Lack of plus-one on invitation threatens family friendship?
Dear Carolyn: My daughter, her boyfriend, and our whole family are struggling to move on after other close family members hurt us. We need help, especially me, the mom! Background: My husband and I have three children and my husband’s brother’s family has two. While the five kids were growing up we enjoyed dinners together every Sunday night, shared every holiday, celebrated every birthday/ graduation, went on vacation together and more. My husband and his brother are very close. Fast forward to last month. Our niece is getting married at the end of July. Our daughter and her boyfriend, who virtually live together and are on the path to marriage, will have been together for eight months. The e-invitations arrived: The boyfriend was not invited to the wedding by name (bad enough), and my daughter was not given a “plus one” (unfathomable). My other daughter (very proud of her) immediately called her cousin, the “bride,” and it is fixed. Bride said it was a computer mistake. Crisis averted. But the damage has been done. My problem is, if it was a mistake, then it was negligently cruel. My daughter’s feelings were not important enough to them to get it right. If it was on purpose, it was intentionally cruel. My daughter’s feelings were not important. Either way, the feelings of our daughter and her boyfriend were roadkill in the world of arbitrary wedding “plus-one rules.” That they would want their cousin/niece to sit alone at the wedding with no one to dance with while her boyfriend sits in their apartment alone totally and completely escapes me. We would never in a million years behave toward our nieces in this way. Disclaimer: I said at the outset that my daughter and whole family are struggling to move on from the insult and hurt. More accurately, they have busy lives all over the country and are just glad it’s resolved. I am the only one having trouble figuring out how to deal. My husband just wants it to be over without any more family strife. Momma Bear Momma Bear: Find a paper bag to breathe into, then find more to do. You wrote this answer into your question. I’m just the cantankerous messenger: You say your whole family “have busy lives all over the country and are just glad it’s resolved”? Then the busy people aren’t upset. You are. There’s also the matter of acting in bad faith – but they aren’t the ones guilty of that. You are. 1. All that backstory is irrelevant to an invitation. 2. No “damage was done,” unless you take your niece for a liar and/or redefine “mistake” to include only malice and disregard. Even if your niece’s explanation was a white lie, it was an inclusive, peacemaking one. 3. You exaggerate and obfuscate at this other family’s expense, enough to throw your own loyalty to them under the kind of suspicion you’re casting their way. You say the new couple “will have been together eight months.” Meaning, five months when you got the invitation, yes? Which is actually true: A lot of five-month partners don’t get plus-ones. As I’ve said before, even kind and generous people make mistakes in guests lists. For all sorts of reasons.