Kids are welcome, and it’s the bride and groom’s first wedding.
Which makes it even more incomprehensible that your sister is being so childish about this.
Go to the wedding. Send a dozen roses to the dance recital along with a note explaining your absence.
Wedding
Go to the wedding, and have the three year old give you a “private, exclusive dance recital” with some of her dance mates. Take them out for pizza afterwards.
MsWhatsit, is this your sister?
How did you get out of making a decision? Are you not attending either event?
Wedding. I think you should also print out this thread and give it to your sister. Explain to her that you wanted a totally non-biased opinion. Maybe she will lighten up.
The sister is nuts. The three year old isn’t even going to remember the dance recital, much less who was there. How much do you remember from when you were three?
Go to the wedding. And tell sister to grow up or fuck off.
About as important as watching cartoons on a Saturday morning.
This piece of business is all about the sister. “Yeah, so he wins. Surprise.” There’s a ton of subtext there.
SRLSY wedding. Sounds like the sister has discovered that she has cover for making everything about herself by way of “just think of the CHILDREN!”
I’m going to the wedding. For all I know, my sister is enraged about that too and just not telling me. But I think she attaches more importance to my mom being there, as the grandparent.
This.
I voted wedding. Seriously, 3-year-old is not going to remember this at all, but she may remember the many times her mother threw tantrums. And follow in her footsteps.
Wedding. I’ve been to more than my fair share of dance recitals and find them excruciating. Weddings only slightly less so.
Can I hear an “amen?”
For millennia, the societal/cultural norm (in quite a range of societies and cultures) has been that births, weddings, and funerals are the milestone events of people’s lives. Grandmother is not choosing her nephew over her grandchild, she is choosing a wedding over a dance recital, and for good reason. It would behoove your sister to embrace and accept this viewpoint, otherwise her life will be filled with stress and acrimony, for no good reason.
You have no idea how sadly accurate this is.
Ask your sister how she will feel if family members choose a dance recital or school play or something over her daughter’s wedding someday. Maybe that will help her put it in some perspective.
I’d personally rather go to the dance recital, having just attended our four year old’s first such event.
But that being said, the child will never remember who was or wasn’t there (if they even remember the event at all) and as someone else said, she’ll have other recitals. Your nephew will always remember that you weren’t at the wedding.
How about feigning illness and missing both?
My vote is the wedding, not just because it is bigger but because what 3 year old will remember her own dance recital in 20 years?
pbbth also nailed it.
People keep saying similar things, however:
My suggestion was based on experience. My daughter’s very first ballet recital was one I could not attend. I sent a dozen long stem roses. Although I attended many more recitals (tap, jazz, etc) over the years, she has memories of the roses and tells the story often.
She was the only dancer who got flowers. The next recital parents got a note asking that nobody bring/send flowers, as parents unable to afford them had complained.:rolleyes: