Cancel the big wedding (to HELL with dad and his deposits) NOW!!! Most invitation companies also offer retractions - or you can make them up on your PC. As far as dad’s deposits go, he may get some of his money back if the band/caterer/florist/whatever can get re-booked for that day.
Go to city hall with your best friends (wear the big fancy dress if you like - or sell it on eBay) and do it that way. Let dad throw a party for his friends if he wants to - this is NOT the time for a college reunion!!!
GOD THIS CRAP MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL!!!
I think she’s like me in that she’s just trying to get through this in order to keep the peace.
All I can really do is remind her of what her options are. If I’m too assertive here, bad things can happen. I’ve got to choose my words VERY carefully in giving advice. Ferinstance, I pretty much have to preface everything by saying, “If it were ME…” or “If it were MY wedding…”
Personally, I would have never let something like this happen to me. The instant Mom or Dad insisted on control of the guest list, I would have offered the proverbial glass of shut the fuck up. Then again, my SO and I are a looooooong ways away from discussing marriage. But I digress…
I like the idea of bailing on the big reception. I think I’m going to offer that up as advice. (Thanks, y’all!!!) Doing things that way will allow her to use the inevitable train wreck as an excuse for bailing, and the happy couple can meet close friends and relatives somewhere else.
Wedding venues tend to book solid way, way, way in advance, 2-3 years in advance in a lot of metro areas. What most people do is to either generate a rough working list at the outset and take their numbers from that, or they estimate how many people they can afford on their budget and work the list from there. The guest list can be in a lot of flux over the year (or five, in some cases) between signing contracts and sending invitations. Friendships grow or fade, relatives die or get married or divorced or have children, life happens. The guest list gets finalized 2-3 months before the ceremony, which is when Dad started all this mess.
Sis had signed contracts with the caterers, the florists, all the vendors, long before her parents started up with their shit.
I’ve seen stories like this over on www.etiquettehell.com. Someone, often a parent of the bride, offers to pay for the wedding and/or reception, then starts throwing their weight around for – “reasons.” It royally sux rox for the happy couple.
With one month until the wedding, there’s not a whole lot the bride can do at this point (short of calling it off, eloping, or leaving her own reception very early; all of which worsen the family situation). But she’s GOT to start standing up to her parents, or this will probably happen again.
If I may make a suggestion: The bride asks some of her friends (who are attending) to act as bouncers. Then she tells her parents that the tension is high enough, if there’s any unpleasantness at the reception the offender gets thrown out at once. Then DO it. Even if she has to throw her own father out. Just because he’s paying the bill doesn’t give him the right to be disruptive.
(I concur with the more aggressive suggestions, this being the Pit and all. I just wanted to add another idea.)
THespos, I wish you, your sister, and her fiancee the best of luck in dealing with this situation. Also: Much congratulations on her upcoming wedding!
Tell Dad to stick his checks somewhere dark and moist, and do the wedding on your own terms. If you allow yourself to be controlled by purse strings, you can only blame yourself when there are strings attached to those strings. It’s the same thing I tell to 18+ year old friends who complain about conditions their parents set on living under their roof, or have other financial ties to their parents. Go out on your own, have a smaller wedding, and be happy about who’s actually there. Submitting to Pop’s demands will only make her more bitter down the road.
I’m in the elope camp. Fuck the family, they obviously don’t care about your sister and her feelings. What goes around comes around and all that stuff.
Of course, this is easy for me to say, as I’ve always thought “weddings” were a phenomenal waste of time and money. And I blew my family off decades ago (cuz I finally get fed up with this type of crap from them).
You’re just as “married” when you go the the justice of the peace, and it’s a hell of alot cheaper and then none of this crap comes up.
THespos, call your dad and tell him he’s being a prick, but that his daughter’s too nice to tell him so.
If the condition for him paying for the wedding is that he gets to invite two dozen people his daughter doesn’t even fucking know, than maybe he should throw his own goddamn party, instead of his daughter’s wedding.
