Our daughter is getting married for the third time and demands we pay for her wedding again

i should start by saying that my daughter is an only child she has always been our princess so to speak and she's received everything material that a girl could ask for before you criticize my husband her father and i for spoiling her we do realize that we shouldn't have given her everything from a young age but we didn't know any better back then and we had the money we are quite well off so we figured why not support our only child my husband owns his own business and i'm a school teacher together we make decent money and i'm looking to retire in the near future when we first started out i stayed at home and my husband worked an office job and so my daughter has been pampered with all of my attention and her father's support she is now going to be married for the third time in her short life her only job is occasionally supply teaching in the same school board i work at so she doesn't have much of a big career yet but i do hope she will find work i'll spare you the long of it she married her high school boyfriend at 22 years old and they divorced less than two years later in a bitter fight the wedding was lavish as it was her first and we truly believed that they would make it work i guess my husband and i also saw through rose-colored glasses since we were married very young as well and are approaching our 35th anniversary my husband and i pitched in around 25 000 for the wedding ceremony and reception and perhaps another three thousand dollars for their honeymoon to europe the second time she was proposed to buy another man she was dating he was a hard-working blue-collar man but his family didn't have much money again she asked if we could help out with her wedding that it was true love this time around we met the man and he was a stand-up wholesome person and so a year after that my daughter then 27 was married to this second husband we paid for most of the wedding costs and the honeymoon to the tune of 43 thousand dollars her then husband's mother was a nurse and his father was a deadbeat they didn't provide much when it came to the wedding itself and i admit the husband and i did harbour ill will toward the fact that her husband's father's name was clearly printed on the reception and invitations as a generously contributing member of the wedding party but that's another story and they divorced because of money issues less than three years later we tired by this time forked over money for her divorce costs and tried to regroup our finances we do have a comfortable nest egg saved up for our post-retired life i would like to travel the world and maybe buy a small lake house with my husband he also enjoys woodworking as a hobby but now my daughter who has begun dating another man has excitedly showed us that she is engaged once again the man in question proposed less than a year into their dating and she is elated more than anything because after her second divorce she didn't think any man would want her anymore my daughter has hinted at wedding costs and brings home bridal magazines and ideas for cakes and dresses and venues and i want to be happy for her happiness but there's a voice inside me that is screaming enough we have spent almost over 140 000 of my husbands and my money for my daughter's two failed marriages wedding reception honeymoon costs divorce costs and i cannot believe she is thinking of planning another lavish ceremony at our expense i've tried suggesting maybe this time she should opt for a small backyard ceremony this time but she turns it around on us and says that we don't believe in her happiness and that we are being cheap as she is our only daughter and her father and i are quite well off which to be fair she is right i'm at a loss of what to say to her long story short my daughter is getting her third divorce we are no longer on speaking terms and she has broken our hearts short story long as many of you predicted she threw a great big tantrum when her father and i told her explicitly that we would not be paying for the wedding this time around we said we would buy her a wedding dress and the cake but that that would be the end of it that whatever else she wanted would have to come from her and her husband's pocketbook she said we don't care for her happiness she cried she said that we were selfish everything all of you said was going to happen all these things hurt so much to hear because they aren't true we do care very much for her but enough was simply enough she went so far as to chuck her wedding planner binder into the backyard pool which was grotesque to watch we asked to meet the fiance in question over dinner what a gem he was tattoos all over his knuckles and his neck showed up to meet us in sweet prince and an ill-fitting hoodie didn't even shake our hand or introduce himself properly he looked like trailer trash when we asked what his occupation was he said he was a sound technician which made me feel embarrassed for being so prejudiced but after a quick conversation at the dinner table where he behaved in the most disgusting manner turns out that he is a freelance dj at 39 years old i believe one should at least be put together not living with other roommates and working at clubs on weekends my daughter i do not know what was wrong with her she looked at him with such adoring eyes as if he were the best thing since sliced bread we doubted that he could provide for himself let alone a family i don't know if this was a sign but the sight of this man boy solidified our decision to not finance a drop of our daughter's third wedding we still agreed to pay for the cake and the dress but no more we even had doubts that maybe this thug was only planning to marry our daughter for the money we assumed it was true when we found out she had been paying for a few months worth of his rent that he could not afford to pay out of her own pocket like i said i don't know what was wrong with her we gave her a budget of thirteen thousand dollars for a beautiful dress and maybe another two thousand dollars for the cake the wedding planning itself was a disaster as my daughter had a meltdown over every single little thing that went wrong even though we tried to tell her that she could use the fifteen thousand dollar budget to plan