Elderly mum getting married and won’t invite us

[Candlemascandy]

My mum and her partner are 81. They have realised that after living together in a house they bought together 30 years ago that they need to get married to make financial things easier when the inevitable happens. They realised this about a year ago and set out to get it sorted asap. They started off with the idea of a small family wedding at a registry office with me, my sister, her partner’s daughter and our spouses and children etc. However, they have made it clear that they do not want to spend any money on this event, basically because they are tight and think paying for anyone else to have a ‘nice time’ is not their responsibility.
So as the planning has gone on and a year has gone by, the wedding idea has been reduced to just partner’s daughter and husband as witnesses so they can do it for under £100. Me and my sister and our spouses and kids are not invited. They are going for a meal afterwards. Also not invited to that as they have picked a pub where under 14s aren’t allowed.
Wedding was planned for early January but then my mum got pneumonia. We dropped everything and rushed up to see her in hospital etc etc. They live about 200 miles away. Partner’s daughter lives in next village. She was unavailable to help out with care because her husband was ‘poorly’. So all the stress fell on me and my sister and husbands. Trying to work full time, manage the distance and 3 kids each. Not much fun.
Mum is now better. Wedding has now been rescheduled for April. We are not invited, they are still sticking to original plan.
I’m really hurt by this. I feel like at a fundamental level my mum is telling us that we are not important to her.
Others I speak to keep saying ‘oh look on the bright side. You won’t need to pay for petrol, outfits, hotels, wedding gifts etc etc’ but I don’t see it like that. It’s a big life event and it’s one to celebrate. Not to be morbid, but it’s unlikely that we will be having another big family event like this with them both there. I feel like when the Saturday of the wedding comes, and we are not there people will say ‘Why aren’t you going to your Mum’s wedding?’ And the horrible answer is ‘we weren’t invited because we cost too much’.
AIBU to think that it’s normal to invite your daughters to your wedding when you can afford it and there is no other reason not to (like a big falling out)?

I still don't understand why you can't ask can you with or without your other half attend without any children

Have RTFT and have no idea why you've been getting such a hard time from some on here @Candlemascandy .

Can completely understand your hurt and bewilderment, and have recently realised that my SM of 40 years has never really liked me, unless I was useful to her, and has masked her antipathy until age related mental health exacerbation has made it crystal clear.

My own late DM, to whom I was extremely close, did on occasion make me feel somewhat irrelevant and excluded on occasion, because of her generational stoic and pragmatic approach to certain things.

While we can absolutely be "the grown ups", "respect their wishes" and make sure we're not "making it all about me", it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, after all, we are still their children and we have those sensibilities ingrained within us. Any perceived rejection by a parent can be extremely hurtful, even if we can understand it on a logical level, and in your case, a step child is getting essentially preferential treatment which us quite savage.

So I can only commiserate really, as it appears nothing can be changed.

I also thing it's particularly egregious to have included you in a year's worth of planning only to change the goal posts at the end. They could have just "got it done" with no input at all if it is really such a clinical formality.

Families are complicated creatures especially in blended cases. On occasion I describe my lot as "putting the fun in dysfunctional".

Take care OP. More people "get it" than don't x

Sorry, there are a lot of posts to respond to.
I have told my mum. She turns it so she is doing me a favour. She’d never accept that I would be hurt. That would be me being unreasonable.
i’m wary of doing the whole ‘oh don’t worry, we’ll pay for ourselves’ thing if it’s really that they don’t want us there. And who, really has to pay to attend a wedding meal they weren’t invited to? Is that not the most cringey thing ever? I paid for my own wedding, I didn’t ask her to pay for her own meal.

I get what you mean about the meal @Candlemascandy, but I think this has the potential to really damage your relationship with your mum. I genuinely think if my mum did this it would be irretrievable.

@Candlemascandy YANBU and I don’t know why so many posters are complaining you are making it all about you.

Despite helping your mother lots, she is effectively cutting you out of both her wedding and subsequent wedding dinner. If she really does only want a legalised union for pragmatic reasons, why are they even having a celebratory dinner.

I didn’t have a great relationship with my mum but she would not have done something like this unless she was coerced or not in control of her faculties. If neither of these apply then I’m sorry, but your mother is being rather callous and ungrateful.

I’d be tempted to take a step back and just let them get on with it.

They started wanting an intimate ceremony which they then realised would 8 adults and 3/4 children so 12 people. They don't want fuss so given you and your sister are hours away, they plumped for the nearest which is her step daughter to be and her husband. Then as they all stay close, a bite to eat at a restaurant they want to go to. Perhaps if you and your sister went aithout husband and kids this would work for then at their wedding., but you seem insistent you all need to go and take photos etc. It's not what you want, but uou don't seem to be able to understand this. As for her being in hospital - the two are totally different.