And if your sister isn’t brave enough to kick your dad’s ass, then it’s your job as elder brother to stick up for her. Because if your sister thinks it’s gonna get bad by cancelling, it’s only gonna get fucking worse if you’ve got a dozen men with their girlfriend’s and their ex-wives at this shindig.
If it does go down, make sure someone brings a video camera, because you’ll be able to sell it for lots of cash.
My mum has tried to invite a dozen people I barely know to my upcoming wedding. “But they’re my closest friends,” she whined.
“But I don’t fucking know them!” I replied. “Why would I want to share my wedding day with complete strangers?”
“Well I’m helping pay for this,” she countered.
“Okay, you’re not paying anymore,” I replied. “This day is not about you, it’s about me and the woman becoming my wife, and the people we love and care about, not about who you care about. And if you don’t like that, you’re not paying.”
Excellent point, Barbarian. This may be something where some family diplomacy can save the day. Can you talk to your dad about it, make sure he realizes that his daughter is having to disinvite her own friends from the wedding so that his friends can show up? Maybe at least you can get him to give her enough money for the wedding so that she can invite her friends as well – maybe you can make him feel guilty about it.
It does sound like it’s too late to disinvite Dad’s friends, though, and canceling the reception is obviously a nonstarter (since Thespos’s sister has ruled it out). The best sis can hope for at this point, I think, is to salvage some fun out of the disaster.
Leave the first quickly saying “well, since no one can leave until the newlyweds do, we didn’t want anyone to be stuck here, waiting forever. We’ve heard so many complaints about that sort of thing. We didn’t want to cause anyone to stay too late, but to have fun and leave when they wanted. Please go ahead and enjoy yourselves!” And then head to the second, smaller, couple-paid-for affair with friends.
Best wishes to them in their marriage!
Got a cite for that?
It’s rude to invite one half of a public couple (engaged, married, life partnered, etc.) without the other half. But people are not required to invite a “friend of guest” for every guest on the list.
THespos, little sister needs to grow a backbone. This is her wedding. The parents may be paying for it, but it does not give them the right to act like assholes.
I am very worried your sister’s wedding day is going to be ruined for her because of what your folks are doing. The day is stressful enough as it is without having to deal with the parents and the friends.
Dealing with political fallout from jerky family members is part of being a grown up. Please, help your sister through this. She should not be blackmailed on this, the first day of her married life.
This would be my advice as well, except I would excercise a bit more tact. At least at first.
“Gee dad, sis is awfully upset. She was really hoping to invite her friends, but because she loves you so much, she’s letting you invite people she doesn’t even know or like. I know that you are paying for this, but it’s too bad that the most special day in her life will be so uncomfortable for her. I know you wouldn’t want that to happen, so do you think you could let her have at least some say in the guest list?”
The idea of parents who will use their own daughter’s wedding as just one more bit of territory in their scorched-earth warfare simply turns my stomach. My parents separated mere months before what would have been their 25th anniversary, then kept lawyers gainfully employed for another 7 years. Fortunately, I didn’t get married until after the dust had settled.
I like CrazyCatLady’s idea best. KHespos and hubby-to-be should schedule an inexpensive party for their own friends (call it the ‘unofficial reception’), to start maybe an hour and a half after the official reception starts. If this means cold cuts and a keg of beer at a picnic pavilion in the park, so be it: whatever they can afford, that they can invite their friends to.
They invite their friends to the wedding, and to the ‘unofficial’ reception. They spend the absolute minimum amount of time diplomatically feasible at the official one, saying they’re eager to get on with their honeymoon. (Nyuk, nyuk.) But dad can’t say no - it used to be SOP that the bride and groom were the first to depart the wedding reception, back in the days when it was more common for the happy couple to have new things to look forward to. The party’s supposed to be able to go on without them, and if the reception is being emceed or anything fancy like that, KHespos should work the timing aspects out with the emcee.
