Evening only invitation to brother’s wedding- AIBU to be a little hurt?

[Eveningonly]

I have one brother who is a fair few years younger than me and when I left home he was only around 10/11. Due to a difficult relationship with DM (it’s complicated), I rarely returned home for visits meaning I have seen little of DB since then but we always get on well when we do see one another. By the time DM and I reconciled somewhat and became more amicable, he had left home so we have only ever seen one another at family parties since. I also live a fair distance away so this is another reason why I don’t see family all that often.

He is getting married in a few months and he handed me an invitation to the wedding at a family party last night. I was pretty chuffed because they announced the date of the wedding almost a year ago so I thought I had been missed off the list. I think it may have been a last minute decision, perhaps to avoid awkwardness at the party with everyone discussing it.

I didn’t look at the invitation properly until I got home and I then realised it was an evening only invitation. AIBU to be a little hurt by this? I realise we’re not close but we are one another’s only sibling if that counts for anything? I’m also not a bad a person and we never had any ‘bad blood’ or conflict. It isn’t a small, intimate wedding from what I gather either. I always thought evening invitations were for colleagues, very distant relatives (I.e second cousins) and friends so it has bruised me somewhat. I feel excluded from the family fold really, am I just taking it too personally?

I think you sound reasonable, to be planning to attend rather than creating a situation by declining.

People don’t owe eachother anything just because they happen to be related. Your relationship is not close, even though you have the title of siblings. It’s reasonable to want the people you’re closest to and most comfortable with at your wedding, rather than simply inviting almost strangers/acquaintances just because you have the same mother.

Go to the wedding, and start trying to cultivate a relationship with him if that’s what you want. But don’t take it personally that he doesn’t feel close to you with the dynamics of your family/his upbringing etc.

No, I did say that I doubted OPs brother felt quite the same way, but I should have been clearer that I wasn't equating OPs behaviour with my Dad's.

I was instead equating the situation. Due to circumstances, OPs brother likely does feel abandoned by her, whether that's fair or not, and that has had the effect of keeping their relationship very surface level.

Sorry you're going through this OP.

He may have been the favourite, but you leaving under the circumstances might have meant he felt he couldn't leave as well, so was stuck.
Getting on when you meet shows he's a decent person but doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't hold it against you in some way.

Another point is the bride, I'm guessing she doesn't know you well and will have had a say, especially if numbers are restricted.

It's not too late to start a relationship with him, but I'd leave any chats for after the wedding.
The good thing is you are invited, even if it's not for the main part.

Go and support him, make the effort after the wedding to spend more time together and the conversations will happen organically.

I'm the oldest too and left to study in a different country when my youngest DSis was 13.

Saw her again intermittently from when she was 18.

I have sister guilt as those are quite important years for a young girl and wish I'd been around as an older sister.
We message now and again and visit each other atound once a year, but it's not the relationship I'd have wanted.

I had to leave but wish I'd called more as it was before social media.

Try your best, but also realise it will never be the same.

I wanted to add, OP, that I'm not suggesting this is your fault. You made the best decisions you could at the time given the circumstances. I did a similar thing. But it's very difficult (if not impossible) in that situation to build a close bond with a sibling. I don't think my sibling has negative feelings or anger towards me, I don't think he has feelings either way. I'm just not that important to him, and that's ok. Would I like a close sibling bond with someone? Yes. But the cards that I've been dealt mean that's not an option for me and I've made peace with that.

He didn’t go to your wedding despite receiving an invite to the main event. That tells you everything you need to know. Thank him for the invite but make up an excuse and don’t go. Evening only invites are for people you don’t actually want at your wedding but you feel compelled to invite anyway

I think you're getting a bit of a hard time on here. Perhaps you could have made a bit more of an effort when you first moved out but you were young yourself (how many people on here make excuses for 18/19/20/21 year olds not being 'real adults'), had escaped an abusive relationship with your mother, and tbh, how many older teens have that much in common with a much younger brother anyway? Even in a perfect hunkydory family that age and age gap is awkward, it would be completely normal to have more of a perfunctory relationship which then develops when you are both adults.

Besides which if people are expecting YOU to have put 100% effort in at age 18 despite your issues with your mother, having moved away to support yourself in a completely different city and doing a degree then why aren't they expecting him to have made a similar (or any) effort once he turned 18? He didn't even bother coming to your wedding and seeing as you refer to his 'partner' presumably he was also an adult by then. If he was so keen to foster a relationship he would have made the effort to come to that.

If he's having a big wedding with hundreds of guests then you have been placed below not-even-particularly close friends, cousins, partners and cousins of friends, possibly work colleagues. That's making a point. If it's a no kids wedding then he could have squeezed you and DH in if he'd wanted to. Besides which, posters are blaming you but you did invite him to your full wedding.

