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Wedding guest shenanigans
1. Dear Sahaj: To make a long story short, my fiancé and I are getting married next month. His sister told him she was planning to hold an event for her baby while she’s in town for our wedding (Jewish baby naming ceremony, kind of like a baptism).
My fiancé told her we’d really prefer she hold it any other weekend. Her baby will be over 1 year old and I don’t trust her to throw the event in a way that’s sensitive to our wedding — she often forgets (or refuses) to consider us and dismisses our concerns. Last year, when my fiancé told her I was sad to be de facto excluded from a family weekend she planned, she told me “it’s not fair to put your disappointment on others.”
Well, she was shocked and hurt by our scheduling request. Sister + her husband tried to guilt trip fiancé solo while he was on a work trip in her city. “You’re taking your anger out on my baby!”, and “it’s just 10 minutes, no big deal.” Then the four of us talked, and they said they wanted to repair this. I acknowledged the hurt feelings but declined to hear more, and I shared what I needed.
Now she’s all “I guess everything I do is wrong!”, “I’ve never experienced hatred like this,” and “I can’t trust [fiancé] anymore!” because we set a boundary, communicated openly with each other about things that involve our wedding and relationship and shared how we feel (like she asked!)
Now, we’re trying to be polite and conserve energy before the wedding, but fiancé’s parents and other sister have been pressuring us to reach out or have another big talk. Fiancé’s family says they’re “close” but it feels suffocating.
Help! I just want to have a healthy, happy marriage and a fun, meaningful wedding weekend. How can we protect these things? My fiancé has gotten a lot better with boundaries, but still ends up super guilty and stressed about how his family reacts to us saying no to them.
— Bride To Be Hoping For Peace
BTBHFP: The issue isn’t actually this one request. It’s about a recurring issue with everyone in your fiancé’s family that has become a pattern. When someone responds to a reasonable request — like, please don’t hold a competing event on our wedding weekend — with “you’re taking your anger out on my baby” and “I’ve never experienced hatred like this,” that’s a bid to make you responsible for managing their emotions so they don’t have to change their behavior.
On top of that, you have other family members who are inserting themselves and trying to get your fiancé and you to default to the status quo, or what they all want from you. So now we have moved beyond just hurt feelings into escalating language and your future in-laws’ attempts to “guilt” you and your fiancé. This is a sign that they don’t want to respect your boundary and they hope to just exhaust you into giving in. They aren’t used to you and your fiancé saying, “My needs matter, too,” hence all this acting out.
His family calls it being “close” while you say you feel the relationship is “suffocating.” Don’t ignore this. It is worth the two of you talking about what closeness to his family will look like in your marriage, on your terms. You’ve both been able to do something really difficult … set boundaries with family. The next step is learning that their discomfort with his “no” is not the same as having done something wrong. Guilt is a powerful thing and it’s also a conditioned response. Your fiancé’s nervous system may have learned that keeping the peace meant absorbing whatever his family needed from him, and truthfully, unlearning that will take time and repetition. Support and encourage him where you can and it may be worth having explicit conversations, like: What are the things you’ll always decide together? What’s the process when one of you is feeling pressured? Having that conversation now, while it’s still fresh, is much easier than having it mid-crisis later.
You don’t have to keep relitigating whether your original ask was fair. You are allowed to protect your wedding weekend. You are allowed to decide what you have the bandwidth for in the weeks leading up to one of the most meaningful days of your life. You do not owe anyone another big talk right now. Sometimes the instinct to overexplain can feel like a kindness, but what often actually ends up happening is that it signals that the decision you’ve already made is up for negotiation. And frankly, it can lead to more, confusing and unclear conversations. Instead, I’d encourage you and your fiancé to get aligned on a simple, unified response you can both use when his family pressures you to reach out or have another talk. This could sound something like “We’re focusing on the wedding right now and will reconnect with everyone after.” And on your wedding day itself? Consider designating someone — a sibling, a close friend, a coordinator — whose one job is to be a buffer between you and anything that could pull your attention away from what matters.
Finally, remember: You’re building the foundation of a marriage, and the habits you’re practicing right now — openly and kindly communicating with each other, holding a line together, not capitulating to guilt — are exactly what a healthy marriage looks like. The wedding will be one day. How you two show up for each other when it’s hard is the rest of your lives.
Link one
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2. Dear Prudence,
My sister “Nina” got married in early April, and she’s still angry over something my boyfriend did during the wedding reception. No, he didn’t get wasted, knock over the wedding cake, or make an unwanted pass at anyone. His crime? He proposed to me on the dance floor. After I accepted, people stopped dancing to briefly congratulate us, and then we all went back to having fun. Nina, however, says I completely “upstaged” her and accused me of trying to ruin her wedding by taking the attention away from her!
