To have expected my daughters to be flower girls

[Notmotherofflowergirls]

Just created an account for people to pile on to me and tell me I am an idiot. I don’t think I can tell my real friends.
I am inwardly cringing!
My brother is getting married in 3 months time to a woman with no nieces or nephews.
My mother and I naturally assumed that my two girls 4 and 6 would be the flower girls. There are no other kids in the family although stepdad has grandchildren.
My mother was feeling left out of all the planning. DB was uncommunicative about the plans and always referred us to SiL and when my mum asked to contribute she was batted away.
Finally Mum insisted that she would buy the flower girl dresses and finally brother agreed. So on Wednesday SiL posted an invoice for three flower girl dresses from a Shop in Dublin. She included a nice note saying that she mustn’t feel obliged to pay.
My mum asked who the third dress was for: it turns out all three are for her cousin’s girls.
Brother came round and said that they will be only kids at wedding.
My brother was asked point blank if he didn’t want his nieces there and all he could say was he would speak with SiL. He did look sheepish.
My dad died and while my mum has not remarried she has been with her partner for 9 years. His kids are not invited. My stepdad isn’t going and is angry that my mum has been made to feel so upset.
I feel as if I have been kicked in the guts. My mum keeps bursting into tears.
My DH says he’s ongoing either Have we overstepped? Would anyone else have made the same assumption?

Some of the responses to this are madness. Thank goodness I got married abroad. Sometimes I feel sad that I’m not part of a big family but it’s times like this that I’m thankful I don’t have to put up with all this bollocks.

YABU for expecting / assuming your daughters to be the flower girls.

Your brother is BU for not inviting his nieces at all and for not inviting his mother's long term partner.

I'm the same. If you don't have a built relationship with me and my children, you don't babysit. ILs never built that relationship. ILs never babysat.

I live in Ireland and isn't it tradition that the bride picks the maid of honour, bridesmaids and flower girls and the groom gets to pick the best man, groomsmen and page boy?

You've missed out quite a bit.
How close are your children to the bride? Does she see her little cousins more? And why is your step dad not coming?

They’re allowed to have the wedding that they want which doesn’t happen to include any kids other than the bride’s chosen flower girls (which for all we know weren’t going to be included except that the OP’s mother pushed for paying for FG dresses). As for the outrage over the “stepfather’s” kids - the guy isn’t married to the OP’s mother and has only been around for a few years, therefore his adult children aren’t related to the OP’s brother and likely have little to no close relationship to them. It’s baffling as to why the OP’s family is weeping and wailing over this. This is where assumption gets you.
I also do wonder whether some posters here have any idea as to how costly it is to accommodate wedding guests. My daughter is planning a very small rustic wedding for next year and that’s expensive enough as it is - I can see it’s going to piss off a lot of extended family as they simply cannot afford to invite a lot of people, and are also having a no-kids policy so there are going to be noses out of joint when toddlers, rellies that no one sees from one end of the year to the next, or great auntie Nellie’s hairdresser’s dog isn’t invited.
OP in the nicest way you need to get over yourself. It’s not your day, so suck it up and try to enjoy it without the histrionics.

It’s not weird at all if you want a child-free wedding, which many people do.

I think most people will know how much wedding guests cost, since many will have been through their own wedding.

If you exclude nursing newborns who won't eat a thing and will be held the whole time, who don't cost anything, then it sends a clear message. Otherwise blanket ban children by all means, but don't be upset when some people, even your own siblings, can't come and get the message about their importance in your life.

Weddings can turn people into unrecognizable self-obsessed idiots. I have had the most horrendous times being a bridesmaid to a someone I knew very well only to find them practically possessed. I don't know how you would have described your family before this episode, but if it was in anyway close and inclusive - I would try very hard to take the long game approach to this.

Your brother and his future wife may well come to view their decisions in a different light down the line. If you allow this to be the thing that divides you then you lose the potential for a relationship there after. I do understand that you and your mother hadn't anticipated a close family members wedding going like this, but it is their day and they can feck it up chose how they want it run and live to tell the tale.

Yup. Just as it’s not weird not to invite any of your families to your wedding if what you want is a registry office quickie with two witnesses. It doesn’t mean you don’t value your families, it means you wanted a type of wedding that didn’t involve them.

I think the OP is the one being self obsessed here. It’s not her wedding.

I think making assumptions when it comes to weddings never turns out well. I don't think I would be paying for flower girls dresses for the brides cousins daughters if your mum doesn't know them. Maybe let your brother and his wife get on with it especially if your SD and DH are not going anyway. It seems a shame that the SIL is alienating her husbands family and that your brother does not seem to have a say in his wedding. Or maybe he is not bothered either about whether his family are included? In which case I don't think I would be bothered about going either.

The OP and her mum are definitely coming across as self obsessed, which happens a lot with wedding guests. I really feel for OP's brother and his fiancée.

Agree with this

I think that is a recipe for disaster, personally. That is exactly how you escalate a situation into outright conflict, which seldom gets anyone what they want.

