to be upset that ds1 & ds2 invited to SILs wedding but not dd?

[macherie]

Sorry, I know the no children at weddings thing has been done to death, but I'm really upset about this.

I have no siblings, only a few cousins, so family weddings are a VERY rare occurance on my side. Dh has 3 siblings, 2 married years, so SILs wedding has been a big event on the horizon, lots of talk of dresses etc.

I see SIL every day as our DC go to the same school, and she never gave any indication that was intending to do this.

The invitation arrived 2 weeks ago, inviting me, dh, ds1(11) & ds2(9). No mention of dd who is 5. I called dh and we decided it must be a mistake, he said he would talk to her about it, which he did today, and no dd cannot go, they decided no under 6s were allowed.

Of course, it is her wedding and she gets to decide, blah, blah, blah.

DD will be so hurt if we tell her the truth, as will her brothers. What am I to do - get the 4 of us all dressed up and leave her at home with a babysitter?

I am inclined to book us all a holiday for that week just to avoid the hassle.

Thank goodness we are on half term til thursday, hopefully I'll have pulled myself together by then.

Ok, I would have to talk to her beforehand then. Not in an accusatory way, but rather apologetically.

Say things like ' I really hope you understand' and 'I know, we really are soppy when it comes to our children'(as that's what she thinks anyway), and 'obviously you can't change your plans, it's your day and we would never want you to' but we just can't bring ourselves to come without DD, as she will be heartbroken. She is too young to understand an age limit, and I think we will spoil your day being unhappy thinking about her missing out.

This kind of talk will put the onus on her, and hopefully awaken some guilt in her too, for being so..so...well crap, really. As well as leaving you looking sunny as you have been apologising and sucking up.

Gosh, all the really clever people on MN come out at night, I'm just going to properly read the last page, please don't go away.

Macherie you are perfectly entitled to feel upset prementrual or not!
YANBU she is, now repeat that to yourself.
She is mad
She is a twunt
She is not worthy of you

You are a good mum
You are the better person
You will all go or none of you

Thank you all, there is some really, really good advice on here, and I appreciate it very much.

I haven't spoken to anyone in RL about this, apart from dh, and I have a tendency to let things go around, and around in my head til I can't think straight.

I will reread this in the morning, and anything else anyone wants to add and I value it all.

Thank you all very much for bothering

Then if she changes her mind you insist that you would never expect her to change her wedding plans to suit you.

You too can bear a grudge!

Of course you could smugly attend in the knowledge that you are RIGHT

One more observation it seems she is trying to split your family so please don't let her.
Stand together and let everone know who asks it's becasue she leaving your lovely little girl out so OF COURSE the rest of the family can't go without her! It's a no brainer, so as it's her decision she has to take the flak. You are not in the wrong here macherie.

Gosh, only just found this thread! YANBU and what an odd person she is. I agree with what all the sensible people have already said .

Is the ceremony in church? If so please post time, date and venue so that as many of us as possible can come along as witnesses to the marriage wearing jeans and T-shirt and accompanied by our toddlers .

Macherie -

I understand completely about wanting to avoid confrontation, which is why, in my first post (about 10 pages ago!) I said I would have to talk to her - not demand DD go.

I would treat her like a friend and how I would like a friend to treat me, by talking and telling her that you are upset that she thinks it's ok to leave your DD out when she knows how much your DD is looking forward to it etc etc there's no need for 'confrontation' as such, no need to be shouty or demanding....

I wouldn't be able to let it go, not before the day nor after and as she is your SIL I think this would cause more problems than talking about it. However, if you feel that after the day you can carry on as before and not bear a grudge good on you!!

I know what you are saying about just letting DH make up his own mind and not having a big bust up over it, but tbh I'd rather have it out with DH and make him see my POV (and he would ) than allow their dysfunctional family to divide and conquor....

But that's just me

OH and BTW - it's got nothing to do with your hormones - what she is doing is bang out of order! and your DH too.

I think you need to decide:
A. would you gonow even if she did change her mind (don't think I would personally - I can harbour a grudge for eons )
B. would it bother you if DH went and you didn't (not sure where I stand on this one - I generally want to keep the peace so as I suggested before I'd tell dh to go to ceremony BUT not reception).
C. do you want/need to talk to her about this, or can you just pretend it isn't happening (I couldn't).

Macherie,
YANBU
As soon as I read that she was not invited to her Brothers ceremony I thought she might be getting you back although Ten years is a long time to hold that..it must have really hurt her, yes it was rude to come anyway but maybe she just could not miss her Brothers wedding.
Moving forward, if this happend to me I would be spending the day with my daughter, tell my sons about the under six rule and give them time to decide if they want to go with their dad or stay at home.
I would be very upset that my DH wants to go to the wedding but accept it as I do not want her to be the cause of a bust up. The wedding is just one day, its the aftermath I would hate, i.e my DD and myself missing from the pictures, constantly having to listen to the Oh what a great day it was etc.

Give it a couple of days she will probably change her mind by Thursday anyway, if she sticks to her guns wish her well and have a lovely day with your daughter and never ever look after her DD or any future children for at least ten years!

do you have any siblings, macherie? i do think it was actually a bit mean of you not to invite her to your ceremony.

Why is anyone trying to make excuses for this loon? She is taking out a ten year old (imagined) grudge on a child. Avoid like the plague. And if it causes a row so be it. Really, life is too short to let people like this call the shots. You'd have a crap day if you went so I'd go somewhere else for the day and have a great time.

How old was your SIL when she was not invited to her brothers wedding?