Now my sister is demanding that I apologize and says she won’t speak to me until I do. She’s even dragged our mom into the act, and now my mom is on my case about it, too. I honestly had no idea my boyfriend was planning to propose to me at her wedding; it was just a pleasant surprise. My boyfriend says I have nothing to apologize for, and my mom and sister are completely out of line. I agree with him, but a part of me wonders if I should just give Nina a fake apology to restore peace in the family. Good idea, or should I stand my ground?
—Proposal Petulence
Dear Proposal,
There are two camps when it comes to proposals at weddings. Many people think they represent the most narcissistic, rude breach of etiquette imaginable. Others, like me, think, “Who cares??” The people getting married still had tons of attention for a long period of time leading up to the wedding, had their ceremony, took their photos, listened to speeches about them, received gifts, did their first dance, and had their guests’ undivided attention for all but five minutes of a very long day. What is the harm in a brief interlude during which the people present are, God forbid, happy for someone else? But even those who disagree with me would have to admit that it would be totally unfair to blame the person who was surprised when their partner got down on one knee.
Did Nina completely miss that your fiancé proposed to you, not the other way around? She’s being ridiculous, not to mention ruining her own newlywed days by being mad about something that’s over and can’t be undone.
Regular readers know I support offering an insincere apology to placate an unreasonable person. It costs you nothing, keeps their unhinged energy away from you, and leaves them stewing in their own misery when they realize they got what they wanted and are still unhappy. So if you want to say, “Nina, I’m sorry Kyle proposed to me at your wedding. I wish I’d told him not to do that,” go for it. That will take the temperature down a bit and maybe create some room to talk about what I suspect is the underlying issue: Nina feels you’ve always been prettier, more popular, or more loved in some way or another, and the proposal incident felt like confirmation of that dynamic. This feeling will rear its head again—when you have the nerve to graduate with your master’s degree during the same month her first child is born, or when you’re accused of trying to outdo her by taking the lead on planning a 50th anniversary party for your parents. Or when you make some misstep or another during your own wedding planning process. But actually, the way she and your mom are stressing you out about this actually makes me think you should show them what not stealing the spotlight really looks like and just elope.
Link two
My fiancé told her we’d really prefer she hold it any other weekend. Her baby will be over 1 year old and I don’t trust her to throw the event in a way that’s sensitive to our wedding — she often forgets (or refuses) to consider us and dismisses our concerns. Last year, when my fiancé told her I was sad to be de facto excluded from a family weekend she planned, she told me “it’s not fair to put your disappointment on others.”
Well, she was shocked and hurt by our scheduling request. Sister + her husband tried to guilt trip fiancé solo while he was on a work trip in her city. “You’re taking your anger out on my baby!”, and “it’s just 10 minutes, no big deal.” Then the four of us talked, and they said they wanted to repair this. I acknowledged the hurt feelings but declined to hear more, and I shared what I needed.
Now she’s all “I guess everything I do is wrong!”, “I’ve never experienced hatred like this,” and “I can’t trust [fiancé] anymore!” because we set a boundary, communicated openly with each other about things that involve our wedding and relationship and shared how we feel (like she asked!)
Now, we’re trying to be polite and conserve energy before the wedding, but fiancé’s parents and other sister have been pressuring us to reach out or have another big talk. Fiancé’s family says they’re “close” but it feels suffocating.
Help! I just want to have a healthy, happy marriage and a fun, meaningful wedding weekend. How can we protect these things? My fiancé has gotten a lot better with boundaries, but still ends up super guilty and stressed about how his family reacts to us saying no to them.
— Bride To Be Hoping For Peace
BTBHFP: The issue isn’t actually this one request. It’s about a recurring issue with everyone in your fiancé’s family that has become a pattern. When someone responds to a reasonable request — like, please don’t hold a competing event on our wedding weekend — with “you’re taking your anger out on my baby” and “I’ve never experienced hatred like this,” that’s a bid to make you responsible for managing their emotions so they don’t have to change their behavior.
On top of that, you have other family members who are inserting themselves and trying to get your fiancé and you to default to the status quo, or what they all want from you. So now we have moved beyond just hurt feelings into escalating language and your future in-laws’ attempts to “guilt” you and your fiancé. This is a sign that they don’t want to respect your boundary and they hope to just exhaust you into giving in. They aren’t used to you and your fiancé saying, “My needs matter, too,” hence all this acting out.
