Brother really upset me - how do I move on?

[HazzaB]

I've generally got a good relationship with my brother although he's retreated quite a lot (from everyone apart from his wife I think) over the last few years. His wife and I get on really well. A couple of years ago, DH and I had a very short & sweet registry office wedding, just with my parents and DS1 and DS2 as witnesses. We wanted to be legally married but not celebrate this. At the actual time we had the legal ceremony, DS2 was 4 months old, I had leaky boobs, and we have never wanted the legal bit to be part of our celebration.

Instead we decided to have a big party celebration of our whole relationship and kids, as a 'wedding party', which we're having next year (also as we'll have saved up by then and DSs will be 2 and 4 so a bit older.) Explained all this to my family at the time and everyone seemed happy and excited.

This weekend, I asked my brother and SIL if they would play a role in our celebration and they agreed and seemed happy and excited. We carried on having a conversation about the music, readings and so on that we'd like. My brother then started, quite angrily and obviously upset, to say we can't have our cake and eat it, can't have a legal civil wedding and then another party where we do music, readings, speeches etc. Our party won't mean anything to him. As far as he's concerned we got married two years ago and he was denied the opportunity to be part of that. Next year means nothing to him and he's angry.
I'm really sorry he's upset and angry but I feel devestated. I want the chance to have our day as we want it and to feel supported by friends and family. It's important to me that my brother is part of it. I'm sorry he's angry and this is the first I knew of it. I feel really rocked. Everytime I think of our plans for next year, it makes me well up. What do I do?

Ignore me OP. Having been to too many lavish weddings that ended in failure (including my own) I find it very difficult to sit through even the most modest example these days without feeling appallingly cynical and depressed :) To be invited to something that celebrated a family's love for each other ... sorry, that's my idea of hell. I love my family and I feel blessed to have a family but I don't expect anyone else to be as dewy-eyed & enthusiastic about it as I am.

Hi AgentZigZag - no I don't think his wife plays a part at all in him feeling a bit isolated from the family. Quite the opposite. His slight withdrawal from friends and family is more because of him having a really difficult time losing his job, and learning a new career which he's found challenging, and finding a new job again at the bottom of the scale (he's now moving his way up very fast). All very understandable I think.

Thanks everyone for your views. It's helped me see things more from his perspective.

It sounds like the party will come across as a self-indulgent fest which fills me with horror, so that's another thing to think about altogether....

I agree with Cognito and Ophelia, I think the time lapse between the 2 events is far too long. By all means throw a party to celebrate something but I don't like own vows and find them cringeworthy when taken out of context of an actual ceremony - especially if the couple get super slushy then try to throw a fun/jokey promise in.

Will there be a wedding-y type dress involved?! And a proper wedding cake and favours? Please say no! That ship will have already sailed 3 years previously and I think it would just be a bit weird to celebrate 3 YEARS after you actually got married. 3 months would have been strange enough IMO.

I can see where your brother is coming from I'm afraid, I wouldn't want to subscribe to something so strange and unnecessary, under the guise of a wedding party, 3 years post event.

OP: I can sort of see your DB's point of view. BUT -

I was 6 months pregnant with my DD when my lovely man and I were due to get married at a registry office. I wasn't going to invite any of my family with the exception of my son.

The plan was that we would get the legal bit done, but have a party in our back garden on midsummer's eve the following year. One of his friends was a celebrant, and as we were as poor as church mice, we were going to do everything ourselves. So it would have been a "wedding" and "baby naming" all in one go...... (But there would have been less than a year since the registry office wedding and 7 months after DD was born).

I still reckon there is more to this than your wedding.
Is his own marriage definitely ok?

I think his own marriage is OK. I don't know for sure - but no outward signs of any problems, apart from them trying to conceive.

Sounds like our party is going to bomb (the wrong way).

I can understand him being a bit 'meh' about feeling he has to go, but not getting proper angry angry about it.

If it will mean nothing to him, why's he bothered?

He could have said he wasn't sure he'd feel up to going because it'd make him uncomfortable, or that they'd have to wait and see closer to the date, or just an outright I don't think we'll be able to make it.

It's just odd he's chosen to make you feel so crap that you're getting upset thinking about it now.

You say you love him as a brother, but do you like him OP? If the answer is 'possibly not as much as I'd like', then I'd put him to one side and concentrate on the people who'll be happy to go to a party you've arranged for them.

You don't have to let him spoil it for you, just let him sulk or whatever he's going to do now he's pissed on your parade, and get on with your life (that makes it sound so easy )

I agree with AgentZigzag.
i suspect that getting 'proper angry' suggests that there is more going here and that this is not all about your party.

Just tell him that you are really upset that you have hurt him. And that it is massively important to you to have him there on the day, and to let you know if there are particular things that he is unhappy about.

Well, it's not up to your brother to say what you can and can't do. You can invite him, you can ask him to play a role in the event, he can choose not to come- but he doesn't get to tell you how to run your wedding ceremony and celebrations.

He was asked to the legal marriage ceremony but wasn't bothered about going - that's his choice, it's not as if you excluded him. He has no right to spout on about being denied opportunities- he was invited , he turned you down.

Personally I'm not someone who is likely to do vow renewal celebrations myself, but if that's what you've planned then you have every right to plan the wedding celebration you and your husband want. If others don't want to be a part of that, then that's their choice- and while I understand it's important to you to have your family there, if they refuse to join in then there's not much you can do about it.

