Another family wedding where my eldest is excluded - a year on

[Stuckinthemiddlewithnoone]

12 year old wants to go to wedding where sister hasn't been invited | Mumsnet

This was my thread from almost a year ago and it's happened again.

Younger one invited but not older one, this time the brother of the original groom.

Younger one went with her gran and the rest of the family and we stayed at home. It's set a horrible precedent.

My husband isn't doing anything and younger one going on her own again.

The family clearly want to make some bizarre point.

I genuinely believed that this wouldn't happen again, only last week husband was at his mother's with the father of the groom and nobody said anything. My mother-in-law won't get involved but thinks we made too much of an issue last time and we should have asked for an invitation grovelled for my eldest daughter instead of declining with dignity.

I don't think this is against my daughter, I think this is payback for last time.

We don't know anything at all about the family or how they deal with issues or even what issues or disagreements they have had apart from this one thing so there's no reason to assume that there's an attitude that will cause long term damage.

I haven’t had a good relationship with my only sibling since I was a pre-teen. I struggle to see how the OP insisting DD2 not go to this wedding will help the relationship, I think given DD2’s clearly expressed feelings it will likely only lead to resentment. DD2 is also obviously the younger sibling and I’m told younger siblings can often feel lower prioritised.

So if they have a piece of paper to say he’s her dad, then she should be invited to the weddings?

I have no issue with that attitude, so I don’t view it as someone being treated like ‘crap’. Not sharing the same opinion as you does not mean she lacks understanding.

Similarly, I am truly grateful I don’t belong to a family that thinks ‘all of us or none’, without any concern for nuance, is in any way a ‘kind’ or reasonable approach.

That would be up to the bride and groom.

Except OP and her husband have both acknowledged that they believe the fallout from not letting her go would have been/would be worse (if indeed they could have stopped her).

There’s good reason to point out that long term damage could very well be an outcome.

I do think they are really mean, sorry op. The sooner people stop being so bloody self obsessed and realise that life is not a perma insta op the better. Marriage and weddings should be about joy, not getting one over on someone.

Yes but if that were my child I'd see that as something worrying about my daughters attitude/mindset to things that we needed to work on and tackle.

@NotSafeInTaxis it is that simple. As the child and the parent in this kind of scenario it really is. You advise the family that you are a unit and it is then their choice if they wish the child to be there enough to invite the whole unit or if they do not care to do so. I would never leave my brothers step daughter out. I had met her twice due to the distance they live and she was my bridesmaid along with her sisters that are my nieces by blood. She is just as much family as they are.

Personally I have refused to allow my husbands family to treat my eldest different to our son and then are now treated as equals. The same way my parents were to my grandparents regarding me as a child. You do not single out a child. They do not creat the family dynamic, if a child is accepted by the step parent as part of the package they should be treated as equals and as part of a family unit.

Again assuming you could force your daughter to agree with you, and wouldn’t actually push her further away.

Except I’d see that as treating this as some kind of very black & white right & wrong situation. Whereas it’s quite a nuanced situation.

DD2 “mindset” is that she wants to go to a family wedding. She doesn’t see them as DD’s family and it sounds as if she has a relationship with her granny that DD1 doesn’t have.

There was no bad intention behind the lack of invitation the first time & the nephew is someone who DH runs into in the mother’s house. They are clearly not massively close and the woman marrying into the family may have made a decision without discussing it with the wider family. She also tried to rectify it by extending an evening invitation which I think did include DD1. The whole thing could probably have been rectified much earlier if DH had asked for an invite.

Evidently it isn’t that simple, or these types of threads wouldn’t appear with the regularity they do.

Wanting it to be simple, and for there to be a guaranteed way to avoid any negative repercussions, does not mean that it is or that you can.

And make her think that her parents are favouring DD1 and don’t care about her feelings.

This.

There is nothing simple about blended families. There are step children who have responded to this thread stating they were treated different by half-siblings family and they never had an issue with it.

In the US, we call people who do this white trash.
I don’t know what you folks call it in the UK, but it’s universally unacceptable.
There’s absolutely no excuse for intentionally harming a young girl’s feelings.
White f**king trash.
End of.

Honestly it's beyond nasty my eldest grandaughter knows her place in our home and hearts oldest grandchild and has been since she toddled into our life .there is no way I would stand for this .your husband clearly doesn't care for eldest child ..I would take my children and go .how you stand for it hell knows

And for all we know the other side of the family could pull her away further or she might get further away if this kind of thing isn't tackled because they're afraid of the fallout.

So all people can do is make the decisions that they feel are right for their own families.

You can't force people to accept your daughter. At the end of the day she is not their blood relative, whereas dd2 is. I think you should allow dd2 to attend if she wants to. I don't think you should force dd2 to stand by her sister because it is clear that she doesnt want to. It's all very well trying to appear united, but in a few years time, the cracks will start showing and it'll become apparent that this united front was not real and was instead engineered by you, OP. Your dd2 will feel bullied into not having a relationship with her blood relatives and resent you and dd1.

It’s almost like they know their daughter, and in a better position to assess the likely outcome of such an action.

And yet she's posting on here, and seems conflicted, and if her husband was in favour of banning her then I think the OP would make that decision too.

Because, to the elder daughter, her mother, step father and everyone else who is getting the point, it's about exclusion and her place in the family.

This is not true of the younger daughter if she doesn't attend.

Why do you keep calling her “a half sister”? She is her sister, that is the end of it.

@Stuckinthemiddlewithnoone woe betide them if they ever have to go through what they are putting your family through!!! I still feel it should be the whole family or none of you going. mil should not be encouraging dd2 to go with her instead. that is also not fair so this is partially on mil's head too!! when i mentioned previously about booking a holiday at the same time as the wedding, I meant for all of you to go.

Because that is literally the point of this whole drama.

She is her HALF Sister. And you, OP and everyone else can lie to yourselves but the most important person there. Dd2 sees her as her HALF Sister.

And this is not the HALF she's sharing.