Woman Accused of Not Caring About Family for Skipping Sister’s Wedding for ‘Travel’

Even after sharing her story, OP (a.k.a. the “original poster”) was slammed with so many questions that she had to return to her original post to add some context to at least try and weed out some of the reasons the YTAs (“you’re the a–hole) were flying.

It didn’t completely stop them, though.

Read on to see exactly what happened, the decisions she faced, and why Reddit got so worked up in the first place.

The woman began her story by establishing that both her sister and her fiancé are in their early 40s. They’ve been dating “many years” and have now decided to marry, a “first marriage for both.”

“But they’ve been casual about this from the get-go. They decided to get married randomly after a conversation with friends prompted it, no proposal, wanted a courthouse ceremony and just a party with their friends,” OP explained. “Our family has blown this up a bit. It seems to be moving now more towards a backyard wedding with friends and family.”

While discussing it all several months ago, OP said she and her sister discussed her availability. “I’m the only family that lives far away and I have 3 young kids, so I’m the most difficult to pin down,” OP acknowledged. She said she gave her sister dates in “no,” “maybe,” and “yes, absolutely” categories.

While her sister told her at first she was looking at the “yes” timeframes, when the “save the dates” came out, the date was on a “maybe” weekend. “I call and ask what’s up, she said her and finance also kicked dates around with friends, and this was the one that seemed to work for them so… they decided to do that,” OP wrote, explaining it as a “maybe” for her because of “other travel I have already scheduled.”

As such, she said there’s no way for her whole family to attend the wedding. According to OP, sister said, “Hey it’s okay. I want you there, but I understand.” After OP talked with her own spouse, they decided “it’s too much to navigate, too expensive to make it work, we’re not going.” She said her sister “seems fine, she keeps downplaying mom & dad making a big deal out of this, says it’s not even a wedding… yada yada.”

“I’m feeling okay but my siblings and my parents are absolutely ripping me to shreds over this,” OP concluded her initial post. “They are piling on the heaviest guilt trips, accusing me of not caring about family and s–t like that. Like I should just cancel and eat the cost of other things I’ve already paid for (and can’t get refunded) and drop thousands of dollars to fly my family to this wedding that my sister scheduled to happen on a weekend when they knew I may not be able to attend.”

Before they could even get into the nitty-gritty of who is or is not being awful here, OP was hit up with so many questions about the planning — and her general tone — that she jumped back in to add even more context. The biggest question was why she would have said “maybe” if she had unbreakable plans?

So OP explained these were more like month-long assessments. “It went like this: my sister says they want to do it before the weather cools down. This leaves us pretty much with July/Aug/Sept. I said hey July is absolutely nuts for us at work if you do it then we definitely can’t go. August, there’s some weeks that are better than others, it’s a toss up. September I’m wide open, zero conflicts. She had been saying Sept all along, that was THE month. We didn’t even talk about specific dates in Aug because she wasn’t indicating that was an option for her at that time.”

At the end of that planning session, OP was “entirely under the impression that it was going to be Sept and Aug wasn’t on the radar.” In a comment later, she explained that her sister settled on this date because her fiancé “has an old friend from college that’s out of town all the other weekend … and she just hoped I could make it work,” rather than have him pick a different weekend and deal with it.

Others called her out for appearing to be “judgy” or dismissive about the wedding in general, so OP defended this take by writing, “I’ve encouraged her from the start to block out all the family noise and just do what she wants. My dad tried to get her to change the date when I said my family couldn’t make it and I had to tell him to leave her alone and let her do what she wants. She’s been the one who didn’t want to call it a wedding, she didn’t like that it was turning into a bigger thing, told me many times they were just trying to make the parents happy by doing ‘a thing.'”

“I’m certainly wondering now if she was being honest with me about the importance of it, and my being there, it’s possible she was just trying to not to put a guilt trip on me,” OP speculated. “She knows it costs a fortune for us to fly out, that it’s a full day of travel in each direction. It’s not some 2 hour direct cheap flight for a casual weekend trip. It’s coast to coast and corner to corner with multiple flights and hours of driving to/from both departing and arriving airports.”

