Wedding dynamics can produce the potential for a wedding guilt trip to be thrust upon you. The advent of social media only multiplied the guilt potential.
A couple we know planned a very large rehearsal dinner the night before their wedding. The restaurant accommodated 65 people. Any more would violate the city’s fire code. The guest list was set. Sure enough, the night before the dinner, an aunt of the groom called pushing (very aggressively) to allow her son (groom’s cousin) to attend.
What do you do? Simple, state the facts. The groom calmly stated,
“I’d love to have him attend, but there is physically no available space. The restaurant is tiny and we’ve taken over the whole place. And if we did, the fire marshal would cart me off to jail and make me miss my very own wedding.
You don’t want me to miss my own wedding, do you aunty?”
Okay, maybe the last sentence was unnecessarily snarky, but you get the idea. Stay calm. Hold your ground. It’s YOUR wedding.
A Bride writes to Miss Manners
Miss Manners had a recent bride write in with a different situation.”
“Years ago, my fiance and I were planning our wedding when one of our parents passed away. We put the entire thing on hold, and then occasionally talked of getting married — for the next 25 years. We finally decided to have a small ceremony, with a guest limitation set by the venue. It was delightful, and just what we wanted.”
So where did the wedding guilt-trip come into play? The bride sent out a wedding announcement to friends and family thinking everyone would be thrilled that she finally tied the knot with her longstanding partner. But rather than congratulations, she received back comments like:
“Well, I thought we were closer,”Â
and …
“You should have told us ahead of time”Â
andÂ
“I guess you don’t need anything from us.”
In other words, they tried to make her feel guilty. How do handle it? As Miss Manners said,
“Miss Manners can only tell you that she is as appalled at this as you are.”
Ask yourself: “Did I do anything wrong? If not, ignore the barbs. No need to be a guilt catcher. Focus on the joy of your new marriage.
Over at Reddit weddings, you can imagine the wedding guilt-trip potential.
“I got absolutely DRAGGED when I showed photos of the monastary I was getting married at. It has a lot of long slopping steps coming up to it. It’s on the side of a mountain, but you can take a cab to the front steps. It’s incredibly historical and important to our religion and after posting it on here you would have thought I decided to make my guests run a marathon before the wedding. People told me I was ableist for not having a disability accessible wedding.”
This despite the fact that no disabled person would be in attendance.
The bride-to-be received a couple of hundred reactions on the thread, most of them critical of her. It was just a couple of months before her wedding, and she was devastated by the reaction.
When all was said and done, her guests loved the venue and the entire event.
The bride’s mistake was in posting it online in the first place. Guilt-trippers lurk everywhere on social media. Don’t put yourself in a position of letting strangers drag you down.
Instead, focus on what will lift you up. And one of those things is your wedding entertainment. When you see how Columbus Pro DJs packs your dance floor, every little wedding day glitch gets quickly forgotten. Music and fun unite your guests while honoring the significance of marriage. Check us out.
