When we decided to have a wedding party, my dear Fi stepped up and said he would like to ask my two brothers to be groomsmen for him. My heart melted a little bit more that day. How awesome right? His sister is standing up for me, my brothers standing up for him...touching, tender and a nice statement to how our families have grown together.
But (there is always a but, right?) due to some strange family dynamics and issues I will not go into here, my middle brother and I have not spoken for the last 8 months.
He and his family may not come to the wedding and I am okay (really!) either way. My issue is that it took him EIGHT months to tell my Fi that he won't be in the wedding party. Yes, we knew it was a possibility and most likely, but come on, have some guts and be a man. Anyways, after a handful of email exchanges with Fi my middle brother has "stepped down" from his post.
Fi took it really hard. He feels that by middle brother stepping down it is a reflection on him. He feels like people will question why one of my brothers is up there and the other isn't or isn't even in attendance. He wasn't comfortable having 2 guys on one side and three gals on the other (even though all us readers of wedding blogs know its okay and common!) so he felt embarrassed to have to ask someone to step in and participate. These are his feelings and I recognize them, but I do not feel them and couldn't fix them. So for a week or so, we have been struggling with this.
Then last night at dinner we had a breakthrough. Fi said, "so how would you feel if I asked B to be a groomsman?" I said I thought it would be awesome.
The thing is that we had lost control over our wedding and ourselves. We lost control over a detail that had been well thought-out and important to the both of us. We had to grieve through that. We may never fully understand or accept why my brother has done what he is doing. I may always look back at my wedding day and be sad my brother didn't come (or maybe be sad that he did show up). But together, Fi and I got there and we are okay. It was a test to seeing ourselves as a team instead of "my family" or "his family".
So we will not have the wedding party we had bargained for, we won't have the wedding exactly as we planned it, but slowly we are remembering that it doesn't matter, as long as we are together.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I have never gotten along with my sister and I asked his sister to be my BM but not mine. Instead her kids are doing things.
But I am sure if I had asked her she'd have taken just as long to say no or even worse have said yes and then not shown up.
You're not alone in having not perfect happy family dynamics. And if anyone says anything about the fact my sister isn't standing up they don't know me very well.
tag!
Post a Comment