Also, just so I don’t sound like a total jerk (because now I’m feeling self-conscious), I try to be there for her, too. When she wrote and staged an original musical a few years ago, I came to every one of the 9 performances and clapped the loudest. And brought groups of my friends to see it, too, one night I had 15 people there.
We’re just disconnected on this issue.
That’s a great idea. Or check into RV rental - I think they run under $100 per day. That could solve both the travel-with-small-kids problem and the expensive-lodging problem!
To me “being there for her” includes saying something like “hey, this isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had. Its going to cause hard feelings for the people you love. Its inconvienencing a lot of them. Its going to be REALLY hard for Mom and Dad to make it. You are asking your guests to make a choice between using their own vacation time for something they had been looking forward to or going to your wedding. It really sounds lovely, but its also going to make some people feel that its more important for you to have the wedding you want than for you to have them there.”
If your family will find a way to make it work, don’t make it about you. But if she hasn’t heard the watered down version of “destination weddings are the height of bridezilla behavior - disrupting your guests life to unreasonable lengths to get ‘your day’” she probably needs to.
If, indeed, she tries so hard to be there for people, she’ll realize she needs to be there for her parents on her wedding day. That as much as a wedding is you all being there for her on her big day - its more about her and her groom SHARING their big day with you.
On target, as always :).
Yeah, that’s the key part she’s NOT getting – she thinks destination weddings are just an everyday thing. Just like some people think $50k weddings are “average”.
If she’s the type who won’t hate you forever, send her the Carolyn Hax piece. There is no reason she can’t have her special wedding, she just needs to recognize she can’t have her special wedding, have all the people she cares about there (you don’t even get that if you stay in town) and no hard feelings from her friends and family that do come over the expense (which she may never hear…“everyone loved my destination wedding” often means “my friends and family are too polite to tell me that I had started destroying the suburbs of Tokyo.”
You’re not crazy at all! But it’s not so very different than had she lived in another city, say Houston, and held it there. You just have the additional irritation of knowing that the inconvenience could have been avoided.
My (now-ex) SIL from Cherry Hill, NJ had exactly 12 people in her family who were attending their wedding. The couple went to college in Ohio and had tons of friends and family from Ohio, who were all invited to the wedding. Where did they choose to have the wedding? Cherry Hill. So basically 150 people were inconvenienced because Grandma didn’t want to travel. My kids were 3 and 5. We had to get someone to watch the dog. And pay for 4 nights in a hotel. And pay a sitter at the hotel. And buy flower girl dresses. And rent tuxes. And buy them a wedding present. Very inconvenient, very expensive and we most certainly grumbled about it. But we had to be there for my husband’s brother.
Now, 12 years later, we laugh about it. We tell stories about my daughter barfing in the mountains of West Virginia, being stuck in a traffic jam and my husband having to pee in a Wendy’s cup, which fascinated and completely mortified our children, my older daughter coming down with strep throat and missing the rehearsal dinner, and my SIL (not the bride) who literally got up on a table and danced.
Good times those.
Anyway, keep trying to talk to your sister. But if she’s set on it, chalk it up as one of those family obligations that are pains in the asses but necessary.