Fallout for not attending a wedding.

thegreengreengrass112

KxMx said:

How did the bride and groom take it?

While it's not nice to upset family Aunt isn't the one who matters here.

We spoke to the bride and groom about it first, and even though they were disappointed, they understood and we thought that was the end of it. The Aunt has turned it into a huge argument and has verbally attacked us and has since told us not to contact her or the bride again. It all seems very dramatic to us to be honest.

onwards&upwards

travisandabi said:

sweetsand said:

Dear OP
I can understand your aunts concerns.

your excuses can look weak to some but understandable to others, depending on the exact relationship and your family dynamics.
Phone them  about 2pmish or early evening about 7/8pm as most people are in a good mood - start off talking about her weeding and you are excited but you will do you best to get there but looking difficult as you start your new job the next day and the baby is very diifuclt to look after in a long, long trip in a car and work early morning and you feel awful but hope they understand
I thnk they will inderstand

x

ps - we have a massive wedding problem as stated on a covid thread - its not looking good as my OH's brother is a dictator type person

Hi, we did this yesterday and unfortunately the aunt is not considering any of our circumstances and is just dismissing everything we have had to say. We spoke to the bride and groom about us being unable to attend first and apologised profusely, and they understood even though they were understandably disappointed. Especially after having had to change their plans due to covid. After speaking to the aunt, we have been verbally attacked by her and she has actually told us not to contact her or the bride again and that she essentially wants nothing more to do with us. This all feels very dramatic to us as we have only explained our reasons and apologised, but there is nothing we can really do now. 

Oh well there you go, problem solved. 

Nice bride and groom are fine and understanding, unpleasant Auntie doesn’t want you to contact her, which is surely a good thing as I can’t imagine why you’d want to.  

Ignore Auntie’s dramatics, send bride and groom a card and gift on the day, think no more about it.

gettingtheresometime

Whilst I fully sympathise with your predicament if you look at the timeline (ignoring the pandemic for a moment) it could come across as you're now trying to scratch around for excuses not to go.
Your daughter, in May, would have been 2 months old so you would have still had a 3+ hr journey to contend with and whilst I'm not a teacher, how much planning would you need to do in the first weeks of term, especially if you're a new member of staff (again I'm assuming that you're a newly qualified teacher but even if you're swapping teaching jobs there is an argument that you would have had planning to do back in May, again ignoring the pandemic for a moment) 

I have no idea of what your relationship is with the bride and it may be a case that (and I apologise for how this may come across - words typed often come across as more blunter than if they were said) she would be glad of you dropping out so she can invite friends that had to previously been dis-invited due to the covid restrictions.

burlingtonfl6

Although I'm in the OP's camp on this issue I do sometimes think people only see things their way when it comes to weddings.
A friend of mine got married in Ibiza and the stag do was in Vegas. Cost a fortune but he's a good friend and I wanted to go.
Fast forward a year later and he and his wife said they couldn't make it to a wedding of one of our group because they were too busy having work done on their extension. The wedding was 30 minutes away. It got the back up of a few of the group because the year before they expected everyone to attend theirs.
I wasn't bothered, treated it as a holiday and I'll never get married so

sweetsand

travisandabi said:

KxMx said:

How did the bride and groom take it?

While it's not nice to upset family Aunt isn't the one who matters here.

We spoke to the bride and groom about it first, and even though they were disappointed, they understood and we thought that was the end of it. The Aunt has turned it into a huge argument and has verbally attacked us and has since told us not to contact her or the bride again. It all seems very dramatic to us to be honest.

