To not go to a wedding of a man I've never met?

[Youthiswastedontheyoung]

Adult niece (in-law). Never met fiance.
I'm more than happy for my husband and daughter to attend (and quite rightly so), but personally feel one shouldn't attend a wedding/invite someone to a wedding of someone whom they have never met.
AIBU?

It is not your wedding!

In all my time browsing on Mumsnet, and occasionally posting, this is one of the daftest and nuttiest posts I've ever seen....😂 So what if you don't know the Groom? It's your niece's wedding as well who, I'm sure, you know quite well.
Deary me, there's some right weirdos about these days...

If you've been invited there's no reason to feel that you shouldn't attend.

I didn't really know a cousin's wife but it would obviously have been rude not to invite her & the invitation was issued with the thought that she would attend & (hopefully) have a nice time with her family!

Not with the thought that she would decline because I didn't really know her & was concerned about money which we were spending as we wished.

It'd be more odd not to invite you, surely?
I think you are being churlish. Ok, don't go if you don't want to but if I were the bride I might feel that was rather pointed. She's asked you to share her special day, which is lovely of her, and you are criticising her for it.

OP you qualify as you’re extended family (by marriage given you’re unsure how you quality) even if you were just GF they could invite you or infact anyone they want. Take it as a compliment and if you don’t want to go, don’t.

Churlish is very accurate.

They are trying to include you as part of the family - you’ll always be the outsider if you don’t make the effort to attend a family wedding. How do you expect to get to know your husbands family better if you refuse to go to anything for totally random reasons like, “I’ve never met them before”. The young couple may not mind, but I’m sure there will be wider family members that see it as a snub. Go to the wedding, support your husband (who probably doesn’t want to have to explain to Auntie Dot & Granny Smith etc why you aren’t there every 5 minutes) have a good time and get to know people. If your daughter is only 4 I’m sure she’ll love dressing up and going, more so with her mum there as well rather than just her dad.

Your post is odd.

I wondered if you lack empathy/understanding of social situations.

The parents are throwing a bash to celebrate the wedding of their kids. You are married to the brother of one of the parents. Of course you should go, you form part of the bridal parents family group.

I think it will be seen as extremely rude and stand offish if you DON’T go.

If you are that panicked about cost, give them a decent money gift for the newly-weds bottom drawer.

Your behaviour in having to ask this is rather odd.

This is so bizarre. You're dreaming up so many excuses as to why they might, hypothetically, have chosen not to invite you. But they DID invite you. You HAVE been invited, they WANT you to go, and they clearly CAN afford it. They are also both part of your family now, not strangers. Why would you choose to distance yourself from a big family event, from all those happy memories and photographs? From the opportunity to get to know everyone better? Especially is being a so-called stranger is clearly such a big issue in your head.

Just get over yourself and go to the wedding. Say thank you very much and enjoy the day.

I've attended weddings as a plus one where I've not met either party many times. Always had a great time. You're being weird.

I've been to several weddings where I only knew one half of the wedding duo, two were cousins that I hadn't seen a great deal of for quite a while.

It would never occur to me that because I hadn't met the grooms that it was odd that I'd be invited to their wedding.

You sound like you don't really want to go and looking for an excuse to refuse the invitation, I doubt they'll miss you.

I've attended plenty of weddings where the only person I have know was my boyfriend. This is very normal OP.

If you want to meet the groom before the wedding why not ask the couple over to yours for tea and cake one day?

.

Weird attitude. I had a very short courtship and engagement. If we'd only invited people who had met both of us it would have been an exceptionally small wedding excluding most of my family, who live far away!

I also invited the partners of all my guests to our wedding, even if I hadn't met them, because I find it rude to exclude other people's partners from a celebration of my own relationship.

But if you don't want to go just decline the invitation.

The wedding invite is perfectly normal. You are the one who is being odd. Sounds like you just don't want to go.

you imagine incorrectly.
lots of people have nieces/nephews/step/half/by marriage that they pick up through the course of their lives.

you have very rigid views of what a wedding should look like. Kindly OP, those are your scripts for how a wedding is properly conducted and not the only way to do things.

But that was your wedding. This is theirs.
How is it going to harm you to attend a wedding, smile and toast the happy couple? You’ll have your DH and dc with you, not like you’re expected to attend alone and you know other people who’ll be there.

Very normal, you're your husband's plus 1. It would be weird and rude not to go.

That’s pretty ridiculous, given how many times I’ve seen posts on here about not being invited/weddings-had you not been invited, I bet you’d be annoyed. It’s perfectly normal to be invited to a virtual stranger’s wedding, it’s not about you, it’s about their day. A plus one is normal. We had a work colleague of my DH’s at ours, didn’t know his wife, but of course she was invited, plus one of his aunts, never met her or her Dh.

I think if there's a chance of further meetings with the happy couple, then attending is the right thing.
If it's overseas, rarely going to see them again then fair enough.
But weddings can strengthen family bonds imo, especially if the family itself isn't large.
You sound a little uncomfortable in large groups? You don't have to stay til end, sure your little one will not manage it either so you have a ready made 'sorry, I need to get off now, Tabitha is exhausted ' type thing.
Good luck 🌸

I find it hard to believe that you're so committed to frugality that you find their invitation distasteful. Nobody is so unworldly they don't know it's standard to invite both parts of a couple to such events.

Strange attitude to have to snub not only your husbands but also your daughters family.

No, the fact is you don’t know your nieces husband to be - what you’ve chosen to do with that is ridiculous.

OP did you come here to make a drama of it? 😊 You seem to be enjoying yourself with your “lack of understanding” and strange comments. Slow day for you?