14 year old not invited to stepsister’s wedding

[Ombreofmyself]

Stepdaughter is getting married. My husband is paying for everything but dress and flowers.

Our six year old and nine year old are in the wedding, but that’s another story. They are half sisters to the bride.

My 14 year old, step sister to the bride isn’t invited.

Made husband clarify with her. Stepdaughter confirmed so I am not going.

Husband is upset but seems completely incapable of thinking rationally and insisting on her coming but then says why can’t she go to her Dad’s. He should insist as he is paying.

Maybe that's the crux of it...the B2B WANTS to harm the relationship between her SM and Dad? To get her own back on her Dad for nit being the best father when she was growing up?

Or if her Dad wasn't the best father to her, it's a way of her testing if her Dad would choose her over her SM/SS? To prove to the B2B that her Dad really does love her...

@Volpini I think you are absolutely right in that the bride’s choice not to invite the stepsister is rooted in her feelings towards her father and his remarriage.

There are clearly unresolved issues at the heart of this whole situation and the OP’s husband needs to see this for what it is and have a conversation with his daughter about why she feels this way.

The bride isn’t dealing with this in the best way - I agree that excluding the stepsister is unkind - but she is clearly the product of a childhood that was challenging and she needs her father to listen to why she feels this way rather than trying to make her feel guilty and threatening to withdraw money etc. Perhaps if the OP could step back from the hurt she feels about her child’s exclusion and put herself in the shoes of her stepdaughter, who to all intents and purposes got abandoned for her dad’s new family when she was 19, then there might be a path to healing and resolution for everyone.

From my understanding of OP's posts, he is truly torn-up over this. The difficulty would be if the younger two know about their position as flower girls and are excited about it. Preventing them from attending would just disappoint two more children. And the 14 year-old would not suddenly stop being upset because her sisters are not attending.

This has piqued my interest so I looked up other threads. There is one from last year where an OP got an invite for her husband, her and their shared daughter but not her daughter from a previous relationship (both were children). They declined the invite, but then the younger (invited, "blood-relative") daughter found out and insisted on being allowed to go. OP was upset and she her husband still would not attend, but they had to relent in youngest attending as they didn't want to disappoint her and feared she would resent the older, uninvited sister. So difficult for the OP.

I can understand why you are upset. But I think you need to rein in any upset about the message you're getting on how she sees the two of you. It is what it is. You have very different views of your family and neither is wrong. You can't make anyone's life better by making an issue of it (and it sounds like you realise that - so kudos to you for a mature response to a difficult, upsetting situation).

This is how rude people get away with it.

Potentially @OKYay & if that is the case, then I feel very sorry for the B2B, however to make a 14 year old suffer for the ‘test’ just seems unnecessarily cruel as there must be some other way!

29 posts you’ve made on this thread. 😬

Manners are saying thank you when you receive a gift. It's not inviting all an sundry in return for it.

I would say that the bride knows exactly what she is doing
she is making her father choose between her and his family

By leaving out the 14 year old she knows it’s going to cause a huge problem and she is probably quite happy about it .

she knows she is hurting her dad as well - she’s is testing him to see if he will put her first

she has just reverted back into a nasty little spoilt hurt child and she is seeing how much her dad loves her and is he willing to sacrifice his second family for her
and she is doing this by refusing the 14 year old

mentally she is still probably the age of when her parents split up or the age of when the OP met her dad
I think it’s her way of showing the control she didn’t have as a young child / adult

In what way was the 19-year-old-at-university ‘abandoned’?

And? That’s an issue why?

What she needs is to have it explained to her that older stepsister is getting married and that older stepsister hasn’t invited the younger stepsister as they didn’t grow up together and weddings are usually only for very close family and friends - but that doesn’t mean that she’s not loved and valued, it’s just how weddings work sometimes.

I really hope the OP doesn't say anything as hurtful as this, which screams 'we are all close family with stepsister and you are not', when it seems far more likely that the OP's daughter is simply collateral damage in the iffy relationship between the bride and her father.

I find attitudes to step-families - which are as frequent as ever they were - peculiar. It all sounds a bit cold and unfriendly. So sad.