Yes it sounds like you don't have a great relationship but I don't think that's all (or even mostly) your fault.

I can understand you being hurt, particularly as you are each other's only sibling, but this is because you don't understand how your past action affected your brother.

I rarely returned home for visits meaning I have seen little of DB since...

He was only primary school age when you left and you rarely saw him when he was growing up. My two older brothers did to me, and my younger siblings, what you did to your brother, went away without a backward glance or a thought for our welfare. I'm now 70 and to this day I still bare a bit of grudge at the way they thought only of themselves.

I think what your brother has done is not very nice at all. Plenty of posters on here are excusing his behaviour by saying ‘well you didn’t do x, y or z so what do you expect?’ Provided I hadn’t been deliberately terrible towards him, I would be very very hurt by this afterthought, ‘b list’ invitation. People move away. They have lives. But they are family nonetheless. I thought weddings were often a time to bond with family, not push them further away and alienate them. Why do so many couples these days turn their wedding into an excuse to show who is or isn’t part of their gang?

Some of these comments are very harsh on you OP without knowing the nuances of your relationship. Your posts on it seem mature and self aware.

You are not being unreasonable to be hurt. And you are not holding your brother responsible for how you feel. You’re just expressing how the situation has made you feel.

I was curious if you had met his fiancée, as it could be a mutual decision to have only people they both knew well at the ceremony (not blaming the bride in anyway). Sometimes friends become our family and that could be the situation here. Does the bride have siblings that your brother has bonded with? All of this is speculation and doesn’t really matter. Weddings are stressful times and they probably haven’t put nearly as much thought into this as you have.

if you’re keen to maintain/build a relationship with him and can arrange childcare then take the invite as it stands and go. Use it as an opportunity to gauge how you feel/are received and take it from there. Try not to ruminate and speculate on all the what ifs if you can.

We very much see our own perspective. DB would say we get on fine when we’re both at an event.

The reality is that he doesn’t go to the event because I am there- that’s a coincidence. He does nothing to stay in touch with me. He just relies on us rocking up to the same event occasionally. I do make an effort. He’s ignored the existence of me and my kids for years. They haven’t had a birthday card. He wouldn’t recognise them on the street I don’t think. It makes me sad but I’ve done all I can. I didn’t know where he was to send a wedding invitation- he hadn’t updated his address and phone number (pre mobiles). He came, because at some point he phoned DM and she told him it was on.

You obviously had a really crap time at home. You thought he was ok because she’d always appeared ok with him. Bear in mind though, that was the perspective of 17 year old you. As an adult you may be more perceptive. The Golden Child is as damaged by bad parenting as the scapegoat. The golden child doesn’t get to leave home, make their own choices. Golden child is living in a gilded cage.

I would be hurt too OP, what were his reasons for not attending your wedding, did he send a card even? I wouldn’t go to his.

Can I swap with you? My brother is getting married next year and I really can't be arsed with it. We're not close and he's chosen a venue miles away from where we both live. I haven't even met the bride to be so can't be bothered with any of it!

Leaving your relationship with your mother out of this, I "get on well" when I see the window cleaner or the post person! The person he is now was shaped in a large part by your absence. Regardless of distance, you haven't honestly made any effort to be closer than that - you are friendly when you see each other, which isn't very often. You made little or no effort to maintain the relationship with him, so why would you be surprised that he is returning that same feeling - you are somebody distant from him whose presence at his wedding isn't particularly important. If you want to know why that is, then that means having a conversation with him, and, if appropriate, making changes to your relationship.

This is awful op, many people have complex family dynamics but barring abuse or being nc immediate family should of course be invited to the whole day.

We probably all have relatives whom we like more than others but invites are not the time for airing any festering issues.

Go, smile and wave and leave it at that. You are both adults now he is as responsible for making an effort. You don't need to be reaching out to him at all.

Evening invites are absolutely shit imo, the B list for sure and what a lovely very public way to make people aware of that.

Yes, I’d be hurt as well.
but it is what it is.

I used to be close to my little sister. The breakdown of her and our DM’s relationship had a long term impact on our sister relationship. I tried to stay neutral and made time to visit her outside of family parties / without our DM, never put pressure on DSis etc.

well, DSis has ignored the invitation to my birthday, my engagement party and most likely won’t attend the wedding.

But there’s nothing you - or I - can do. I’ll just keep inviting her but also respect her decision to not attend.

@another1bitestheduck

I don't blame the OP for not being great at keeping the relationship going when she was at university.

But that was a very long time ago now. She has had a long time to reach out and try to forge a better relationship and hasn't chosen to. Even when he didn't come to her wedding, she didn't reach out to see if he was ok or reflect on their relationship. He is much younger and she did the leaving so while I don't think their poor relationship is all on her, I do think it's 70/80% on her.

