THespos, it’s very obvious that you love your sister dearly (she’s very lucky to have a brother like you!) and yes, I know how stressful this time is. I just went through this, remember? I’m sorry to have offended you with my directness. However, please don’t put words in my mouth – I never called your sister a whiny bitch. Sadly, she doesn’t appear (from your representation here) to be acting like much of a grown-up, ready for marriage, either.
Your sister is having a lavish wedding – she’s having bridesmaids in full gowns with bouquets, groomsmen in tuxedos, a reception with music, dinner and party favors for the guests, a full bar and limousine service. That’s lavish!
And there’s NOTHING wrong with that. My wedding may have been small, and we may have done things like print our own invitations and drive our own car, but make no mistake, with a full bar, a live band and not just one, but three entrees (including paper wrapped halibut, roasted lamb chops and filet mignon), our wedding was lavish!
That description, in and of iteslf, is Not A Bad Thing. OK?
But I got a sense from all your posts in this thread that this statement made by you above, “and frankly, she shouldn’t have to,” is what was driving this whole rant – and what I was trying (obviously unsucessfully) to get across to you is the wrong attitude to have if your sister wants to relieve the stress and anger she’s feeling right now.
Again, I speak from experience. Let me preface by saying that I know your sister doesn’t have the exact same options I had, so I’m not recommending she do what I did. I’m merely pointing out that there are solutions, if one is truly genuine in their desire to accomplish their goal.
My father, too, wanted to invite all of his friends and business associates to our wedding. I Did Not Want That. I’d always dreamed of having a small, intimate affair with only our closest friends and family surrounding us, helping us celebrate our joy. My father wanted to turn it into a “reciprocity” event. Ie, he’d been invited to all these people’s kids’ weddings for the past 20 years. If he had to go to theirs, then they should have to come to his. And not only that, he felt it would be socially wrong not to invite them.
Well I don’t know most of those people and I did not want them at my wedding. I told my father this. Now, unlike your dad, who I have acknowledged is being an extreme prick to your sister over this situation, my father was at least nice to me about it. Basically, he pouted and sulked (maybe it’s a Jewish thing – you know, throw around a little guilt and you’ll get your way – but I digress ;)). And he did, ever so gently, suggest that since he was paying for this thing, he should be allowed to invite whomever he wanted (though it was never to the exclusion of our own friends). And I agreed. Like it or not, he was right. If he was paying to throw me a wedding, it really was, basically, his party and he had the right to invite the guests of his choosing.
The only solution was to take that “power” away from him. I did that in 2 ways… I moved the venue to California (where we live now) from Missouri (my home town). All his business associates weren’t going to fly all the way out to L.A. for his daughter’s wedding and he knew that. Therefore, inviting them would only make it look like he was asking for gifts and it was easy to convince him not to put them in that position.
Secondly, Thomas and I decided that if we wanted the wedding of our dreams, without other people telling us what we had to do and what we should do and what we needed to do, we were gonna have to be in control of at least half the purse strings on it. It may not seem fair to you, but it was a necessary fact.
Voila! We’re now “co-hosting” the party, we now have a LOT more say in what gets done or not done!
I tell you this because I want you to understand that I DO know exactly what your sister is going through and dealing with here. And I COMPLETELY AGREE that it’s BULLSHIT. Your father is an ass and I do sincerely pray he doesn’t ruin this day for your sister.
But he will if she allows him to!
Your sister is a grown woman, about to enter into a very serious grown-up commitment. She can either face these obstacles that have been (wrongly) dumped in her path and make the necessary personal sacrifices so her day is not spoiled, or she can whine and dig her heels in and insist that “she shouldn’t have to” and have a crappy day that she’d rather forget than cherish.
And the fact that your sister planned a wedding during the busiest time of her and her fiancé’s year isn’t going to win her any sympathy points for being all stressed out right now. I’m sorry. She’s got what she’s got because she planned it that way and she has to figure out how to sucessfully deal with it. If her wedding is that important to her, then she and her fiancé need to make time to address the problems that are popping up. That’s what life is all about. If she thinks this is bad, wait until she finds out what kinds of monkey wrenches marriage will throw in her path!
Now, as her brother who loves her and wants to help, you have several choices. You can stay the heck out of it, hug her and give her a shoulder to cry on and simply “be there” for her as a big brother. That will accomplish exactly nothing. But we’ve already established that you’re willing to do a whole lot more than that.
You can keep doing what you’re doing – trying to intercede on her behalf with your father and pitching in your own money if he won’t budge. That will certainly solve the problem of your siter’s friends being able to attend the reception, but it won’t do much in the way of family relations. I can only imagine it will lead to further hurt feelings, animosity, arguments and resentment.
Or, you can call your sister and invite her to coffee tomorrow morning. Tell her to bring all her wedding planning stuff with her. Find out exactly how many friends didn’t get invited that she wants to invite. Calculate exactly how much the extra meals will cost for that number of heads, assuming they can all attend. Then go through each item, one by one to determine which things can be reduced and which things can be sacrificed.
I strongly recommend cancelling the limo service. I know she wants it – it’s part of the dream, the fairy tale. But she has got to weigh how much she wants that vs how much she wants her friends by her side. And if she’s absolutely insistent that she have transportation, help her look for alternatives to limousine services that will be just as lovely but not as costly. I’ll even go so far as to bet that one of the groomsmen would get a huge kick out of getting a chauffeur’s hat and “playing” the role!
I’m serious when I say that the flowers are not “done”. Your sister has chosen the ones she wants, but they’re not gown, picked, delivered to the florist, arranged and delivered to the wedding yet. And until that happens, she should be able to change anything she wants about them. And I promise you that, if her florist is a decent human being, he or she will be happy to substitute less expensive flowers for the ones she’s chosen.
Did your sister hire a professional photographer? If so, did she pay for a “package”? If yes again, have her call the photographer and see if they’d be willing to work on an hourly basis instead. That might help reduce some expense, as well.
Also, keep in mind that there will be a lot of people who’ve been invited – including your father’s frat boy friends (who, by the way, I think you’re projecting way too much vitriol towards – they may be perfectly lovely people socially, in spite of what you think of them morally, who would never dream of causing a scene at a friend’s daughter’s wedding), who will decline the invitation. Every “regret” she receives is room for 1 more friend who can be accomodated!
You can do this. You can make this happen and have it be just as lovely and elegant an affair as she’s always dreamed of, have all her and her fiancés friends there with her and stick to the budget your father has provided. Let your father be the stubborn prig – don’t you be!
In all seriousness, I do wish your sister the best day possible.