It’s absolutely not up to OP or her mother to dictate what is or is “not on” with regards to this or any other wedding. That level of entitlement is absurd. The bride and groom decide the guest list to their own wedding (which they are paying for).

They may well have their own reasons for the decisions they have made- it could be that there are number restrictions at the venue or cost restrictions. Or perhaps OP’s DB has a very different view to OP with regards to his relationships with his sister, or his stepfather, and/or step-father’s children. OP might be close to her step-father/his children, but it is not necessarily true that her brother feels the same. Or perhaps he is just fairly distant from the whole planning aspect.

The couple wanted a child-free wedding, excluding the children in the bridal party- it’s not exactly unheard of or unusual. It might not be your (or OP’s) preference, but it’s not your wedding and so you should respect that other people don’t share your views in everything. If OP cannot do that, chooses to make it a personal slight against her daughters (which it is probably not), then that’s up to her. I have children, I really don’t see why it is an absolute necessity that OP’s children are invited? Why is it a source of such outrage?

However, if OP really can’t see past it (or has a childcare problem), then she’ll just have to decline the invite. If asked why, she can explain. What you don’t do is wade in, make demands and issue ultimatums with regards to other people’s wedding (even a family member) and expect everything to go smoothly thereafter.

as for “it’s terrible the brides cousin’s children are flower girls but the grooms nieces are not”- why? They may be closer genetic relatives to the groom than the brides choice, but it seems very possible that the bride is very close to her cousin and her children. Degree of relation by blood is not the only factor that matters. The bride is free to choose her bridesmaids and flower girls, that is absolutely normal. Perhaps OP and her mum should also get to decide the MOH and best man? If not, why do they get a say on her choice of flower girls?

My SIL yelled at my DH, ten years after her wedding, that any issues between them were my fault because I should have left my newborn baby to go to her wedding. No change of heart there (no children herself either). I made sure to tell her that I had no regrets and would make the same decision again if we had to do it again. I am not apologising for not leaving a newborn in another city for a full day. She's the one that decided her brother's newborn wasn't welcome. She just seemed unable to accept the consequences of that decision (our not being there).

Indeed. Husband and I sort of eloped and only had our 2 best friends as witnesses. I quite fancied the big wedding but it was DH’s second go and he wanted as little fuss as possible as he’d gone through all that the first time round, so I went along with his wishes. Oh the drama. The very first time I met his grandmother she berated us for not having a big wedding as “great auntie Linda would have liked to have seen you get married”. Great auntie Linda hadn’t been at the first wedding and hadn’t seen DH since he was about 12 🙄 That about sums up wedding drama for me really.

Also where are people getting the idea that not inviting children is a new thing , it's not . It costs a lot for a wedding and takes a lot of organizing . You don't want to turn your wedding into something like a nursery .
The only kids are likely to be the wedding party .
It really is not new , I can remember my parents going to weddings in the '70 s .
I can also remember organizing my wedding , there was also places places set aside for PIL a few people that was for long time friends of Pil .
It's not a child event .

Unless they’ve been through their own wedding in the last couple of years, I’m betting they’d have no idea. Prices have risen dramatically and it seems the wedding industry is a bigger rip off now than it’s ever been.
And honestly to say that having a child-free wedding is “sending a message about family’s importance” is nonsense. If you want to take it that way, I’d suggest that’s on you, not the bride or groom. They’re quite entitled to have the wedding they want, not what someone else thinks they should have.

Of course they're entitled to have the wedding they want, but it does show a lot about the couple's values.

We had a wedding where we could afford to invite everyone we wanted. Weddings don't have to be expensive. If the form of the event is more important than your family and friends, it says a lot about your priorities.

Everyone I know that had expensive weddings got divorced within a few years. Those with simpler weddings have stayed together. I have my theories on why this is.

I would have expected your brother’s two young nieces to be invited to be flower girls, yes. I haven’t rtft but would most certainly not go if my children, the nieces of the groom, were not welcome.

Since when did a nursing newborn in arms cost anything anyway?

Where are you getting the idea that all children at weddings are nursing newborns?? I’d think very few are…

Simpler weddings = less cost = less guests. Can you see where that’s going? You’re completely contradicting yourself.

And honestly to say that having a child-free wedding is “sending a message about family’s importance” is nonsense. If you want to take it that way, I’d suggest that’s on you, not the bride or groom. They’re quite entitled to have the wedding they want, not what someone else thinks they should have @Fourfurrymonsters

How is it not sending a message? I do agree that they can have the wedding they want, but the point is if someone wants to exclude certain family members then surely they will expect it to alter the family relationship.

My DB wouldn't allow my breastfed DC at his wedding which he expected me to travel to Australia for. I'd be a fool to not see that a) my DC is not particularly important to him and b) I also am not important to him since this was a massive PITA for me.

I never fell out with him because, as you said, it was his right. But I won't make much effort to maintain a relationship with him because I don't want to be taken for a mug!

We didn’t actually tell anyone we’d got married for about five years, by which time we’d more or less forgotten we hadn’t as a lot had been going on, including two big moves (our witnesses knew, obviously), and it was too late for anyone to start getting cranky about something they hadn’t been invited to half a decade earlier.