The whole process of planning our April 30, 2022 wedding since March 2020 has been a long, overwhelming struggle. There are so many aspects that I have loved and yet so many more aspects that have left me feeling defeated and tired. Most of it has been dealing with blended, complicated family dynamics and relationships and has nothing to do with the actual wedding planning process itself.
At the beginning everyone was so excited for us, as we have been together for a very long time and seems like everyone was waiting on us to get engaged. It was an exciting period of time for awhile. Then covid hit and we had a lot of the same issues that everyone else was dealing with. I had lost my job, we had no idea how or if we were going to be able to pay for the wedding we wanted, we were nervous if our date would have to be changed so we made it very far into the future, my fiance had lots of international family who we were not certain could attend. But all of those challenges seemed to work themself out over the first year. But as we got into the second year of our engagement, things changed. One of my bridesmaids, my future sister-in-law, got engaged and didn't ask me to be a bridesmaid or have any plan to include me in their wedding even though I am very close to my fiance's brother (her fiance) and obviously also close with her. I realize everyone has their reasons, but this was so hard for me to navigate while I was in the middle of planning my own wedding which involved her to a great deal and facing the future knowing I would not be included in their wedding at all. Then another person who we considered to be in our wedding party but had a weird title as being our flower girl/dog escort for our dogs in the ceremony decided that this was too much of a responsibility and that it was inappropriate for me to consider her as one of the wedding party members. She didn't want to be as involved in the ceremony, help with or attend our couples shower, and said yes to being in another wedding the next day after our wedding in a different state so now she will be missing getting ready with us that morning to go to the other wedding's rehearsal and may miss out on our gift to her of getting her hair/makeup done and just "do it herself" whenever she gets back from attending the rehearsal for the other wedding. It feels like a slap in the face to be so casually dismissive of our gift and suggest that maybe someone else could go instead or "don't worry about, I can do my own hair..."
I also have been dealing with so much family drama it is killing me. I did not invite either of my parents to attend my wedding because they were not a part of my life growing up and I do not consider them to be my family. My grandmother who raised me is furious and threw a fit when I told her my dad would not be invited. But he ruined my wedding dress shopping weekend with my grandmother because he failed a drug test, lost his job that he had for years despite him having the world's most understanding boss, and chose to live homeless with his trashy girlfriend instead of cleaning himself up again and doing the work (he's a lifelong addict which my grandparents are always in denial about). He lived with us growing up and I hated it. Always getting in/out of jail, stealing money or stuff from my grandparents, driving under the influence and doing dangerous stuff, the list goes on and on. My grandparents came to visit me to go dress shopping and couldn't enjoy themselves because they were too worried about him messing up for the 1 millionth time. I was over it and decided that I couldn't have this happen on our wedding day, so I uninvited him to the wedding. They have not gotten over it and it's been 6 months. They are now also unhappy that my 2nd and 3rd cousins/aunts/uncles are not invited to the rehearsal dinner, which would make the rehearsal guest list 40 people if I invited them. It's too many people and not what we were wanting, 10 of those would be just children which is also not what we were wanting. My sisters are invited with their children and that was the max number of kids we wanted at the rehearsal dinner. But now this is also a heated discussion of one more thing that I am not being inclusive on according to my grandmother. I am just fed up.
My grandmother, who I'm particularly close with, has taken all of our decisions so personally and has let this affect our relationship and our wedding. She is no longer happy or excited about the wedding, she dragged her feet helping my MOH with our shower when she used to be super enthusiastic to help and volunteered to help with catering, she has dragged her feet on getting an outfit for herself and a suit for my grandpa who will be dancing with me at the wedding. After telling me every day for weeks in the beginning what they were planning on wearing and looking up outfit ideas and discussing what color suit he would get, now she doesn't think it's economical and doesn't understand why a nice dress shirt and khaki pants isn't enough. It's a formal dress code, they've known this. She also is saying she's telling all my cousins that wearing cargo shorts and polos is fine, which just infuriates me. It's like she is purposely trying to upset me and I don't get why.
We have not asked anything from my grandparents except to attend the wedding and to have my grandpa dance with me. I feel like this is not a lot to ask. Am I bridezilla for wanting my grandpa to wear a jacket and matching pants to a formal event? Am I overreacting to the cargo shorts? Idk, but it's not even about the clothes it's about the lack of any effort from my family to care and I'm so over it. We made these decisions around our wedding because it was what was best for us, my fiance is also not inviting his father for similar reasons and his family has been nothing but supportive. I am finding myself feeling so sad that my family is treating me this way and it is making it so hard to look forward to the wedding. I don't know what to do. I wish I could just not care and let it go but they're the only family I have and I wish they would just be happy for us.
