Whose Wedding Is It Anyways? PART ONE

My wedding planning has taken off recently at very brisk place whether its booking venues, taking meetings, DYO tasks, or finalizing the guest list and wedding party, im definitely in the thick of it now.  And im noticing a disturbing trend in my planning that seems to be gaining more and more momentum. At first I didn’t really notice the subtle comments or the strong suggestions pushing me one way or another until there was a small nuclear meltdown within my family, allow me to explain.

I have an aunt who  struggles with some very mild mental disabilities. She is a very strong minded, kind and loving woman but her mental frame of mind is that of about a 7 year old child with a 40 year old womans vocabulary, if that makes any sense. She is not fully handicapped by any means, she goes out, she shops, she does things just like your or I do except she is a little slower than most people. She and I have never really had a close relationship other than a few Christmases at Grandma’s house from my child hood where she was in attendance. But I almost never saw her and still don’t really feel like I know her all that well. In the past year or so her life has taken a number or very turbulent ups and down (which I wont go into here) and both of my parents have stepped up to the plate and taken her under their wing to see to it that she has a very nice place to live, she is in good health and always loved and cared for. The other side of this is that she can be a very difficult woman who requires constant supervision and has to be told what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior and when something (even the tiniest of things) makes her unhappy or goes wrong she call my parents endlessly.

About 5 months ago my Dad and I were talking about her and how difficult she can be sometimes and my father said “I don’t know that we would necessarily invite her. Im not sure that we would be able to juggle the wedding stuff and her needs”.

So I was working on a finalized guest list about a week ago and I texted my mother that I needed some family addresses and her list of personal guests. At the tail end of the message I added that I hadn’t planned on inviting my aunt (as previously discussed with my father). She messaged me back somewhat distressed and I explained that I didn’t see how we would have time to do everything needed for her to attend such as pick her up at the airport, make sure she had a hotel, pick her up, take her home, and make sure she behaved at the wedding, and that I didn’t really want to have to worry about sharing my parents that week. She said she would delegate a family member to be in charge of  her, which made me nervous, and I asked for some time to think about it. She got very upset which made my father very upset, which made him call and pose two ultimatums to me.

The first was that my Aunt would be coming and the second was that my brother had to be at a minimum co-officiant or they weren’t going to pay for anything or attend.