Wedding Etiquette Forum

MIA Brother/Groomsman

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Re: MIA Brother/Groomsman

  • OP! How have I missed you at family reunions?! We are clearly related. Thank you for sharing your story. I still think you should invite them so as to be the bigger person. After that, I would not make any effort to contact them. It sounds like they won't even come, but at least nobody can hold it against you. Now, if you have decided that you don't care if you have a relationship with your brother ever moving forward, then don't invite them. That's not to say that you for sure will never have one again (I cut my brother out of my life several years ago and then made up with him later), but if you don't care if you ever do again or not, then not inviting him will not have potentially unwanted consequences. If you, for any reason, WOULD like to have a relationship with him, then don't risk the possibility of permanently severing ties.
    What did you think would happen if you walked up to a group of internet strangers and told them to get shoehorned by their lady doc?~StageManager14
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  • Sheesh!  We should form the "Survivors' Club"!
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  • Jen4948Jen4948 member
    First Anniversary First Answer First Comment 5 Love Its
    edited March 2014
    I have a half-brother whose existence my younger full brother and I were unaware of most of my life.  He is the son of my mother by someone she had a relationship with before she became engaged to and married my father, and she placed him for adoption at birth.

    Just before I turned thirty, he suddenly turned up, looking for his biological family.  He made contact with my mother, who told me and my younger brother about him.  We went out of our way to make his acquaintance.  At the time he was married with a kid, and since then he has had two more kids.

    Also since 2010, he dropped contact with our family, claiming that this was due to problems in his marriage.  He chooses not to respond to messages or otherwise associate with us outside of Facebook.  We had had plans to get together early in 2011, and he called them off for various reasons, and shows no wish of ever meeting again.

    I have no desire to maintain contact with him or invite him or his family to my wedding, and if my parents or he or his children (I don't even know if he's still married, my guess is that he and his wife are separated if not divorced) make a fuss, I will let them know that it is due to his responsibility, not mine.  I don't feel any closeness to them whatsoever-it feels like he threw our relationship away.

    So I disagree with the PPs who think you should have automatically invited your brother to your wedding anyway.  He probably doesn't care one way or the other, but it sounds like your parents and other relatives care.  I don't believe that weddings are the time for patching up bad relationships-if anything, they aggravate bad situations between people.  If you want to "be the bigger person" and "kiss and make up," do it independently of your wedding.  Don't do it for the sake of inviting someone to your wedding to make third parties happy, especially if the relationship stops right afterward.  Sometimes those third parties need to accept that their view of the relationship is not the same as yours and live and let live.
  • @AddieL73...Ah...now I know where I get my red hair from! ;) Thanks for your advice. Right now, I dont seem to care about losing him. I feel like I lost him years ago regardless of our time when he was with me. I do, usually, believe and act like the bigger person, and also find joy in it. I really dont know what to do even though I thought I did.

    @CMG...I agree! :) ((group hug))

    @ Jen, I really am sorry for your experience and admire your determination in not letting others influence your decision/feelings. I agree with you and had hoped the "kissing and making up" would have happened before and independent of the wedding.

    Thank you all for taking the time to read my posts and sharing your thoughts/advice. I know it was a long post but it felt really amazing to get it all out...it helped me to even organize my thoughts. Much appreciation!


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  • Whether you're particularly invested in maintaining (or reestablishing?) the relationship or not, you invited them to the shower. Even though they didn't attend, you still invited them. It's considered rude to invite people to pre-wedding events (especially of the gift giving kind) and then not invite them to the wedding itself without something DRASTIC occurring in between (and not being as in touch as you'd like, IMO, does not qualify).

    I think etiquette dictates that you send an invite. Whether or not you continue to make an effort after the fact is up to you, but I don't think it'll shed the best light upon you if you invite these people to your bridal shower, but then don't extend an invite to the wedding itself; lack of communication notwithstanding. And this has nothing to do with him being your brother. That's irrelevant to me. I invited just 4 family members to my wedding. No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no grandparents, nothing. So I'm not of the mind that family is untouchable. That being said, I am of the mind that verbal invites must be followed through on, in the absence of extreme extenuating circumstances, and thus, I'd highly suggest sending an invite. I can't see what harm it'd do.
  • Whether you're particularly invested in maintaining (or reestablishing?) the relationship or not, you invited them to the shower. Even though they didn't attend, you still invited them. It's considered rude to invite people to pre-wedding events (especially of the gift giving kind) and then not invite them to the wedding itself without something DRASTIC occurring in between (and not being as in touch as you'd like, IMO, does not qualify).

