Furious about family wedding abroad

[Creamandjamorjamandcream]

A close family member has lived on the other side of the word for the last five years. He met someone over there who seems great (we’ve only actually met her once when they spent some time in Europe) and last year he proposed!

We have been discussing flights and accommodation for a few weeks. We are a family of 4 with a 4 year old and an 18 month old so it was always going to be tricky financially and practically to travel. They live in a major city but the wedding will be about two hours away in a beautiful rural location. We have booked flights and accommodation for the wedding and the two weeks either side to explore.

Last week we received a formal invitation which stipulated that it was an adults only wedding. I immediately contacted my brother to make sure that our kids were not included in the ban - seeing as he knew we had booked flights for us all and this had never been mentioned. Unfortunately he said that our children were not welcome at the wedding however his wife to be had the details of some baby sitters in the city.

I don’t know what to do!! I am furious that we have paid so much money for accommodation and travel which I never would have if I’d have known our children weren’t invited!! I feel very uncomfortable with leaving the children two hours away with a stranger overnight however if we take them with us we have no other alternative as everyone we know in the country will be attending the wedding. I’ve asked if they can be babysat in the hotel on the wedding site as a compromise but have been told no as ‘they don’t want any kids there at all’.

Please help me with what I should do!! I feel like I’m too angry to think straight.

I'm a fan of a childfree wedding, but as they are not even allowing them to be babysat at the hotel, then it seems UR. Just cancel it and tell them why.

Agree 100%

Weddings don’t seem to be family celebrations anymore - just about the aesthetic and being ‘my special day’.

I cannot begin to understand the mindset to drag family halfway around the world with kids they have to bring and to not include them in the invitation.

Why do you think they are old enough to be left with a babysitter?

One of them is 18 months! They can't have anything explained to them. Imagine being taken halfway round the world to a strange place to be left with a strange person and you've got no idea where your parents are, who on earth would do that to their child?

Nurseries and even schools have settling in days to make sure children are slowly introduced to the people who will be looking after them.

I just wouldn't go. If you can't get a refund on travel, then enjoy a holiday, even if it's not one you'd have chosen.

I would cut my losses. Try to get as much refunded as possible or transfer the flights to somewhere shorthaul and more enjoyable for a family holiday or, if it’s too hard, go to the other side of the world and have the holiday but decline the wedding invitation.

However you end up dealing with it, make sure you don’t internalise any of the awkwardness about it. When asked just say “we weren’t all invited and we didn’t want to leave the children”. If this means other people think your brother is a dickhead, well…

I’d be tempted to go and see my brother and meet his fiancée and find out about his life out there and where he lives. But be totally honest with everyone about why you won’t be at the wedding itself. “Oh they don’t want kids at the hotel and we obviously can’t leave them here while we go off!” Don’t apologise or be sorry about it. It’s a ridiculous situation of his own making.

I would not do that. Your children won't be safe with strangers. Honestly, I'd cancel the whole thing. How stressful will that be, alone in the room with the kids, and how lonely will one feel, at the venue without the other half? You'll have to scoff down your dinner, tell them not to take hubby's away, run back and swap over! It's going to be a nightmare. Thry should have explained the no child policy before you booked it. Cancel it, all of it.

@Creamandjamorjamandcream

I presume the wedding is in the US. But regardless.
It is understandable that they don't want children at the actual wedding. But - as it is happening on the grounds of a hotel - they can't dictate to you not to have the kids in your room.

Personally - I wouldn't be "asking" your brother. I'd be contacting the hotel asking to arrange a babysitter for the night of the wedding.

Both you and your partner should enjoy the wedding together. You can check in on the kids on an off - but they will be absolutely fine with a babysitter for the night - knowing that parents are nearby.

As your brother doesn't yet have kids - I think he (and his fiancée) simply do not understand what it all means. They think babysitter is a simple solution - like leaving a car in a parking garage. I don't think they are purposefully being evil, just ignorant.

I'd simply tell him - kids will be in the room with a sitter, in the rural hotel. They won't be interfering with a wedding.

Hotels are able to provide / recommend perfectly reputable babysitters. The world isn't teeming with perverts vying to be childminders at well-known upscale hotels.

This ^
What a pair of clowns.

@Creamandjamorjamandcream a very similar situation happened to someone I know but what was even crazier the niece was asked to be a flower girl (could barely walk) but was to be whisked away after toddling down the aisle (other than for a photo beforehand) to be looked after by some unknown babysitter in a hotel room. This information was only made known to the parents two weeks prior to the wedding, they knew the wedding was child free but had unsurprisingly presumed the flower girl was exempt from this rule being as she close family and both her parents were in the wedding too. The parents would not agree to this and being abroad there was no option for other friend or family to help out so ultimately one of them missed the wedding entirely to stay with the child (and had to drop being in the wedding party themselves). After the wedding the bride and groom claimed the parents had made a big fuss, said some awful things about them and cut contact because they were ‘so distressed and hurt’ by the whole thing which was entirely their own doing, the child is now a teenager and they are still no contact.