Once all the dust was settled and Redditors were satisfied that they understood the crux of the situation, they were ready to render their verdict … and then fight about it some more. The top post, with nearly 9K upvotes definitely saw some a-holes in the story, but it wasn’t OP and it wasn’t her sister. “Your family shouldn’t even be involved, they’re the ones creating drama where none exists,” they wrote, adding, “Enjoy your trip.”

OP said it’s her siblings putting it into her head that her sister may be being nice to not “guilt trip” her, but at the same time, wrote, “She made some comments about how my kids would have been the only kids there, that gave me the vibe that she didn’t want kids running around the backyard wedding either.”

This was a turnaround, though, as OP told another commenter her family at first “came down on my sister for picking that date, telling her to move it for me to be able to go, and I asked them to back off her because it’s her wedding. Apparently they’ve all forgotten that part as the wedding gets closer and the burden has shifted.”

One possible solution offered by Redditors was for OP to “shut that noise down in an instant by telling her family that if they pay for all the financial losses, then she can go.” The commenter then added, “sounds of crickets chirping.”

“In truth we’re the only ones in a financial position to do something like this without breaking the bank, and I think that’s why they feel comfortable pressuring us,” OP replied. “If that’s the case they’re making bold assumptions about how much money I have lying around to light on fire to go to a wedding.”

But that admission didn’t sit well with some Redditors, who took it to mean this wouldn’t be a hardship at all. “Your in a financial position that it wouldn’t break the bank but they are making bold assumptions?” marveled one commenter. “And you would consider going to your own sisters wedding as lighting money on fire? Just own up to the fact that you don’t actually want to go.”

When another commenter suggested she just go by herself. “In my house and family, you would be TA. Weddings are weddings, and worth the hassle or change of plans … You seem to have an ‘I’m allowed a pass because I’m a busy parent’ mindset. Ugh.”

OP replied, “I think that’s a completely sound point. FWIW I have in the past shown up for pretty much everything,” but others quickly noted, “You didn’t answer the question — why can’t you go alone?” OP had explained in another comment that this wasn’t a vacation. Her oldest is “going to a specialty out of state camp” and her middle child has an audition.

“You make it sound like you’re available on the wedding date but kids have stuff close on either side of it. So, hubs stays home and takes kiddos to their stuff while you go to wedding seems like the obvious move unless I’m missing something?”

While OP did not answer this follow-up, another Redditor weighed in: “She doesn’t want to. It would be a long day or two of travel, which she’d rather avoid, so she’s minimizing the importance of her sister’s wedding (they didn’t get engaged right! it’s in a backyard!) and pretending that ‘inconvenient’ is the same as ‘impossible’ because she doesn’t want to go but also needs strangers to validate her.”

Another commenter agreed, writing, “Not even impossible, just a mess. If you weren’t willing to navigate the mess you should have said so from the start.” “Exactly. Let it be a mess,” wrote still another Redditor. “It’s her sisters wedding, not a random birthday. How does that not warrant a little effort?”

OP did finally jump in and say her “dilemma” is because her work is more flexible than her husbands, meaning she’s the one who has to take each of the kids to their respective thing that weekend while her spouse stays at home with the other two kids. “If I’m gone for any part of those trips, I can’t just tag in my spouse from a different state. Whoever starts the trip, has to finish it.”

Some commenters wondered if the fact her sister is older is a factor in OP’s decision here. “She’s trying to not be a demanding bridezilla but you’re taking that as an excuse to treat your sister’s WEDDING as not that important. It’s important. It isn’t less important just because she’s not 20 and now you have kids,” wrote one Redditor. “How much inconvenience did your sister go through when you were getting married? Having kids? You really can’t attend a one day event, even if it’s by yourself without your husband and kids?”

She summed up her position in another comment, writing, “I’m left with a lovely choice of disappointing someone, either my kids, or my sister, and now my entire family apparently.” But don’t forget Reddit, too! One person also warned that she might wind up disappointing herself for missing it. “I am definitely feeling this way,” OP conceded. “I know this will be a sour subject for years to come.”

What do you think?