His family calls it being “close” while you say you feel the relationship is “suffocating.” Don’t ignore this. It is worth the two of you talking about what closeness to his family will look like in your marriage, on your terms. You’ve both been able to do something really difficult … set boundaries with family. The next step is learning that their discomfort with his “no” is not the same as having done something wrong. Guilt is a powerful thing and it’s also a conditioned response. Your fiancé’s nervous system may have learned that keeping the peace meant absorbing whatever his family needed from him, and truthfully, unlearning that will take time and repetition. Support and encourage him where you can and it may be worth having explicit conversations, like: What are the things you’ll always decide together? What’s the process when one of you is feeling pressured? Having that conversation now, while it’s still fresh, is much easier than having it mid-crisis later.
You don’t have to keep relitigating whether your original ask was fair. You are allowed to protect your wedding weekend. You are allowed to decide what you have the bandwidth for in the weeks leading up to one of the most meaningful days of your life. You do not owe anyone another big talk right now. Sometimes the instinct to overexplain can feel like a kindness, but what often actually ends up happening is that it signals that the decision you’ve already made is up for negotiation. And frankly, it can lead to more, confusing and unclear conversations. Instead, I’d encourage you and your fiancé to get aligned on a simple, unified response you can both use when his family pressures you to reach out or have another talk. This could sound something like “We’re focusing on the wedding right now and will reconnect with everyone after.” And on your wedding day itself? Consider designating someone — a sibling, a close friend, a coordinator — whose one job is to be a buffer between you and anything that could pull your attention away from what matters.
Finally, remember: You’re building the foundation of a marriage, and the habits you’re practicing right now — openly and kindly communicating with each other, holding a line together, not capitulating to guilt — are exactly what a healthy marriage looks like. The wedding will be one day. How you two show up for each other when it’s hard is the rest of your lives.
Link one
2. Dear Prudence,
My sister “Nina” got married in early April, and she’s still angry over something my boyfriend did during the wedding reception. No, he didn’t get wasted, knock over the wedding cake, or make an unwanted pass at anyone. His crime? He proposed to me on the dance floor. After I accepted, people stopped dancing to briefly congratulate us, and then we all went back to having fun. Nina, however, says I completely “upstaged” her and accused me of trying to ruin her wedding by taking the attention away from her!
Now my sister is demanding that I apologize and says she won’t speak to me until I do. She’s even dragged our mom into the act, and now my mom is on my case about it, too. I honestly had no idea my boyfriend was planning to propose to me at her wedding; it was just a pleasant surprise. My boyfriend says I have nothing to apologize for, and my mom and sister are completely out of line. I agree with him, but a part of me wonders if I should just give Nina a fake apology to restore peace in the family. Good idea, or should I stand my ground?
—Proposal Petulence
Dear Proposal,
There are two camps when it comes to proposals at weddings. Many people think they represent the most narcissistic, rude breach of etiquette imaginable. Others, like me, think, “Who cares??” The people getting married still had tons of attention for a long period of time leading up to the wedding, had their ceremony, took their photos, listened to speeches about them, received gifts, did their first dance, and had their guests’ undivided attention for all but five minutes of a very long day. What is the harm in a brief interlude during which the people present are, God forbid, happy for someone else? But even those who disagree with me would have to admit that it would be totally unfair to blame the person who was surprised when their partner got down on one knee.
Did Nina completely miss that your fiancé proposed to you, not the other way around? She’s being ridiculous, not to mention ruining her own newlywed days by being mad about something that’s over and can’t be undone.
Regular readers know I support offering an insincere apology to placate an unreasonable person. It costs you nothing, keeps their unhinged energy away from you, and leaves them stewing in their own misery when they realize they got what they wanted and are still unhappy. So if you want to say, “Nina, I’m sorry Kyle proposed to me at your wedding. I wish I’d told him not to do that,” go for it. That will take the temperature down a bit and maybe create some room to talk about what I suspect is the underlying issue: Nina feels you’ve always been prettier, more popular, or more loved in some way or another, and the proposal incident felt like confirmation of that dynamic. This feeling will rear its head again—when you have the nerve to graduate with your master’s degree during the same month her first child is born, or when you’re accused of trying to outdo her by taking the lead on planning a 50th anniversary party for your parents. Or when you make some misstep or another during your own wedding planning process. But actually, the way she and your mom are stressing you out about this actually makes me think you should show them what not stealing the spotlight really looks like and just elope.
Link two
no subject
But more seriously, Fiance needs more structured help in boundary setting, because if you do it properly, you don't listen to your family whining at you until they induce a stomachache. Instead, as soon as they start, you hang up the phone. Blocking them wouldn't be going too far.
2. Of course Boyfriend says LW "has nothing to apologize for", he's the one who ought to apologize! Those two charming boors deserve each other. In the meantime, LW, please just apologize to your sister.
no subject