I dunno, I kinda like calling Dad on the carpet as he is.
"Dad, you fucking selfish ass, do you suppose you could just grow up and be selfless for once? My sister is in tears because you’re too fucking self absorbed to realise that this is HER wedding and NOT your keg party. Do you even realise what you are doing to your own daughter? Me personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if she cuts you out of her life for being so goddamned juvenile.
“And don’t you smirk over there, Ma. You’re just as bad. What the judge SHOULD have done was locked you two in a room together and let you go at it. Pricks, both of you.”
And then exit the conversation in a righteous huff.
Dude. What an awful thing to do to one’s own daughter. My suggestion is to either cancel the whole big thing and do it on the couple’s own terms, or for them to pop into the big reception, smile, cut the cake, and leave to go party with people they care about, and who care about them. Asshat-Dad has already made it clear that the reception is his party, so let him and his friends party there.
I’d also remark that people tend to work in patterns. If your sis and her fiancé give in on this count, dear ol’ Dad is likely to continue in similar manipulative, selfish, jerkish ways. She should not stand for it. A wedding isn’t about money, it’s about two people getting married. Your sister will only have one wedding (okay, so I’m old fashioned, but at most a handful of weddings), and when it gets ruined by a greedy, selfish father the experience will be ruined forever, and she won’t have as many happy memories of what should be one of the happiest days of her life.
I think Athena, later Hamadryad and then especiallypeepthis hit it right on the head. THespos, just remind your sister that she does have choices. Your dad’s paying and he thinks that gives him the right to make certain demands. Those are evidently the conditions of accepting his money for the occasion. Unfortunate and crappy as it may be, if that’s the choice she makes that’s what she’ll have to accept. She does have other choices but this looks like a situation where someone else’s behavior has put her in the position of having to choose the lesser of evils – that doesn’t mean, though, that she doesn’t have that choice.
While imminently more satisfying, that may just make matters worse. Flies, vinegar, honey, and all that. Plus it doesn’t seem like KHespos has it in her to do that.
If it were MY wedding…I’d put on a smile and go ahead with it. Its just a damn day, the important thing is the marriage. And if I were THespos (and I’m not, so she should feel free to ignore this advice), I’d remind my sister that the important thing here is that she is marrying her husband and that they will get to spend the rest of their lives together. Whether they do it in front of 100 drunken strangers, or in front of a JP by themselves, or in front of an Elvis impersonator.
And I’d explain to my friends that my dad is a bastard, but the bastard with the checkbook, and that’s why they didn’t get invited.
And then the moment I got back from my honeymoon, I’d throw a great party for my friends. Or ask my friends to throw a great party.
(Or elope now with the people that are most important to you and have the “wedding” for show).
I had a big first wedding, with all the trauma associated with it (my Dad switched my reception place for his country club, switched my menu to one featuring beef, so my veggie friends all got to eat salad, and the smoking battle still haunts me 15 years later every time I see my grandmother). The marriage lasted 18 months. My second wedding was much more of a fly by the seat of my pants affair.
I called KHespos at work an hour ago or so. She’s still really upset. Here’s the advice I gave her (summarized):
Go back and invite all the people that my Dad made her cut. If Dad acts like a dick about picking up the check, I’ll take care of it.
Have a backup place to hang out with close friends, etc., just in case something bad happens at the reception. (We decided on a nice place where my cousin used to waitress…)
Reassert the “no dates” rule for divorced friends of my parents, unless they’re married or engaged. I’m breaking it to Dad that his insistent friend needs to disinvite his date.
I got even more upset talking to sis on the phone when I found out about several other friends that my Dad had invited that I didn’t know about. My sister and her future hubby wanted to invite the future hubby’s college roommate, who just happens to be the guy who encouraged him to pick up the phone to call my sister to ask her for their first date. He and his SO were nixed in favor of one of my Dad’s Florida friends who my sister met exactly once. When she was six. And his brother. Who. My. Sister. Has. Never. Met.
