To un-RSVP to this wedding?

[SaltySallyAnne]

Not sure if I’m being a bit dramatic or entitled to feel a bit put out

context -
We have been invited to DHs cousins wedding. It’s in a remote area of Scotland and on a Thursday. To attend we need to take 3 days off work and it’s child free so will need to leave DD at home and my aunt is coming to look after her and drop off at school etc.

The bride and Groom have no family that way and are all southerners so travel is quite a lot for everyone. (Grooms family is Devon based)

Due to the remote location and being in an area of outstanding beauty hotels within an hour radius of the wedding venue are expensive. The cheapest we have seen is £250 a night (for a B&B over a pub…)

Now, although it’s annoying having to take so much time off work, and the hotel costs, we RSVP’d yes as we can just about afford the hotel and it’s a family wedding, doesn’t happen every day etc. plus there are some family members that are relatively old and it might be the last big family celebration they make it to.

Now onto the AIBU.

The wedding venue is a castle type location, and in the grounds there is accommodation as part of the wedding package. 50 rooms. The cost to guests is only £120 for the 2 nights needed (night before and night of the wedding) FIL and his wife were given a room, which we expected since aunt and uncle are immediate family.

However we have just found out that they have also offered one of these rooms to DHs brother and his wife, in addition to his step sister and her boyfriend.

This has rubbed DH and I up the wrong way, we had assumed on site accommodation was for immediate family and cousins were a bit far removed. But to find out one of DHs brothers and his step sister were given one is a bit shit. (All siblings are adults, in well paid jobs so it’s not due to that)

In my view they have decided who in their families they want to ensure attend the wedding, by offering cheaper lodging and (as I’ve found out yesterday) putting on transport for guests staying on site. I begrudge paying over £500, taking 3 days off work and leaving DD for 3 days to go to the wedding of someone who clearly isn’t too concerned about us attending.

DH is annoyed and a bit hurt, but says since we have already said we are going and were fine with all the inconveniences until finding out about his step sister and brother being offered a room, it’s a bit unreasonable to now back out. (The wedding is over the Easter half term next year, so I think that’s still plenty of notice)

AIBU to not go purely because of who they allocated on site lodgings to?

Basic maths doesn't say they were specifically chosen above you. You don't know (maybe I've missed it) how they were chosen.
Do you know they looked at their list and decided you and your husband were not their favourites, so the ones they prefer would get the room instead?
Someone had to be chosen, someone had to be left out, as the number of rooms are less than the number of guests...

DH is reaching out to the groom to see if anyone is also struggling with accommodation, if not we will say we can’t come anymore!

Oh come off it.

Good!

They really don’t deserve to have you there. Think of what you can do with the money and time off! It’s a no brainer - rather than propping up someone else’s event, you could create one of your own.

I have never left my dc for an extended period, but honestly wouldn’t even consider doing it for something like this! Or if you do go to Paris or Vienna for a few days and enjoy some time with your dh.

@SaltySallyAnne Is there any possibility that FIL dictated this? Not that it makes things better for your DH BUT I'm wondering if there were other influences over the B&G. Whole thing's annoying tho.

Is DH mother invited? I assume not as not mentioned in all of this.

For those questioning the closeness of cousins, I would suggest it's more of FIL and current wife's children being prioritised, rightly or wrongly depending on POV as additional rooms have now become available. This doesn't necessarily mean closeness to the groom, rather how perceived by family.

The arrangements are still the same for you and DH As they were when you agreed to go.

Your DH has been triggered but he's still invited to the wedding under the same auspice as his siblings were all done initially.

YABU but tell them now as you've already made your mind up before posting

Definitely not. He doesn’t give a shit about any of his children equally

I think it’s sad the lengths your dh is willing to go for these awful people. Trauma or not it’s time to take a cool appraisal and ask yourselves this question.

Would these people do this for you?

Would they lose 3 days AL, the expense and the time to trapse up to the end of the country leaving their child behind and fork out this much money for YOUR wedding?

If the answer is no you should pull out. I think we all know what the answer is without even trying.

Trying to work out how you feel about something and what to do accordingly, isn't 'angst.' Angst seems to be the latest word used on here to slyly belittle someone who is trying to deal with any type of feelings from catastrophic to mild musing. If reading it makes you feel angst then perhaps there are other suitable threads?

If you pull out now you won’t offend anyone with six months to go.