If someone said that to me, turst me I'd never contact them again but I would mention it to the bride and most likely they will say they are not part of it - if this is so, send them an card and gift and then text them a messge after the and before the big day short messahe and when they return from their honeymoon - aunt will get over it us oldies are like that, lol

thegreengreengrass112

gettingtheresometime said:

Whilst I fully sympathise with your predicament if you look at the timeline (ignoring the pandemic for a moment) it could come across as you're now trying to scratch around for excuses not to go.
Your daughter, in May, would have been 2 months old so you would have still had a 3+ hr journey to contend with and whilst I'm not a teacher, how much planning would you need to do in the first weeks of term, especially if you're a new member of staff (again I'm assuming that you're a newly qualified teacher but even if you're swapping teaching jobs there is an argument that you would have had planning to do back in May, again ignoring the pandemic for a moment) 

I have no idea of what your relationship is with the bride and it may be a case that (and I apologise for how this may come across - words typed often come across as more blunter than if they were said) she would be glad of you dropping out so she can invite friends that had to previously been dis-invited due to the covid restrictions.

We did say before baby was born that it would be very difficult for us to attend the first planned ceremony and everyone seemed understanding at the time. I think they assume that now baby is getting on for 6 months old then everything will be fine and we will be much more ready to make the journey but we have outlined why it would be really difficult for us to do so. 

billy2shots

I like to play devil's advocate on MSN so please don't get upset with anything I say OP (I actually agree with your stance by the way). 

Groom's family coming from Norway under difficult circumstances makes you guys look worse I'm afraid. 
Why can't you go alone? Your partner can look after the baby can't he? 
You will be leaving your daughter when you go to work soon so I guess you have provision for expressing milk because you said your daughter can't stomach formula milk. 

In my experience, babies need time to adapt to formula, slow and steady so couldn't you adopt the same process that most of us needed to go through? Obviously if breast milk only is a  choice then I respect that which brings us back around to expressing. 

Whilst I personally wouldn't be annoyed if you couldn't attend my wedding (saves me money) I wouldn't see your reasons as deal breakers. 

Devil's advocate off/

greensalad

They chose to have a Sunday wedding, they caused the issue themselves. 
Saturday is the standard conventional day for a wedding for a reason, it's the day most likely for people to be off-work and be able to travel home the following day.
If you don't have a wedding on a Saturday you should expect a certain amount of declines based entirely on this fact.
It's cheaper for a reason.

thegreengreengrass112

billy2shots said:

I like to play devil's advocate on MSN so please don't get upset with anything I say OP (I actually agree with your stance by the way). 

Groom's family coming from Norway under difficult circumstances makes you guys look worse I'm afraid. 
Why can't you go alone? Your partner can look after the baby can't he? 
You will be leaving your daughter when you go to work soon so I guess you have provision for expressing milk because you said your daughter can't stomach formula milk. 

In my experience, babies need time to adapt to formula, slow and steady so couldn't you adopt the same process that most of us needed to go through? Obviously if breast milk only is a  choice then I respect that which brings us back around to expressing. 

Whilst I personally wouldn't be annoyed if you couldn't attend my wedding (saves me money) I wouldn't see your reasons as deal breakers. 

Devil's advocate off/

Sorry should have made that clearer - the majority of the groom's family actually aren't coming from Norway as they don't want to travel with coronavirus concerns, but the bride and groom have decided to go ahead regardless. I think that's largely the problem - a lot of both sides of the family are unable to attend. Obviously it makes sense that they're bound to be upset by this, but we have no control over the actions of others and whether or not they attend, only our own. Our daughter is on formula but can't stomach ready made, so the issue was actually preparing the bottles with no hotel room available etc. I couldn't attend alone as we only have one car and I don't drive myself, and after the way I've been spoken to I would feel awkward and would be anxious to anyway. But don't worry no offence taken, I can see both sides, it's just a shame that the aunt seems unable to give us the same credit.

Mojisola

travisandabi said:

We spoke to the bride and groom about it first, and even though they were disappointed, they understood and we thought that was the end of it. The Aunt has turned it into a huge argument and has verbally attacked us and has since told us not to contact her or the bride again. It all seems very dramatic to us to be honest.

That's all that matters.

If you tell someone you can't make it to a wedding, that should be enough.  You shouldn't have to give reasons and you certainly shouldn't have to put up with people telling you that your reasons are inadequate because if you did a, b or c, you could manage.

Other people might be able to travel further, stay for longer, bring very young children with them or whatever - they are not you and you know what you can cope with and what would be too much.