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LW, what on earth is wrong with you?
Dear Prudence,
I will be getting married in a few months. We are planning and paying for the wedding ourselves. Our save-the-date cards went out a few weeks ago and my mother called me because her sister didn’t get one. I explained that we were not inviting my aunt. She is a lovely woman, but she had a daughter who was the same age as me who passed away when we were in high school. My cousin and I were very close and having her mother at my wedding will remind me of how tragically my cousin’s life was cut short. I also think it might be hard for my aunt to attend my wedding. I’m sure my milestones make her think of all the things her daughter never got to do. My mom is very upset because we are inviting the rest of the extended family. She says my aunt’s feelings will be hurt. I’ve tried to explain my reasons to my mom, but somehow by the end of every conversation about this, I end up looking like the bad guy. I’d like to think of a way to make my mom understand my position, or at least to just back off.
—It’s a Wedding, Not a Funeral
Dear It’s a Wedding,
Oof. I hear you saying that you feel you are doing this, at least in part, for your aunt’s feelings, but I have to say that I side with your mom on this one. I know there is a “we’re paying, we can do what we want” tautology at work here, but given that you are inviting the rest of your extended family, it sounds doubly cruel not to at least extend the invitation to your aunt. If it doesn’t feel right to her, she can decline. And let me tell you: As someone who has had not one but two weddings, you’ll be too busy focusing on yourself and your partner to get distracted by your aunt’s presence.
—Hillary
Link
I will be getting married in a few months. We are planning and paying for the wedding ourselves. Our save-the-date cards went out a few weeks ago and my mother called me because her sister didn’t get one. I explained that we were not inviting my aunt. She is a lovely woman, but she had a daughter who was the same age as me who passed away when we were in high school. My cousin and I were very close and having her mother at my wedding will remind me of how tragically my cousin’s life was cut short. I also think it might be hard for my aunt to attend my wedding. I’m sure my milestones make her think of all the things her daughter never got to do. My mom is very upset because we are inviting the rest of the extended family. She says my aunt’s feelings will be hurt. I’ve tried to explain my reasons to my mom, but somehow by the end of every conversation about this, I end up looking like the bad guy. I’d like to think of a way to make my mom understand my position, or at least to just back off.
—It’s a Wedding, Not a Funeral
Dear It’s a Wedding,
Oof. I hear you saying that you feel you are doing this, at least in part, for your aunt’s feelings, but I have to say that I side with your mom on this one. I know there is a “we’re paying, we can do what we want” tautology at work here, but given that you are inviting the rest of your extended family, it sounds doubly cruel not to at least extend the invitation to your aunt. If it doesn’t feel right to her, she can decline. And let me tell you: As someone who has had not one but two weddings, you’ll be too busy focusing on yourself and your partner to get distracted by your aunt’s presence.
—Hillary
Link
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If LW is actually capable of getting through all of their post-cousin's-death milestones without becoming distraught then, unless they have evidence that their aunt is going to act out at the wedding, they're just being ridiculous.
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Is LW serious? Because it really sounds like she's trying to punish the aunt in some way rather than consider her feelings. Does LW think her aunt isn't (hasn't) heard that about the wedding? Why not let the aunt make her own decisions rather than decide you know what's best for her?
having her mother at my wedding will remind me of how tragically my cousin’s life was cut short
Get some therapy, LW.
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okay, that's an explanation I can get behind.
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cracks up
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If you’re not familiar with it: at her mother’s funeral, this girl meets a handsome stranger and is instantly smitten with him—-but doesn’t think to ask for his name or phone number, and no one else seems to know who he was.
A week later, she kills her sister. Why?
The magic answer that’s supposed to unmask a psychopath (or sociopath) is: she was hoping that the mystery man would show up at her sister’s funeral!
(And never mind the dubious taxonomy of mental illness, nor the assumption that people with a given mental illness are ipso facto dangerous predators—-but that there are magic formulae for detecting and repelling them, as if they were vampires, werewolves, or the Fair Folk. It supports the use of the DSM-IV as a Monster Manual—-looking at you, horror movies and cop shows.
Heck, if I were a dangerous predator, I might make a point of composing and disseminating just such a crunchy bite-sized litmus test—-making it simplicity itself to reassure my targets with a “safe” answer.)
This is the sort of question that works a lot better as a writer’s prompt. Maybe the sister had murdered their mother in the first place; when she attempted to eliminate her competition for the inheritance, the girl had to kill her in self-defense. Maybe the Mystery Man had just learned that he was an earlier son the mother had given up for adoption and was sneaking around trying to investigate his heritage.
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Oh God that thing.
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I have run into people who stop inviting friends who lost their partners because "this is a couples event," and I am simultaneously deeply grateful that my parents' friend-group is not like that in the aftermath of my dad's death--they not only include my mother, they often will raise a toast to my dad and to all their friendships at some point during the evening--and appalled that anyone is. But your own FAMILY. I am aghast.
Does LW think that her aunt should just hide in the house forever and never be invited to anything that isn't specifically a bereaved parents' support group? Better get her groceries delivered, someone at the store might remember cousin and have sad feelings, and as we all know, the point of life is to never once, not even for a single moment, have a sad feeling.
If you're old enough to get married and the same-age person died in high school, it has been YEARS and your aunt has learned to go through her life without rending her garments and screaming. Unless she hasn't? But there's language like "might" and "I'm sure" and not "when she came to my college graduation party she threw fistfuls of cake at the other party guests shouting 'why not my baby, why cruel world, why'" so...I think LW thinks she just gets to avoid any twinge of sad feelings ever. Which is, it turns out, not the deal here on this beautiful blue ball.
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Yeah, I've also seen that "couples event" thing after deaths (and divorces). The closest version of it I've experienced personally was people who just don't want to be around me while I'm grieving, and that's painful enough, but cutting someone off years after the event because somebody died a decade or more ago!
It would be understandable if LW blamed either themselves or the aunt for the death or some other bad blood, but if so, there's no hint of it here. Instead they just don't want to be around a person who has ever had grief. What an infant. This is not someone capable of forming a healthy family of their own.
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