So, this all went down a few weeks back, and I’m still getting texts from family about it. Now I’m genuinely wondering if I crossed a line.
My husband and I had our wedding last month. It was a pretty small outdoor ceremony with around 75 guests, mostly close friends and family. I had asked my older brother, Jake (not his real name), to walk our mom down the aisle since our dad uses a mobility aid and couldn’t do it. I really wanted her to have someone significant by her side.
Now, let’s rewind to six weeks before the wedding. My parents were celebrating their 30th anniversary, and we threw them a surprise party. Jake decided to give a toast, and everything was going fine until he turned it into a chance to air out old drama with our dad. He started talking about how our dad “wasn’t always there when it counted” and how “some wounds don’t heal just because time passes.” It completely killed the vibe. My mom ended up leaving her own party in tears.
After that, I told Jake I thought his toast was way out of line, and he just shrugged it off, saying he “wasn’t going to pretend everything was perfect.” I warned him that if he pulled any similar stunts at my wedding, he wouldn’t be welcome. He got defensive and said I was “threatening him.”
The morning of the wedding, I was a bundle of nerves about everything. I felt this awful pit in my stomach that I couldn’t shake, so I made a last-minute decision to have my cousin, who’s like a brother to me, walk my mom down instead. I didn’t tell Jake until he got there and saw them lining up.
He didn’t cause a scene, but after the ceremony, he left without a word. Since then, he’s been posting vague stuff online about “fake loyalty” and “family who turns on you when it’s convenient.” A bunch of relatives think I was being petty and dramatic, and that Jake had “earned” his spot.
But honestly, I felt like my wedding just wasn’t the right time to gamble on whether he would turn another moment into a drama fest.
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So, this all went down a few weeks back, and I’m still getting texts from family about it. Now I’m genuinely wondering if I crossed a line.
My husband and I had our wedding last month. It was a pretty small outdoor ceremony with around 75 guests, mostly close friends and family. I had asked my older brother, Jake (not his real name), to walk our mom down the aisle since our dad uses a mobility aid and couldn’t do it. I really wanted her to have someone significant by her side.
Now, let’s rewind to six weeks before the wedding. My parents were celebrating their 30th anniversary, and we threw them a surprise party. Jake decided to give a toast, and everything was going fine until he turned it into a chance to air out old drama with our dad. He started talking about how our dad “wasn’t always there when it counted” and how “some wounds don’t heal just because time passes.” It completely killed the vibe. My mom ended up leaving her own party in tears.
After that, I told Jake I thought his toast was way out of line, and he just shrugged it off, saying he “wasn’t going to pretend everything was perfect.” I warned him that if he pulled any similar stunts at my wedding, he wouldn’t be welcome. He got defensive and said I was “threatening him.”
The morning of the wedding, I was a bundle of nerves about everything. I felt this awful pit in my stomach that I couldn’t shake, so I made a last-minute decision to have my cousin, who’s like a brother to me, walk my mom down instead. I didn’t tell Jake until he got there and saw them lining up.
He didn’t cause a scene, but after the ceremony, he left without a word. Since then, he’s been posting vague stuff online about “fake loyalty” and “family who turns on you when it’s convenient.” A bunch of relatives think I was being petty and dramatic, and that Jake had “earned” his spot.
But honestly, I felt like my wedding just wasn’t the right time to gamble on whether he would turn another moment into a drama fest.
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I think I might be in the wrong here. Even though I had good reasons to be concerned about Jake’s behavior at our parents’ anniversary, I took him out of an important role in the wedding at the last minute without giving him a heads-up. Not talking to him beforehand probably hurt him more than I meant to and made him feel left out or blindsided in front of the family. I was just trying to keep the day smooth, but I get that my actions could have seemed unfair or too hasty.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
ESH. Look, your brother’s toast was out of line, but if you wanted him out of your wedding, you at least owed him the decency to tell him to his face. Booting him from your wedding without warning was a nuclear option – I hope that’s what you actually meant because you have almost certainly seriously damaged your relationship with him.
You might very well have made the right call, but telling him in the last minute was cruddy. I can understand his hurt and maybe embarrassment.
I think soft ESH.
Was your dad really like what your brother mentioned?Did your brother help raise you?.What does your parents anniversary has to do with your wedding?
NTA – He might not have caused drama, but worrying about him causing drama was going to be almost as much of a problem.
NTA – Jake decided to have his moment at your parents’ party. He proved to everyone his feelings are going to be paramount regardless of time and place. His feelings were valid but his behavior was not and his lackluster response to your concerns were more than enough justification for your choice. It is YOUR wedding day, YOU get to be comfortable.
Congrats on your marriage and may you have many blessed years together 🥰
NTA. A classic FAFO situation. You cause a scene at an event, you get a reputation for causing a scene at events. Shocker. 🤷🏻♀️
ETA: could have probably timed it better in telling him, but weddings are a crazy time.