Some people just get too wrapped up in themselves to consider other people’s perspective and lose all reason when it comes to ‘their special day.

I would cancel. And tell them why.

This! 👏👏

This is only a problem for you because someone else has made it one. You've booked for all your family, so attend with all your family as intended.

Problem solved! 🤷‍♀️

You havent added any new information. "THEY" don't want kids there could just mean the couple. Doesn't mean the hotel is child free (OP hasn't clarified) or that the hotel couldn't arrange a sitter if she asked just that the couple would prefer otherwise.

Personally, I'd rock up to the wedding with the kids in tow.
I'd like to see the 'zillas turn the kids away once they're already there... 🤔

Wow fuck that. I think you're being very generous to even consider that as an option but I get it that you just want to try and keep the peace. You can understand not inviting all the DC of random friends and cousins but immediate family?! Hell no, if my children weren't welcome anywhere near their wedding then I'm out. I'd be cancelling everything.

Good luck OP - horrible that you’re in this situation.

i wouldn’t be happy with this option if I was your partner. Flying around the world at great cost to be cooped up in a bedroom with my children! No way Jose.

I’d leave groomzilla and bridezilla to enjoy their childfree wedding.

Nope tell him to bugger of. Treat it as a holiday goto the same hotel etc they can't stop you and make a point of already having booked and not being able to attend if anyone asks why your not at the wedding once there.

It isn't standard to wait for an invitation to start booking transport and accomodation for the wedding of an immediate family member who is giving you final details of their wedding plans as they make them. This is OP's sibling, not a family friend's child who they have vaguely heard has set a final date, I would imagine she said to her brother that they were thinking of booking things and he gave the go-ahead without correcting her assumption that her very young children were attending. I don't think I'm an especially anxious person, but there is no way I would be leaving my children alone for 12hrs+ with an unknown babysitter in a different country where I probably don't speak the language or know what childrearing practices are considered so ubiquitous that they wouldn't be mentioned.

OP - if it's NZ, flick me a pm

No parent would fly to another country and leave their kids 2 hours away with a stranger. I’d be calling family members saying I’m so upset and it’s costing us so much how could he not have told us till now?! Would you believe he thinks we can just find a babysitter then drive 2 hours away?? We just can’t go , he says they aren’t even allowed at the hotel 😫😫 to get your side in. Everyone will judge him.

We have done a version of this- arrived after 28 hours travel to be told our baby isn’t invited to the wedding reception. Baby was breastfed and wouldn’t take a bottle. In hindsight I wish I’d just have said no, I can’t come, and you can all fuck off. The marriage didn’t last either.

@Creamandjamorjamandcream Please, please, please, don't offer for your DH to stay back in the bedroom with the children. If your brother isn't that bothered about you being at the wedding, and he can't be or he wouldn't allow this horrible and very selfish rule - even if it was first thought of by the bride - then why would you attend his wedding at all?

Just because you will be staying at the same hotel as the wedding party, and where the wedding is actually taking place, it does not mean that you have to attend the actual wedding. If your Dear Parents are going to be there, and they are putting pressure on you to attend, please explain to them (again if necessary) why you won't be attending it, and tell them gently that it is your brother they need to have words with if they don't like the situation as it is at the moment. But please stay strong, and don't give in.

If your brother doesn't change his mind, please tell him that you will all still be staying at the hotel,and will be going "no contact" from now, and will stay like that until he profusely apologises for his and his future wife's behaviour over this - you might have to wait until their first child is born to receive your apology.

If after the wedding and the meal - I suppose I am being presumptive here - you want to meet up with members of your family, then go into the bar, have some hopefully free drinks, and a dance if you want to, and stay strong and ignore your brother and his wife if they approach you.

Why do I care? I care because I had a very similar sounding brother who lived overseas for most of his adult life, got married, had children, came back to the UK for 1 to two weeks, almost every year, but he would only spend one night a year visiting my parents - who loved him very much. As my DMum neared her death bed she asked me and my husband whether she had a son, that broke my heart, but I have never told my brother that, just incase it did upset him. He didn't even come home for our Dad's funeral. There were things done by him later, when my parent's house was being sold, that also broke my heart - it was nothing really to do with the actual inheritance, which we split equally as was written in the will.

I know that your brother isn't my brother, but I have hope for you OP that if your actions regarding the wedding work, you will be giving your brother the opportunity to think very hard about his behaviour, and what he actually wants the rest of his life and relationships to be like. I don't even know where abouts in the world my brother lives, or even if he is alive. He will be in his 70's if he is still alive.

That's awful. If you can't get the money back I suppose you may as well travel for a holiday but I'd skip the wedding, there's no way I'd leave the children with a stranger on the other side of the world, not for anyone.