Partner has told me today that I cannot go to his daughter’s wedding on Saturday

[Oscarcleo]

I’ve been with my partner for 5 years. He’s a widow - wife died 9 years ago and he’s brought up only daughter on his own ever since. I’ve met daughter ( we get on), groom, groom’s family, friends etc who’ll all be at the wedding. Wife’s relatives live a long way away and about 30 of them will be travelling to the wedding. As they live a long way away I haven’t met them yet.
Apparently yesterday evening some of the relatives told my partner/bride that they don’t want me at the wedding as wife isn’t there. It’s really upset my partner/ bride and I’m utterly distraught at this stage to be told I can’t go. It’s a big wedding that’s been planned for 18 months. I have been very careful to not be replacing wife’ s position at the wedding- agreed to not sit with him for ceremony or at the reception.
We’re really happy together but after this I’m not sure I can carry on with the relationship as it will be always hanging over us that I was banned from the wedding. AIBU? Any words of wisdom to help me get through this?

And what better way to remind DP of his place in the family pecking order than by making him attend the wedding alone.

And l don't think it’s anything to do with not living together either - OP was invited to the wedding before aunty and uncle raised their objection.

No bride is going to uninvite her own aunts especially when they are her link to her dear deceased mother, for her father's girlfriend!

And that’s exactly what aunty and uncle were banking on.

Is he supposed to not have a partner then? Spend the rest of his life alone because his wife sadly died years ago? He and his daughter should tell the aunt and uncle where to stick it. How dare they turn up and dictate this. Appalling.

I don't blame you for reevaluating the relationship. If Aunt & Uncle said they weren't happy with him dating you he'd probably dump you.

OP can you explain why an aunt and uncle hold so much sway. I am pretty close for my uncles and aunts but they had zero input into my wedding. If they had said that to me I’d have been like, oh well, don’t come then. I wouldn’t absolutely have never disinvited step parents. (I add this as someone whose parents are divorced but managed to be nice and civil during my wedding)

1. I personally am absolutely extremely close to my mum's sisters
2. She's not a step mum, they don't even live together!

I'm guessing because aunt is the bride's late mother's sister. On a psychological level, it would be very hard for her to tell them not to come.

1. I am too but my love for my parent would overrride that. I would never tell my parent that they couldn’t bring their partner of 5 years to my wedding unless there was some bad blood somewhere. It is actually very cruel of the bride to do that to her widowed father.

2)she is a step mum effectively . I was using it to denote the relationship regardless of whether they are married . They have been together 5 years so I’d say that is now an established step parental relationship of a sort. She isn’t a casual girlfriend and she clearly has a relationship with the bride.

others may disagree but my dad’s wishes would rank higher than an aunt/uncle.

It should be the bride's decision, not aunt and uncle. If aunt and uncle don't come, that's their choice.

Losing someone close is always hard with these sort of events later, because they're glaringly missing, but you deal with it because life has to go on.

I’ve seen this dynamic play out before.

my best friend from childhood’s mother died when she was 20. The relatives of the mother believed - due to various things that happened - the communication from her father (the husband of their sister/daughter) was not good in the years following - over financial, emotional, legal and rememberence matters.

not that he did anything wrong but that the events following her mother’s death were dealt with in an way that they did not have much control over.

when it came time for my friend to get married, the sisters of the dead mother kind of seized on it as an opportunity to make a point that the “mother’s name” would live on and really pressured my best friend to make certain decisions about the wedding that were dictated by them entirely (I was maid of honour and remember the politics well.) That included disinviting a well loved new partner of the father, insisting on various names and songs being changed around in the programme and threatening the bride with “not coming to represent the maternal side” if she did not do it.

I remember my friend being extremely conflicted. They almost threatened her with their presence or not as her deceased mother’s stamp of approval. It was extremely manipulative and done in the 11th hour where no one was thinking straight. The bride regrets it now.

not taking either side, OP, but just saying that those under pressure from this particularly manipulative and (surprisingly) common tactic may not be thinking straight right now and I wouldn’t burn a long term relationship over this

That is absolutely outrageous. I'm really shocked at their behaviour.