What kind of drama did you imagine he was going to cause just walking your mother down the aisle? It’s not like he was supposed to make a toast or do anything else that would require significant speaking.
He was just walking your mother down the aisle. No speaking part. What were you afraid of?
YTA.
You had a moment of paranoia and changed the plan. You told your brother the consequences that would happen if he acted out, and instead of letting that be that and letting him maybe dig his own grave, you spontaneously replaced him in a role he’d been expecting to do without a word, which has absolutely nothing to do with making speeches.
If you had doubts, you should have replaced him before the day of. You handled this poorly. I’d be apologizing.
ESH – I’m not saying it wasn’t the right call but it was the WORST timing. The man literally got in line.
Did you really expect him to stick around after that?
ESH you can remove anyone anytime from your wedding party, but waiting 6 weeks and dropping him day of is intense. Even the day before…
Nta. Your wedding Your rule. Just next time when he retaliate you can’t complain.
NTA. Did you threaten him? If you did, it wasn’t without reason. Your brother took an event for your parents and turned it into his person therapy session. Whether what he said was true or not, it was inappropriate.
As far as your brother taking what you did to social media: it’s typical of people who know they are in the wrong to try to win an argument via peer pressure when they know the facts are against them.
>he turned it into a chance to air out old drama with our dad.
There has to be more background to his behavior. Was this out of character for him? What is his relationship with his parents? There must be some bad blood between your family and your brother.
You must have felt he would have words to say about you as he walked your mother down the isle? But it should have been handled between the anniversary party and your wedding date to get some clarity about his motives and if he wanted to air out more dirt at your wedding.
This mostly sucked for your mother.
YTA. You caused wedding drama at your own wedding. I suspect Jake would have been just fine had you left things as you’d planned because if Jake had done anything, it would have been on him. But instead, you changed things last minute, which is what caused this situation in the first place. Jake is no saint for what he did before, but you didn’t give him a chance to do better.
YTA: walking your mom down the aisle didn’t require any talking, you changing your mind last minute however is an asshole move
ESH. He is definitely in the wrong. How you handled it was also wrong.
Yeah, you were but so was he so…🤷♀️.
Everyone even now???
NTAH – your brother behaved really badly at the anniversary party and lost your trust in him to behave appropriately at your wedding. Actions have consequences, and he is now finding that out. You did what you had to do for your peace of mind. What’s done is done and don’t engage with those who want to make further drama out of it.
He showed you who he was. Believe him. Low contact would be best. Sounds like first chance he gets your hubby will know all your past with a twist
NTA because allowing him the honor of walking you at your wedding would have told him (and others) that he can be completely disrespectful and get away with it.
By giving that honor to someone else, you showed him that actions have consequences.
Trust is lost in buckets and gained in drops. He lost your trust. He doesn’t get to do that without consequences.
YTA doing ir at the last minute while he was in line. You will have to suckup the negative texts from family and friends.
It sounds like Jake has some very deep wounds that he needs therapy for. My heart goes out to him. Either he’s a problematic shit stirrer, or your father has wounded him deeply and repeatedly. Maybe a combo of both, idk.
YTA for 2 things… 1 – for not telling him sooner. When you had the conversation about your wedding, you should have told him then. Unless your bro is a shit stirrer, walking Mom down the aisle wouldn’t have given him a platform to make any sort of speech. He was in no different a position to ruin it by simply being there. He could have caused a scene regardless of walking your mom down or not. 2 – Instead of talking to him empathetically, you ‘warned’ him not to pull shit. You could have said ‘look I get how you feel but please don’t use my wedding, blah blah blah…and mom would sure love for you to be the person to walk her down.’
Flies, honey, vinegar…
You are n t a for choosing to not have him walk mom down. It’s your wedding. But you handled it all wrong, imo.
Nobody “earns a spot” in a wedding. The bride and groom have the only choices that matter.
NTA. Would your brother do it again. Most likely. He is immature.
YTA mostly because you didn’t give your brother any warning. You should have told him when you first had a talk about your parents anniversary. If you really thought your brother was going to do something during the walk down the aisle you should have spoken to him about before making that decision instead of blindsiding him.
NTA. Jake used your parent’s 30th anniversary celebration as a platform to bring up old family drama. He absolutely did it for the attention and as a way to hurt your parents.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know what happened and if Jake has a right to be upset. I assume he does, because he’s obviously hurt. But that’s not really the time to bring it up. There’s no way to have a meaningful or constructive conversation about the events leading up to the hurt and pain Jake endured. I don’t see how lashing out and bringing up family drama would ever help Jake heal. I don’t think him doing that was about healing at all, it was about him inflicting as much pain (or more) to his parents than he felt they did to him. It was revenge.
