Dear Prudence: My Granddaughter Won’t Invite My Best Friend to Her Wedding

[minoanmiss]

My granddaughter “Riley” is getting married late next year. She’s currently putting together her guest list (I heard this through the grapevine) and is not planning on inviting my childhood best friend, “Greta.” Greta has been overwhelmingly kind to Riley for over 30 years. She sends Riley checks for every birthday, takes Riley to dinner whenever she’s in town, and generally plays a grandmotherly role in Riley’s life. I hadn’t heard of any conflict between the two of them. But it appears that Riley has forgotten all of this as she builds the guest list. She and her fiancé are getting financial assistance from my son for the wedding. It seems cruel to not include Greta when it’s not even Riley’s own money! I’m thinking of putting my foot down and saying I won’t attend if Greta doesn’t attend either. Greta’s been mercifully quiet about this, but I can tell she’s heartbroken. I would be too. What’s a grandmother to do?

—Penny-Pinching Granddaughter

Threatening not to attend your granddaughter’s wedding on the strength of something you heard through the grapevine without having a single conversation with her is likely going to backfire. I understand that you love Greta and that she’s been a member of the family for decades, but you don’t know that Riley has definitively kept Greta off the guest list or whether she just forgot your friend. You don’t know how much financial assistance your son is putting in, what Riley’s total budget is, or if the couple merely wants to keep the guest list small. You also don’t know how many other people are making guest-list requests, and your granddaughter has not only her own relatives and friends to consider, but that of her partner’s.


Rather than approaching Riley with a demand or an ultimatum, you should frame it instead as a request: “I don’t know what your budget or guest limit looks like, and I don’t want to impose, but if you’re able to make room for her, it would mean a lot to us both if you’d invite Greta.” I hope you can try to look at this not as an act of spiteful exclusion. It would be great if Riley could invite her grandmother’s best friend to her wedding, but it may not be possible. And if she can’t, it’s not an irrevocable slap in the face. Riley and Greta can still go out to dinner, catch up on the phone, and stay in each other’s lives.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Dear LW:

I am so sorry that your granddaughter didn't have the sense to realize that all those years when Greta gave her monetary presents and took her to nice dinners that those were downpayments on a ticket to her wedding. By all means, please do boycott Riley's wedding. She will absolutely have a very different time if she doesn't have to interact with you on her special day. A very diffeerent experience indeed.

[ambyr]

The only way this level of indignation at the exclusion makes sense to me is if Greta is actually the grandmother's life partner, the family knows they're a lesbian couple, but the LW doesn't want to admit it in print.

[petra]

I had this thought too. Being this upset on a friend's behalf seems like a major overreaction.

[minoanmiss]

Oh good point. I'm annoyed with myself I didn't think of that possibility. I was mentally mapping this to my grandmothers' friends from church, who collectively treated me kind of like the LW describes.

*IF* that's the case I wish the LW felt comfortable admitting that in print I can understand her upset but all the given reasons still ring hollow.

[ambyr]

I am admittedly projecting like a cinema multiplex here! I do not actually think this is what is going on. I am just grasping at straws to justify the letter (and also, as someone in a non-traditional relationship, I have a fair amount of personal stored indignation about times when I've been the only partnered guest invited to a wedding without a "plus one" because the person putting together the invite list didn't register my relationship as significant or serious or real or whatever criteria they were using).

[minoanmiss]

Nah, you're bringing up a dreadfully common possibility, informed by your personal experience, just as I reacted because I was thinking of another common possibility informed by my personal experience (one of the major reasons I never got married is what my mother would have insisted on making the wedding into. She would TOTALLY act like this about every single one of her friends who gave me $5 at my birthdays and took me to dinner with their kids sometimes.) We all bring out personal knowledge to analyzing these. :)

(And UGH PEOPLE not taking others' relationships seriously unless they fit a particular mold. I hate that.)

[jadelennox]

Yeah, I was thinking that Prudie's advice about what to say makes sense only if LW's queer, or if LW's not queer, but if they're a single person in a platonic life partnership, live with Greta, do everything with Greta, etc. In that case, they're asking if Greta can be their plus one.

[naath]

If Greta is actually all but your wife you're going to have to tell the granddaughter that or lump it that she doesn't get counted as 'family'. Weddings are not cheap; I certainly wouldn't invite friends of my relatives unless we had a close personal relationship (tbh, were I marrying I probably wouldn't invite my relatives, nasty bunch, but that's by the by)

[watersword]

Wow, this LW went from zero to garment-rending tragedy really fast. On the basis of a "grapevine."

[conuly]

what the hell even is this.

[jadelennox]

what you said.


I sat down once and did the math, and realized if I got married (which I didn't), I could have either an elopement with two witnesses, or 100 people, and basically nothing in between. My grandparents' bff's, however beloved, wouldn't be even on the longest of long lists.

[shirou]

Realizing a relationship isn't as important to the other person as it is to you can be painful, and Greta could be hurt not to receive an invitation. Being excluded sucks, and being excluded from a major life event by somebody you consider almost-family sucks worse! But LW needs to realize this is between Riley and Greta, and she has no information beyond rumors. I think LW can have one short conversation with Riley to say Greta has always treated her like family and would love to receive an invitation, but then she needs to drop it.

[redbird]

The total budget may well be the explanation all by itself. If "Greta" is the LW's life partner, she should be included as one of Riley's grandparents. Grandmother's best friend who plays a grandmotherly role is more like a great-aunt, and if someone is limiting the guest list, "grandparents but not their siblings" is a reasonable line to draw.

[melannen]

...you know, having read the comments through, I think my advice would be for LW to treat this as if Greta was her +1, and handle it that way.

(One explanation for the level of upset is that Greta is the LW's life partner and the LW doesn't realize this.)

It's also possible Greta considers herself a grandparent, not just as LW's friend - I know quite a few elderly people with no bio grandkids who have "adopted" grandkids and would assume they're being treated as such for wedding invites. But if that's the case, Greta should be allowed to handle this with her own grandkids herself.

That said, given the general tone of the letter, maybe LW should wait and see if *she* gets an invite, because if I was granddaughter I would probably be thinking long and hard about that one.

[jadelennox]

I was really curious as to whether LW already has a plus one. Like, is there a co-grandparent?

[melannen]

It is curiously absent from the letter, if there is one!

She should take Greta as her +1 anyway, let the other grandparent use their own invite.

[minoanmiss]

Other grandparent may have joined the choir invisible already. Or LW left them for Greta long ago.

[lemonsharks]

I read this differently from both major threads of conversation here. I assumed that Greta was a third grandmother to Riley in all but blood and legality, and that the two have become friends in their own right as Riley has grown up.

Hence my reaction of: WTF, why no invite? Riley, come on now.

It's still on Greta to ask about it herself, not the LW to act as go-between, though. Even if it is considered gauche to ask.

(I did ask a friend if I was invited to her wedding once--she knew about some circumstances that made it seem kinder to not invite me in the first round (which I appreciate!). I'm also really glad I did get to go and that I went fuck manners and said something. (once, for an answer, which I accepted--they had to squeeze me in when they found out I wanted to come.))

[conuly]

If there IS no invite - Grandma heard this "through the grapevine". Grandma also just kinda assumes that Greta is "heartbroken" despite Greta apparently saying nothing of the sort to anybody.