I agree with the posters who say - just dont go. It is appalling that your sil - and by association - the rest of the family - have exluded your dd like this.

stand your ground, say we come as a family or not at all.

Whoa - this is running away with itself!

Why must it be that SIL is omitting dd as a grudge? She has also omitted four (?) other children because she doesn't want young children at the wedding.

Quite reasonably, when OP complained, she brought up that she was not invited to OP's wedding. Presumably as an example of the bride getting to choose her guests.

She sounds like a horror, but then it sounds as thought the OP doesn't like her or her parenting methods anyway, so losing her friendship is no great loss.

Well, i can understand if you say to your friends, please dont bring your little ones, but to exclude a family member is just not on. How will the rest of the family feel knowing that one little girl has been deliberately excluded. Its this sort of thoughtlessness that causes family rifts.

My way of thinking, IF she is much younger than her brother, and IF she was just, say 15 ten years ago, she might then have felt really hurt to be excluded from her brothers wedding. Maybe now that SHE is getting married, this has resurfaced and she is feeling upset again, she might not necessarily have been holding a grudge the last 10 years.

In any event, seeing as you are family, have children close in age, do things together as friends and family do, I think the best course of action is to actually TALK to her. Not rant and rave and be angry, just talk and see how you go. But please keep calm. Say you understand she was hurt at being left out, you did not think she would be as it was such a small wedding and you did not have any guests. But your dd feels very left out because she has a big wedding, and has invited her brothers but left her out. Appeal to her better nature.

Let me explain about my wedding please.

I have no family apart from my mum and 2 aunts, for various reasons I have not seen my dad for about 20 years.

I'm also quite a shy person and I don't liuke to be the focus of attention. Dh and I had been together for about 8 years, ds1 was about 18 mths and I was pregnant with ds2. We decided we wanted to get married.

Please note I am saying I wanted to get married, rather than I wanted a wedding. I would have been happy to elope, and we did look into that, but my mum would have been very upset.

In contrast to me, dh has his 3 siblings, 6 aunts and uncles and hundreds of first cousins. He is the sociable one, he wanted to have a party/celebration of some sort.

So the compromise we reached was that we would hve a witness each, our 2 mothers and ds1 at the wedding, and a party afterwards.

When we arrived at the registry office, SIL and her dd (she was about 25 at the time, QS), and dhs brother and his girlfriend were also there. Dh's other sister understood that we wanted to keep the ceremony small and did not come.

Despite the fact that I felt ambushed, I remained gracious and gave everyone a warm welcome 'What a lovely surprise, we didn't know you were gooing to be here!' type of thing.

After the registry office, we walked back to my mums where she had a lovely lunch prepared, but the unexpected 4 guests, 2 of them vegetarian rather spoilt her plans. But, noone made a fuss.

At 3.30 we went to our 'reception', which I found an absolute endurance test, and I was so relieved when it was over.

So that was my wedding day, it wasn't exactly what I wanted, and didn't go exactly as planned, but I didn't have a hissy fit about it.

If I had know it would come back to bite me in such a nasty way, maybe I would have done it differently.

You seem very sensible Macherie. On the one hand I think you should explain this to her. On the other, it is a shame that you should even have to. She is putting herself in a very bad light. First by ambushing YOUR wedding in such a manner, and then by excluding your dd.

Do you think having a chat with her will clean the air?

I'm not really the ranting and raving type anyway, QS, but thanks for your good advice. I think I will leave it a day or so, so I'm not feeling quite so raw.

If it's that important to her to have a child free day, so important that she doesn't care who gets hurt in the process, well that's what she should have, and I don't mean that in a mailicious way.

Aitch made such a good point last night, I have been thinking about it -

Aitch wrote:

I just think there are two issues. you thought that sil was your friend and you are hurt because she's not behaving like a friend. or an aunt, come to think of it. that's fair enough, you're going to have to work through those feelings but you can't avoid her while your doing it cos you see her twice a day.

the other thing is the wedding, which dh (rather disappointingly) still wants to go to. the best way to work that out is to get her to change her mind...

That's it really, I need to get over the hurt and then deal with the wedding issue.

I would really rather not go, I just don't know yet.

You had very sound advice from Aitch there (she is clever that Aitch), and I think she might be on to something. This is why talking about it with her might be the best approach, but like you say, in a day or two when it is less raw.

I did not really think you came across as the ranting variety!

so it wasn't just her who didn't get the whole mini-wedding thing, his brother gate crashed too. i think that must have been fairly humiliating for them, tbh, no matter how nice you were about it. i'm from a big family, dh isn't, when he married me we had a small wedding but it would have been unthinkable to exclude my sisters and brother from any part of the day. your dh should never have agreed to it (tbh the fact that he's a bit of a wuss is not good here).

so i suppose she thinks you've crosses a rubicon... you excluded a sister, so what's a niece at the end of the day?

of course she's not being kind, but tbh nor were you when you didn't invite her to your wedding service. i think you really need to speak to her about this, from the perspective of 'i can see now that our wedding situation must have been v hurtful for you.... conversation... let her get that off chest etc... and then SO YOU CAN SEE HOW HURTFUL THIS IS TO MY LITTLE GIRL...

ooooh, x-posted with me being all wise... hope i didn't break my duck with that last post.

Oh I am sorry that it is some weird revenge

I would plan some amazing weekend away for your DD and not tell her the truth, this could knock her confidence and feelings of self worth for a while - poor mite. Can't believe a grown woman, a mother could be so spiteful and insensitive.

Alternatively maybe take her (DD) to the ceremony in her pretty dress then take her for a fantastic meal of her choice with the most enormous ice-cream for dessert as a treat Perhaps with some friends of hers?