You had every right to not want your wedding to be another platform for Jake to enact revenge on your parents. If he lashed out, then the attention would entirely shift from your wedding and celebrating your love and relationship with your spouse, to Jake and your parents.
Jake can pout all he wants about it. But instead of making passive aggressive social media posts, he needs to go to therapy and actually heal.
What disruption could he have caused just by walking his mother down an aisle?
I’m going with ESH.
OP for taking a gamble to spare her own nerves (and for not being upfront earlier), and the brother for setting the stage of distrust.
YTA. Sounds like Jake has some trauma from your father, and wasn’t okay pretending at the party like everything was roses and sunshine. Probably not the place to do it, but it’s good that he is addressing it. The reason YTA is for randomly changing his role the day of while not talking to him about it. Sounds like talking about things is what got your family in this situation in the first place.
NTA post back that actions have consequences.
I’m all for it being your choice since it’s your wedding and all, but you shouldn’t have waited until the last minute to tell him. You should’ve been upfront prior to and laid out your reasons. He’s childish and actions have consequences but you were petty as well. ESH.
It was your wedding so you could do whatever you wanted. But did you really think he was going to stop in the middle of the aisle and go on a tangent about anything?
Now the speech during the reception is different. I wouldn’t have let his ass near the mic.
YTA at the very least for not telling him about the change. That was cowardly and it must have been a punch in the gut for him to show up and suddenly see he’d been replaced and no one even told him.
Normally, I might say it’s your wedding and you can do what you want, but I’m not sure why you were concerned about him walking your mother down the aisle. He wasn’t giving a speech, so what kind of stunt were you worried about? It sounds a lot like you just wanted to punish him for the things he said at the anniversary party. It was certainly in poor taste for him to say those things publicly and at their party, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t capable of walking down an aisle without causing drama. If anything, I would have been worried about him doing something at the reception, but that has nothing to do with him walking down the aisle.
Also, it seems like this should have been something you could have left up to your mom? She was the one walking with him down the aisle, she was the one hurt by his words at the party. Did you even ask her what she wanted?
I also feel like we’re missing some context here – even though I don’t think it was the right time or place for his speech, he obviously has unresolved issues with your dad and I am just wondering if you could be unfairly siding with your dad and not acknowledging whatever he has done to hurt his son. I’m inclined to say ESH but without knowing more about this, I could be wrong.
>But honestly, I felt like my wedding just wasn’t the right time to gamble on whether he would turn another moment into a drama fest.
Was avoiding the potential for drama at your wedding worth hurting your brother and your relationship with him?
NTA
also, this is a baseless idea. Traditionally brothers don’t walk down the aisle; they are already seated at the start of the procession.
I’m sure I’ve read this before but from an attendees pov
It’s pointless to ask now unless you have a time machine
Her bro’s a drama queen
NTA. Your actions had nothing to do with loyalty or not. They had to do with not letting someone upstage your wedding with their own agenda. I say this as someone who has been estranged from her abusive parents for over 20 years. There is a place and time to talk about me and my terrible parents. In my case, I usually opt out of family parties if my parents are going to be there because there is a good chance that THEY will stir drama with me there, making it all about them vs the person they are celebrating. They do not have the emotional maturity to put things aside so others can enjoy their celebration.
Your brother might have real, legitimate trauma in his past regarding being abused. He needs to get to a therapist stat so he can begin healing and get perspective on how his trauma doesn’t get to take center stage at other people’s celebrations.
ESH- yes he sucks for what he did but you suck for not telling him until THE DAY OF!
INFO: was your dad incapable of walking down the aisle with the help of his mobility aid?
NTA is your brother always this self-centered?
Really sounds like Jake is both an AH but also not wrong about your family having unresolved drama
YTA Did you honestly expect Jake wouldn’t be upset with you replacing him with no notice and letting him find out like that? His issue is with your father. What drama could he have possibly caused walking your mom down the aisle? You overreacted and damaged your relationship with your brother.
NTA. Your brother had proved, in the most clear way possible, that he could pull very inappropriate things at celebrations. and that he was perfectly willing to be hurtful to your parents. Avoiding giving him attention or a ‘place of pride’ at your wedding was not out of line.
OP said I warned him that if he pulled any similar stunts at my wedding, he wouldn’t be welcome. He got defensive and said I was “threatening him.” He wasn’t wrong there, he was in fact being threatened with actual consequences for his unacceptable behaviour. Not all threats are out of line or inappropriate.
People are saying OP was cruddy for leaving telling him he was out until the last minute but the last thing you want to do with a shit-stirrer is give them notice because that gives them time to plan what kind of scene they are going to make or what kind of drama they are going to cause.
ESH. Poorly handled all around, as others have said
Really ESH. Jake for pulling what he did previously, but also you not letting him walk your mom down the aisle. Literally, wtf was he going to do during that short walk? Pontificate mid-stride?
