Wedding guest lists have long been the downfall of friendships and the cause of family feuds. Anyone who’s ever met a bride-or-groom-to-be will be familiar with the parental pressure, plus-one debates and table-plan politics that come with organising a wedding.
Reddit has once again served up a wedding dilemma that has provoked strong reactions from its users. A 27-year-old bride laid herself on the mercy of the ‘Am I the Asshole?’ subreddit, asking its members whether or not she was wrong not to invite her older sister to her wedding.
She and her partner of 10 years, J, had already been legally married via the court, without a big ceremony. Six years on, the couple were planning an actual wedding (think Don’t Tell The Bride’s classic combo of a legal ceremony followed by fancy unlicensed wedding).
The poster said that her sister ‘has been a toxic person in my life since I can remember’ and listed the following grievances: ‘When I started dating J she used to tell him that he could do so much better than me.
‘I’ve never been someone that wears a lot of makeup and J has always known this. She used to tell me that he was going to leave me because I didn’t “take care of myself”.
‘I’ve suffered with an eating disorder and have done inpatient [treatment]. She told J that I was “crazy” and shouldn’t be dealing with me and should just leave me.
‘When I was at said inpatient, she tried to use me to get an excuse for her job so she wouldn’t have to do something she didn’t want to. All under the pretense of “helping” with our girls. This was my second day there, when I told her I couldn’t she called me selfish and “why couldn’t I do this for her” and didn’t reach out the two months I was in there.’
Despite this catalogue of cruelty, the poster said she struggled to cut her sibling off because they shared a traumatic childhood and she felt like they ‘just had to be close’. Even after the poster and her two daughters were in a serious car accident, her sister ‘never reached out’ to check in on them.
However, the bride said her family ‘want her to be the bigger person’ and invite her sister anyway, as she’s still her sibling ‘no matter what’.
Overall, readers voted that the original poster was ‘not the A-hole’. The commenter with the most upvotes rightly pointed out: ‘“Be the bigger person” shouldn’t mean inviting the company of a toxic, negative person - even when they are family. Certainly not to an event that’s supposed to be a celebration of your marriage.’
The overwhelming majority of commenters backed the OP, telling her she’s ‘already the bigger person’.
This bride’s dilemma seemingly typifies the fact that, all too often, weddings become about everyone apart from the two people getting married.
Family and friends, particularly parents, too often attach their own hopes, dreams and anxieties to their loved-one’s wedding, rather than allowing them to make the decisions that are best for them and them alone.
And, when it comes down to it, on what other occasion would you consider paying £50 for a fancy dinner for someone you don’t like?
Ultimately, the author of this post did invite her sister to her wedding, she confirmed in a follow-up post. Not because she’d succumbed to pressure from family, but because her sister apologised for her actions and the pair found some common ground. The decision of who comes to a wedding has to be personal and - blood relative or not - no one is automatically entitled to an invite.