Dear Newsweek, my son and his fiancée chose to have a destination wedding at Disney World, but partly due to the cost, I couldn’t attend.
The couple decided they didn’t want to get married locally. They felt the people who loved them would be willing to take vacation days and spend a great deal of money to attend their wedding. I admit I had a very low opinion of that expectation.
A busybody decided it was her place to tell a friend of the bride’s mother that I wasn’t going. She, in turn, told the mother. I hadn’t planned on telling my son until just before the wedding. I didn’t want to interfere with their plans.
My son said they would pay for my airline ticket and hotel, but still I told him I wouldn’t be attending.
With uncontrolled spending, his father drove us into bankruptcy court for well over $100,000. When he was younger, I’d had conversations with my son about his own problems with spending, and trying to get him to see where it could lead.
Additionally, the bride had lamented to my oldest son about her fiancé never having any money. No matter how much I tried to get him to see what uncontrolled spending could do, it never sank in. No way could I take part in putting them into the financial distress his father put us into.
To say what his father had done was a terrible experience would be an understatement. Going through bankruptcy was embarrassing and heart-breaking. I’m still dealing with PTSD from it, and that was 1998. I did not want to be part of that possibly happening to them.
His little sister was also in college, which I was helping pay for—her father was not. She doesn’t drive so I drove her back and forth to classes at the local community college. She had classes the day of the wedding, so she couldn’t attend either. She messed up her first semester of college so there was no way she could miss any classes and risk failing them too. Her having to repeat that semester had been a financial strain for me.
My estranged husband and son’s father, was always one to try and make me look bad. He’s said I didn’t go to their wedding because I hate Florida.
No one took into consideration that not only couldn’t I afford it, but I also wasn’t physically able to make the trip. A half mile down the road and my back is killing me. I have fibromyalgia, so I get pain from that.
My husband, daughter, oldest son, the newlyweds, her parents, my brother-in-law, his two adult children, and his grandchild—all from out of town—got together at a local restaurant recently. My estranged husband gleefully told me I wasn’t invited. My daughter didn’t attend the wedding either, but she wasn’t ostracized. I haven’t had any contact with my son in almost three years. What should I do?
