I’ve never understood the Jr bridesmaid thing either. To me it seems like it was invented to train them to be bridesmaids when they grow up or something. Or to appease an older sister who has a daughter who’s beside herself with giddiness over the impending nuptuals.
Awww, see, I think the junior bridesmaids are a great idea. The junior bridesmaid is often the only attendant who is genuinely thrilled to be wearing the fancy schmancy gown. It’s nice that someone actually enjoys that part. 
I think you’re reading too much into it. You can only have so many people in a wedding party, and there may have been promises made that pre-date your future sister-in-law meeting your brother. If you were the same gender as the sibling who was marrying and you weren’t chosen I could understand if you took offence, but I wouldn’t expect a bride to exclude a sister or a friend to include you unless you had an especially close relationship with her. If you’re not known as the sort of girl who adores weddings then that goes double.
In answer to the question - I have one sibling (a brother) who wasn’t part of the wedding party. Between us, we have two brothers and three stepbrothers, and rather than choosing between having a large wedding party (which we didn’t want in any case, which would have looked stupid at our tiny informal wedding and which would have made it even harder to throw the whole deal together in under 7 weeks) or risking offending some brothers by leaving them out, we decided to offend them all equally and have no groomsmen. I had initially asked my best friend to be my bridesmaid (before we knew we were having the quick, tiny wedding), and I was rather embarrassed to withdraw that offer but my MIL pointedly told me that my young sisters-in-law-to-be (they were 11 and 13 at the time) really REALLY wanted to be in the ceremony and I felt obligated to ask them (at least I love them dearly so it wasn’t a hardship to have them be a part of it, and my friend is a most understanding and easy-going girl who forgave me for my dreadful faux pas). The two young girls all the attendants we had.
My brother planned two weddings, went ahead with one and asked me to be a part of neither. In both cases, the bride-to-be had a sister and lifelong friend/s who she was closer to than she was to me so it made perfect sense. My husband was asked to be Best Man at the first wedding (the non-event one), but didn’t even make the cut for bridal party the second time around. He was relieved, as he found the idea of planning bucks parties nerve-wracking (not to mention how he felt about the costs involved!).
That part’s true enough. I stood up in one wedding in my life, and it was more than enough. There was an Ugly Bridesmaid Dress website once, and it pretty much nailed what women have been saying for decades: Butt-Ugly Mutherfuckin’ Dresses Are A Drag! (and expensive)
Exactly - I’ve been a junior bridesmaid once and a real bridesmaid, like, seven times and a reader more than that. The junior bridesmaid was by far the most fun - didn’t get to realize the trashiness of the bride, thought the teal monstrosity with the butt-bow was beautiful and glamorous, loved all the fittings and such, caught the bouquet. (Does that count, if they’re only together two months?) You know, I’ve never been in a wedding of which I approved? That’s not saying anything about my standards, it’s saying something about the people who ask me to be in their weddings. Nearly all of them are divorced now, too.
Another vote for “You’re Reading Too Much Into This”, although I can understand your feeling of being slighted, having been slightly disappointedonce that I wasn’t included in one of my friends’s wedding.
My husband and I had some discussion when we planned ours: he has 2 brothers, I have one brother. We have no sisters. My husband had considered on including his brothers and mine, but since we had decided 2 attendants each (we didn’t want a massively huge wedding cast; one of my bridesmaids had 4 bridesmaids and 3 flowergirls whilst her husband had 3 groomsmen and his son in his groomsparty), he wouldn’t be able to include all brothers. So my husband was at pains to decide which brother, since he also wanted his best mate as a groomsmen. He also felt obligated to include two other friends, since my husband had been a groomsmen at both their weddings.
Me, on the other hand, not having many female friends, no sisters and no female cousins I felt particularly close to, did not have such issue with my choices.
In the end, no family members (save for my dear cousin by marriage) were in our parties, and we were happy with that. My husband chose his best mate as his Best Man and his friend Kylie (yes, a girl) as his other groomsman, which allowed for some curious/interesting comments.
I understand with wedding planning, there’s a HUGE obligation (both from the couple AND/OR their relatives) to include family members. It must be remembered that it’s the bride and grooms day - easy said, not often carried out! Fortunately for us, none of our family or other relatives had the urge to tell us who we could or couldn’t have.
Possibly, but if you’re close to your brother then I can see that it may hurt a bit. When my brother got married I (his only brother) wasn’t asked to be his best man, or even to be one of the official party. I didn’t even score an invitation to his bucks’ party. Everyone else in my family was scandalised on my behalf by these omissions. I wasn’t. I’m not particularly close to my brother and it seemed silly to pretend otherwise. In fact I was relieved not to get invited to the bucks’ party because it would have involved a long journey on a weekend when I had better things to do.
That’s precisely the role that I got. It was great. Only five minutes’ preparation was required and the decencies were preserved.
No, you don’t have any right to feel slighted, but yes, I do understand why you do. Does that help? 
Seriously, as others have suggested, talk to your brother. Simply say you were a little surprised, and you had kind of expected to be in his wedding party since you are so close, and ask if there is some other capacity that you could help him in (and phrase it that way, too, that you want to help him, not demand that he put you in the wedding in some way).
