My family is getting ready to attend a wedding. The bride has pretty serious social anxiety, so she and the groom have opted for an extremely limited guest list. My younger brother is mad that he can’t bring a plus-one and has been complaining to my parents about it for weeks.

Brother: “It isn’t fair not to let me bring a date! [Name] gets to bring his girlfriend!”

Mother: “For the last time, she is his fiancée and they are the ones getting married!”

Related:
Oh, Brother! – Part 6
Oh, Brother!, Part 5
Oh, Brother! – Part 4
Oh, Brother! – Part 3
Oh, Brother! – Part 2

My now-husband and I met in high school and became best friends. I didn’t know this at the time, but the feelings I had for him during school weren’t just platonic. It took a few years for me to realize it, but I was too scared to pursue anything romantic.

If not for the fact that I didn’t know what [Husband]’s sexuality was, then my twin sister trying to pursue him definitely warded me off.

[Twin Sister] is my mother’s favorite twin, so I knew if I did try then not only would I feel the wrath of my sister, but my mother, as well. So, I held off and tried to make myself content with just being in [Husband]’s life as a best friend.

That all changed four years ago. While [Twin Sister] (presumably) got over [Husband] and moved across the state, I stuck around and spent time with him. Once, when we went out to a party with our group of friends, I let slip my feelings.

Call it a case of wanting to get it off my chest, you know?

Well, it turned out that [Husband] returned my feelings! We had our first kiss that night, to a round of “Finally!” from our friends. Turns out we were a case where everyone could see it but us.

We started dating, and then, last year, [Husband] proposed to me. When I told my family this, [Twin Sister] flipped out.

Twin Sister: “Do you have any idea how much it hurts to have you betray me like this?! You started dating my first heartbreak, and now you want to marry him and force me to see the man who broke my heart?!”

We had a huge fight, and I was ready to not invite her to the wedding, but stupidly for me, I listened to my mom and invited her.

This went on and on throughout the whole wedding process; everything we planned for that my twin didn’t like was either stupid or backstabbing her — from the food, to the guests, to the venue. But the big deal-breaker happened with the Maid of Honor fiasco.

[Twin Sister] assumed I was gonna make her the Maid of Honor, but [Husband] and I decided to make his older sister the Maid of Honor. She’s part of our friend group, has been there for him during the worst parts of his life, and helped us with any relationship bumps we went through.

An important thing to know about his sister, she’s adopted… from China. And just from me bringing this up, you know it’s bad.

Turns out, [Twin Sister], upon hearing this news thought it would be a good idea to send [Husband’s] sister horrible text messages attacking her personality, her interests, and her body, and of course, she thought it was okay to also send her terrible texts about her race and the connections to a certain thing happening in the world.

[Husband] found this out.

Husband: “[Twin Sister] is not to be invited to the wedding, or even allowed to step foot on the venue.”

Me: “I wholeheartedly agree.”

I sent a long text telling her that she was banned from the wedding and that we were not even going to consider talking to her after all of this.

Well, my dear mother decided to send a long text, too — not to me of course, but to [Husband]. 

Mother: “I always knew you were trouble when you couldn’t see how perfect [Twin Sister] was. You tainted [My Name]. Your family tainted [My Name]. And I am going to ruin you at the wedding.”

My mother was also subsequently banned from the wedding to her absolute shock. And after she tried to break us up on Christmas that year, we went no contact with her.

[Husband] and I are now as happy as can be.

This story is part of our Halfway-Through-2022 roundup!

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My girlfriend and I, both women, are getting married next year. We’ve been planning everything, despite her mother’s attempts to intervene. So far, she’s thrown a hissy fit over the bridesmaids’ dress color, tried to change the floral arrangement without my girlfriend’s knowledge or consent, and tried to force her female cousin to be the maid-of-honor instead of the woman my wife chose.

Soon, everything comes to a head when my future mother-in-law tries to control the guest list.

Mother-In-Law: “You need to uninvite [Guest #1] and [Guest #2].”

Girlfriend: “Why, Mom?”

Mother-In-Law: “Because I invited [Woman], and we’ll be exceeding the number of guests allowed.”

Girlfriend: *Sighs and pinches her nose* “Mom, I told you not to make any changes. [My Name] and her parents are paying for most of it, and you’re not paying a cent. I’ve made some compromises already to suit her needs. Besides, she doesn’t know [Woman], and [Woman] has never liked me, anyway.”

Mother-In-Law: “But she’s my friend!”

Girlfriend: “Exactly: she’s your friend, not ours. We already got the licenses and everything, and if they find out we exceeded the limit, we could get in trouble.”

Mother-In-Law: “You and [My Name] only get so much say in how it goes! I told you not to get that disgusting color of green for the bridesmaids’ dresses!”

Girlfriend: “Is that what this is about? You just don’t like the dress color? Well, too bad. [My Name] paid for them, so she gets to choose what color they are. Personally, I love the color. It goes well with most of our bridesmaids. Now, Mom, I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

My mother-in-law just sighed theatrically and petted the cat while pretending to sulk.

When my fiancée and I got engaged, her parents invited my parents and me to their house for a meal to celebrate and to try and get to know them a bit better.

