agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Carolyn: My sister is, to put it mildly, self-centered. My fiance and I are getting married next May and have had the venue booked since April. My sister just told me she's expecting her first child — wait for it — eight days before the wedding. I am absolutely thrilled for her and her husband and amazed they're already pregnant, having just started trying in June.

She is demanding — literally stomping her feet, screaming at our parents, yet not talking to me at all — that I push my wedding back at least a few months so she and her newborn can attend as guests of honor.

We have a very limited window to get married: active-duty military, graduating from grad school the weekend between the wedding and moving across the country. Not to mention we started planning well in advance, we have most vendors booked, we would lose a lot of money by changing and have told all family and friends the date.

Of all the selfish things she has done in her life, this reaches new heights. I'm trying to laugh about it, but I find myself dwelling on it and becoming sad. I'm resigned to the fact that my sister is not going to change.

So how do I change my perspective so I do not (a) resent my sister, and (b) become bummed about the wedding planning process, which has been wonderful until now?

— Always the Bridesmaid, Even When I'm the Bride

Always the Bridesmaid, Even When I’m the Bride: Not to give a foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing adult anything that resembles a pass, but your sister is not the person causing you the most grief right now.

If she is “not talking to me at all,” and yet you are aware enough of her behavior to describe it “literally,” then somebody is reporting this irrational demand of hers directly to you, in detail. Right?

And that somebody is presumably one of your parents?

As in, one of the people who raised someone self-centered enough to scream her claim to guesthood of honor at someone else’s event?

Not that parents deserve all blame for unpleasant or immature offspring, but there is a connection that looks suspiciously like enabling between your parent(s) and sister, which would make this incident a useful microcosm.

Had your parent(s) not enabled your sister in this case, then you wouldn’t have heard anything about her demand that you change your wedding date — certainly not secondhand. The only healthy play by a witness to her howling entitlement was this, to her face: “Are you quite finished?”

That’s it. Followed by not breathing a word of it to you — because if one adult sib ever has something to say to the other, then the two can speak directly.

Extending it further: Had your parent(s) stayed out of it, and had your sister then gone to you directly, you would have been able to say to her, “Oh, no, we have only one weekend before graduation and relocation,” and not given it another thought besides genuine dismay at the timing. Because that’s how it would play out in a family that works from a healthy emotional playbook.

So to minimize resentment, proceed as if healthy and proceed as planned, letting Sis act out, offstage.

About the emotional playbook, and pardon my possible overreach: Your “wait for it” and “just started trying” bear a whiff of “how dare she” about a due date. If so — or, regardless — please consider talking through your family dynamics with a skilled, reputable pro.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/concerns-about-a-daughters-modesty-expose-more-about-the-mother/2019/11/06/d78a2338-fcf0-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html

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I get Carolyn's point about the family dynamics and the parental enabling. Also, that the parent was supposed to carry tales from sister to LW and passive-aggressively put a spoke in LW's wedding wheel.

That said, while the lead up with the 'wait for it' really did sound like there was going to be a negative connotation to the birth date of the child, it was negated in the next sentence, and I'm okay with taking LW's statement that she's happy for her sister at at face value.

Hoever, given the family dynamics, it does feel to me that LW would benefit from a discussion of her relationships with her parents and sister with a counsellor, etc. (presuming she can manage the time/afford it) It might also help with the "how not to resent the sister"/"how to live a life without dependency on the familial approval" issue that LW is facing, too.

Yeah, I didn't read that as her being bratty about her sister's due date, just like "Oh no what a bad coincidence!" and also "We were aware it was POSSIBLE she might get pregnant that quickly, but not LIKELY."

I...assumed the stomping and screaming happened while the LW was witnessing it but being performatively ignored.

Yeah, same.

All else aside, I've attended a friend's wedding with a 2-week-old newborn, and my SIL's wedding with an 18-day-old (different babies!), and it was possible with e.g. my spouse carrying everything, and places set up for me to feed and change easily within earshot of the speeches etc. I *think* 8 days would have been feasible with the same support.

(In my SIL's wedding, we weren't on the 'top table' but baby got shout-outs in the speeches.)

IDK, I personally wouldn't want to bring such a small baby to such a crowded gathering. Opinions differ, of course.

I've taken 4 day old babies (different ones) to choir rehearsal, a movie, and a day at a science fiction convention. And a three week old to a folk festival. Much easier than taking a toddler!

I'd be worried about illness. Again, I know opinions differ.

My nephew's bride's matron of honor was holding in her arms a baby of something under a week, as I recall, and everyone happily got the matron of honorchairs etc. through the ceremony. Obviously that won't apply to every new parent's physical abilities, but it's possible.

At the time of my wedding, my brother said that he and SiL had hoped they would be pregnant with their second child at the time of the wedding, so they could tell everyone. Now, granting for a minute that this would only have been the latest in a very long list of, "can this one day be about me?", at least insofar as my family was concerned, The thing that sticks most in my craw here is "guests of honor." Who the fuck DOES that? I put off telling my family about my pregnancy so my sister could have the focus on her for at least a couple more months. Good grief.

Edited 2019-11-15 14:30 (UTC)

Yes, it does seem to me that the bride and groom are the usual guests of honor at their own wedding, unless they have some dear friend or relative who is dying and made a heroic effort to get there. The baby is the guest of honor at their first birthday.

Carolyn sucks so hard in this answer. I fell in love with the LW, by the letter's end, because all she asked was how to change literally the only thing she has a chance of controlling: how do I change my perspective so I do not (a) resent my sister. And Carolyn, who has been much kinder to much worse LWs, started with a quite possibly unwarranted rant against the parents, and turned it into a malicious attack on the LW for being bitchy about the baby, which the LW *wasn't*.

This is a crap answer. Bride should tell sister directly that 'we've already booked date, venue, list of expenses.I would love you to be part of it and little one too if arrived. I'm sure X relative can help you on day. love you, bye'

Teeny newborns at weddings are not new. Hell they are often quieter and more content then month olds.