Groom grabs bride and leaves reception early after SIL gets proposed to at reception.
Self-centered family members have a way of ruining everything in their path.
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man asked if he was wrong for leaving his wedding reception early after his SIL ruined the reception. He wrote:
"AITA for taking my wife and leaving the wedding reception early?"
My wife and I got married this December. We've been together for 7 years and I really wanted to give her the dream wedding she wanted. Both me and my wife were heavily involved in the wedding and up until the reception, it was the best day of our lives. My wife is very shy and non- confrontational. She wasn't hard on anyone about gifts, dresses, kids etc.
We had a few simple rules like don't wear white and don't do anything to take the attention from the bride and groom. Then, during the reception her sister walks in, dressed in this little white dress with her boyfriend (she was late and had missed the actual wedding completely).
Their mom went up on the stage and on the mic requested everyone to pay attention to Bella (the sister) and there her bf got down on one knee and proposed. As you can guess, suddenly, all the attention was on Bella. Their mother still screaming "my sweet daughter" on the mic. No one had warned or even asked us before doing this.
I was angry but my wife was just sitting in her seat trying not to cry. We hadn't even started the wedding speeches for us or cut the cake yet and now all her family could think about was Bella. After about 20 minutes of her family just ignoring us and basically stopping the reception to drink and take pictures with the "new" bride to be, I was done. My wife just said she wanted to leave while trying to stop her tears.
I told my parents and our mutual friends to wrap up the party and took my wife and left. No one from her family stopped us. She cried the whole way to the hotel. After about 2 hours, our phones started blowing up and I shut our phones to hopefully get some sleep. The day after, we left for our honeymoon and celebrated New Years in Kashmir.
We didn't talk to anyone except my parents. We returned home last weekend and my wife's mother and sister came to visit. They were mad at us for leaving our wedding and embarrassing them. My wife just told them to leave and went up to her room, locking herself in.
When my MIL turned to me, I said she was a horrible mother for doing this to her daughter and she can forget about contacting us for the foreseeable future. Bella called me an AH for ruining the party for everyone and I called her an attention seeking b#$ch in return.
Now some of our friends and relatives are saying they understand we were hurt but that it was wrong to leave the party altogether. So, AITA?
Redditors jumped on with all of the thoughts.
Left-Banana-8275 wrote:
NTA The fact is, it was your wedding. You get to chose when to leave your own wedding and that is it. I am so sorry to hear of your wife's experience on your wedding day. Her family sound like they can't stand the attention on anyone else and immediately got defensive about their actions.
Your wife has you to validate her feelings and support her choices. In all honesty, if it were my family, I would cut them out completely at this stage.
OP responded:
I wanted to kick them out the second Bella walked in a white dress. My wife kept telling me to "let them be" while I could see her beginning to break down into tears. So I decided to take her and leave.
Signal-Load-37 wrote:
Announce a pregnancy at their wedding. It doesn't even have time be real. Just take ALL the attention off them in return.
puffy-the-dragon wrote:
NTA. Thank you for looking after your wife and standing up for her. Please go no contact with these people and move away if possible. If the wedding was this bad, it spells trouble for future events especially when there is kids involved.
Also keep in mind your wife just came to realization that her family is full of narcissistic pricks and is currently grieving the loss of a life she always believed she had. That in itself is an earth shattering revelation. Please be patient with her, and help her get therapy to start the healing process. Please keep us updated and give your wife and yourself a hug from an internet stranger.
SilverShadzBandit wrote:
First off:: Congratulations
Secondly:: NTA.
Bella and MIL stole the day and made it about the other (more successful and beautiful wonderchild probably) when it was supposed to be your wife and your day to celebrate.
The fact that no one in their family noticed your absence for several hours is saying enough of what they think about and care for you as persons and a couple. You are doing the right thing by removing those influences from your life, they will probably just keep dragging down your wife mentally while claiming they are just “trying to help, you know.”
OP is NTA here, but Bella and his in-laws are major ones.