Hi all, I have a major dilemma (apologies for the long post!)
I have been engaged for about a month, and I'm super excited! Of course, I've been in contact with my family living across the country constantly since then, coming up with ideas and ways to save money! My older sister (she's a half sister, but we grew up together) is the artistic one of the family, and she's been great with coming up and sharing great ideas. Just the other day, she asked how many bridesmaids I plan on having (I told her 3) and then asked if she could get her own dress that she's always wanted to get.
Here's my dilemma, I was not planning on making my sister a bridesmaid.
I have 3 older sisters, consisting of two half sisters and a full sister. I'm probably the closest with this artistic sister (from my mom's side); I didn't grow up with the eldest half-sister (from my dad's side) and (I hope) that she wont expect to be in the wedding, and my full sister is developmentally delayed and she wouldnt want to be in the wedding.
However, in addition of feeling weird about having one out of the three of my sisters as a bridesmaid (and potentially upsetting my father's side of the family for not having the eldest sister in the wedding), I have so many close girlfriends that would be considered too!
For years I've considered a plan on how to determine who is in my bridal party. With the goal of it being as small as possible I came up with 3 rules: 1) sticking to the term "maid" very literally; if you are married, you've had your day and you're out! 2) choosing one person from major stages of my life (HS/College/First job/etc) 3) choosing only 3 bridesmaids.
Out of potentially 15 BM's, this list helps cutting things down a lot! And, with these rules in hand, I just hadn't planned on my sisters being in my bridal party (the two eldest are married, the artistic sister has been married twice).
Additionally, while I love my artistic sister, I'm not the biggest fan of her actions. She hasnt done anything too terrible, no drugs or anything like that, but I dont like how she treats our mother and her children. She's the mother of 4, and is completely hands off with them. Our mother had to take care of the kids a lot (she's lived with my mom for the past 10 years). My mom (divorced from my dad) had been the primary breadwinner of my sister's entire family, the babysitter, the housekeeper, the chef, everything. Basically, my artistic sister is self-centered and takes advantage of my mom. She's also quite mean to our mentally delayed sister, telling this sister that she is killing my mom. Things have gotten slightly better recently, especially since my mom had major surgery last year: my sister and her husband pay for more around the home (after my mom lost her house and they moved around a few times), and her kids are older and can take care of themselves better now. However, she still does things that I dont like (like taking over my car that I left for our mom to use when I moved out of state, not saving any money, spending our mom's money when running errands for her, etc).
My fiance is not a big fan of my sister. He is annoyed that I'm even considering giving her a spot in the wedding, and thinks she's trying to force her way into the wedding. I think that she genuinely wants to be a part of the wedding, and for some reason she's always been the best (and least selfish) with me.
Am I a terrible person for not even considering her as a part of my wedding party? Am I being a pushover by reconsidering things now that she's assuming she's part of the wedding? I considered making her an honorary BM, but that feels like a downgrade, and my fiance still thinks that's doing too much.
Help!!!