Bridesmaid Anxiety

[iloveglee]

I have a tricky family issue landed in my lap and am seeking insights from you good people out there.

My daughter has three daughters, the middle one is getting married next year and has asked her sisters plus a couple of friends to be bridesmaids. The older sister has very bad anxiety associated with body dysphoria and feels she cannot cope with being a bridesmaid, although initially agreed. The bride to be is trying to emotionally manipulate her sister to do it by saying if she cared she’d put her anxiety aside for the day.

The older sister is saying if you cared you’d not try to put me through this. So it’s a standoff. The irony is the bride to be also has anxiety but for different reasons. You’d think she’d have more empathy but, much as I love her to bits, I fear she’s going to be a bit of a bridezilla.

My fear is the older one will reluctantly go ahead, and melt down on the day and just not go at all. Which they’d both live to regret. They’ve had a love/hate relationship since childhood and I’d hate to see this destroy what they do have. I don’t see how to help really. Maybe someone out there has had a similar situation?

[andy-hughes]

Weddings mean grief - all the involved parties can do is try to minimise it, and understand that a wedding without grief has never, and will never exist.

In your particular circumstance, maybe from the distance of being a grandmother, you can offer some sage advice without getting into the minutia of immediate relationships.

Ask the bride to dial down the insistence, you understand how she feels, but trying to pressurise her sister is having the opposite effect.

Tell the reluctant bridesmaid that although she feels like she will be a figure of attention, and is stressing because of it, it is her sister the bride who will be the focus, and all everyone will be thinking of her as a bridesmaid is how lovely she looks supporting her sister.

Hopefully the combination of those viewpoints will decrease the pressure from one sister, and release the pressure from the other.

Failing that, there is little you can do except let things take their course, as hard as that may be.

Good luck x.

[anneasquith]

Tell the bride, her sister with the anxiety issue could potentially ruin her wedding without even trying.
The sister needs support not grief. As her mother you should be supporting your daughter .( with the anxiety)

[anneasquith]

She .

[Canary42]

///Weddings mean grief - all the involved parties can do is try to minimise it, and understand that a wedding without grief has never, and will never exist. ///

What a sad and bitter cynical view, and one certainly not present in my experience.

[pastafreak]

Anne, I believe iloveglee is referring to her granddaughters, not her own daughter.

[wolf63]

As granny of the bride you probably can the situation clearly. Your instincts are probably right, the reluctant bridesmaid will make herself ill with worry about being a bridesmaid.

I don't understand why her sister is making such a big deal of wanting her sister to be her bridesmaid. It could all go wrong on the day.

Bridezilla needs to chill and her sister should say "no" and refuse any further discussion.

Families!!!

[johnk]

I'm with Ilove on this one, well said. From the outside all weddings look wonderful but there's plenty of grief inside.

[dave50]

Anxiety issues? You mean she is nervous and shy of being a bridesmaid. Always has to be a medical label put on everything.

[iloveglee]

So many insights for which I am grateful. Sorry maybe I didn't make it clear, these are grand-daughters. The oldest one has body dysmorphia which is a mental illness, not just shyness and nervous. I understand because, always being overweight from a child, no matter how much weight I lost I always (and still do), look in the mirror and see a fat person. She sees an ugly person, no one else does, but covers herself, mostly in black, as I have always done. Now I have reached the grand old age of 74, frankly I couldn't care less but it took me a fair number of years to get here. Being a bridesmaid would have been my worst nightmare as well.

I have always had a good relationship with all of them, and hope that somehow I can mediate between them, maybe some kind of compromise. I agree that the bride to be is getting totally, and un-necessarily screwed up about the whole thing, and definitely needs reminding that this is a marriage, not just a wedding, and it's not 'her' day as she keeps telling us, it's 'their' day. I am yet to hear her fiance's take on all this, but I will.