    I think etiquette dictates that you send an invite. Whether or not you continue to make an effort after the fact is up to you, but I don't think it'll shed the best light upon you if you invite these people to your bridal shower, but then don't extend an invite to the wedding itself; lack of communication notwithstanding. And this has nothing to do with him being your brother. That's irrelevant to me. I invited just 4 family members to my wedding. No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no grandparents, nothing. So I'm not of the mind that family is untouchable. That being said, I am of the mind that verbal invites must be followed through on, in the absence of extreme extenuating circumstances, and thus, I'd highly suggest sending an invite. I can't see what harm it'd do.
    This is how I feel.  Take the brother element out of it. You made a verbal invite by asking he be in the wedding AND invited half the couple to a pre-wedding gift-giving event.   Etiquette says you still invite them.






    What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests.  Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated. 
  • Etiquette says you send an invite. That's all, just send an invite for your own sake of knowing you did the proper thing and that you are, in fact, the bigger and better person. Feel the weight lifted from your shoulders when you drop that envelope into the mailbox.

    If I were in your position, however, I may have a hard time finding it in me to be the bigger person. I, like several PPs, have estrangements from many of my family members and I would never ever ever invite them to my funeral, much less my wedding. My ex-FI always used to pressure me into mending fences because THEY'RE YOUR FAMILY AFTER ALL but he didn't understand that sharing some DNA doesn't entitle someone to a relationship with me. I tried to tell him, they're not my family, we're just related. It's hard hearing people tell you who you should and should not have relationships with. Do what's right for you and your emotional health.
  • Etiquette says you send an invite. That's all, just send an invite for your own sake of knowing you did the proper thing and that you are, in fact, the bigger and better person. Feel the weight lifted from your shoulders when you drop that envelope into the mailbox.

    If I were in your position, however, I may have a hard time finding it in me to be the bigger person. I, like several PPs, have estrangements from many of my family members and I would never ever ever invite them to my funeral, much less my wedding. My ex-FI always used to pressure me into mending fences because THEY'RE YOUR FAMILY AFTER ALL but he didn't understand that sharing some DNA doesn't entitle someone to a relationship with me. I tried to tell him, they're not my family, we're just related. It's hard hearing people tell you who you should and should not have relationships with. Do what's right for you and your emotional health.
    I agree that just because you are blood family doesn't mean it's an automatic invite.

    However, inviting the brother should have been decided BEFORE the shower invites went out.  As far as I'm concerned when you send out the shower invite you are saying you want them at the wedding also.      I understand the SIL didn't bother RSVPing.   She might be just a bitch like that, but not a good enough reason to removed them from the wedding list IMO.

    Had the OP said "I'm not sure if I should invite my brother " and the shower invites had not been already sent to the SIL I would have had different advice.






    What differentiates an average host and a great host is anticipating unexpressed needs and wants of their guests.  Just because the want/need is not expressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't be appreciated. 

  • LAM2228 said:

    @ Jen, I really am sorry for your experience and admire your determination in not letting others influence your decision/feelings. I agree with you and had hoped the "kissing and making up" would have happened before and independent of the wedding.

    Thank you all for taking the time to read my posts and sharing your thoughts/advice. I know it was a long post but it felt really amazing to get it all out...it helped me to even organize my thoughts. Much appreciation!

    You're welcome.  Unfortunately, I probably will have to invite him, his kids, and whoever he might be in a relationship with to make my parents happy, because I can see them threatening not to be there if I don't. 

    Also, if your brother was invited to a shower for you, then etiquette does require that you invite him to the wedding.
  • I agree with the etiquette surrounding the shower invite. Trust me, when she was invited, I was not very pleased...then to find out later that she didnt even RSVP...grrrr! Thanks everyone. Honestly, I'm not so worried about the "etiquette" or the after math of not being proper. Etiquette also dictates that if one commits to being a groomsman, then one should (baring extenuating circumstance). Having said this, I know that 2 wrongs do not make a right. I just have to decide what I can live with and at the moment, my bad etiquette, I can live with. Being the "bigger person" I can live with also! :) Hence, the dilemma!

    tinkerbell gif photo: Tinkerbell stuck in keyhole animated gif Peterpan2_coince9e.gif
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