How is your partner and his daughter allowing family to dictate who goes to her wedding? Her mother died nine years ago and whilst I sympathise with their loss how is it right to not want the father’s partner at the wedding? It certainly won’t bring the mother back.

It’s not just about the wedding though, any christenings @Oscarcleo will be left out or if there’s a big family Christmas. OP’s been made to feel like an outsider and barred from special events. It’s put a barrier up and if I was her, I’d turn my phone off tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to hear from him and yes, I’d be evaluating the relationship because even though I’d understand their reasons, they still went along with it. Op must be devastated

What a horrid thing these people have done to their niece, framing her having someone she wants at her wedding as an insult to her dead mother's memory and living family and threatening a boycott to force their way. It's not hard to imagine how awful the threat of a rift with the few members of her mum's family left would feel to the bride, and she's likely not in a great place to deal with this emotional manipulation right before the wedding. Obviously they don't actually have any care for her wishes or feelings.

I'm sorry you've been forced out of the celebration and absolutely don't blame you for being deeply upset. But I would be cautious blaming your partner or ending the relationship based on this. Of course this outcome isn't the right or fair one, but given the options in front of your partner I'm not so sure he didn't make the right choice. Would you really want him to escalate the conflict and insist his partner be able to come or... what? He doesn't attend his daughter's wedding as her one living parent? He brings you anyways and turns the wedding into a standoff between the bride's relatives? That sounds awful, and I'm not sure it's reasonable to ask that of him. Your feelings should absolutely be important to your partner, but so are his daughter's and it's her wedding. Even if neither of you should have to, perhaps it's right to make him being there to support his daughter and de-escalating the conflict and toxicity the priority on this specific occasion.

I had to reread the original post to check that I’d didn’t say you’d only been together for 5 weeks…. You’ve been together for 5 years 😮

I’m so sorry OP,how horribly hurtful.

I think the Bride will regret this down the line.

It's not just future events. How can her partner talk to OP about the wedding? He can hardly see her on Sunday and start waxing lyrical about it. How can anyone bring it up without the undercurrent that's now there? Any relationship OP has with the daughter is now damaged.

The OP isn't nobody, the wedding had been planned for eighteen months, she helped with the planning and she had met the groom, his family, and both bride and groom's friends.

God knows what they're all going to think when OP is missing!

If it's a tiny consolation OP, I expect there will be some people asking where you are, hopefully that will be in earshot of the awful aunt and uncle.

that actually broke my heart. Im really sorry can't imagine how rejected you must feel. Big Hugs

Bride should tell aunt uncle to go jump off a cliff. Op, your partner, the brides dad, should sit her down and advise her that he wants her to have a wonderful day, and he loves her, but if they don’t come aunt and uncle are petty minded but also still have each other. But if his long term partner doesn’t come he will be walking his daughter up the aisle and celebrating her wedding, then going home as a single man, and he really hopes that’s not one of his key memories of her wedding day.

op, you should tell him this.

But also, tell him now that this ends it for you. He will kid himself that you’re hiding away for now and it will be back to normal once that weddings done. He needs to know that it’s irreparable and he’s actually single. Do not hold off telling him to protect his and his daughters day, they will just have to bear the consequences.

The uncle and aunt to the bride is threatening not to show up. The bride wants them there. I would suck up my pride and leave them to their special day. I wouldn't drop the relationship she has with her partner and his daughter. The aunt and uncle are probably grieving from the fact their sister won't be there to watch her daughter walk down the isle. Op is allowed to feel upset and disappointed but she needs to understand how they feel and it's another grieving process they have to work through.

Then it's the ops loss not his he sounds like a good man to put the needs of his family first. Men and women come and go but your family will always be there.

Her aunt and uncle has been in her life since she was born. The op has been around for 5 years while she was away in university why should she choose the op over her own family.

I'd want to know how far this goes. This is one event but what about future christenings, birthdays, funerals, other family events? Is OP going to be sidelined forever because someone else doesn't realise life goes on in spite of a difficult loss? Is that acceptable to her?

The op hasn't met them they don't know what she looks like. There is a 150 people attending what's the likelihood she will be seen?