wedding etiquette & family drama

enticing blog post title, eh?

i don't know if i've mentioned it before, but my baby brother is getting married in october. i don't remember if i went into the whole drama that was their getting engaged and announcing it. an attempt at a short version: his gf (who i've written on this blog way back who i don't really like very much) apparently proposed to my brother. and they set a date for this year, knowing full well that if they got married this year, patrick and i couldn't because of some weird family superstition about siblings getting married in the same year. so even though patrick and i were engaged first, they went and got engaged and set a date without asking us or giving us a heads up.

and when i mean they, i really mean she. maybe i'm being overly sensitive because i don't like her to begin with. but obviously it wasn't my brother's idea to get it done sooner rather than later otherwise he would have done the proposing. she stepped it up because it was on her agenda.

anyway, i've been able to let it go because honestly i am not ready to get married quite yet. call me old fashioned but i require that my partner have a job in order to get married. and at the time we were still living in my parents house. how can we be married when we can't even take care of ourselves?

patrick didn't seem to agree and was LIVID! and will probably always be to some degree angry at them 'for what they did' and at me for accepting it. if he had his way, we would planning a wedding now, if not be married already. how we would have paid for it, i have no clue. anyway, his displeasure at the situation has not gone unnoticed and it wasn't until recently that he apologized to my brother's gf. though he told me he did it more to smooth the water and he didn't really mean it.

so that's the back story. but apparently the new drama is, is that patrick feels slighted that he isn't involved in their wedding somehow. i am a bridesmaid. though i think i was a last minute addition. regardless, i would have said yes to any request from my brother because he is my brother. even though she asked me in a totally lame way by email, giving me only a week's notice before dress fittings. so yes i am a bridesmaid. one of eight.

i didn't really think of patrick not being in the wedding because we have so much family. and they have sooooo many close friends that they've grown up with that in their list of most important people patrick probably trails very far towards the end, even though he will technically be family. part of me thinks we've been together less than 2 years and he kinda goes out of his way to not be involved if he can. and suddenly he wants to be in their wedding? when he was so livid about them getting married this year?

i'm so confused.

i'll admit he's had a hard time getting in good with the family. including the extended family. it's not that they necessarily have anything against him. i just don't think anyone has anything in common with him. besides me. the majority of my family are boys. the girls that marry in get along with each other because they have that in common. and they get along with the few girls in the family because well, girls play better together, i think. but patrick, and any other boy that tries to marry into the family has their work cut out for them. they've got to try to get in good with an established pack of males. and patrick's the first to try to do that. my cousin had a long time boyfriend who did get in good with them but 1. he was filipino. and 2. he was into sports and poker like them. patrick has nothing in common with anyone in my family. he's managed to feel comfortable with a couple of my older cousins and the sister-in-law i do like. but that's about it.

and at the same time that he wants to be included, he doesn't. he says, 'even though i know i'll say no, and they know i'll say no, it's still nice to be asked'. i get it kinda, but for the most part that seems ludicrous.

i recognize that the role my family plays in my life is probably much more intense than other people. and i make no apologies for that. it's who i am. it's who we are. and it's something that i'm actually quite proud of. and if you've ever seen 'my big fat greek wedding', you'd understand. just substitute filipino for greek. i have pushed all this family vs. patrick drama to the back of my mind because it was all i could do to focus on other things. and i am still hoping and praying that with time and with us having our own place and soon our own family that things will work themselves out to something resembling civility.