AITA for refusing to sit next to a picture of my late husband and telling my daughter I will not be going to her wedding if that is her plan?’

A woman reflects on her strained relationship with her late ex-husband, who passed away due to alcoholism after their divorce. Now remarried, she faces tension with her daughter, who resents her new husband.

As the daughter’s wedding approaches, conflict arises when she plans to honor her late father with a picture and insists her mother sit next to it during the ceremony and at the family table, excluding the stepfather. The mother refuses, explaining her discomfort, and says she won’t attend if this arrangement stands, leading to a family dispute. Read the original story below…

‘ AITA for refusing to sit next to a picture of my late husband and telling my daughter I will not be going to her wedding if that is her plan?’

My late husband and I didn’t have a good relationship. He struggled with a**oholism and ultimately drank himself to d**th after I divorced him . After some time, I remarried, but my daughter doesn’t get along with my new husband. They have a strained relationship, and I married him while she was in college.

She has hated that I have remarried and is kinda a d**k to my husband. My daughter is getting married soon, and while I’m excited for her, I’ve had some concerns about how she’s planning the wedding. She mentioned wanting to include a picture of my late husband at the ceremony, which I completely understand as a way to honor him.

However, she also wants me to sit next to his picture during the ceremony and my husband would sit elsewhere. I told her that I’m not comfortable with that arrangement. I also learned she wanted to me sit with a picture at the family table and my husband wouldn’t be sitting there either.

I told her no. she got upset and said I was being s**fish and disrespectful to her and her father’s memory. I told her that if that’s her plan, I won’t be able to attend the wedding. She called me a j**k and now fmaily is involved.

Take a look at the comments from fellow users:

Ink-and-Ivy −  INFO – to clarify, she wants you to sit alone with a photograph rather than with your husband…? I feel like I must be missing something, because that’s absurd. 

victrin −  NTA. A simple compassion exercise would hopefully solve this. Imagine things were reversed, and she were asked to attend a wedding with her fiancé, but would not be able to be in proximity to her fiancé. Instead, she must sit next to an image of a t**ic ex who the bride had a great relationship with.

Wouldn’t she find that very disrespectful? Wouldn’t she feel hurt by someone who loves her asking her to disrespect her partner and herself? Something brides and grooms need to learn is that their big day is NOT all about them. They don’t get to run roughshod over human decency to fulfill some strange fairytale. That’s not reality.

I think you’ve extended plenty of grace in understanding that your daughter had a positive relationship with her father, and therefore his memory would be included in her wedding. In asking you to actively disrespect your husband, she is crossing a line. Your boundary is reasonable.

I’m so sorry your daughter is not currently capable of processing basic human empathy.

mango_bingo −  Honestly, since you divorced before he passed, he’s not even your late husband, he’s your ex husband. She can honor his memory all day long, but it would be ridiculous to sit you next to your ex instead of your spouse even if your ex was still alive.

I could see a modest compromise of sitting next to the picture and your spouse during the ceremony if you feel comfortable with that, but eating dinner with a picture of your ex instead of your actual spuse is absurd. NTA

hannahkelli −  NTA. It’s 100% fair enough that she feels inclined to honor her father at her wedding, but there’s definitely a limit to what it’s reasonable of her to expect from you in regards to it. Particularly expecting your husband to sit elsewhere while she seats you next to your ex-husband’s photo – yikes!

You set a perfectly reasonable boundary and the fact that she doesn’t like the choice in front of her is a her problem and the fact that she’s completely unbothered by your explicit discomfort with her plans makes her the s**fish and disrespectful one in this scenario.

anotherintro −  NTA. Of course she wants to remember her dad and have him present at her wedding. I’m sure the loss is painful and significant as she approaches this important day.  But having you sit next to a photo, especially considering you history with him, is ghoulish. You divorced and that’s not a light decision.

You had to make a hard choice in life to no longer tie yourself to him, and having you sit next to a photo of him ties you back together in his d**th. There are ways of honoring the dead and remembering them during milestones, but your daughter doesn’t get to disrespect the living in order to do so. 

ComeSeeAboutIt −  INFO: Will the picture at the family table get a plate of food?

trippymonkeys −  NTA – including a photo of her dad is sweet. Involving you with the photo at all is weird. She has some sort of denial fairy tale going on in her head about how this will go over. If nothing else gets through to her, maybe this will: guests aren’t going to see this and think it is sweet.

Depending on their level of compassion, they are going to see it as something between a cry for help fom someone who can’t accept that her parents divorced, her dad died, and her mom moved on, and an act of petty/childish denial/rebellion against having a stepfamily.

No_Jaguar67 −  NTA if she is grown enough to get married she is grown enough not to be this silly.

mizfit416 −  I know reddit is all “your wedding, your rules” but this is ridiculous. I wouldn’t put up with it either.. NTA

treelife365 −  NTA – As an adult, your daughter should understand that she may love her dad completely, but the same isn’t necessarily true for you. She definitely shouldn’t force you to sit beside his picture!

What if he was still alive and remarried also? Would she force you two to sit together and pretend you were still married?!?! That said, perhaps you can try to understand it from your daughter’s perspective? It sounds like there are some big unresolved feelings/issues weighing on her

This situation sparks a discussion on balancing respect for the past with the complexities of new relationships. Should the mother compromise for the sake of her daughter’s special day, or does she have the right to set boundaries?