agonyaunt | (no subject)

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Dear Carolyn: My daughter got married a year ago. It was an immediate-family-only affair, which is how she wanted it, since even then the guest list was over 100 people. Many of my friends did send my daughter a gift anyway — not a huge gift, but at least a nice acknowledgment and gift card, and it was so thoughtful. I’m disappointed in two very close friends who didn’t do anything and am having trouble getting over it. I have sent very generous gifts to their kids. One of the weddings we couldn’t attend and the other we did. They contributed $35 to a shower gift.

I know it isn’t a tit-for-tat thing and I know the rule of thumb is that if you aren’t invited, then you aren’t required to send a gift, but — they’ve known my daughter forever. And having given their kids really nice gifts, I would have expected them to do something. What do you think?

— Disappointed

Disappointed: I think there is no way to indulge this line of reasoning without emerging worse for it on multiple levels — while having nothing whatsoever to gain.

You introduce judging, cherry-picking, materialism and petty bean-counting (just for starters) into what you describe as “very close friendships” for what — a few hundred bucks on a gift card? I’ve seen some wastefulness around weddings, but this might take the bouquet.

It’s like giving your “very close friends” a friendship test they’re never made aware they’re taking, without benefit of study materials, and there’s no objective basis for the right answers. I can see, to be fair, how it makes sense in your mind. When their kids got married, whether you attended or not, you made an effort (in dollars, and I’m sure in thought) — so where is the friends’ effort in this analogous situation?

But I also have one idea how they might see it: It’s not just that they “couldn’t attend” your daughter’s wedding, they weren’t invited. After they watched her (helped her?) grow up. So it seems as if it’s not analogous. You assured them it was immediate-family only, no doubt, but maybe that was tough for them to square with photos of 100-plus(!) people.

In other words, maybe you didn’t pass their double-secret friendship test that you didn’t know you were taking, weren’t allowed to prepare for and were graded on subjectively. If they value inclusion above gifts as markers of enduring friendship, then they could be carrying around their own year-old hurt feelings about this. To no one’s benefit in this case, either, also to be fair. In which case, why are you off the hook for stiffing them on an invitation but they’re not for stiffing your kid on a gift? Cheap shots all around! Kidding, nothing was owed except benefits of doubts. (Remember, gifts aren’t ever required, or else they’re fees, not gifts.)

I’ve got alternate theories, too: They were low on cash; they’ve always been more about giving time, effort and meaning than material gifts, and you lost sight of that; they’re over in Miss Manners’ queue, asking whether, ah, that shower invitation without a wedding invitation was a faux pas?; this is part of a larger drifting-apart in your friendships and it took a gift imbalance for you to notice; they thought the shower gift covered it and would be stunned you’re so enduringly bent over this. A common thread in all of these is that prosecuting your snit about the gift, even just in your heart, takes you nowhere.

If these friends are a longtime, treasured, integral part of your life, then have the courage to live that fully — without small-dollar scorekeeping toward perfect reciprocity.

If instead you have a genuine emotional obstacle to doing so, of which the non-gift is simply a visible sign, then that would explain why you can’t get past it — and that’s the thing you address with your friends. But with the gift as one piece of evidence, not as the central point.

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Does Daughter even care about the lack of gifts? Because if Daughter cares, Daughter should handle it - and if she doesn't, then LW should have taken their cue from that.

I feel like the transition period from "I am socially in charge of my child" to "my child is an independent social entity" is a hard one for some parents, and weddings can be a weird locus of that. Which is not to justify this parent's behavior! Quite the opposite.

Unlike some parents (including mine), LW did let go of their daughter's guest list. "Which is how she wanted it." Good. Yes. Her wedding was how she wanted it, hopefully how her spouse wanted it as well. But that's the model for future behavior: Daughter did not invite Parental Friends, Daughter does not seem to be the one upset about lack of gifts from Parental Friends, Daughter can steer this ship from here on out.

Even if this was a matter of equivalent exchange, LW shouldn’t have to mediate an adult child’s relationships anyway, unless there’s dire circumstances. She doesn’t know what’s going on behind closed doors, who’s getting secret presents for their friends because they don’t care about looking like the “good guy” to everyone else, who’s taking longer to put together something they deem worthy of gifting. If you’re gonna be concerned that your gifts aren’t being “reciprocated properly”, you gotta talk it out, give lesser gifts, or realise you can’t compromise and leave the situation (or relationship, if push comes to shove) behind.

I feel like the term "immediate family" means different things to different people but even mine is not stretching to mean this. 100 people? That is your extended family, my pal. EVEN TO ME. There is a branch of my grandma's family that's 43 people so far, all descended from Grandma's brother, but none of them would say that their sibling's great-grandchild or their second cousin's boyfriend were their IMMEDIATE family. That's why we have terms like "family" and "extended family."

I feel like LW was hoping that by saying "immediate family" she would foreclose any hurt feelings on the part of the friends: obviously they couldn't be invited! because it was only immediate family! But by the time you're including your first cousin once removed's fiance, you are well into the land where your parents' best friends for your whole lifetime can count if you want them to. Daughter didn't want them to. Move on.

Yeah, unless this was a wedding between two Duggar-sized families (19 kids/13 spouses/30+ grandkids), there's no way that 100+ people is only immediate family

Even if the daughter said “close family only” to mean that they’re including their favorite aunt and uncle, and some of the groom’s cousins, but not everyone at the same degree of relatedness, I’m not sure I can get it to 100.

Maybe “immediate family only” is the couple’s version of the Miss Manners-approved “small wedding” to cover “if we invited you, we’d have to invite your siblings or we’d never hear the end of it” and “Mom, Dad, you can invite a few of your friends who we also know and get along with, but not everyone you know.”

