I would like to apologize first if this seems to be a very longgggg forum but I am being driven crazy and wondering if fellow brides can help me out here??
I am marrying my fiancé in June this year after a long 2 years engagement! We’ve been together for almost 8 years now it’s finally happening! Unfortunately what is supposed to be my happy time is leaving me very confused by my future sister in law's behavior (my fiance’s brother’s wife).
Background – I’ve known my sister in law about 7 years now I would say? But we lived in different states up until recently (November 2014) when the brother and her moved to the same state as us due to job relocation. We were very civil towards each other, she was actually a nice person but we just never grew close due to living in different states and so we see each other when we see each other, not necessarily during holidays because me and my fiancé would go home to visit his mom (parents divorced) but the brother and sister in law never did (another story – but briefly explains here the family was from upstate NY, sister in law used to live there but since she moved out she never stepped foot back in to visiting the mom, and brother just followed her footstep, she doesn’t talk to her own mother either, for whatever reason, but that isn’t my business to dwell into it).
What happened – we were invited to their new home on New Year Eve 2014, but since I had to work and didn’t feel like driving into the city, so we didn’t go. My fiance’s younger brother and his boyfriend went because they live in the same city as the older brother and sister in law. Background on younger brother and boyfriend – known them for the past 4 years and hung out many many times because they have always live in the same state as me and my fiancé). So during the night, the conversation lead into our wedding parties, and the older brother and sister in law found out the boyfriend is invited to be a groomsman, but the sister in law did not (I did not invite her because I did not even have her phone numbers, that says how "close" we were - mind you she never even asked me once how was the wedding planning or congratulated me since we got engaged). At this point the boyfriend was very uncomfortable that he was asked and she wasn't in the wedding.
We received phone calls from both the younger brother and the older brother on New Year’s Day.
January 1st, 2015 – older brother called and told my fiancé his wife is crushed because she felt she was purposely left out, and younger brother called and told my fiancé his boyfriend felt uncomfortable to be in the wedding now because of this. As soon as I heard that, I felt really bad that I didn’t even think of the optic of the scenario and how bad it looked on my fiance’s part, so I immediately reached out to the sister in law (remember I didn’t have her phone number, I got it from the younger brother which he got it from Facebook). I called her 3 times and she did not pick up, texted her twice, nothing either. Comes to find out she had also deleted me from her Facebook (our relationship is described as Facebook friends, at best). Not exactly sure what else was there to do, I waited about a week and emailed her.
January 7th, 2015 – I emailed her and explained everything to her, told her she was not purposely left out and apologized if her feeling was hurt. Waited about 2 days she finally responded, said she had heard people were upset but she has not spoken to anyone about this and haven’t done anything, and my email to her was a surprised and explanation of my wedding choices was unnecessary (I chose my best friend aka my sister and 3 of my girlfriends from college, by the way).
Everyone in my family and his parents told me I don’t have to do anything else at this point (although the future MIL did say if I had a chance, I should ask her to be in my wedding), just move on with my wedding planning. Which I did. Now the end of January, after a month of not talking to anyone (my fiancé hasn’t talked to his brothers either), as I know how important family is to my fiancé, so I made and mailed my sister in law a card asking her to be my bridesmaid (as suggested by the future MIL) and I hope she accept it for both me and my fiancé. She never responded.
February 15th, 2015 – My fiancé finally called the younger brother telling him his boyfriend does not need to be in the wedding anymore if he’s not comfortable, and they both agreed. Through the conversation, the younger brother told my fiancé that they did meet with the older brother and sister in law for dinner recently, and she told everyone she hasn’t talked to us and hopefully everything is ok, all she wants is just for everyone to be happy, didn’t mention a word on I’ve tried to reached out to her 8 different times by even asking her to be my bridesmaid. Naturally the younger brother and the boyfriend thought I never reached out to her since I found out she was upset, which is not the case at all.
So now my question is – what do I do next? I certainly won’t be surprised even she is invited she won’t show up anyway. After all I’ve done to try to reach out to her (I literally did not do anything to her for her to derive this kind of behavior). I am very furious at this point and this has caused me anxiety, what should I do? How do you deal with such future sister in law?? She pretty much burned all bridges at this point and her husband is 100% with her. HELP!!