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.

FWIW I enjoyed that there were children at my wedding.

However I was amongst the first of my friends to get married so there weren’t loads - I think it can get expensive if so, and I understand that.

The vast majority of posters on a thread on mumsnet reflects ‘some’, yes.

What kind of trips? Holidays where the parents wanted/needed to have a night to themselves. One was to a vineyard spa in California as I recall.

Again, maybe, maybe not. You’d have to ask him. I agree that he was thoughtless not to mention it before OP booked the tickets, but I don’t think offering babysitter recommendations was sone outrageous act. Each to their own though.

I have nothing against child free weddings but it is insane you weren’t told so you could have made a choice. Cancel if you can.

I've seen so many Child free weddings on Mumsnet recently. I'd not heard of them before. IMO weddings are for all ages and children are made bridesmaids / pageboys.
Is my idea just old fashioned? 😅

I agree that you have every right to be furious that you weren't told until after you'd booked everything and I'd also be reluctant to entrust my small children to a complete stranger who is 2 hours away, if you needed to rush back to them in case of emergency.

It would've made sense if your brother had allowed close family members' children at the ceremony and if they were having an evening dinner in the hotel afterwards, then the children would be in bed and you and partner could take it in turns to sit with them, or some hotels might offer childcare.

I agree with what other people are commenting too, about either cancelling altogether, if you can get a refund, or going sightseeing instead.
Hope it all works out for you.
xx

Could you arrange your own babysitter at the hotel. It's up to the Bride & Groom who they have at their wedding but it's not up to them who stays in the hotel. You can make your own arrangements for your children to be cared for at the venue hotel which means you or your your DH can pop in & out to check everything is ok. I can't believe your DB & SIL aren't more understanding & are saying the kids can't even stay in the hotel.

It feels different to me if the child is going to be looked after in their own home for some reason (maybe not logical.)

This is an unknown babysitter, in a country/city etc the OP has never been to before, two hours away and possibly overnight.

I think it's not unreasonable for the OP to not be comfortable with this. I think it's very unreasonable for the SIL to assume they must be. The OP isn't saying she wouldn't consider any babysitting at all, just to have the child nearby.

Every Asian wedding, I have been to. Including mine! Never ruined by kids.

Genuinely.

We had LOADS of kids at our wedding, 1/4 of the guests though only 1 baby, and they all made it really fun. We had a play area and loads of time outside, so parents socialised while vaguely watching laughing kids playing. I feel a bit sorry for those who don't see the joy in kids running around, but there we are. I'm definitely not a fan of all the preening, endless photos and raft of speeches in some other people's child-free weddings, we are all different.

I isn't children who ruin weddings. It is crap parents who don't parent their children.

What gets me is the absolutely bizarre way the brother and SIL are trying to control having them at the hotel at all. I mean - what are they going to do - a room search?

It's not so much "offering babysitter recommendations" as the fact that the children and the recommended babysitters would be two hours away because the sky would apparently fall in if the groom's DNs are allowed within 150 miles of the wedding venue.

I’m going to assume that the bride is doing most of the wedding planning.

To her and your brother, you’re people who live the other side of the world from them. She’s only met you once, she doesn’t know you at all, her friends and family are all local.

Your brother hasn’t expressed his feelings about his family attendance enough or strongly enough.

You are low on the priority list for the bride. She’s throwing you a bone of names and numbers of random babysitters in this rural location, without thinking or caring too much about what that might mean for you. All of her local friends and family can sort themselves out via their own local networks.

I think you giving him an ultimatum of “kids come too or none of us come” will be the beginning of him feeling hard done by. He’ll take it out on you rather than his fiancée, because you’re far away and he doesn’t have to deal with you every day.

If you want this resolved, you have to frame this purely as a practical problem: you live 8000 miles away from us, we don’t know anyone or anything there, we will be very jet lagged, we don’t know our way around, no reasonable parent of a 4yo and a 1.5yo - children who can’t advocate for themselves, or speak full sentences frankly - would leave these children with strangers in a foreign country to attend an optional thing. This isn’t life-saving surgery, it’s a wedding. Thanks for inviting us two but we have to turn you down.

Keep your pissed-offness out of it. Make it his problem: he didn’t think it through, he’s ridiculous, what else did he think would happen?

What happens after that will be telling. But there it is.

Personally, this is breathtakingly selfish to me. They may as well tell you to your face they’re only inviting you out of duty, that they’re really only interested in their local friends and family.

They don't make the decisions about whether the OP and her husband should travel to the other side of the world and then leave their very young children with an unknown babysitter two hours away though.

They can of course make the decisions about what kind of wedding they want to have, within reason. But not, "A child free wedding which my sister attends with or without her husband and without her children, even elsewhere in the hotel."

@Creamandjamorjamandcream I think in this situation I would just say that if your children aren't welcome at the wedding, you're not going. Even expecting all four of you to fly to the other side of the world at your own expense so that you can attend their stupid party and your husband can sit in the dark in a hotel room with your children is outrageous, IMO, let alone refusing the compromise you have suggested because they don't want your children in the hotel at all. Sack the whole thing off. See if you can get your money back if you cancel or exchange it for vouchers so you can go on holiday somewhere of your choosing. Even if you can't cancel or exchange anything I'd rather just have a holiday in that location and sack the wedding off altogether than give in to their narcissistic demands.

They'll be thoroughly embarrassed when the whole family learns why you're not there.

That would be an appropriate response if the OP hadn't already spent thousands of pounds on plane tickets and accommodation, which her brother let her do without bothering to tell her it was a child free wedding.

The appropriate response in this situation is to tear him a new one.

He didn't really invite you, did he?
An invitation including a set of conditions you know will be unacceptable to the other person is just bullshit quite frankly.
Elvis would play Glastonbury before I left my babies under those circumstances, and I imagine that's true if most mothers.
I'd be declining without further explanation or apologies. Might send a card if feeling charitable.

Were the kids named on the invitation?

If not, I wouldn't have spent anything on travel costs before checking.

Spending thousands to go somewhere rural in Australia for an event lasting a few hours would have been a "no" from us anyway. What if it's a wild boozy party? That's not appropriate or safe for kids anyway. (Compared to a hotel or restaurant reception.)

Okay 🤷🏻‍♀️

You think it’s an outrageous ask, fair enough. Not sure why he doesn’t want the kids at the hotel so not going to comment on that, but I don’t personally think that suggesting a babysitter in the circumstances is a wild notion. Again, each to their own.

Not sure why he’d be embarrassed when the family find out why OP isn’t there. I’ve been to a childfree wedding where a sibling wouldn’t go without their children and no one was stressing it. It is what it is.

I think most people would judge if they found out that someone let their sister book four plane tickets to Australia (or wherever) before telling her she couldn't even have her kids upstairs in a hotel room.

I'm a firm believer in drawing attention to people's shitty behaviour and letting everyone discuss it out in the open.

And had the sibling who didn't go to the wedding already purchased flights and accommodation before being told their children weren't welcome?

There is a really important decision every guest makes for themselves, the bride and groom don’t get to make that decision. It’s whether to go or not.

No idea tbh.

I don’t think most people would give it too much thought, and consider it a matter to be between the groom and his sister. I can’t imagine it will impact his social circle or the bride’s family.

Well no, because none of them know or care about his family.

His actual own family might take a dim view of it though.

@Creamandjamorjamandcream They need to be paying whatever money you will lose!

As if you'd leave your kids with a total stranger, just because they were a 'babysitter!' I wouldn't even do so in my own home with a local so-called 'babysitter' ffs