Your Wedding And Your Sister

Your family can cause a lot of trouble when you start choosing members of your wedding party. Everyone wants to be a part of your ceremony, especially close relatives.

Choosing your Maid of Honor can create fireworks you never considered, particularly if you have a sister and choose your best friend and not your sister. Close relatives who have been in your life and consider you their best friend, like cousins, can also have a problem if you do not choose them.

If you have an older sister who isn’t married and all the family attention shifts to you and your future wedding, resentment is almost sure to rise and cause stress. You could be involved in soothing hurt feelings, resentments and unfair comparisons based on her unmarried status. Rivalry and subtle attempts to bring the attention around to her are common.

Wedding preparations often consume the better part of a year and that’s a long time for hurt feelings to fester without some fireworks when you least expect them. Your feelings might get hurt as well if you do not understand what is happening to your sister.

For all your life, you two have been together, sharing adventures, secrets and laughs. She feels betrayed by your choice for a Maid of Honor and might show it by sulking silently or sniping at your seemingly endless planning sessions with your mother and friends. It would be a mistake to retaliate in kind and snipe back or cut her out of your celebration.

Friends come and go. Sisters are forever. Some TLC might soothe hurt feelings and avoid losing your sister’s companionship for years. Be the first to try to soothe hurt feelings and get your sister to understand that you really want and need her to be your ally in your wedding.

One important tactic to use is to enlist her help as an important part of your wedding planning team, like a wedding planner, of sorts. Ask her to take over chores that she would like to do. Make sure some of them are critical to your wedding plans. Your sister needs to feel like she is a special part of your wedding.

Include her in all your plans and ask her opinion. One thing to remember is that every single detail of your wedding is not critical to your marriage ceremony. If you put your sister in charge of specific aspects of your planning, let her plan it. If you hit a definite roadblock, talk it out privately and, together, reach a compromise. Don’t forget your mission is to bring your sister into your wedding and rebuild your relationship and not to have a struggle with minute details.

One big project that takes a lot of planning, checking and scheduling is the reception. With all the other details you, the bride-to-be, have to deal with, putting someone you trust, who knows your likes and dislikes, in charge of the reception would reduce your stress and give your sister a true sense of being an important part of your big day. Another benefit would be that, if your parents are paying for your wedding, she would already have real knowledge about their budget.

All your sister really wants is to keep you in her life and that includes the journey to your wedding ceremony. That journey is probably the most important event in your life up to now. She’s been there with you for most or all of your journey. Don’t let her go. Sisters are forever.