My 11yo brother missed me when I went on exchange for 7 months at 21, just for some context op. It may be that he was hurt and abandoned, having his mum love him doesn’t mean he didn’t feel like his sister was missing suddenly. I absolutely do not mean you shouldn’t have left or you should have tried harder- you had to manage your own mental health. I’m just trying to imagine his view of it, and that he had no concept of what it was like for you. I think taking the high road and attending nicely is the best approach here. I’m sorry your childhood was like that.

YANBU. It’s quite thoughtless.

Maybe you just need to ask him why he doesn’t want you - a member of his close family- to see him married in the actual ceremony?

I just wanted to reach out, if you are still reading this to say I think you have achieved a great deal by setting up your own life in academia a long, long way from the abuse you have suffered.

It seems you have decided, with the help of a counsellor, to bridge some kind of relationship with your family of origin. The outcome being that you are now unfortunately exposed to the old dynamics and patterns that are embedded in your family, and are unlikely to change. Therefore hurt by them again. Most people would never insult a sibling with an evening invite op.

I wanted to say this is just one day. One day in the backdrop of 364 others the wedding will come, and it will go.
Regardless of whether you swallow the humiliation and embarrassment and accept the invite offered, or choose to decline with dignity and grace - you do not need to let this hurt you - another wound inflicted on you to add to the others.

It’s possible to rise above it, wish them well and continue investing your time, energy and resources into your own family and friends.

Your life is self made, in every conceivable sense, and that should be celebrated. You have done incredibly well to achieve what you have, since leaving home with no family support or any safety nets whatsoever, I wish you well op 💐

My take is that he might feel you abandoned him and then when you did reappear you were totally different to him and his life. There’s no connection and as the older sibling/adult that was ur job to do and you didn’t. What messaging has he got from you all these years? I think you don’t have any right to ask questions you got to put the work in first.

It's a horrible, hurtful feeling, one of my nieces never invited me but did invite every other aunt and uncle, my second niece invited me to evening do only, but again had every other relative there for wedding again I felt really hurt so I didn't bother going, I took my own little family out for the day and had a brilliant time. The thing that hurt the most was a couple of days later my sister put a picture on FB showing a big group family picture with the caption of all of my family altogether, That hurt even more. Sending big hugs x

Firstly, being a sibling doesn’t automatically entitle you to a wedding invitation. It would be customary and traditional to invite parents, siblings, their spouses and children. But customarily and traditionally nuclear families don’t fracture like yours has.

Secondly, and most importantly, you are “the one who left”. You see this a lot with siblings who move abroad and expect to have all of what they had at home AND the extra stuff in their new lives. (I pass no judgement as a sibling who both left for a life abroad and someone whose sibling left for a life abroad). Often, the family members left behind feel hurt and betrayed (which they shouldn’t, but you can understand). But mostly the one who left forgets that the people who were left behind went on with building and living their lives. Their world continued to turn without you. You are the outsider, especially with the attitude of home being too far / its normal to only see each other if other family members are present so it makes the travel worthwhile / it’s normal that my life got busy with work and children etc. You have made it clear with your actions where your home family lie in your list of priorities. Your brother seems to have accepted this, hence why he issued you with a late, evening-only wedding invitation. That’s what you mean to him. He knows you don’t prioritize him.

You made your choices. These are the consequences. I don’t think you have a right to feel hurt. I also don’t think there’s anything to feel hurt about. It’s natural consequences.

Don’t forget the bride will have a say in the guest list too.

Finally, I 100% agree that evening-only invitations are the absolute worst. So rude and insulting. I never accept them. I don’t want to be someone’s compromise. I’d rather be nothing at all! (Unless it’s a work colleague and there are a bunch of us, in which case it can be quite fun. Mind you, it’s been many years since our last wedding invitation!)

You barely have a relationship and I suspect that, along with the age difference, means that he doesn't really see you as a sibling. It's not really surprising he doesn't want you at his wedding, in all honesty.

Most people (thankfully) have not had a family situation of abuse in the way you have, so just won’t understand it - I might add.

I completely understand your disappointment OP but I think a lot of people prioritise friends over blood relatives these days unless they’re genuinely close to the latter. So I can see why your brother and his parter would rather use the day spaces for people with whom they socialise monthly (for example) over you, DH and DC.

That said, I think that something else is going on here, maybe there’s a bit of (unfair, I’m sure) resentment simmering away on his part. I think you’re right to be planning a talk with him after the wedding. As a few PPs said, this invitation business could be a wake-up call and you could end up having a warm relationship with him and any DCs he may have. Silver lining!

I hope the wedding goes well and that you and DH enjoy the party.