I think you edge into asshole territory for leaving the decision so last minute and even more so for not telling him. The decent thing to do would be to pull him aside the moment you made the decision and let him know. The decision was yours to make, but the way you went about it was unkind. YTA.
You made this decision based on a very real and recent situation where your mom storming out of your anniversary party in tears is no small matter
This was your day—not the stage for Jake’s personal therapy session 2.0.
Yeah, it would have been better to let him know sooner,
Jake may be hurt, but he’s ignoring the consequences of his behavior. Every action has consequences—and expecting others to respect your boundaries is not “fake loyalty.”
You’re not being petty. You’re acting protectively. And frankly, any bride or groom has the right to do the same on their wedding day.
INFO- Was your dad distant from your brother? What drama did you think your brother would’ve done walking your mom down the aisle? What was the drama? I’m stuck between E S H and N T A.
NTA. I know it was last minute, but if you were having reservations about him doing this task, before the wedding day would have been more appropriate to let him know. Him showing up and finding out is sort of a dick move, even if he deserved it.
As for the fake loyalty posts, I would retort, on line, it’s more fake to show up to a celebration of someone’s lives together and then nuke the party with your own petty complaints and toast.
Assholes who don’t communicate intent, and surprise people on the day of a wedding are assholes.
I’m not sure what you think your brother was going to do. I’m not sure that you are wrong for making a change. But I am sure that you are an asshole for not knowing how to communicate. Esh
P
Info needed: What was the stuff that the dad did that made the brother feel he needed to do that? Was it just that the dad worked too much or was it abuse?
Also what did you think he’d do just walking your mother down the aisle, it’s not like he was gonna be giving a speech at the same time.
ESH. You all acted immaturely by being morons who couldn’t just communicate issues to each other instead of making it into something dramatic and stressful but none of you were particularly malicious in intentions. Just dumb.
Yta for doing it at the last minute!!!! His beef was with yalls father who he wasnt walking down the aisle it was yalls mother . Id be pissed to if I was the brother to and he did show you he was mature by not making a scene and leaving quietly . If you wanted to destroy a relationship with your brother congrats you won the grand prize!!!
So you said your brother “killed the vibe” of the anniversary party but you didn’t say he was lying about your dad not being there when it counted, ect. I have a feeling there is some complicated family history that we don’t know about that is coloring all of this.
I’m going to reserve judgement, but there a few things I don’t understand. You had this problem weeks ago but only decided last minute to change Jake. You said your mom.left her own birthday party because of Jake, did you ask her how she felt about him walking her down the aisle?
As everyone mentioned, what was Jake going to do walking down the aisle? It really comes across as petty do change it on the morning off.
NTA
Jake proved he has no problem taking over other people’s special occasions and making everything about himself. He’s obviously going through some stuff but occasions like an anniversary dinner or a wedding are not the places to bring these issues to everyone’s attention.
NTA- I wouldn’t have trusted him either, especially after his response of you are threatening me! He sounds like he is 12 years old
NTA. Tell relatives say yes Jake did earn his spot OUT OF THE WEDDING. He showed he couldn’t behave appropriately at his parents anniversary party. What was to stop him making a scene at the wedding. It’s not hard to make a 30th anniversary speech without drama mom, dad I love you congratulations on your 30th anniversary here’s to another 30 years.
ESH, but only because I think you’re being disingenuous about why you didn’t let him walk your mother down the aisle. How did you anticipate that he would cause drama in that specific scenario? Trip your mother up at the altar? You could have just told him at your parents’ anniversary that he was behaving like a self-centered jerk and he should just take a seat with the other relatives during your wedding. Replacing him six weeks later reads like, “Oh, actually, today is the day you’re going to pay for that shitty toast.”
Yes YTA if there was no speech for him to give anyway then removing him on the day of from just walking down the aisle was rude and disrespectful…your mom never asked to have him removed either so you just made that decision to punish him for something that ultimately had nothing to do with you anyway, he held a grudge against your dad and decided to air that out, that’s on him…and you could have cut him out from having a speech if you were worried about him saying something…but unless he did something to you otherwise you just chose to insult him in front of the whole family unnecessarily.
YTA op and he’s right about you having fake loyalty.
ESH and your family clearly need a ton of therapy because boy do you all have unresolved shit out the wazoo. Yes your brother’s toast was out of line, he might have issues with your dad but that was neither the time nor the place, plus he clearly don’t give a shit about mom. But what exactly were you scared he’d do? He wasn’t giving a speech, he was walking up the floor? But not gving him a heads-up? That was a shit thing to do on your side and in his shoes I’d simply have turned around and walked out since I clearly was not welcome.
You turned it into a drama fest yourself, congratulation. You seem to fit right in with your brother.