My sister and I have had a strained long distance relationship for many years. I moved to a city 20 hours away from my home town to attend university, and have been living here ever since. I come from a hugely dysfunctional family and since moving away I have made many wonderful friends and met my amazing fiancee. I don't have a lot of contact with my family but I love them and miss them and want them to be a part of my wedding.
My fiancee asked me to marry him more than three years ago and we did not start to plan the wedding until recently. At the time my fiancee first asked me, I told my sister that she could be the MOH. I figured that even though we are not close and she has never been my biggest cheerleader, it was the thing to do. When I began planning the wedding my sister didn't really want to discuss it (I feel that she is probably very jealous) and it became increasingly difficult to feel good about the event with no support system near by or over the phone. She was so negative and nonsupporting of any of the choices I was making, and acting almost as if I was obligated to cater to her opinions and not my own.
I had no idea how hard it would be to plan a wedding without my family close to me. Going to dress shops alone and seeing the pity on the salespeople's faces when I said, no, my mother will not be by to see the dress. My FI and I decided fairly early on that we were not going to have a traditional wedding party, as I hate the matching dresses stuff and we didn't want to single any friend or family member out as being more important to us than another. We decided that it would just be a MOH and a BM, as we needed them to sign the paperwork. Throughout the preliminary planning stages my best friend stepped up to do all the bitch work with me with a positive attitude, enthousiasm and support. I decided that I wanted her to be the MOH because she is physically and emotionally here for me, and she is so excited. This decision was not a slight at my sister, but the best choice for me and my wedding. After all, there is no MOH internship, and I can't expect my friend to do all the work without giving her the honour.
My sister lost it when I told her. I do accept that I let her down and that I hurt her, and I truly feel bad about that. Just because we chose not to have a wedding party does not mean that I did not include my sister in the ceremony, and always intended to do so. She, along with my brother and my fiancee's two brothers were asked to carry the chuppah at the start of the ceremony, which all have accepted with pleasure, except my sister.
She has been pleading with me and guilt tripping me in extremely abusive and manipulative ways to try and get me to change my mind. She has pulled every dirty trick out of her bag and thrown it at me, always relating the source of her hurt feelings back to her experience of this event and the sad fact that she believes I don't love her. I said that no role I gave her in the wedding other than the one she wants will make her happy and she needs to get over that because it's not going to happen. It also boggles my mind a little because she has never bothered to try and get to know my fiancee, so why does she care so much about our day?
Last week, she sent me an e mail stating she would not participate in the ceremony because the custom “meant nothing to her” and that she will not attend the wedding. She also expressed that she no longer wanted to have a relationship with me and closed with “see you at the next funeral.” Frankly, after all the drama, I think I would prefer for her to not attend. (I have had a couple of dreams where she misbehaves at the wedding that have freaked me out a little. In one she threw a glass of red wine all over the front of my dress.) If the tables were turned and she didn't include me in her wedding, I would respect any decision she made and help out in whatever way she needed me to. I don't need to be her MOH to know that she loves me, but I guess she needs a title, a bad dress and some flowers to believe I love her, and that to me is truly sad. This situation has definitely put a cloud over the event for me but in the end, I just want her to come and celebrate with us. It is going to be a great party and I think the only person who is going to regret her choice is her. I do have a feeling that at the last minute she will decide to attend and everyone (my family) will praise her for being such a good sister for showing up. I feel like this is her last attempt to try and get me to change my mind, but I'm sticking to my guns. At this point she has caused me so much pain over my own wedding that I don't want her to stand up for me because someone who loves me would accept my decision with grace.
Do you think I did the right thing?
