When planning a wedding, considering who to invite is a crucial step. The Knot claims that the average size of a U.S. wedding in 2023 was 115 people. Of course, a lot still depends on culture, budget, and other factors, like friend and family relationships.
This bride singled out one cousin when it came to her wedding. Because the rest of the family was invited, the young woman assumed she was, too. However, when she showed up at the ceremony, her appearance caused a scene. She sought opinions from netizens: was coming to this wedding without an official invitation so wrong?
We also reached out to the young woman in question, u/Imaginary-Active5980. The Redditor agreed to tell us more about her relationship with the now-married cousin and how the whole ordeal made her feel. Read our conversation below!
A woman "caused a scene" at her cousin's wedding after finding out she was not invited
Image credits: mstandret/Envato (not the actual photo)
She asked the internet whether her decision to show up with her family was so inappropriate
Image credits: Woodsymoss/Envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Imaginary-Active5980
The author says she and the cousin used to be very close, but something changed last year
Image credits: astrakanimages/Envato (not the actual photo)
In her original post, u/Imaginary-Active5980 writes how she and her siblings were close with the cousin as kids. "Honestly, I've always seen her as another one of my siblings," the Redditor told Bored Panda. "She's an only child and we lived 15 minutes away when we were younger, so we spent all of our time together."
Granted, they did drift apart a little bit when the cousin was a preteen, but eventually, they became even closer. "I think she guided my sister and [me] through a lot of our lives, and she was the person we went to if we needed advice," the young woman says.
The relationship remained close even when the cousin moved away for college. "We always sat next to each other at family events and would catch up on each other's lives/gossip," the Redditor says.
However, last year something changed. The women barely talked at family gatherings on Christmas, birthday parties, and Easter. At first, the author just thought it was because the cousin's boyfriend was present.
"She talked to me like my aunts or uncles or other family members, like an adult," u/Imaginary-Active5980 says. "She asked things like 'How's school?' or 'What are you doing again?' when we used to talk about our failed relationships and friend drama together. So, I guess that's when I really realized that something had changed."
"Maybe in the future, we might overcome this, but it seems unlikely," the OP says
Image credits: sloomstudio/Envato (not the actual photo)
At the moment, the author doesn't see herself reconnecting with her cousin. "I don't think I could bring myself to be around someone knowing what they think of me in their heads," u/Imaginary-Active5980 told Bored Panda.
"She talked to me like I was dirty in a way, like she was ashamed of me, and when you know that someone thinks of you like that there's no going back. But, at the same time, it will always make me sad to think about how close we used to be.
"I think I might try to fix it out of nostalgia, to go back to the relationship we had," the author admits. "Although, I don't think that could happen realistically," she adds immediately. "And I know that I don't want to be around her husband and in-laws if their opinion of gay people is so low she couldn't even let them know she had a gay cousin."
However, the women most probably will be seeing each other at family gatherings. The author says it will probably be only polite handshakes and sitting at the same table. "Maybe in the future, we might overcome this, but it seems unlikely," she admits.
The author has two theories about why the cousin would decide to cut her off so suddenly
Image credits: nenetus/Envato (not the actual photo)
The OP has two hypotheses regarding why her cousin decided to exclude her from the wedding. The first one is that she always felt uncomfortable with the OP's sexual orientation to some degree.
"If you strongly disagree with someone's view, and if you truly care about your family member, the right thing to do would've been [to] stand up for me, and not exclude me to please her husband and his family," the OP believes.
"So, I'd assume maybe she didn't disagree with him that much and had always felt uncomfortable about my sexual orientation. But then I remembered how much she supported me when I first told her, and how she helped me come out to my parents and it seemed genuine," the author points out the discrepancy.
"So, my second hypothesis is [that] maybe she is so infatuated with her husband that she'd do anything to please him and make sure that he doesn't leave her, including what she did. Maybe she'd even cut off her parents if he asked her to," u/Imaginary-Active5980 theorizes.
"That seems plausible to me because she's always been sort of a people pleaser, so maybe she wants him to like her and that's why she excluded me," the Redditor says. "I'm sort of torn between these two answers; either she really wanted to please her new family, or she had always felt that way and took that as an opportunity to get me out of her life."
"There isn't even one second where we considered the possibility that I wasn't invited," the OP wrote in the comments
Most netizens agreed that the bride was the AH for her bigotry
However, others thought that the author should've checked whether she was really invited and blamed her for causing a scene
