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.

It's not right but my DD would have been miserable and sulky at a wedding in her teens and in fact was,on several family get togethers. I wouldn't go either but then I absolutely hate weddings. DD will be off enjoying her own life soon and then the issue will resolve itself. My DD has never been excluded from her step fathers family events but is always excluded from her step mothers. Do something special with her on the day using the money you would have spent attending. I would encourage DH to go though so he can mention the situation to anyone that asks where you both are.

I think that would be really sad if the younger daughter has a really good relationship with her grandmother and sees her all the time like OP said.

This is truly cruel. What horrible people. Your dh is an apologist for dreadful nastiness. That would really give me the ick.

I don't understand how they can treat a child like this. My nephew has a stepson and the little boy is treated exactly the same as all the other cousins. He's part of our family and we love him dearly.. What sort of person would leave one member of four out ! Id tell them to shove their invitation where the sun don't shine!

I would absolutely do something that DD1 loves - Go Ape, shopping, trip to London/Edinburgh/Paris, favourite restaurant etc on the day of the wedding. If DD2s nose is out of joint because of that, so be it 🤷🏻‍♀️

The brother the grandmother and the others all sound toxic frankly so I would think it would be a good thing to keep them apart.

No way would the youngest be going if she was mine, she was a nasty brat to her sister last time and got rewarded for it. I would be fuming that my child though it ok to say such hurtful things to her sister and all reinforced by the ILs shitty behaviour. Id be telling DH too that I'm not facilitating his family's relationship with youngest at the expense of her relationship with her sister when it is their actions causing it! Poor girl. Id have cut the whole lot of them out.

How, if at all, has it impacted on both (a) your oldest child as an individual and (b) the relationship between the girls since?

Yes it is bad manners to only invite one child and both parents.

For both weddings, the grooms must be at least ten years older than your girls. I assume they haven’t spent much time with your older daughter - so to them she is simply their uncle’s wife’s daughter from a previous relationship. Not their cousin. Mumsnet has made me realise that technically I have step cousins - but I have never thought of them as related to me or part of my family. I wouldn’t invite them to my wedding (but they are adults who don’t live with my aunt).

I agree OP and her husband should decline the invitation to mark the poor manners and out of loyalty to the older girl. I agree it is was unnecessarily cruel not to invite her.

But the younger girl is old enough to decide. She doesn’t see this as a slight to her sister - she is very matter of fact about the status of the relationship.

trying to guilt or blackmail her into taking a moral stand that she doesn’t agree with is unfair.

I wouldn't allow the youngest to go, it'd be 'one out all out' and it wouldn't be negotiable.

Surely she has to come up with the loyalty to family sentiment herself. If not, won't she resent her older sister? I think some kids would choose family loyalty and others would want to go to the (still family to her) wedding. I don't think you can judge her harshly if at 12/ 13 she wants to attend. You can't force this and expect there to be no consequences further down the line. I can just imagine " my older sister was the golden child. If she wasn't doing something, then I wasn't allowed to, even though they were my family" when she is older.

This is despicable behavior. My brother had an amicable divorce from his wife who had a baby when they met. He loves the child like his own. They are both now in lovely relationships & as a family we all treat his first wife son as part of our family. I'd miss him dreadfully if he wasn't included in family functions.

All of them would be dead to me by now. I’d have returned the invitation, no reply, and booked a trip away.

I'm sorry OP. This is clearly very hard for you and you have my sympathy. For what it's worth I think you did the right thing by both girls last time. Would your husband consider adopting her? Would she even want this?

That would be one way to ensure a poor relationship between the siblings, and between yourself and your youngest I suppose.

You would call your daughter a nasty brat? Wow! Ok..,

Thank you. I’d been in my step dad’s life for about 8 years by that point. Meh, their loss.

As opposed to passively sitting back and letting the relatives torpedo the girls relationship. Ok. I suppose you missed the bit last time where the youngest kept saying the sister wasn't their family. Wonder who she learned that from? Would have been better to cut them off years ago but better late than never.

Can see reading isn't your strong point....

Agreed with other's that it's despicable behaviour and it's about time your DD2 understands that it's despicable behaviour.
I'd give the bridal couple an opportunity to amend their invitation to invite all your family. If not forthcoming I'd decline on behalf of you all and inform that all future invitations will be treated the same way.

Your proposed course of action wouldn’t prevent any torpedoing, you’d be inflicting the same amount of damage, if not more. ‘Cutting them off’ will not ensure family harmony, or force the youngest into sharing OP’s viewpoint. It also isn’t something OP can enforce with a determined 13/14 year old, unilaterally or otherwise.

She didn’t say her sister wasn’t her family. She said that she didn’t share paternal family with her, which she doesn’t.

I disagree. Far more damaging to allow this short of thing to continue, as well as damaging to the oldest's mental health and self-esteem. Rewarding a child for joining in with her family's alienation of her sister is not something I would be ok with. And yes I know what she said, I still think it's a nasty thing to verbalise when she KNEW her sister was very upset about being excluded.

So the Divide is already happening, out of the words of your younger daughters mouth.

Awful people, you’d think they’d have learned something last time round. I wouldn’t let 12 year old go, you stand as a family, she’ll just have to suck it up but once she’s older she’ll get it

Pretty clear the husbands family are the ones primarily driving a wedge between the sisters. The longer that goes on the worse it will be - unless other family members see things differently.

Her sister doesnt appear to have an alternative paternal family, certainly no father involved for the whole of her childhood.
The Op's husband is for all intents and purposes her Dad.
This isnt a case of blending a family, they have been a family unit for 15 years.

If the Op and her husband had adopted a child before having one of their own would the same apply? Would people support that?