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A groom disinvited his father and stepmother from his wedding after they pressured him to change his mind about allowing parent-child dancing at the reception.
“I (26M) am getting married and my fiancée Nella (25F) and I will not be doing the father-daughter dance or the son dance during the reception,” the husband-to-be wrote in a Reddit post shared on the popular Am I the Asshole forum.
He explained that the ceremony will include a traditional walk down the aisle, while the reception will feature a first dance for him and his bride. However, the Reddit user and his fiancée did not want any additional dances during the wedding, such as a father-daughter dance or a mother-son dance. “No one complained about it except my stepmom,” he said.
The Reddit user explained that his stepmother married his father when he was six years old. When his mother died three years later, his stepmother became his “primary caregiver.” The groom’s stepmother complained to him when she learned there would be no mother-son dance during the wedding, as she felt she deserved to be honored with a dance. She explained how she had been waiting for this moment and admitted that it hurt her not to be able to experience it with him.
“I told her that Nella and I did not want to have that moment at our wedding,” he wrote. “My stepmother asked why an exception could not be made. She said that Nella and her father did not need a father-daughter dance, but we could still have a mother-son dance.”
The groom explained that it would not be a “mother-son dance” since she was not his biological mother. “Her face when I said that showed how much it hurt her to hear that,” he added. Although the Reddit user noted that his stepmother could never replace his biological mother, she still always considered him a “son” and never a “stepson.”
When his father noticed his wife was upset, he approached the groom and asked if he could “throw his stepmother a bone” and give her that one “mom thing.” The Reddit user also claimed that his father shamed him for always keeping his stepmother “at arm’s length.”
Unfortunately, his father and stepmother wouldn’t take no for an answer and asked the groom to change his mind several times. The Reddit user was so frustrated and exhausted by their request that he spoke to his fiancée and they decided that if his parents asked him to change his mind again, they would be excluded from the wedding.
“They brought the subject up again and I stuck to what Nella and I had agreed to and told them they were no longer invited to the wedding,” he wrote. “I told them they had crossed that line. They were demanding that I add something to a wedding that is not their own and is not being funded by them in any way.”
“My stepmother asked me if I really preferred them not being there, but to have a simple dance for the two of us, where she could feel for a moment that she was more than just my stepmother,” he continued. “I told her I would prefer that and it was her own fault that she didn’t stop asking.”
While the groom’s parents accused him of becoming a version of himself they didn’t like, anonymous Reddit users argued against his parents and validated his wedding wishes.
“They almost harassed you with their persistence,” one user wrote in the comments, while another said, “They still didn’t give up after being uninvited. Instead of saying, ‘Sorry, you’re right, it’s your day,’ she insisted, ‘But I deserve recognition.'”
Someone else stressed: “This is YOUR wedding. You and your fiancée decide what will happen and you have to accept it.”
“Give them back their words,” suggested another Reddit user. “They’ve become people you don’t like at a time in your life when they should be supporting you and celebrating your connection.”
A fourth person noted: “They don’t do parent-child stuff! It’s not even personal!”