Another thing is that the SD might not view the 14 year old as a sister, but there is every chance the 14 year old views the SD as her sister. For the 14year old, she probably won't have any memories of the SD not being in her life. And she has a relationship with her through their shared younger sisters, as well as OP's husband, who must be a father figure to her after 10 years starting at a very young age. So even if the SD feels no sisterly feelings towards her, she must be completely lacking in compassion to not consider that the 14 year old may actually love her like a sister, and is therefore going to feel hideously left out. OP has said that the 14 year old and the youngest 2 are all aware that they all have different sets of parents from the 29 year old. But that doesn't mean that affection and a feeling of family hasn't set in with the 3 younger children towards the oldest.

Nineteen year olds are still very vulnerable and need to know they can go home and get parental support if they need it.

If both your parents shack up with new partners and start having second families when you’re that age, you can suddenly find yourself with no home to go to, no bedroom, and with parents who have no time for you.

Perhaps you don’t remember being 19, or haven’t parented a 19 year old yet. They might seem very grown up and self sufficient but they still need the security of their parents. Parents remarrying and starting new families at that age can feel very much like an abandonment.

I love that you’re making me out to have no empathy when you are showing a remarkable lack of empathy towards the bride, whose choice not to invite her stepsister to her wedding is, while not exactly a pleasant thing to do, clearly the result of how she feels about her father’s remarriage. She’s obviously not had an easy time of it, otherwise she wouldn’t feel as she does about her stepsister.

Everyone piling on and calling this young woman a bitch, cow, cunt, stunted and gleefully imagining never speaking to her again, not helping her in any way in the future all makes for deeply unpleasant reading. I also find it a bit odd to call her a step-daughter when there has never been any kind of maternal relationship there as she was an adult when they met. I appreciate there isn't really another convenient term to use but it doesn't really describe their relationship.

She didn't meet the OP until she was 18/19 as OP terms it and by that point her parents had been divorced for 10 years and she has also intimated he wasn't a great father, OP's eldest has probably spent more time living with this man than the step-daughter and, while that's not her fault, there may well be resentment there. I also wondered if there are step-children on her mother's side and on the part of her husband-to-be, who also may have 2 sets so they may have taken the decision not to invite any?

Overall, I do think it would be better if the eldest was invited and I wonder how much effort the husband made to arrange it, but I don't think it's the outrage some people seem to see it as and it does not excuse the way people have spoken about this woman on here, which has been really horrible to read.

You think? When it ends up in her being excluded from family events that include her half-sisters, she might regret her decision!

Your situation is entirely different.

Your father sounds pretty unpleasant as well, him and his "latest shag"!

My honest answer to this is to still pay whatever he promised and still attend. By all means try to explain the family perspective and convince her otherwise. But if she won't change her mind there is simply no way I would abandon my daughter on her wedding day or withdraw funding that I had already promised. Even if her decision broke my heart. I don't perceive not being with the younger ones for one day to be abandoning them. But not going to the eldest daughter's wedding is not something you can take back. I wonder if he is paying for everything and raiding his ISA etc to compensate for prior poor parenting. He can't turn his back on her now, but doubly so if that's the case

But the reality is, she isn’t close to her stepsister. That is how it is in this family. It’s not hurtful to state a truth that the girl already knows from her lived experience - she barely sees her stepsister.

A 14 year old is old enough to understand that she has a different relationship to her stepsister than her half sisters, and that is actually perfectly normal, especially given the huge age difference.

She isn’t close to her 29 year old stepsister. She doesn’t see her very often and they don’t have a sibling relationship. Therefore she isn’t going to her wedding. The OP can find a way to explain this kindly and appropriately to her daughter - it doesn’t need to be made into a drama.

If you think that's what "manners" are I can only surmise you must be lacking in that department.

A 14 year old stepsister is not "all and sundry" either!

Oh god, are you still making shit up?!

How do you know how often bridezilla sees her stepsister? I don't recall the OP mentioning it?

That would just make you a fucking stirring bitch, imo. What a way to go stir up as many of your DC as possible. Despite the simple fact that a 29 year old woman in the uk can decide who she wishes to invite to her wedding. And that your husband, her father, can decide what he wishes to fund.

How about the 29 year old adult bride puts herself into the shoes of her 14 year old stepsister who also grew up not living with her father, and with a stepparent in her life?

That’s awful OP . Is there any know issues between the girls ? I find this awful .