let anyone in your immediate family do so either.

Life is long. Who knows what the future holds for this marriage or your relationship with your son.

It isn't even the sort of insult that would trip off the tongue not that insult would be OK but some would be more believable as a one off loss of control.

Also interesting that the DD and DH heard the insult, nothing about them hearing the son pulling her up about what she said.

OP they aren't worth it, forget them and move on. If someone spoke to my DD like that they'd be out the door so fast their feet wouldn't touch the ground.

It's clear why there are a range of issues OP, so starting a naive "why am I on the second row" post was pointless. Throwing your DS out for the STBDIL comment was a strange decision, saying she needed to back off for a few weeks would have been fine, but it is not remotely clear why HE had to leave his home with nowhere to go for a week. Nor why you don't see that you created the rift by that action, and why you can't be in the front row when you won't communicate with STBDIL. The STBDIL was way out of line with her abusive comments, but forgiveness can still be possible, explaining clearly why it's hurtful and working towards a resolution would have been more appropriate, but your DD is being led by you here.

No. They are both the problem.

The fiancée said something shitty. How the op handled it with her son is what’s caused the actual rift. Rather than ban her she kicked her own son out.

Fiancée apologised to the daughter but they anit going to be mates, fiancée just cnba with all of them after this even those she was an idiot first.

Son decided to second row his mother and have his step mother at witness.

Im going to say although fiancée was a fucking idiot and what she said was terrible, the son’s relationship clearly wasn’t great prior to his mum kicking him out let alone after for something he actually didn’t do. The mums first thought to be to throw out son rather than ban fiancée shows the relationship wasn’t great.

She asked him to move out early, he was late 20s/early 30s with a girlfriend and a dad, I'm sure he wouldn't have been living on the streets for 7 days. His fiancee said a despicable thing to his sister, OP probably thought best to have a break from them. His response to what his fiancee said may also have impacted OP's request to move out early.