My sister's wedding (a mini-rant)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hello all,

I’m not really sure that this is Pit-worthy. I’m feeling very confused right now.

My sister is going to be married soon. Third time’s the charm. ANY-way. . .

Last weekend I’m sitting around the house with my housemate “Renee.” We get to talking about the upcoming nuptials and I wonder why I haven’t received an invitation yet. I know the wedding is soon, but that’s about all I know–not even the place, date, or time. Renee suggests, “Why don’t you call your sister and find out if she’s registered anywhere? I’d like to send her something.”

So I call Sis. And she seems–well, flustered at my call.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? It’s going to be at . . .” etc. And this is how I learn that my sister is to be wed in twelve days. :eek: “. . . And I didn’t send you a printed invitation because some of the invitations didn’t turn out right, so I sent the good ones to Bob’s friends and family and I was just phoning the family members on my side. Didn’t I call you? I thought I called you. I’m sorry.”

O-kay. Not that big a deal, really. We all live here in town, after all. I rationalize myself into accepting this. Sis can be spacey, and she does have a lot on her plate. I say:

“Renee wants to know if you’re registered anywhere.”

“Oh, Pete. About Renee–”

Uh-oh.

"You know how much I like her, and I’d never want to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable. . . "

I see where this is going.

“. . . and there are going to be a lot of older, conservative people there, right-wing people, you know? And–and, I just wouldn’t want her to feel uncomfortable; that’s all.”

My housemate Renee is my bestest friend. She’s a beautiful woman (and happens to be engaged to a nice guy of her own). And, oh yes, until last year, she happened to be a man. She did attend my sister’s last wedding with me, back when she was “Ron.” (She’s already told me that she doesn’t plan on going to this one, only sending a present. It’s true, she’s not entirely comfortable in public just yet.)

I tell Sis that I’m planning on coming without a guest (which is true). Sis seems much calmer all of a sudden. Pleasantries exchanged, we hang up.

Needless to say, I didn’t tell Renee any of this. (But I did encourage her to skip the wedding present.)

So–does anyone else smell a rat? “Some” of the invitations didn’t turn out right? :dubious: Sis “forgot” to call me? :rolleyes:

Do I go to this wedding, or express my regrets (cordially of course, without giving a reason)? I don’t know what to think, or how offended to be. I’m confused.

Any suggestions welcomed.

2

I don’t expect a lot of follow-up anger to the OP, so I’m moving this thread to MPSIMS, where posters can offer advice to the OP on how to deal with this potentially sticky situation.

3

Your sister is a coward.
or
Your sister doesn’t want to deal with the attitudes of the old farts at her wedding, and wants to keep the wedding as non-explosive as possible.

Since the wedding is in town, go to the wedding and have a good time. Let your sister do her thing. Skipping the wedding accomplishes little, unless you think that she needs a lesson taught to her. However, I don’t (personally) consider weddings to be the place.

Now - if Renee was your partner, I would feel differently, I admit. Since she is not, I would just go have a nice time.

Tell Renee to spend the money on herself instead. Or, if she REALLY wants to mess with things, tell her to send your sister a really heartfelt card and a small gift just to make the sister feel guilty for giving in to the troglodytes. (OK, that is evil and goes against my earlier statement - yeesh, could I BE more all-over-the-board on this?)

4

Shit. Why do people have to be this way?

If your sister really liked Renee, you’d think she’d send an invitation and let HER be the one to decide where she’ll be uncomfortable. What a load of bigoted horseshit.

My initial reaction (OK, after royally telling the sister off) is to send regrets, in support of Renee (and also because you yourself seem to be a second-class invitee), and take your lovely friend out for a nice dinner that night. :slight_smile:

But I’m sure that more mature minds will show up and tell you that you should go and be gracious because you’re the bride’s brother. I myself had to do that once, though for different reasons (I was violently opposed to the marriage because I knew my sister was doing it for the wrong reasons, and I knew that she knew it too).

Sometimes it really sucks to be a grown-up. :mad:

5

I vote - that your sister is a chickenshit who’s been trying to duck the issue and therefore ducking you. :slight_smile:

With that said, I would go. Her wedding, whether or not you approve of it, probably isn’t the best place to take a stand about her dissing your friend for stupid prejudiced reasons (on her part or just your family’s part probably doesn’t matter). Especially if said friend wasn’t planning on going anyway.

Like Algher, I would feel completely different if she were your romantic partner.

6

This isn’t an either/or. Both can be, and probably are, true. It could be, of course, that she just doesn’t like Renee, but that doesn’t seem to be the case as she was invited to Wedding #2.
As you asked for advice, my initial impulse would be advise to go to the wedding and wish your sister and newest brother-in-law a happy marriage and sincere congratulations. Then skip the reception, unless there are relatives you haven’t seen for a while and want to see. As you “all live here in town,” that doesn’t look to be happening.

