The Self Absorbed Wedding Guest

I’m confused, they invited these additional family members to your ceremony? Or they invited them to join them for their family vacation?

View Quoted Comment Well I was asked if I wanted to have her father walk me down the isle. It’s a manipulative tactic to force us to invite more people. Plus these folks are like family, I told them it out us in a position where we felt obligated to include them. I would say to answer your question...both. Just sneaky the way they went about it. I explained if my fiancé’s mother found out all these people came she would be hurt she didn’t even get invited. It just felt so rude and inconsiderate.

These people were way out of line. You did the right thing by uninviting the.

Agreed....these people have no business telling you how YOUR wedding should be or who is there... especially if you are paying for everything yourselves.


Tara you did absolutely nothing wrong and nothing to feel bad about. I know it's easier said than done, but please do not let it bother you for one more minute!
This is YOUR day. Best wishes to you and your FH ❣

View Quoted Comment Thank you Willow for the validation. 🙏

View Quoted Comment Thank you Hope for the kind words. Technically, they agreed to stay in RV we rented for one night and then told me they decided to get a cabin themselves so they could stay longer. That’s when all the family started to get invited. byt yes we were paying for RV with limited space and a permit for ceremony with limited guests, drinks, food, and dinner afterwards. Not only would we have felt obligated to allow them to go to ceremony and scratch our plans of the off the beaten spot we had in mind for going over 10 people, but we would have felt obliged to kick it with them during the rest of our honeymoon in Yosemite. Thank you again for taking the time to respond.

I....have no words. Other than you absolutely didn't do anything wrong. There's selfish guests, and then there's...these people. You dodged a bullet (or several).

View Quoted Comment Your comment gave me a good giggle. Thank you, I needed that. 🥰

Dang you absolutely did the right thing! Your wedding is about you and your future spouse and nothing else and no one else matters if you want it to be about that. They had NO right to do that to you and put you in an uncomfortable situation. You should just go off and do your elopement just the 2 of you! That will keep everything less stressful so you don’t have to deal with things like this! Keep your chin up and know that in the years to come you will thank yourself for standing up for yourself!

Can you switch your wedding plans to an actual elopement (that is, just you and your future spouse) and hire an officiant?

View Quoted Comment Much gratitude for your words of encouragement. 🙏💝

View Quoted Comment Best advice! Yes, we have my future sister in law who is going to be our witness and her wife is ordained so crises diverted. They were the only other guests we had coming so it’s all going to work out in the end. She was more than happy and honored to officiate after we told her what happened. A silver lining..... 🌈👰

I'll be the voice of dissention, but I do hope you read it in its entirety even if you don't like what I have to say.

I think you triggered some of this by inviting the brother to the ceremony in the first place - it sounds like they only invited him to go to the reunion/vacation/whatever, and you added him of your own volition. The guilty feelings that caused you to do that are your responsibility.

Also, the daughter telling the brother you didn't want him there.... seems like she's correct that you didn't actually want him there. You only invited him because you "felt guilty." Was she trying to cause problems, or was she just telling him the truth and because it happened to cause problems, you believe it was done on purpose to hurt you?

It seems to me that this was largely a big misunderstanding - they invited people for their vacation/whatever and you assumed that meant they were inviting them to your elopement. Some things you said, such as "I was told I can’t control who she invites and it won’t affect our wedding day," make me think that you assumed these invitations extended to your elopement. I know you said in response to another poster that they were "trying to do both," but I'm not so sure. From the information here, the only person it sounds like they were truly trying to get in on your elopement was the father to walk you down the aisle.

The thing about destination weddings/elopements is that guests generally do make personal vacations out of them, and it is true that you can't control that or what anyone does on their own time during them.

You made assumptions, and you are blaming someone else for feeling obligated to invite these other people to your ceremony - but as I said above, your feelings are your responsibility. I actually don't see anywhere that anyone made you feel obligated. That appears to have come from within because of your personal view of your relationship with these people ("they're like family, so because they were going to be in the area I felt like I had to include them.")

They, however, reacted inappropriately. They could have asked you what was upsetting you. Saying "if you wanted to be alone, you got it, screw you" was certainly not a loving way of resolving this issue with you. Perhaps you did overreact. Honestly, that doesn't matter - even if you did, it does not justify their response. I have had many loved ones overreact on me, and my response was certainly not "screw you." That isn't how people who love and care about each other respond to each other. You deserve better than that. You deserve more compassion than that. One outburst doesn't justify them being so hateful and hurtful to you.

