A groom has disinvited his father and stepmother from his wedding after they pestered him to change his mind about allowing parent-child dances at the reception.
“I‘m (26M) getting married and my fiancée Nella (25F) and I aren’t doing the FOTB walks the bride down the aisle and no Father/Daughter Mother/Son dances during the reception,” the husband-to-be wrote in a Reddit post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole” forum.
He explained that the ceremony will include a traditional walk down the aisle, while the reception would feature a first dance for him and his bride. However, the Reddit user and his fiancé didn’t want any additional dances during the wedding, such as a father-daughter dance or a mother-son dance. “Nobody else had any complaints about this except for my stepmother,” he said.
The Reddit user explained that his stepmom had married his dad when he was six years old. When his mom died three years later, his stepmom became his “primary caregiver.” The groom’s stepmom complained to him after she learned that there wouldn’t be a mother-son dance during the wedding, since she felt like she deserved to be honored with a dance. She explained how she’d been waiting for the moment and admitted she was hurt that she wouldn’t get to experience it with him.
“I told her this was not a moment Nella or I wanted to have at our wedding,” he wrote. “My stepmother asked why an exception couldn’t be made. She said Nella and her father don’t need to have a Father/Daughter dance but we could still have a Mother/Son dance.
The groom explained that “it would not be a Mother/Son dance,” considering she isn’t biologically his mother. “Her face as I said this was showing how much it hurt her to hear,” he added. Although the Reddit user noted that his stepmom could never replace his biological mom, she still always considered him a “son” and never a “stepson.”
When his father noticed that his wife was upset, he reached out to the groom and asked if he could “throw my stepmother a bone” and give her this one “mom thing.” The Reddit user also claimed that his dad shamed him for always keeping his stepmom “at a distance.”
Unfortunately, his dad and stepmom wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and went on to ask the groom to change his mind multiple times. The Reddit user became so frustrated and exhausted by their request that he spoke with his fiancée, and they decided that his parents would be banned from the wedding if they asked him to reconsider one more time.
“They brought this up again and I followed through with what Nella and I agreed on and I told them they were no longer invited to the wedding,” he wrote. “I told them they had pushed this boundary, they were demanding I add something to a wedding that is not their own and is not being funded in any way by them.”
“My stepmother asked me if I’d really prefer for them not to be there over a simple dance for the two of us where she can have one moment of feeling like she gets the recognition as more than just being my stepmother,” he continued. “I told her I would prefer that and it was their own fault for refusing to stop asking.”
While the groom’s parents accused him of becoming a version of himself that they disliked, anonymous Reddit users had argued against his parents and validated his wedding wishes.
“They were almost harassing you with their insistence,” one user wrote in the comments, as another said: “They still didn’t give up after being uninvited. Instead of saying, ‘Sorry, you’re right, it’s your day,’ she doubled down, ‘but I deserve recognition.’”
Someone else pointed out: “This is YOUR wedding, you and your fiancée decide what will happen and they need to accept it.”
“Use their words back on them,” another Reddit user suggested. “They have turned into people you don’t like, and they have done it at a moment in your life that they should be supporting you and celebrating your union.”
A fourth person noted: “Youʻre not doing any parent/child stuff! Itʻs not even personal!”