Sarky may well be on to something- your brother getting angry about your wedding seems to be something of an over-reaction, and there may be more to it. Does he have money or marriage worries of his own? Does he think you're getting funded twice over by your parents (even though you've said you're saving for it yourselves)?

Is this one of those things where you unknowingly just caught the wrong moment?

Is it possible that while he may think that your party seems over the top and isnt thrilled by it he was also angry about something completely separate?

Dont we all do that? Cross about something but for whatever reason cant say anything (disagreement with partner, big credit card bill, whatever). Then someone starts whittling on about something that seems fatuous and a bit annoying. Cue anger at the trivia.

If he is anything like me people I know then of course he cant back down from having got angry about your wedding party. Instead he justifies himself by making grand statements.

Leave discussing the party for a while then closer to the time offer him a smaller role in it if you want to or just invite him to be there on the day.

OP I feel so sad that you are being told on here that your party is 'ODD', 'pointless', 'self indulgent', etc. Sure, it's not the conventional way of doing things but I really can't imagine why that bothers other people or why they need to be so unpleasant about doing things different (actually, I can imagine why, and assume that it is either insecurity in their own choices or downright unpleasantness, both of which they are welcome to if that's the kind of person they are). I see absolutely nothing wrong with own vows. I for one would certainly never be told what I have to promise to my partner, it is very much a personal thing. True friends/family that love you will be happy to celebrate with you. Anyone who is going to be sourfaced over it - well fuckem basically. You need to have confidence in what you want/what matters to you and sod what others think - whatever you do, there will always be someone to criticise it, so stick with what you and your family want

If he's basically a decent person he probably feels bad about being rude and angry about it, so taking him out for a walk and a drink sounds like exactly the right thing to do.

Like other people I would find it odd to have a wedding-esque ceremony with self-written vows (eek), music and readings two years after the actual thing... when it's serving no legal/formal function it would feel a bit weird somehow.

I'm with the brother. If someone said to me "we're going to have a tiny legal wedding, nothing big, and then a big party a little later" I would take that to mean exactly what it says. You said to us originally a "party".

I can see if you'd made a big point that the legal bit was really nothing much at all and you didn't properly INVITE your DB (as opposed to just saying 'come if you feel like it' which is how it seems to me) why DB would choose to say, well, if it's not much and we're not properly invited, we won't go.

Now you tell us it is not just a party but a "ceremony" with vows, readings and the whole lot. That's no longer a party but, more or less, a proper wedding ceremony. I'd be cheesed off in his shoes. Sorry.

I had some friends once who invited a load of us round their house one afternoon in the summer. Nice buffet meal. During which they announced that the previous weekend the two of them had gone off and got married at a registry office and this was their 'party/reception'. As they'd both been married twice before, they didn't want a fuss. Now THAT's what you should have done. Kept it as a party, made it sooner, and not 2 years down the road come up with his ceremony malarkey.

Really voiceofunreason? Cheesed off? I would be happy for my sister celebrating her relationship/family in the manner they have chosen

because it's not about me

I agree with Naming of Parts. It does rather sound like there's something else going on, especially since he had the opportunity to attend the original ceremony but turned it down. Maybe his anger has been brewing over other things (it sounds like he's had a tough time of it recently) and it overflowed when it came to this. What might have been a feeling of irritation is anger and a rant instead.

Thank you so much somuchforanindiansummer. That means a lot to me.

I'm going to do all I can to acknowledge my brother's upset. I'm going to hope that those who do love us will celebrate with us and not find it a self-indulgent pointless waste of time. Personally, I would much rather say (and listen to) words that people wanted to say about their own relationship, but appreciate others don't.

Thanks again everyone for your thoughts. I'm not coming back to the thread now as I've had lots of help about the issue with my brother, which was my original question, and don't want to think any more right now about how awful our party might be and what we should have done but didn't.

somuch To be fair I wasn't the only person who thought this a rather unusual situation and some of the earlier posters were trying to get the OP to at least TRY and see things from the other side.

I guess a lot of us don't see the need to publicise/celebrate our family with some grand ceremony in this way. It does smack of "look at us, look at us".

But yes, at the end of the day, if that's what they want to do, then fair play to them.

At this day and age, all weddings are essentially an act of self-indulgence. Whether they happen at the time of the legal contract being signed or after, it doesn't matter. It's not like anyone needs to have a party to celebrate it. For most couples it doesn't mark the beginning of a life together or anything life-changing at all. It's an excuse to self-celebrate.

Which is fine. And for this reason I'll be forever baffled at people who talk of "false" weddings and Christenings and the lot. As if doing it by one particular set of rules made any difference. Bah. It's just a party either way.

But I also think people have to understand that not everyone is going to want to play along with your big day of self-celebration. Some will (I would, if it was one of my siblings), but others won't, and, quite frankly, there's nothing wrong with that either. Especially if you make it cumbersome, expensive, or require a significant sacrifice of time, annual leave, whatever. What is it exactly that you want your brother to do, OP?

If it was me, I'd throw a party, but wouldn't expect my family to contribute in any way other than being present. That way, the sane and supportive relatives could come along and the "we don't buy into fake weddings" cohort could stay at home, no hard feelings.

Your brother sounds a bit drama queen-ish for having nursed a resentment for two years and now throwing a wobbly over it. I would just invite him and let him decide if he wants to come or not, but without assigning tasks to him or making him do 'jobs' or whatever. Make the whole thing about you offering to host a happy event, not about expecting others to cater to your dreams of self-indulgence (am not saying that's what you do, just that it's very easy to perceive it that way.)