After reflection, my better advice would be to go and show your new in-laws the meaning of class. Tell them about yourself, what you do, and where you live. Tell them you have a great roommate, too, whom you hope they can meet on a less formal occasion.

7

I wouldn’t worry about the Renee thing. It more or less resolved itself. To do anything now would be to make it into an issue, when it could die a quiet death.

As far as the invitation? Well, I wouldn’t worry about that either. If you don’t go it would get noticed and be something years down the road that could be remembered. If you make an appearance, but don’t stay long, then what’s the harm? Five years down the road you’re not going to get a lot of sympathy by saying “I didn’t go because I wasn’t sent an invitation”. By your own admission your sister is flighty. To me that’s even more reason to just let it go, and assume she means well.

On a possible related side note. My son just got married, and the occasional dimwit that he is; decided he would only invite people whom he thought would actually show up to the wedding. But that’s not all! As smart as that idea was, he only bought the exact number of invitations that he would require. Granted the guy was on a very limited budget, but I wanted to shake him and say “don’t you get it? A. you’re going to make mistakes addressing the envelopes; and B inviting family that you know can’t attend is still something you should do (if nothing else for the gift opportunity; uh assuming they’re actually close enough family to invite to your wedding)” So naturally he started freaking out when he started getting the usual wedding things like an RSVP for someone bringing their family instead of just the married couple. In a way it was kind of funny. I tried as best I could to say… don’t worry about it; it’ll all work out. It’s not going to be the end of the world if you have seating for 100, and 102 people show up. Not only that there are ALWAYS people who won’t show up.

Anyway, I’m sure some will disagree; but I think this is a no brainer.

8

This is the short version of what I was trying to say. You could rightly have some issues that could be dealt with… but why now? Good answer Risha

9

yes, rat. sorry she turned out like this. but you know, there’s no law you have to be friends with your siblings. Or better said, you don’t have to pretend to agree with your siblings more than you actually do. You just have to be polite to them and be around when they need family support, any friendship that comes after that is a bonus.

personally I would confront my sister, and say that if she doesn’t want me to bring a guest that’s fine. But Renee is an adult who knows how to act in public and can decide for herself what events she wants to attend. And then I would attend and bring a card and a $25 bottle of wine ('cause yeah, it’s her wedding and you’re already in town).

But that’s just me, I tend to confront people I’m upset with.

10

I think your sister was being a bit of a jerk (forgetting to send an invitation to her brother? There’s flighty and there’s brain-damaged.), but I would go anyway, and just remember how she was about this. Tuck it away in the back of your mind and don’t forget it - that old saying, “When people show you who they are, it’s your job to see it” applies here, I think.

Because Renee wasn’t planning on attending anyway, I would let that drop, but you really don’t get to tell people who they can bring as a guest, if the invitation is “Peter and guest.”

11

The OP has already stated that Renee is engaged; if we’re talking about etiquette, it wouldn’t be proper to invite an engaged person to a wedding without inviting her fiance. Certainly Peter could escort her if said fiance is unavailable, but inviting Renee and excluding Renee’s intended = bad manners. It sounds as if Sister doesn’t know this, but she may be unintentionally committing a gracious act! Commend her!

12

You can always give your sister grief for the half-assed invitation later… but you can never go back in time and show up at her wedding.

13

There’s a couple of issues here for me, and the only way I can see them getting tied up together is if your sister thought you would assume or insist on bringing Renee, even though you are not a couple and in fact she’s engaged to someone else. If that is NOT the case, then IMO there are two issues:

First, you sister didn’t call you to invite you to her wedding, in less than two weeks. For me, this would be a MAJOR issue, that would need some follow up. Is there some other reason that she would not invite you or not want you there? Do you and she have a complicated or bad relationship? Does her fiance hate you for some reason? Do you have a history of getting drunk and mooning the clergy if you go to a wedding? For me, there would be a serious “You forgot to invite me? WTF?” conversation with my sister, with the bottom line being that if she doesn’t want me there she needs to tell me so honestly, and I won’t come, because I want her to be happy.

Second, Renee is not invited. My reaction to this is mostly: So what? IMO it’s a small-minded decision on her part not to invite Renee based on her sexuality (if indeed that is the reason), but it’s your sister’s wedding. Unless Renee is independently her friend also, it’s not like there’s some established custom that would dictate the bride invite her brother’s roommate anyway. The stock response to “why didn’t you invite X?” is “It’s a small wedding.” Could be 500 guests, but if you don’t want to invite your crazy college roommate and someone asks why, the asnswer is, “We’re having a small wedding.”

