Groom Refuses To Allow Bride's Parents At Their Wedding After She Forgives Them For Disowning Her
His anger is understandable, but this isn't his choice to make.
andreonegin | Shutterstock Parent and adult-child relationships are incredibly complicated, and they become even more so once the adult child gets married and starts making a family of their own. Add an estrangement to the mix and things become downright impossible to parse.
A man on Reddit is in this situation with his wife-to-be, whose estranged parents have come out of the woodwork now that they've heard about their wedding. As you might expect, it's kicked off quite a bit of drama.
The groom refuses to allow the bride's estranged parents to attend their wedding.
In his since-deleted Reddit post, the man explained that his wife-to-be has always had a difficult relationship with her parents, especially her very "controlling" father. He has belittled her choices all her life, and her decision to get married was no different. Her parents and her father especially insisted the groom was "not good enough" for her and their family.
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Their disapproval finally came to blows when she refused to break up with her fiance. She wouldn't call off the wedding, so they disowned her in the most shocking way possible.
"They told her she was 'dead to them' and blocked her everywhere," he wrote. "It was brutal — she was devastated, but we moved forward and built a life together."
Now the bride and her parents have reconciled, but he still doesn't want them at their wedding.
Things took quite a turn when her parents got wind of the upcoming wedding from family members. "They suddenly reached out, acting like nothing happened," he wrote, and offered to walk her down the aisle and take part in other wedding traditions.
"My fiancée, being the kindhearted person she is, is considering it because 'he’s still my dad,'" he continued, and it's a decision he is struggling to understand and accept.
"I, however, am not OK with this. I reminded her how they treated her — how they threw her away when she needed them most, and now they just get to show up like the perfect parents for a big, emotional moment," he wrote.
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That's certainly an understandable take, as is his insistence that he doesn't want her parents anywhere near their wedding. But his fiancée is pushing back. "She thinks I’m making it harder than it needs to be and that it’s her decision to make," he wrote. And of course, her parents are furious, too.
His feelings are understandable, but this is his fiancée's decision to make.
This groom's feelings are understandable, and they may even be right — it's hard to argue that her parents aren't way out of line here, and as someone who comes from parental estrangement myself, I tend to agree with the thrust of his argument.
However, it's not his relationship to manage, and his wife-to-be's feelings about her parents — that he's "still her dad" — are every bit as valid. He needs to support her in her approach to this, even if it ends up being the wrong one.
Several Redditors urged him to find a marriage and family therapist to meet with in advance of their wedding, as issues with in-laws tend to only get worse with time and have been shown to be deeply injurious to a marriage. Experts like therapists and divorce attorneys say that anecdotally, discord with in-laws can be a significant contributor to the disintegration of a marriage.
The groom is right that this situation is a disaster waiting to happen — the vitriolic history between his fiancée and her parents isn't going to disappear just because she lets her dad walk her down the aisle.
She needs to deal with the abuse she's suffered from her parents, and they as a couple need to deal with the way it's affecting their relationship, and they need to do it with the help of a professional. Simply "putting his foot down," though understandable, is not only counterproductive, it puts their mental health and marriage in long-term jeopardy.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.