I have three sisters, and had only one as a bridesmaid (another one who lives nearby was in charge of my gift table/sign-in book). My husband has only one sister, and she wasn’t in the wedding party in any capacity, since they are not close at all. Bottom line - your brother and his fiancée will decide who is in their parties, and that’s the way it should be, and I can almost guarantee you they mean no insult to anyone not included. But talk to him.
I have to say, the best, non-traditional thing we did for our wedding was having all the spouses of the wedding party at the head table with their spouses. Nothing like being in a wedding party and getting to watch your spouse eating across the room from you. :rolleyes:
Is there any part they’re leaving for you?
In Spain there’s no “party”, just the Godfather (usually the bride’s Dad) and Godmother (usually the groom’s Mom); when my bro got married, the cameramen were SIL’s bro and my other bro. They were informing us of who would be doing things like the lectures and I asked “do I do anything?” Bro said “uh, no”. I said “OK, thanks” and just looked on calmly while he continued listing people we’d never even met.
Then they were informing the priest and he said, “what’s Nava going to read?” “Uh… nothing… we were thinking of having friends do everything…” The priest stared at my bro and said “is it friends who can actually read? I’m a bit sick of people who can’t pronounce Corinthians properly and who insert commas where they don’t exist”. Yeah, I got to do the second reading.
Everybody they’d picked was from her group of friends; that still draws its shared of barely-contained rolleyes 7 years later.
I’d definitely talk to your brother, Zipper. Where I come from, sibs are always in the wedding party (if someone comes from large family, there’s usually a “representative” sibling in the party) unless they have expressed a desire to not participate. Heck, I had never even met my brother’s fiance and I was in the wedding and sang. And I wasn’t particularly close to my brother either. It’s just a given. I’d ask him non-confrontationally what gives.
I would be pretty damn pissed but in my culture I would have an official role in the wedding party. Technically my sister shouldn’t be in my wedding and my younger cousin should be in it, because my sister is now married, but she’d wring my neck if she didn’t get to be my karoli and I’d let her walk down the aisle behind me even if she was 8.5 months preggers. Mainly because she’s my best friend and only sister. Frankly the whole “it’s yourrrr big DAY” attitude comes off as exceedingly selfish to me, but as I said, I come from a completely different cultural perspective.
It’s nice to try to include all of your siblings in the ceremony somehow, but the bride and groom have no obligation to include any particular person in the wedding party. It can’t be big enough to include everyone (4-5 people on each side is already pretty big!) and the groom had to make a choice-- I’m sure no slight was intended.
My wife’s two sisters stood with her, and I chose my one brother and her brother. I also have four other sisters, but if they had been included too, I would have needed four more guys-- I don’t even have that many male friends! 
We gave my sisters parts in the ceremony and it worked out great for everyone.
I’ll talk to my brother, I will. I was trying to feel out beforehand wether or not it’d be worth it to bring this up with him. I do NOT want to make him or his fiancee feel horrible about this. I don’t feel horrible…just slighted.
They’ll be getting back from their vacation next week (where he proposed to her in front of her whole family). I’ll give some time for that excitement to die down before I remind him that he forgot about me. sniffle sniffle
With one exception, all the western-style weddings I’ve attended (i.e., the kind in which there is a wedding party), all the brides’ and grooms’ siblings were included in the wedding party. The one exception was a case in which the bride had something like a dozen siblings.
Well, keep us posted. I’m curious to hear what he says about it. And if he does ask you to stand up, here’s hoping the dresses aren’t pink and poofy.
The giant wedding I went to not only had a dozen attendants and groomsmen plus the little people, but they flew the relatives in from Italy and did the entire full-blown catholic ceremony it both English and Italian. I was exhausted before we even got to the reception!!!
Well, in my eyes, family is more important than friends. I’m sorry, I’m just really close to my family and if I had to make the choice between my best friend and my sister, I’d choose my sister.
That said, and having that view - My best friend got married last year, and she wanted me to be a bridesmaid. Her husband-to-be is Hispanic, and his mother FLIPPED OUT because his older sister wasn’t chosen to be a bridesmaid. My best friend had chosen her older sister to be Matron of Honor, her sister, myself, and one other friend to be bridesmaids.
After witnessing a really horrible incident between her future mother-in-law (very controlling Hispanic women; think of the general stereotype you have for that kind of person, and she’s it) and herself where my friend was almost in tears over her wedding, I informed her that I wouldn’t be able to afford the bridesmaid gown and so her fiancee’s older sister could be in the wedding party - that I really wish I could be her bridesmaid, because she’s my best friend, but because I couldn’t do it anyway…
It wasn’t entirely false, but it solved the problem. I’m more likely to err on the side of family, personally.
However, it IS the bride and groom’s day - they can choose whoever the hell they want.
~Tasha
I was a groomsman when my sister got married (3 on each side), but my sister wasn’t in the wedding party at all when I got married. This was partially because she’d given birth only a few months previously (and brought the baby to the ceremony), but also because my wife didn’t have any female attendants–her entire side of the wedding party was male (as was mine, at 2 each) and none were family. Her brother gave her away, my brother-in-law (sister’s hubby) did a reading, and I’m sure my sister was relieved to not have to stand up there as the only “girl” (aside from the bride) the whole time.
One point to consider is that your brother appears to belong to a group (men) that tends not to consider weddings nearly as significant as others might. It’s perfectly possible he is close to clueless about your feelings. To the extent that he’s thought about it, he might naively regard asking you to be involved as an imposition. Perhaps a short chat will help to sort things out.