Bachelor Trip Etiquette

I kinda have a similar situation. I made my 20 year old sister a bridesmaid. We aren't super close but close enough I guess and I did sort of make her a bridesmaid out of obligation and guilt. I will probably invite her to the Bachelorette party so she doesn't feel left out but if there was a way out I probably wouldn't invite her just because everyone will be 5-15 years older than her and we plan on going to bars and stuff

To answer your question though, I think if you have a night with just your friends that would be fine if you have a bachelor's party later and include your brother. He would probably be hurt if he wasn't invited.

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Yeah I mean my brother's old enough to go to bars and everything. We've just always had this weird relationship where we've never been super close. I just think it will feel odd when I'm hanging with all my friends. Almost like I have to constantly check if he's good and everything's alright since it's all my friends.

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Yeah we planned a whole trip for the 5 of us - my friends and I. It's going to be 4 nights. I was planning on doing a night out later as the wedding gets closer where all our brothers and friends could go out and hang out downtown together. Just not sure if he and my parents will feel slighted if he's not on the trip.

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I'm with Gabby on this. Is there a way to make the upcoming friends trip not a formal bachelor trip/party? Or is it too late for that? Like is it widely known that the upcoming trip is the actual bachelor party, or (up until now) is it a trip that kinda organically happened with your friend group that just so happens to be before your wedding?

View Quoted Comment I totally understand that and I am the same way with my sister. I think it would be fine as long as you make it clear there is a bachelor party he will be invited to in the future.

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Yeah I was thinking about that. Technically it's not super formal as it's all being planned together - not just the best man. However, when I was talking with my friend about it, he ended up telling his mom. His mom is super close with my mom so they talked about it. My parents ended up texting me saying, "oh heard you're planning the bachelor trip, you're brother's gonna love it!" Sooooooooo kinda stuck here lol.

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Yeah that makes sense - appreciate your feedback!

I'd say you're fine keeping the bachelor trip to just friends, given that you're not that close to your brother and planning something inclusive of him and your future brothers in law as well. Personally, if I were in your brother's shoes, I'd feel awkward taking a trip with people that knew each other but not me and would prefer to skip it anyways (but that's just me!).

Can you just call it a “boys trip” ?
I understand your perspective but I still think it is super hurtful to a wedding party member to be excluded from pre wedding events — ive even seen posts on here from the perspective of the sister bridesmaid feeling hurt and left out that the bachelorette party didn’t include her. Her story was similar to yours— they had an age gap and weren’t that close, and she even said she may. It have even chosen to go if invited, but when she heard about the party and understood she was NOT invited, she felt really upset. I wouldn’t want to risk having my sibling feel that way or know I caused them to feel that way, especially if we had a somewhat tenuous relationship. So,
My move would be either invite him but be up front that it’s definitely a bro-y trip with your friends and he might not really fit in and it would be totally fine with you if he didn’t want to come and say you’d have that other night out for all to enjoy, or, call the other thing your bachelor party and completely remove this getaway as a wedding event and just enjoy it as a guys weekend. The kicker here though would be the guys would have to be on board too with the approach. It would be super uncool/awful feeling to have someone talking about the awesomeBachelor weekend in front of him when he wasn’t involved/invited.

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Yikes. Ok I think you have 2 moves here. One option is to invite your brother (understanding that he may not want to join anyway) and apologize for the delay. Maybe mention what's been planned so far for this trip, that your FW's brothers can't make it, and that you're planning to celebrate again once the wedding date gets closer. He very well may opt out for this one (to avoid awkwardness, etc) and just look forward to the more accessible, shorter duration celebration down the line....but I personally think the right thing to do is to at least invite him. The other option is to reverse course and explicitly state that the upcoming trip is not a bachelor party - just a friend trip....and that the bachelor party is still a few months down the line. I think you'd also have to get your friends on the same page. This seems a bit more difficult in terms of logistics. I wish you luck with whatever you end up doing!

Personally, I would include him in the trip. You mention that you’ve recently reconciled after not speaking for a year. With that in mind, if he found out that you didn’t include him in the trip (and of course the fact that he is after all a groomsman) how do you think we will feel? What does that say about your relationship?

The fact that you’re happy to have him be your groomsman, why is it an issue to have him on the trip? Just because your brother is younger than you doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time since he’s not in the same age bracket as you and your friends. Obviously as others have pointed out, you can try get around it by labelling the trip something else but I think if he finds out it will damage your relationship which already has quite a few bumps in it.

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Well the family drama stemmed from him talking negatively about my FW. I told him he crossed a line and cut him off completely. We celebrated the holidays this year and he apologized via text beforehand. Both of his apology texts to myself and my FW were identical like copy and pasted, so idk how sincere it was. But regardless we reconciled somewhat, and I do feel like eventually our relationship will repair itself as we get older, which is why I want him at the wedding and in the party, and it's tradition. But part of me still feels like I'm kind of letting him off the hook by inviting him to this. Idk, we'll see.