I offered to drive my parents and noticed that they were fairly “merry” when I collected them, but unfortunately, I didn’t realise just how drunk they actually were until weeks later.

My wife and I hadn’t discussed any wedding costs with them at this point, and although her parents had offered to put something toward it, we had assumed that we would pay most of the cost ourselves. However, on the drive to my in-laws’ house, my parents grandly announced that they insisted on paying for half the wedding.

They refused to hear of it when I told them that their offer was far too generous, and then they made the same announcement to my fiancée and my future in-laws several times over the course of the night.

My fiancée and I ended up planning a relatively small event. In the course of planning, we both sent my parents some of the plan information and some initial estimates by email and messenger, which they typically made some polite but non-committal comments about.

Then, I visited them one weekend and had this conversation with my Dad.

Dad: “Why are you sending us all this information? It’s nice that you want to keep your Mum in the loop, but the financial stuff seems like it would be a bit personal.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Dad: “Well, why do we need to know what this is costing you?”

Me: *Laughs* “Good one.”

Dad: “I don’t see what’s so funny about this. You don’t actually expect us to pay for any of this, do you?”

Me: “Are you being serious right now? We didn’t ask you for a penny! You offered and actually insisted on paying for half! We’ve been actively trying to keep the price down to avoid asking you for too much.”

Dad: “Rubbish. If you can’t afford to get married, then you shouldn’t be getting married.”

My mum later insisted on giving us a gift toward the total cost, but I was told that since my sister had eloped without getting married, they would need to give her the same amount of money as anything they spent on us, so they couldn’t afford too much for that reason. 

From offering to pay for half the wedding, their gift was reduced to a small contribution, which they then later reduced further to paying a token toward the cost of the reception. They didn’t have any change in circumstances and are fairly well-off; they were just so drunk on the night of the meal that they made an extravagant offer but didn’t remember making it. My parents are alcoholics and I knew they were drunk, but this was the first time that either of them had done anything like this.

Whilst I was grateful for any gift, having to explain all of this to my fiancée and in-laws — specifically that my parents weren’t keeping their promise because they had been so drunk that they didn’t even remember making it — was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life.

I got married at the weekend. As anyone who’s ever done it knows, wedding planning is one of the most stressful and exhausting things you can experience for something so happy. A large part of that is down to having to play family politics for every single decision. There’s a reason Wedding Planner is a full-time job!

My dad started by saying that it was OUR wedding, and we could do things the way WE wanted. We shouldn’t listen to what anyone else said, especially as we were paying for it all ourselves. But then, he found out I wasn’t inviting his incredibly flaky best friend, who hasn’t spoken to me since I stopped living with my parents and has never had a conversation with my now-husband.

Dad: “But you have to invite [Friend]! He’s my best friend!”

Me: “Right, he’s your best friend. He’s not made any attempt to contact me in nearly four years and he doesn’t even know [Husband]’s name.”

Dad: “That’s not the point! He invited you to his wedding!”

Me: “Yes, he invited me as your child, not as myself. He didn’t invite [Husband] because, as I already told you, he doesn’t know [Husband]. And I think his wedding day is the only time I’ve met his wife! I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd. Also, it wouldn’t just be [Friend]. It would be [Friend], [Friend]’s wife, and two children under five! We’ve already gone over the limit for the number of guests we can invite, and you want me to add four more people to the list?!”

Dad: “But you’re inviting [Friend]’s sister and her family! How can you invite her and not [Friend]?!”

Me: “[Friend’s Sister] is my godmother! She deliberately chose to play an active role in my life, texts me regularly, and invites me to her kids’ birthday and Christmas parties. She’s coming to my hen do because she’s like a big sister to me! She knows [Husband]’s name and has even met his parents! This is his wedding, as well, don’t forget, and he doesn’t know [Friend] at all!”

Rinse and repeat various similar arguments for at least half an hour, until…

Dad: “But I’ve already told him when it is! I told him the invite would be in the post!”

Aha! That’s why you’re so worried about this; you want to protect your pride!

Me: “Well, that’s not my fault. I never told you I was going to invite him, and I’ve not given you the okay to give the details out yet.”

This carried on for quite a while with my dad screaming and getting angry like a toddler. Eventually, he resorted to emotional blackmail and started yelling at my mum, calling her a “liar” and worse because he thought she had “been in on it” and was deliberately keeping it from him. When he started on that, I caved. I can’t stand it when he’s like that to Mum, especially when it’s not her fault.

The punchline is that his friend, the one that was “so important to this family,” that he couldn’t be without, and who had been given the date of our wedding weeks before anyone else, didn’t even come. Being the total flake that he was, he forgot the date Dad had told him, and he didn’t mention it to his wife, who went ahead and booked a holiday. He then lost the invite when we eventually sent it, and we found out after the RSVP date that his wife didn’t even know we’d invited them — nor did she expect to be invited because, you know, we hardly know them. My dad couldn’t understand why I was fuming.

Whilst this wasn’t the last stunt he pulled to get his own way at our wedding, it was the first and last time he tried to influence the guest list. And he still doesn’t get why we live so far away.