But if my sibling decided that rather than talk to me about her assumptions (that I would insist on bringing Renee) and her discomfort (having to explain to me that Renee was not invited), she would simply avoid it by NOT INVITING ME TO HER FREAKING WEDDING, I would be pretty pissed about that.

14

That pretty much sums up what I was going to say. If your sister really wanted you at her wedding you would have either received an invitation in the mail or gotten a phone call a month ago explaining the situation. The fact that you “slipped” her mind is just, well, I’m not buying it. If I’d suddenly discovered that I was unable to mail invitations to half my guest list, I’d have some notations of who I needed to call and whether or not they answered, along with their RSVP.

This whole thing just reeks. I think you got fucked over and should find something else to do that day. Then again, I’ve learned over the last few years that having the same parents isn’t a good enough reason to put up with contemptible behaviour.

15

Eh, as someone who is planning a wedding, I can see EASILY how one hurried, anxious, oh-shit-the-invites-got-screwed phone call could be missed off the list. Especially if you are in the back of her head as the “easy to deal with” family.

Honestly, weddings are a time when family takes it upon themselves to pile unceasing bullshit on the bride. Yes, it was stupid, and yes, she should have a list or something, but I sincerely, very sincerely doubt there was anything intentional about the oversight. You probably got lost in the shuffle and that’s never a good feeling.

16

Well, I am a bitch, and don’t much like my sister (who would pull something like this) so if I were in your shoes, I’d show up in drag (assuming I were a guy).

Sounds to me like your sister is a coward. She could be fully legit in her story, but it sounds fishy to me. Depending on how much you like your sister, I would recommend dropping it as a no-harm-no-foul day and attending and eating up her food and drinking her wine and having a good time or forgetting about the date/time (“without a written invitation, I forgot!”) and going out with people you like more – maybe Renee and her fiance?

Of course, in your sister’s defence – where I work, we deal with a lot of brides. Every. Single. Day. I deal with some bride who has to have her ribbon overnighted because her wedding is in 2 days and the florist screwed up and ordered the wrong colour/size/whatever. Maybe the printer did screw up, maybe not. Who knows? Who cares? Of course, one would think by the third time, you’d have a little more sense of who to hire for what, but then again…

17

Sister shouldn’t have voiced her reason for not inviting Renee. If she had kept quiet, it might never have come up, since invitations weren’t sent and the OP wasn’t even going to bring her. Renee only asked about giving a gift, not attending, so I assume she wasn’t thinking about being there anyway. Maybe Sister spoke out of guilt, I don’t know.

The stuffy, conservative guests who might be shocked by Renee could be her fiance’s immediate family or people closer to her than Renee is, so I can’t get upset about her decision to not invite her brother’s best friend. If she were close to Renee, it’d be a different story, but my impression is Renee is a “friend-of-my-brother” and not a “friend”.

Of course, there may not actually be any stuffy, conservative guests at all and Sister is just saying that so a transsexual doesn’t show up at her wedding, but the OP hasn’t supplied anything to support this.

Whether you go depends on how big a deal you want to make of this. The invitation thing would annoy me but not to the point where I wouldn’t go. But you know your sister’s personality and possible motivations better than any of us.

18

You know the other thing that occured to me is that she could have been meaning to call you, but just kept putting it off because she was nervous about the awkward “no guests” conversation. Which is still rude but not the same as “forgetting”.

19

That works for cousins and extended family out of state, that does not work for the bride’s own BROTHER. Third wedding? Didn’t he come to the other two? heck, he was probably IN the first one. Like Jodi, I have more issue with the “oops, ditzy me, forgot to invite my own brother to my wedding!” nonsense. I think she didn’t want to confront you and deal with the awkwardness of having Renee there. I can see why she’s on her third marriage (not meant harshly, but come on–how mature is this woman?)

How does your brother get lost in the shuffle? It’s not like they’re estranged.

I think Sis preferred Ron to Renee, but that’s her issue. As reactions go for someone like Renee, that’s got to be kind of mild. If Renee is coping, I say drop it. If Sis is as leery of Renee as you say, it will come up again and it can be dealt with then.

This sounds like some wedding. Did your parents get lost in the shuffle as well?
:eek:

20

First of all, thanks to the moderator who put my post in the proper forum. And thank you to everyone who took the time to respond with your thoughts on my problem. It has been entirely resolved: I won’t bore you with the details, but it was really nothing more than a horrible miscommunication, and much of it was my fault.

Please close this thread. I must go wipe the egg off my face now.

Thanks,

PP