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]

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.)