It seems they have chosen the witness they have, because they live closest? Not because they are more valuable than you.
They have limited funds, so have limited witnesses, and have chosen the ones that are most practical?

Could you not offer to pay the cost to attend? Or offer to rearrange and sort the meal so all of you can attend?

are they aware of how you feel, and the issue with the meal? If not, you are being unreasonable to suggest this relates to the value they place on you, they might not even realise this is an issue for you, as this is almost just an admin thing for them.

But you dont all need to go surely? You said you are not trying to make it all about you, you want to remember the occasion and get photos etc. So there's no need for the whole family to go

Such an unkind post.

They want a piece of paper showing a legal contract so that the survivor does not have to sell the house to pay tax or be forced to sell because other relatives now own part of the house. Not a piece of paper, at all, a legal contract. But it doesn't have to be a big thing and if that's what they want then they can do it.

Makes you wonder what sort of relationship some people have with their own parents and their own children when they can so blithely say something like this.

As you get older, you may find that you have less energy to deal with Big Occasions, and that you need to limit contact with some people because, however much you love them, they are exhausting in anything more than small doses.

but your mum clearly DOES NOT THINK OF IT as being a "big life occasion" for her
I feel like at a fundamental level my mum is telling us that we are not important to her.
I think it's more likely that she is telling you that on a fundamental level the wedding is not important to her
It is just a tick box they are doing for financial security.

to be honest, I think there probably is more going on with your mum and her tightness,given the comment you said she made about you just wanting to safeguard your inheritance, which is horrible and not something I could ever imagine my mum saying. Perhaps that is influencing your views on this.

but you're getting quite aggressive towards some posters who seem to be trying to explain the above - for you clearly weddings are a big deal, for many people they are not. It seems like your mum is one of them, and even if she originally mooted having a slightly bigger ceremony has now decided that she cba (understandable at 81) and literally just wants the easiest option possible, which is inviting the family members who live nearby to be the witnesses and have more availability rather than the ones who live hundreds of miles away and have to navigate kids being in school etc.

I appreciate some posters have been unnecessarily rude, but others are trying to help you - it's not a case whose view of the importance of weddings is right or wrong but if you can reframe this to try and understand that it's not you she is rejecting, it's the concept of a wedding ceremony being a significant event, it will only help you, rather than taking it as a personal insult.

Another cruel and unkind post. Are you the OP's step sister (to be) or her mum by any chance?!

By whole family do you mean me, DH and three kids? All 5 of us? It’s not a cast of thousands. And I’m not sure how you think I tell my DH and kids that their granny doesn’t want them there. I know most people’s granny’s don’t get married so there is little precedent, but what’s the etiquette for that? My husband dropped everything, borrowed a car off a friend and drove us up to be with my mum in hospital. Because he’s a good man. Maybe she can tell him he doesn’t derserve to come to her wedding herself if I pay for myself and go.

OP you obviously have a very loving but somewhat fraught relationship with your mother. My mother is 92 and, looking back, I realize she had started to make odd and stupid decisions in her mid eighties. She went from being quite thoughtful, rational, and reasonable to being unable to change her mind or make good, rational, decisions very slowly but, looking back, very clearly.

To me the entire prodrome of looking for conventional family inclusive weddings to suddenly and stubbornly refusing even to change the restaurant booking snacks of this sort of mental decline. The person becomes fixated on one set of issues (cost in this case) and they can no longer flexibly accept suggestions or information from outsiders about parts of the plan. Its a kind of mental rigidity that masks frailty.

I am so sorry this has happened this way. My advice, if you don’t mind my tendering it, is to treat this like a non event. Just say “your daughters and grandchildren will come up and take pictures and bring flowers and cake to celebrate the wedding during the next visit. our wedding present will be taking you two out to a restaurant to celebrate then!” Snd leave it at that. The exact date and time of the celebration doesn’t matter.

Definitely not my mum. She can’t use a computer.

Is this your way of saying ‘you’re exhausting’?

But does it really matter as long as it’s one of you?

Mumsnet uses the term weaponized incompetence for men a lot. I feel like OP is showing another side of it - weaponized incompetence and lack of understanding, weaponized in order to feed anger/bitterness.

There are a million ways for you to understand this or find a way to either join or be ok with it - but you're just set on being a bit of a brat. With love, if you're like this in real life, it would harsh my decision to have a low-key wedding with my long time partner.

To me, it's off that they are involving his Dc and not you/your sister. But it's not a big event to them, it's just a piece of paper, and they are doing it for legal reasons. It's not a big declaration of love.
I am a generation younger, divorced, and if I were to get married again, I would not want any fuss.

I rather agree with this. What’s the point of OP fighting with strangers here? It won’t solve the problem.

Do people actually pull randoms of the street to be witnesses? I'd be too stressed I might not find someone at such short notice and might lose my slot!