the entire wedding instead of just spending it on the dress and cake alone that was our intention that maybe she could scale back the dress and cake for a more humble affair maybe it would teach her the value of a dollar she would not budge she did not invite us to the wedding let alone the reception we don't even know how it was as we were not shown any photographs afterward i spent the entire week crying when i found out she had left us out of the wedding party she came back a few times with a u-haul and her disgusting husband to take her possessions from our home and moved in with him while my husband and i were gone on a vacation to new orleans right before christmas we had received several voicemails all from our daughter her voice was slurring as if she had been heavily drinking or on d she said that she was going to divorce as he was a ducking dead beat who couldn't even treat her to a nice dinner she said she's had to sell her engagement ring to pay the rent that she is still living with his roommates and that this is the part that just sends me into anger that if only we had paid for her wedding and helped her buy a home with him this wasn't even discussed between us i do not know where she got this idea from that she would have made this marriage last if we had given her more money my god what have we done i am shaking with anger just typing this my husband wanted to leave her receiving voice a male i talked him out of it as far as we know she has moved forward with the divorce we will be here for her we will take her back into our homes but only if she wishes at this point we have heard nothing from her and she does not pick up her phone it is so easy to blame ourselves for being bad parents and i just feel so awful she is our only child and if any of our nieces or nephews behave this way to our siblings we would have cut them out of the family in a second but we can't she is our only child now 31 years old and a thrice divorcee it pains me so much what has happened over the last year i feel like i've lost a daughter well the title says it all my fiance oliver and i have been together for 12 years stuck together through thick and thin ldr the usual problems of a couple starting off very young etc in the last years he has been struggling a lot with depression anxiety but he is slowly getting better at some point of our ldr we were living in two separate countries and during his stay he became very good friends with two other people ben and sarah the three of them bonded through shared experiences same mental health issues etc at some point he came back we started living together eventually became engaged we decided on a long engagement two plus years since we were both settled on long academical paths our relationship that had at some points been turbulent settled very well as we both acquired maturity and got to really know each other during our daily lives things were peachy three years ago sarah moved closer to where we lived for a two year stay we were all good friends everything good etc long story short my fiance cheated on me with her short before she left the country emotional affair included founded by snooping bad on me i was devastated i cut contact with her immediately demanded him to do the same and almost broke up with him we were separated two months it was rough because at that time i had no access to therapy or counseling and i was really far away from home but my friends were kickers and supported me emotionally all that time after these two months and a lot of soul searching we took the first tentative steps to be together again it took me a long time to forgive him and to recover my trust on him but little by little we healed and we made it work again this was two years ago and things are really good ben did not take the news of their separation too kindly and he has been passive aggressive to oliver about him not talking to sarah oliver has reacted well and has been adamant about not contacting him again two weeks ago ben told fiance that he had given our new address to sarah because she wanted to send us a package with stuff belonging to oliver he says that she has nothing of him and i believe it they have never lived together most of their friendship they have been living in different places he has been really anxious about all this matter he does not want any contact with her i personally do not care about her but he is dreading the day the package arrives if it comes when i'm in the house i just will throw it away but i do not want him to receive it and get an anxiety attack so relationships what is your advice i know i do not have to protect my fiance from this stuff but he is hurting and i do want to support him i do not think it is compromising material because i already found the compromising material welp i think it is a passive aggressive way of reminding us of our existence and what shall we do with his friend ben after reading the advice here i sat down with him we decided we did not want the ducking thing so he wrote a message to ben saying tell sarah we do not want anything from her and then he blocked him this all happened last year meanwhile life went on he changed jobs he is still in academy and now he is way more happy and relaxed my job is well paid and interesting and i can keep some other projects on the side we got married this summer and our wedding was perfect for us lively bombastic lots of food and alcohol and our friends and family together it was expensive but we did not give a damn this month my husband is in a conference trip in another continent so i'm home alone when i arrived home in the evening there was a package addressed to him in the mailbox with a stamp from a place where i know she lived and a sender we don't know i thought for a moment oh my this may be her but then i thought that it would be pretty crazy of her to send it now that night i was skyping with my husband and made a comment about the parcel i mentioned the name of the sender and he did not know the name so i proposed that i opened it with him on camera hard and well turns out i was right on the money it contained several postcards wishing him happy birthdays and merry christmases all unsigned also little notes such as dance in the rain look at the clouds walk barefoot that kind of platitudes and it had a book a