Dear Prudence,
I understand family, especially stepfamilies, can be messy, but I am worried about my fiancée.
We have been together three years, and she has never minced around that she hated her ex-stepmother, “Terry,” and was glad the day the divorce was final.
Her older brothers don’t feel the same way and have been in contact with Terry and her family for this past decade. I thought it was all just casual, getting together for games and such.
Well, my fiancée’s brother got married recently, and Terry and her family were included, to the point that the grandparents were toasted for footing the honeymoon to Fiji. It was a pretty grand affair. This caught my fiancée off-guard and she has been flaming-out ever since.
We both still have student loans, and our parents have told us that they don’t have a lot of money for the wedding, so our budget is pretty small. My fiancée keeps bringing up how “unfair” everything is and how Terry somehow cheated her out of a dream wedding. I have caught her stalking Terry on social media and making negative comments. Worst of all, she is picking fights with her brothers and father. It is so bad that one called her a bridezilla to her face and the other blocked us both on social media.
My fiancée and I make our bills, but our salaries are decidedly lower than her brothers’, as both are in finance. I don’t get what is going on and my fiancée refuses to discuss it. We should be talking about our future together, but she is obsessing over a past that ended when she was in high school. I have pushed for counseling and she said I was calling her crazy. What is the right move here?
—Wedding Weird