Fortunately, it's still some months to go before the big day, plenty of time to hopefully sit down and get some sense from them. And yes, I am very much of the view that 'if things can go wrong, they probably will', and it will be these things that you'll remember and laugh about in years to come. But oh, how impossible it is to put old (and wiser) heads on young shoulders.

[roopower]

What a shame that some weddings have problems to sort out. Its a relief that my daughters wedding - costing about half of the going rate - went so well, apart from the organist playing the wrong wedding march! I think all you can do is sit down with the bride calmly and quietly and talk it over with her. It sounds like the love/hate relationship has bubbled to the surface. Put it to her that it would be better to have her sister at the wedding as a guest than maybe her backing out on the day as a bridesmaid, with all the costs that involves.( dress, shoes, hair and makeup etc)

[iloveglee]

It is sad that such a supposedly happy occasion can be rife with such angst. But where families are concerned, and ours is a big one, these things happen. I have seen the dresses, they are lovely but the older sister, never could I imagine her in anything like that, even on her sister's wedding day!! I know that the Bride can say this is what I want, and if the bridesmaids don't like it, they can just suck it up or bow out gracefully. However, bowing out gracefully doesn't seem to be the OK thing to do either.

We have reached a stage where the two of them cannot even speak to each other rationally about this. They are entrenched in their respective positions and neither is minded to budge. I am considering sending my husband in to mediate between them, his job was a full time Trade Union Officer I can't even begin to count the number of times he has had to negotiate between recalcitrant employers and employees refusing to even talk. I can't ever remember a time when a compromise didn't happen, eventually!!

There is a compromise to be had here, I'm sure of it. In the past, when they were kids, we have used the talking stick when there has been falling out between them so it might have to come out again. Not to beat them with I hasten to add.

[MargoTester]

Your post at 9.45 says it all really. Take the bride to one side and explain exactly what you have said there and ask her if she would rather have her sister as a very special guest or a complete wreck who may have a meltdown and 'ruin' the whole day.

[andres]

It's just not worth all the hassle and dramatics. The one who is being married should respect her sisters decision not to be a bridesmaid. Why don't you get your daughter to step in and talk to all three girls. There are lots of things that the older girl could do. Writing place names ,arranging table flowers , greeting guests etc. etc. Make her feel involved without being ''on show''. I'm sure that you could think of lots of things for her to help with.

[iloveglee]

My daughter has tried talking to the two of them. One says you always take her side. The other says … you’ve guessed it … you always take her side. And she can see both sides.

For sure there is a compromise here, we just need the win win situation. It needs a bit of work. And mega amounts of patience. Girls!!! If it was boys they’d just lay into each other, then shake hands and agree to differ.

[albaqwerty]

Would the anxious bridesmaid be a ring-bearer? She gets a brief co-starring role and bride gets her beloved sister an important part? x

[albaqwerty]

Ring bearer instead of bridesmaid I meant

[andy-hughes]

Canary - // ///Weddings mean grief - all the involved parties can do is try to minimise it, and understand that a wedding without grief has never, and will never exist. ///

What a sad and bitter cynical view, and one certainly not present in my experience. //

It's none of those things!

In my vast experience as a wedding DJ, I have been present at hundreds of evening receptions, and the overwhelming relief when I talk to those closely involved, is that all the grief - and by that I simply mean the strain of arranging and sorting, which sometimes, but by no means always, involves some diplomacy with relatives - is all over.

When I use the term 'grief', it's a catch-all for everything that needs to be dealt with, from making sure there are no last-minute unforeseen hitches, to making sure the bride and groom's fathers don;t fall out because they don;t get on, and everything in between.

On that basis, I stand by my observation that any and all weddings involve minor, and occasionally major issues, but all of them have issues, because it is not possible to arrange a wedding (unless you elope!) without them.

If I gave the impression that I think every wedding ends in tears, then that was not my intention, I have yet to see a wedding, including mine, and all of my daughters', that did not end very happily at the end of the day.