I wish you a beautiful, peaceful elopement. I think you are correct in your assessment that none of them - including those you originally did invite - belong at it.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for playing devils advocate. Yes, the perspective you shared is I’m sure how they are feeling. That it wasn’t ill intentioned, but when you send someone an invite to your elopement, you kind of assume they understand what that means. Yes, that’s my fault too for assuming they know what eloping means. As a people pleaser trying to become reformed, I understand my feelings are my responsibility. I took that into consideration and spoke things out with my FH before expressing how I was feeling with them. Was speaking my truth going to be worth loosing them over? I knew me having an opinion on how my wedding should go would not be well received. He agreed that they were making our wedding about them, and yes I was triggered big time because this has been some time coming. In recent years and months we’ve felt as though the relationships with these folks was one sided. Because of my people pleasing habits I let that resentment build and suffered in silence instead of speaking up sooner. It wasn’t until wedding planning that I couldn’t ignore the one sidedness any longer. The icky feelings were too strong. For the first time I spoke up. I told them how I was feeling. When they said I shouldn’t feel obligated to invite their entire family, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, kids, grandfather, despite knowing them my whole life...what I heard was, “I don’t give a (blank) how all this makes you feel on your wedding day, as long as I’m comfortable, and everyone gets to meet my newborn, that’s what matters.” When she asks me why I don’t want her brother there, she’s putting words in our mouths and creating more unnecessary drama ignoring the fact that we can only accommodate 6-8, having explained we paid $150 permit for that many people for a specific location not listed as a ceremony spot in the National Park. I feel like I have to call her brother and grandfather now to clear things up. We ordered a cake for no more than 8 people and an RV that could accommodate no more than 6. We all live in California about three to five hours from Yosemite. Her brother, two kids and gf live 10 hrs away in Oregon, and her other brother/wife and two kids in Arizona. Both of whom I didn’t invite...the daughter threatened behind the scenes not to even come to my wedding after her mom invited the brother and wife from AZ that no one even likes. Talk about drama behind the scenes. Not to mention when these people all get together and drink it’s a nightmare of fighting. I could understand if I had them flying half way across the world that they would want to make this a vacation as well for them. We aren’t even staying in Yosemite, we are staying at bass lake outside the park. Had it been some major destination wedding I would have made an itinerary to hang out with them during our honeymoon and asked that they stay an entire week. It for sure boils down to my people pleasing getting me in hot water. I’m learning to teach people how to treat me and standing up for myself. I mean the only reason these people were invited instead of my own parents and family is because I orphaned myself after finding out my father molested the daughter in question when she was 9 (three years ago she confided in me). I was the only person to stand up for her and confront my father, and I lost my entire family over it. To say I’m surrounded by toxic people is an understatement, I suffer from complex PTSD. I guess I expected a lot more from the mother who didn’t have the courage to defend her own daughter and from the daughter herself who was a victim of my father. Again, having expectations just sets us up for disappointment in the long run. At least now that all these self absorbed folks are out of my life, hopefully I can enjoy my wedding without them. You are correct about what bothers me the most...how they responded when I tried to speak up. I wasn’t heard, I was belittled, I was given excuses, and they were rude and totally unapologetic. Ultimately, that’s why the relationship is over.

The major reason elopements have a better reputation is that until tv and wedding industry redefined them recently, an elopement has for centuries meant the couple, or the couple with a pair of assistants/ witnesses go off without notice, an announce it after it has happened. You have tried to do a very small private wedding . Always very contentious thing. And worse, a destination one which in many families is nothing less than a prize fight.😞 And what a start! I do think that at this point it would be a help to state what you wanted, and what misunderstanding occurred. That you planned the only option that Yelllow -stone accepted for that spot, 10 people. And no people can be added to that 10. But when people bedan to meen

Continued after puppy help)
When people began to mention using that time as a reunion time, it was clear to some but not others that they could come, vacation in the same general and see and visit with friends family who are staying in the general area in nearby nodgings, but not at the wedding itself. The wedding is hours. But if family are coming to Yellowstone it will be for days outside the wedding.area, though nearby. I think you can save things for people you care about like the occifiant. People you don't care about, don't bother. *** l have been to numerous destination weddings within the US where wedding day was reserved for invited guests. But guests had guests who had parallel vacations. Some bro do es objected, as they wanted all attention on them. Others just took it istride. This might be an approach that would work for you. Good luck sorting things out !