Eh, in my family, if you included just my parents, sibling, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and spouses/long-term partners of above, and first cousins who grew up together, with no cousin spouses, you'd be over 50 easily. If you included first cousins' +1s and other family we grew up with, you'd approach 70 really fast. Presumably the other person getting married has at least a few family too, and the couple might have wanted to invite at least a few close personal friends of their own even. 100 "close family" is not off the wall if you have a large family that's close.

See, I feel like once you're using the "relatives we like a lot" definition of "immediate family" rather than the super-restrictive "parents, siblings, children, grandparents if you're lucky enough to still have them and feel close with them" definition, you've waived the right to say, "but we COULDN'T invite you! It was THIS GROUP ONLY."

Which is fine! It is absolutely fine, and it sounds like LW's friends also think it's fine, because the letter is not talking about LW's friends throwing a fit or giving Daughter the cut direct in the grocery store or whatever. I just think that LW wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want their daughter to be able to say, "I'm having a small wedding and I'm not inviting your friends, parents, I like them fine but I'm just not close with them, it's not important to me to have them there," but not have the friends similarly think, "Oh, I wish LW's daughter well, but we're not that close, so I'm not going to put myself out for a present."

I mean the thing is: my mom had eight siblings, most of whom had several kids, everybody but Mom stayed in the hometown, and they did all stay very close - everybody was at my grandparents' house for potluck every Sunday with nice weather while they were alive, and even with my grandparents gone and two more generations out they still all get together for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, New Years, a fall picnic, and, yes, family weddings. It's not really a family where "pick one aunt and uncle you like to invite" makes sense.

You can argue about the precise definition of "close family" and if you grew up around small families or not-close families I can see how that's hard to imagine. But on my dad's side, the entire family including second cousins and in-laws' relatives is down to less than 12 people, and we're also fairly close, I think most people wouldn't blink if they were all invited to a "close family" event. But they are also all about the same level of close as the 100+ people who have an open invite my mom's side's Easter dinner.

(I just counted, I currently have 41 immediate family according to my work's bereavement leave policy, and that's with only one unmarried sibling, and after having to use that bereavement leave a lot more than I'd like in the last five years.)

My late ex had 80 first cousins — both of his parents were from large Catholic families with 10+ kids. It does happen!

(I grew up in a very small family, with one or two kids per generation per couple, so his family reunion was WIIIIILD for me!!)

I'd only consider my parent, sibling, and child figures to be my immediate family. Everyone else is extended, but can be "close family". I literally don't even know 30 members of my family, as most couples in mine have only had 3 kids at most. The extended members I know are my aunts/uncles and their children, grandparents, 2 of 5+ grandaunts/uncles... and I think that's it. Even then, my family is split across like 3 countries at the minimum, so it's hard to be close to any of them. I'm closer to my friends in every way except blood.

The advice here is really good.

I have a sense that the LW can't be mad at her daughter for doing the wedding in this way the LW disapproved of and perhaps the snit over this gift thing is that anger directed in a safer direction.

Personally if I wasn't invited to the wedding, I wouldn't send a gift. Unless it was a close relative whose wedding was far away and I didn't plan on going.

Also I sent a gift to a niece and never received a thank you note. I was somehow able to shrug that off!!!

Weddings bring out the worst in people.

I have a sense that the LW can't be mad at her daughter for doing the wedding in this way the LW disapproved of and perhaps the snit over this gift thing is that anger directed in a safer direction.

Yeah, something about those opening paragraphs reads a bit passive aggressive to me, but I may be reading into it.

So between Daughter and her spouse, they have 100+ siblings, parents, and children? Holiday dinners must be wild.

My family rents a hall.

Yeah, plenty of extended families do. But I’m guessing you wouldn’t describe your 100+ person events as “immediate family only” - that’s gonna include cousins and grands and aunts/uncles and such.

The times enough of my family have gotten together to rent a hall have proven disastrous, so nowadays a big family get-together happens once every couple decades.

Yeah, ours happens four or five times a year, plus smaller gatherings. The only one I would call "extended" is the fall picnic where my mom's great-aunts' kids are also invited. And I dunno if I would call it immediate family? Like my options for "immediate family" are "my mom and sister" or "all my aunts and uncles and first cousins" there's not really an in-between. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if someone included "Aunts and uncles and first cousins" as immediate family - it's just most of the time when people say that they have a lot fewer aunts and uncles and first cousins.

(also, if the large families are in their generation instead of the one before, the 50+ people each could easily be siblings, siblings' spouses, nieces and nephews instead of aunts uncles and cousins - if you each have five married siblings with five kids each, it adds up fast.)

My grandfather had 14 siblings and (iirc) 63 nieces and nephews. Most of those siblings were married, so even just inviting parents, siblings, and siblings' spouses would have put him around 30.

I would hazard a guess that the wedding guest list included friends of Daughter and/or Son-in-law as well as the immediate families. And if so that's fine, that was their prerogative. LW's friends are most likely not Daughter's friends, so Daughter not inviting them was also fine.

But LW was expecting a quid pro quo from their "very close" friends when none was really warranted. Except imho quid pro quos don't generally belong in friendships, even if LW's friends have known Daughter since forever and vice versa. If LW believes friendships are also supposed to be transactional, I think they need to ask themselves why.

I attended a wedding that was ‘close family only’: with all siblings, parents, and one aunt/uncle pair for each, plus the celebrant, it was <20 people. Once you’re into triple digits, as so many have noted, that’s no longer close family only.

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