young adult romance book i remember saying a loudo for duck's sake when i saw it meanwhile my husband had a face like he had seen a cockroach in his sandwich the title of the novel is star girl it is about a girl who arrives to a high school and she is very quirky and magical and she dances in the rain and plays the ukulele and she is very misunderstood by the normies the narrator dates her but realizes that he cannot be with her because deep down is afraid of not fitting in so he dumps her and then regrets it forever it is not a super bad book i like the prose but despite the intentions of the author the heroine is too much of a special snowflake and her behavior often delves into creepy territory the book itself had a sad face in the dedication page and a small note saying read the sequel you will understand it was crammed with notes in small script and sometimes the letters had been traced several times over all of the notes were very idealized descriptions of the heroine about how magical and beautiful she was about the things she did etc some of the notes were also about the main character agonizing about staying with her or leaving her to fit in or descriptions about how they made out yuck there were also drawings of the heroine who looked like an idealized version of sarah i'm not gonna lie i laughed my ass off at this ducking manic pixie dream juan abe my husband was less amused and more creeped out he said that she was psycho and that he did not want that [ __ ] at home i kind of forgot about the book for the following days because last week was my week from hell and i had to work 70 hours i normally work 30 because apart from my job i took a two-week project working in-house for a company and i organized an art exhibition in the weekend also i got pretty bad health news from a close friend think incurable and degenerative so the topic of sarah was out of my mind yesterday i finally had time to think about it and i got angry at that [ __ ] they have not met in three years who the duck does this dweeb think she is etctc i considered unblocking her briefly to tell her to stay the duck away from us but discarded the idea then i considered finding out her address and sending her a copy of holes by louis thatcher and 20 minimalist peps printed between the pages with a note this is a riddle if you solve it i will leave my wife for you love fiance then i realized i would rather ignore her so i threw the notes in the recycling bin and i put the book in a free box so somebody can take it home that is all no threats no pictures no positive pregnancy tests it was anticlimactic but honestly it was a welcome distraction and a heavy week i don't like that she has our current address but i do not think she will be sending more stuff if she does we will tell her to piss up a rope the funny thing is that i don't hate her she is an [ __ ] but this is just too sad to hate to mock okay but not to hate hey all so my brother and his fiance have been together for around seven years now to be honest we didn't start off great to begin with my family and i were really nice with her and tried to treat her like part of the family but she was just weird with us she didn't talk to us or eat in front of us if we went out for dinner she demanded that her and my brother have a separate table away from the rest of the family she didn't let him go on vacation with us she did a lot of different [ __ ] over the years if i was talking to them and she wanted to eat they would just kick me out of the room when our parents were away she purposefully left a mess that i would have to clean up planned her birthday party on the day of my birthday so he couldn't go rummaging through my room while i was gone petty stuff like that but what was worse was what she's done to my brother when he got with her he had a lot of friends he's always been a happy-go-lucky outgoing person but she stopped letting him see his friends and going to family get-togethers my other brother and sister live in a different city so we don't see them often about two years ago they both moved in together in a city three hours away for university we see him once every one or two months now which is okay but she doesn't let him go out or have friends which just seems so bizarre to me i feel like he should be enjoying himself in university but she just has him cleaning the apartment all the time the latest thing that's happened was that my sister 27 had an engagement party my brother's fiance came out with this demand that either they go home with her friend before the party or that my parents drive them home again six-hour drive all in all afterwards oh and she wasn't even going to the party just him basically just she wasn't letting him go she wanted to ruin the party for my sister he ended up going regardless and as punishment she ignored him on the phone for two days and that he was allowed to come home when she was away to work another thing is that she's been trying to plan their wedding even though he's expressed openly that he doesn't want to get married yet she texted my mum from his phone he's dyslexic and doesn't type the way she did in the text demanding that my parents would have to give them 4 000 pounds for the wedding just to clarify this isn't some petty thing just because he's my brother i adore my other brother's boyfriend and sister's fiance they fit so well into the family my family have tried so hard to make my brother's fiance fit in and feel comfortable i don't know what to do now he reconciled with her as soon as he went home i don't want to associate with either of them anymore i just feel like they bring in too much stress is it childish for me to just stop talking to them the thing that pisses me off most is the engagement thing my sister has gone through a lot and is the one person who deserves to be happy it hurts to know that my brother's fiance wanted to ruin that for her

Channel: Ask Girl

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Keywords: reddi girl, reddit wedding, reddit best friend, reddit parents, reddit sil, reddit, r/askreddit, r/ girl, r/ wedding, r/ sil, r/ parents, r/ best friend, r/, askreddit girl, askreddit wedding, askreddit sil, askreddit best friend, askreddit parents, askreddit

Id: m1X8GrL8dwQ

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020