Brother’s Wedding Would You Say Something?

[GutsyPeachExpert]

Brother announced that he and SiL were getting married in September. She wasn’t even there when he told my mother. They didn’t have engagement or a big fanfare or anything.

When they have been asked about the wedding he never knows the answer but she is more forthcoming.

Once Dad asked for a lift with something but brother said he wasn’t free as they were looking at venues so that was the only hint we got.

We have now got formal wedding invitations through the post and my two little girls 6 and 4 aren’t invited.

My mother immediately rang him as she thought it was an oversite but it is a child free wedding. My mother said that as SiL doesn’t have nieces she thought my girls would be flower girls and could they make an exception as nobody would question the wedding party being an exception to the child free rule. However, he said they already had two flower girls from SiL’s side. We have never heard her even speak about these children.

I am so upset. I can accept logically the flower girl thing but for them not to be even there!

I don’t want a debate on children at weddings I want to know if I would be unreasonable to speak to my brother about how upset I am and to ask that they be invited.

Op, I get that you are upset, and to my eyes, it feels rude not to include your dc.

But.. you have a choice to make. Suck it up and arrange childcare, or decide to sit it out.

You and your mum feeding each other this angst and ill feeling will do neither of you any good.

So, decide what you want to do, then do it without fuss, and try to be happy that your DB is getting married to a woman he presumably loves.

She could not look at the photos if they will upset her so much

But op was happy to have her children as the exception?

Sure. But they should own it and stop bullshitting. It's not a child free wedding. They have just chosen not to invite the OP's children.

So don't call it "child-free" then.

DB was probably doing that to pre-empt them kicking off.

everyone is a guest bar the bride and groom.

It's a shame the OP's brother doesn't care about his mother's feelings though. He should decline the £10,000 if it is still offered.

Hope they get a bouncer lol

That's some roundabout mental gymnastics.

Well it didn't work, because it's not true.

Not really.

You can say ‘child free’ barring immediate family. Most people understand that. It is more unusual to be child free and then have children from non immediate family.

Don’t give gifts with strings.

People are so unreasonable when it comes to their dogs.

And what all the "but it's not child free" protests are ignoring is that the Op and her mum were very happy to have flower girls as exception to child free when they thought heir DC would be them.

The points about behaviour could be valid.

We recently attended a child-free wedding of my DH’s best friend from uni, my DH was best man. We left our two with my Mum, no problem. The only children there were his niece and nephew (which he informed us of on the invite) and 1 baby who was breastfeeding, which of course nobody with older DCs begrudged.

He was very appreciative of all our organisational efforts to attend without our DCs, and he definitely likes them. We appreciated his appreciation as parents.

Interestingly, he confided to me during the evening do that he’d actually have loved to have my two and his other best friend’s two children there, as they are so well behaved and he genuinely likes them, but he could not invite the children of his wife’s cousins, as he was genuinely very concerned they would spoil their big day. From what he described, these concerns were valid. I totally got that he couldn’t pick and choose to remain tactful.

My parents paid for my wedding. The money was already in my bank account before we finalised the guest list but it would not have occurred to me not to let them invite some of their friends (let alone quibble over immediate family, who were all invited). I think it would have been exceptionally graceless to say, "Thanks for the cash but we don't want your friends there."

We don't know the relationship between the bride and the flower girls, other than they're not her nieces.

If they're not her nieces, children or siblings then they are more distant family than the OP's children.

So they should invite OPs kids just because of how they're related and not because they genuinely spend time with them and actually want them there?

Pretty sure this 10k hasn’t been given yet to op or her brother is “were going to be given” and the money to match the ops
wedding went to his first property purchase years ago. They haven’t paid for the wedding but even so technically if they where paying for the wedding with the intentions of some input again this would have be realised ages ago not once the official invites went out. Though again I don’t agree with I’ll do this but only if you do that.

It was child free to everyone outside my immediate family.

So not 'child-free' at all then, which is my point, what is the point in calling it that? yours was a bigger wedding, which I actually think makes it better, but a small wedding where only a handful of children aren't included while other children are, is just insulting calling it "child free" to the people who's kids you are excluding.

But I also believe that people can do what they like at their own weddings, just don't insult people's intelligence..

Basically a bit like saying, "yes it is a gluten-free bread, it only has a little bit of gluten in it"

Huh? Why would they? The "child free but not actually child free" decision was made by the bride and groom. Why would the OP or her mum have an opinion about whether they decided to invite all children or just children of close family?

If it’s a Church wedding, you could decline the invitation but all get dressed up or just get your girls dressed up to go into Church to see them married, then congratulate them afterwards, have photos and go somewhere special just the four of you. This might also be the case for the flower girls and little usher boy….that they attend the Church ceremony but not the reception.

If they don't want to hurt their family's feelings then yes, of course they should.