hi there, I know this might have been asked before and maybe i am over thinking this. My girls, ages 6 and 9, have a dance recital the same saturday every year since they were toddlers. My cousin (out of state) is getting married next year (no kids invited) and has picked this day. She was only going to have a maid of honor but has now asked my sister and I to be in her wedding party. My husband is asking me why i feel so bad! I love my cousin but i spend the whole year taking my girls back and forth to dance 3, 4 times a week for the end product of seeing them on stage for one day. i know there will be more dance recitals and I know i have to go to the wedding. my husband will stay back and take them to the recital. just wondering if you would do the same!
I’d go to the recital.
Didn’t Dear Prudence address this very issue last year?
I would probably go to the wedding, only to see aunts and uncles and grandparents who may not bethere for the next family wedding. However, I would be miserable doing it! Not at the wedding, however, I’d be fine. But going to and from …
And if I chose the recital, and there were people I didn’t see again, I’d wonder why I chose the recital when I knew there would be many more.
So really, like many of my decisions, I would second-guess myself forever.
We had a thread awhile back with an IDENTICAL dilemma!
Wedding. Sorry kids, but you will [probably] be around next year, but weddings are a [mostly] once in a life event that you can also see aging relatives one last time before they [possibly] die.
I saw that post but that was about a grandmother not going to her granddaughters recital. These are my kids. Its different.
In this case, if it were my kids and my cousin, recital. Had my kids been invited, it might be different, because we wouldn’t do the recital and I’d watch them dance at the wedding. But I have lots of cousins, none of whom I’m close to any longer at 40. And lots of extended relatives, again, at this point, I really don’t care too much if I don’t see aunts and uncles I don’t make an effort to see who don’t make an effort to see me.
There will be fewer recitals than you think there will be. And each one is precious (says the mother of a twelve and thirteen year old who are starting to outgrow all that sort of stuff - I still get at least one more year of band and choir concerts, and I think I’ll get baseball games through high school, but baseball games are twenty a year, not one. ) Kids grow up so fast.
I voted wedding. The fact that you’ve been asked to be in the bridal party cinched it for me.
Personally i hate weddings and would thrilled to have such a perfect excuse. YMMV.
If it’s the same one I’m thinking of, it’s close:
and then a bit later…
I wonder how that one worked out…
I think it really depends on how close you are to your cousin and her immediate family. You don’t have to go, even if you were asked to be a bridesmaid. That said, if I were close enough to ask someone to be a bridesmaid, and they said no because it was their kid’s dance recital, then I would probably be upset and assume that person isn’t as close to me as I thought.
On the other other hand, if I absolutely had to have this person at my wedding then I would find a way to invite their kids. If I didn’t invite kids then I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if someone with a 6 and 9 year old in another state told me the logistics just weren’t working out and they couldn’t make it.
Wedding, definitely. There will be other dance recitals. If you’re close enough to be asked to be a bridesmaid (assuming you actually are close enough) then you’re close enough to want to celebrate this special day with them, I’d think. Not to mention all the other people you only see at weddings and funerals.
Thanks for the link! That’s what I was refering to.
I think my mom skipped both recitals to go to the wedding (she may have only missed the second one, can’t remember now) and my sister was predictably insane with rage. They currently aren’t speaking, but not because of that specific incident. Their whole relationship is, shall we say, rocky.
In the case described by the OP, I’d go with the dance recital unless this were cousin she’s particularly close to. If it’s a distant relative, then no.
Since your kids are not invited to the “family” wedding, I say go to the recital.
Thanks for that. I guess I’ll stop reading back columns of Dear Prudence trying to find it, then.
[sub]Gosh, she gives awful advice sometimes. Take your 15 year old kid to a shrink because you think he’s got a latex fetish because you caught him masturbating with gloves on? [/sub]
Carry on!
I voted “Wedding” in the last thread, for a couple of reasons - A “kids welcome” wedding, vs a 3-year-old’s dance recital… The 3yo is not going to remember who was and wasn’t there at that recital. Plus it was Grandma, mom and dad were still going to her recital.
I’d say recital this time for a couple of reasons. One, because kids aren’t invited - so if you do go to the wedding, your kids aren’t welcome there. Which is certainly the wedding party’s privilege to request, but it does mean certain people may not be able to make it and they have to accept that. Two because 6 is definitely old enough to remember who was there or not, but not quite old enough to grasp the logic of why mom missed this recital - especially if it was to go to a party she wasn’t invited to. The 9yo may understand, but I can only imagine she’d be disappointed as well.
If you were ultra-close-best-friends and your cousin wanted you to be her maid of honour, then I’d change my mind again, but if she’s just asking for numbers to bolster the wedding party… Eh.
I voted recital. But then I was never all that close with any of my cousins. In fact, even if there was no recital, I’d opt out of the wedding because the kids weren’t invited.
If I was very close to this particular cousin, then I’d probably pick wedding over recital, knowing that the recital will probably be recorded by at least one person who would share a copy.
Recital. Mostly because you the wedding is no kids – seriously, who does that these days?