Bride Asks If She Can Exclude 98-Year-Old Grandma From Her Wedding Because She Wants A 'Party Atmosphere'
The elderly woman has always wanted to see her grandchild get married.
HONG SON / Pexels Having a living grandparent as an adult is a precious gift. But one woman wasn’t really feeling the love and appreciation for her fiancé’s 98-year-old grandmother when it came to inviting her to the couple’s wedding reception.
In a story shared on the AITA (Am-I-The-A—hole) subreddit, the 28-year-old soon-to-be bride expressed her hesitation about including the family matriarch in her post-nuptial celebration.
The post from 2021 started by saying that the woman was preparing to get married to her 30-year-old fiancé the following month. Everything had been going well until they got into a heated argument about whether or not his grandmother, who had been blessed to live to 98, should be invited.
Photo: Jelena Red Riding Hood / Shutterstock
“We've agreed to not have kids at our wedding, as we want the reception to be a huge party for your adult friends and family with dancing, loud music, and an open bar,” she said. Because of the expected “party atmosphere” at the reception, she thought it would be best if the elderly woman left after vows were exchanged and skipped the reception.
As expected, her future husband was taken aback by her insistence that his grandmother be left out of the celebration.
His grandmother had “dreamed about being at her grandson's wedding” and being that he was the eldest of her grandchildren, it was important to her. “She probably won't make it to the next family wedding,” the poster said.
Her fiancé and his potentially uninvited grandma insisted that she reconsider, but the woman felt that the grandmother would be “too out of place” and believed that should she attend, the couple would end up caring for her on their special day.
“I just want to get drunk and let loose with my friends,” the woman explained. “She's now really upset and won't talk to me, and my fiancé is also angry. I think I am within my [rights] to make this request, I am the bride after all.”
Photo: carlesmiro / Shutterstock
The woman was naturally and overwhelmingly thought to be in the wrong for trying to exclude such an important person from the once-in-a-lifetime event.
One person said, “She’s been a grown adult longer than you’ve been alive - I’m pretty sure she can handle any tiredness and noise as she wishes. If I was your partner, I’d be noticing the red flags.”
We have heard many a story of bridezillas asking for contributions, demanding their bridesmaids lose weight, and imposing strict wedding rules on their guests. But disinviting the groom’s grandmother from his wedding reception is a whole new level of selfishness.
There are so many possibilities to deal with caring for her grandmother-in-law at the wedding. Hiring someone to help out or leaning on other family members to assist should have been some of the considerations she made before making the leap to excluding her. Her actions might genuinely be an indicator that she and her partner don’t share the same values and need to reconsider marrying.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationship, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.