Writes Save the Date reader Jessa:
My boyfriend proposed in November of 2014. We finally started wedding planning and decided we’d like to have our wedding in April of 2016. We are were both very excited—until I mentioned the date to his sister, my future sister-in-law, who’s getting married that June. (She’s had her date for nearly a year; hers has been a long engagement.) She said she’s really upset that I’m pushing her out of the limelight. We’ve always been really close—I’m her maid of honor—and I’m worried that this is going to come between us. But I’m a few years older than she is (I’ll be 33 next year, she’ll be in her mid-20s) and I’m ready to start a family.
I’ve been really involved in planning her wedding, and I help as much as I can and whenever she asks. I’ve really gone out of my way for her, and I feel like she’s just being selfish in return. I’m not the type of person to steal someone’s thunder, and I’m upset that that’s how she thinks of me. So what do I do?
Here are my thoughts:
Yuck. I feel like this is the sort of thing, 10 years from now, that your sister-in-law will look back on and be like, “Wow! I was being a little bridezilla-y!” but she just doesn’t have that perspective now. Assuming she got engaged in 2013 and planned her wedding for 2016, it’s really weird/selfish that she expects to monopolize all of the limelight in a three-year stretch.
So let’s look at all your options:
You could move your wedding date to later in 2016. You could bump your wedding from April to August, or even April to October, but I feel like even that wouldn’t make her happy, since your prewedding events—engagement party, bridal shower, bachelorette—will still overlap with her wedding, so there’s still potential for limelight stealing.
You could move your date to 2015. But again, I feel like there’s still thunder-stealing potential, so I don’t think rushing to plan your wedding is worth the added stress for you.
You could move your wedding date to 2017. I’m assuming your SIL would be OK with this, but that seems incredibly selfish of her. Like you said, you want to start a family, and there are scientifically proven benefits to having kids before you turn 35. (Off the top of my head, the risk of Down syndrome increases after the mom turns 35.) I don’t believe your eggs will start shriveling on your 35th birthday, but if you do want to have two—or even more—kids, it’s obnoxious that she’d let her wedding interfere with that.
You could keep April and hope she gets over it. Honestly, brides, you get A DAY. One day. Not a season, not a two-month stretch. Certainly not calendar year. Your wedding doesn’t exist in a bubble. Other people will get married before your wedding, and other people will get married after it. If it’s not your sister-in-law, it might be your best friend or your college roommate or your cousin or a coworker. People will have babies in conjunction with your wedding, people will move and lose their jobs—people might die. Obviously your wedding is a monumentally huge part of your life right now, but that doesn’t mean it supersedes the existence of everyone you know.
If you want to get married in April—and I think you do—I think you explain to your sister-in-law that your internal clock’s a-ticking and you don’t want to hold off your wedding just to give hers breathing room on the calendar. Explain that you’ll still follow through with all of your MOH duties, and promise that you’ll be there 100 percent in the months and weeks leading up to her wedding. You could ask her when she would rather you get married, but by asking you’re opening up the can of worms where you might have to say no to her. She just can’t insist that people don’t get married in the months leading up to her wedding. She just can’t. And if she does, IMO, she’s being unreasonable. Hopefully if you continue to help her plan her wedding without commanding everyone’s attention away from her, she’ll see that soon enough.
Ladies, what do you think? Should Jessa switch her wedding date? Or keep it and hope her SIL gets over it all?
Have a wedding-y dilemma of your own? Email me!