OK, I’ll provide a bit more info.
The grandparent in this situation is my mom. My sister is the one whose kid has the dance recital. She actually has two girls, both in dance, but the dance studio is so huge that they break up the recital into different times. My mom is able to make it to the 5-year-old’s recital earlier in the morning, but has opted to skip the 3-year-old’s recital in favor of going to her nephew’s wedding.
My sister is insane with rage about this. She is claiming that my mom has “chosen her nephew over her grandchild” and is considering disinviting my mom from both girls’ recitals due to what she perceives as a massive slap in the face. I tried calmly explaining to her that a wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and that I’m sure this was a tough choice for our mom to make, and her response was “Yeah, so he wins. surprise.”
I think I am quietly disengaging from the whole thing at this point. My mom and sister are just going to have to duke it out. I’m sort of glad I’m not involved this time but also sort of wishing that I had a family that didn’t have nuclear meltdowns every six months or so. (ARE there families like that?)