If that was the case then they probably should have worded it so - 'I'm so sorry we don't have enough rooms to offer everyone, we really, really would have liked to offer you one but picked them out of hat etc' or whatever. The lack of that in itself is telling, either purposeful or thoughtlessness neither of which says 'take three days leave, arrange childcare and spend a fortune on travel, accommodation and gift to celebrate us' as an appealing option.

Well I can understand why you're miffed and your husband is hurt.

I'd not go, and I certainly wouldn't be sending them £250-£300 as a wedding gift! I'd be sending £50 max.

It wasn't lavish, we could only afford to have a very small number so we had about 20. We both have big families and friends on either side which meant we couldn't have a whole group of either family or friends so it was either choose some or have no one. What should we have done?

I definitely wouldn’t go even if I was offered the accommodation- no way would I be spending that sort of money and annual leave on someone’s wedding 💕 spend it on a nice break for your family instead x

Considering the groom hasn’t seen MIL for over 20 years definitely not.

The fairest thing would be to book the rooms specifically for the wedding party and for everyone else, put the info on the invite about the rooms, making it clear that there are a limited amount of rooms and they will be allocated on a first come first serve basis.

Cherry picking who you want to give rooms to is bound to cause offence/upset.

Whilst I appreciate your point of view, I think you’re overreacting a bit. Not everyone could have a room and you’re not in any different position than you were before you found out about the cousins.

Things like the travelling and leaving your DD would be the same regardless. Go and have a bloody good time, if your husband wants.

Nobody likes being on the wrong side of a line, so I do understand why you’re hurt. You’d have had to make decisions about your wedding, I expect.

I have a cunning plan.

Hire a campervan and have a little family holiday pootling around Scotland before going to the wedding then park it right outside the castle entrance.

This is the biggest sadness to me. Flower girls at a wedding are such a joy.

Of course everyone can’t have a room. My issue is with how they’re allocated. And how that strongly implies the value placed on our attendance.

we were fine attending before as we felt close to the couple. Now less so

Exactly this. Your friends correctly assume that nobody held a gun to your head and said you can only invite 30 people.

op good decision.

Good luck having a 'bloody good time' if she has to sit around stone cold sober as the designated driver, because she doesn't have on-site accommodation.

The more I think of it, the more I'd bin this one. Send a card.

Or show how much you care about your friends and family by choosing a wedding venue that isn’t in the arse end of nowhere and requires Sherpas and oxygen support to get there.

I'd just say that you are sorry but you've realised child care will no longer be possible.

So if you are designated driver you are driving from Devon. Even if it's southern Scotland, that's a hell of a drive.

In three days you'll spend the first almost entirely on the road, arriving late when it's probably dark. You'll then faff about getting to wedding venue and watching everyone get pissed. Then you get the joy of driving home again.

Meanwhile family at castle have a nice evening meal together the night before wedding etc.

Roughly where is it being held?

We declined one at fernie castle for similar reasons. Not many rooms, not many other convenient places to stay, no children for us but others were invited (also cousins). Another we had an evening only invite to a wedding in Orkney (when our son was three weeks old). Like others have said, I think these were obligation invites rather than them actually thinking we would go.

Let me be clear, that was absolutely not the case. I've had a number of responses on here telling me how I feel and why I made the decisions.
I had a small wedding because we couldn't afford a bigger one.
We knew we couldn't have almost everyone we wanted there so we made choices in ways we thought people wouldn't feel left out e.g. if we have X then Y would be upset so we won't have that whole group, or because someone had had a difficult year and we wanted to give them a nice day. Some people really understood and wished us well, some didn't so much.
You're pissed off, maybe justifiably, maybe it is because they feel closer to your DH's siblings than DH.
But maybe it's not. You sound like your hurt is causing you to get carried away, and you've now decided you've been left out of other occasions that you had no basis for thinking prior to this.
If you're at the point of re-judging your entire relationship - one that until now you had faith in - why don't you just ask them how they allocated the rooms? I'm sure they'd rather have the opportunity to reassure you, than have you think badly of them. Their reaction will tell you what you need to know one way or another.
Then make a decision on whether to go based on all the real and valid reasons that you then have at your disposal. All I'm trying to say is don't have yourself miss out on a potentially lovely occasion and possibly ruin an important relationship based on overexcited responses on Mumsnet without knowing the facts.