Sometimes it seems weddings genuinely bring out the worst in people. For example, a woman recently posted on the Reddit forum Am I The A**hole, or AITA, looking for sympathy after telling her brother that “family means nothing to him” for going to his late girlfriend’s funeral instead of his sister’s wedding.
The original poster, or OP, explains that she was getting married in a week at the time of posting. Her brother ‘Jack’ was originally planning to attend. Still, his long-distance girlfriend, ‘Katie,’ has suddenly died in a crash. As she lived in London and Jack in America, he will be flying out to London for her funeral, which also takes place next week.
Long distance or not, Katie was clearly immensely important to Jack, him saying that he can’t risk catching a red-eye flight right after the wedding in case he misses any of the funerals, that he “needs” to go and his life is “ruined.” This means he will be unable to go to OP’s wedding.
OP’s reaction to this has frankly been absurd. “I was upset and replied he can do whatever he wants,” OP writes, “but it’s obvious family means nothing to him, and it’s my fault thinking he ever wanted to be a part of it.” Harsh words in any case, but to say to someone going to their partner’s funeral? Colossally unfeeling.
Trying to excuse herself, OP gives a few details about Jack and Katie; that they met before the pandemic when he was on a degree program in London, that they had difficulty seeing each other again because of the following COVID restrictions, and that OP only ever met Katie once.
It reads as flimsy justification to dismiss her brother’s mourning because it inconveniences her—she even says it was “strange” that he’d be serious about a long-distance relationship because “he’s always been flirty.” Yikes.
We read from the sparse information that Jack and Katie had managed to make a stressful long-distance relationship work for over three years and that OP is a massive narcissist who can’t comprehend other people’s lives, she can’t see.
OP has not written any updates or comments on her post. But, again, unsurprising—if we were getting ripped apart by the community this hard, we wouldn’t want to log back in to see it. “She was his girlfriend. Your judgment on the relationship doesn’t matter. They were in a relationship. They meant something to each other,” says one comment.
Many commenters find OP’s behavior so outrageous they can’t help but turn to dark sarcasm. “I think the exchange rate of 1 funeral equals four weddings is widely accepted, so the funeral is worth more,” says one cheeky user.
“I can’t imagine being so entitled. Even her subject line “last minute” shows how greatly inconvenienced she feels at the fact that a life has been lost,” says another, pointing out the callousness of OP’s post title—” AITA for telling my brother family means nothing to him after he said last minute he won’t be attending my wedding?” No mention of why at all, just how it affects OP personally.
It appears the only way Jack’s family tried to accommodate him was him and OP’s mother telling him to take a red-eye flight—hardly any help whatsoever. And then accuse him of not feeling anything for his family.
It seems quite the reverse to us—if OP desperately needs her brother there, she could postpone the wedding a week, maybe even offer to go to Katie’s funeral with him for emotional support. Not demand he skip out on the person he loved’s funeral to watch another couple have something he now can’t.
Most of the comments on the post settle for ripping OP a new one, but some muse philosophically about the horrifically vast number of stories on the AITA subreddit that fit into the same category: people being bizarre about weddings.
“The sheer number of AITA posts that stem from a wedding-related perceived slight is wild,” one user says. “This culture of building up weddings as MY DAY where everyone else has to treat me as the most important person in the world is tailor-made for amplifying any and all simmering family/friend beefs into destroyed relationships.”
Of course, it’s true, and it’s not always the bride being the problem either: the groom, one or more of the parents, and even an impudent guest who was part of the planning somehow can all be culprits; there’s just something about weddings that turns people into egotistical monsters.
HIS STONE COLD GREED. WIFE TRAGICALLY LOSES HER PARENTS BUT HER HUSBAND DEMANDS INHERITANCE
Source: Reddit