AITAH for refusing to go to confession so I can take communion in my Brother’s wedding?

A Reddit user navigates a complex family dynamic surrounding her younger brother’s wedding. Tensions rise when her future sister-in-law, Emma, insists she must take communion—requiring confession first—despite her long absence from the practice. The user values her autonomy and refuses to comply with Emma’s demands, leading to a fallout that has repercussions for her attendance at the wedding.

‘ AITAH for refusing to go to confession so I can take communion in my Brother’s wedding?’

I (31F) have 3 siblings (40M, 38F, 27M) and we have a good relationship despite the age gaps between some of us. My older siblings are both married and so am I, the wedding in question is my younger brother’s.

My younger brother ‘Luke’ is engaged to his gf of a year ‘Emma’ (28F), she is nice I guess but we have never really clicked and are just polite to each other. Something important is that we are all Catholic, but not really hardcore ones and some of us are even lapsed.

I do believe this whole situation started just when I met her for the first time. I look younger than Luke and it has always been a sibling joke that I am truly the baby of the family, most people that meet us assume he is older than me but nobody has had issues with it until Emma.

The day I met her she kind of scoffed when I said I was happy the baby had a proper girlfriend, she has this weird thing about being the Eldest in her family and refused to believe I was older than her until I showed her my ID. She has been hot and cold with me since then, often infantilizing me or trying to have a sort of boss attitude.

I just let her be and usually ignore her since I have no time to try and beg for her friendship so I am just polite and civil, always include her when planning stuff but don’t really make an effort.

The family knows about it but we just shrugged it to different personalities. Then the wedding planning started. Emma decided I could not be in the wedding party since I was not married in a church, fine by me. Then she requested that immediate family submits their dress plannings so she could check it fits the wedding dress code, fine whatever.

You see where this is going I hope? You’ll see I have not gone to confession or have communion in more than a decade, If I go to a mass for whatever reason I am respectful and simply sit or stay standing during the rites I don’t participate on. Well this is not good enough for her and she says I need to take communion during their wedding, I said no and she has not taken it well.

For the most part I avoid her as I said before but this time I wasn’t gonna say yes or risk an issue. I told her for taking communion one needs to go to confession and I didn’t want to. She said all immediate family is doing it and it will look bad if I don’t, I told her sure fine, then I’ll just go have communion in front of everybody but won’t do confession.

She said if this was gonna be my attitude I was uninvited from the wedding because I clearly wanted to ruin the day for her. I turned to my brother and told him ‘thanks’ gave him a thumbs up and went home.

My family understand my reasoning and said they respect everybody’s choices but I shouldn’t have said what I said. I told them I really don’t want to go to the wedding anymore and I don’t owe Emma explanations on my life. I only called my Grandma because she heard what happened and asked me not to disrespect the church by doing the communion without confession, I promised I wouldn’t do it and she is fine with me now.

I got a text from my brother wanting to compromise so I replied by asking if the other lapsed people are being made to take confession too? He said no because it was only nuclear family members, I find it funny since all the others are clearly older than her and she just behaves like this with me and the youngsters. AITAH?

Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:

Lucky-Effective-1564 −  NTA Who died and made Emma Pope?. Edit: Thanks for the award!

Beautiful-Report58 −  You should alert the Priest to her behavior. He will ensure that she stops with her actions. She cannot make rules that do not exist in the church. I would send a quick email to him and let her deal with the consequences of her own actions.

rose_unfurled −  NTA, Emma’s request is super-inappropriate and disrespectful towards her own religion.

2dogslife −  Your brother really loves this girl who is insulting and throws shade on his family?. Wow. Just wow.. NTA.

HairyBBWEnjoyer −  She just sounds like she’s being a bridezilla and it’s mixing in with religion which has created a double whammy effect. Any time religion becomes part of the equation you can be certain things are going to be messy, complicated, and there will be no compromises. I don’t think you were being the a**hole necessarily but I know I personally would feel hurt if my sibling allowed their spouse to step all over me like that.

Crafty_Special_7052 −  And your brother really wants to marry this person?

Big_lt −  NTA. However demand an apology from her else you still won’t go. I am an atheist but I have been requested to go to various religions ceremonies. I generally will just stand silently in the back and have a. Inner monologue of how dumb the s**t is.

This b**ch wanted to make your own decision her responsibility and she can go f**k off. Tell your brother you want it else you won’t go and you want it to be sincere none of that garbage ba sorry and walk away crap.

New-Comment2668 −  NTA. As one lapsed Catholic to another, may I suggest the following confession: “Bless me father for I have sinned. I have evil thoughts towards my future sister-in-law because she is a hypocritical, snooty, obnoxious b**ch who refused to allow me to attend my brother’s wedding unless I went to confession.” Bonus points if you tell her in advance what you will be confessing.

Jmfroggie −  Nta. Not only does she NOT get to dictate how people believe and practice in their faith, she doesn’t get to do it to make a show of it. She’s mocking the family and the religion by requiring this. The Catholic Church doesn’t even require mass participants to be catholic, even when in a wedding held there- simply the bride and groom must be up to date in their sacraments. You just don’t take communion. It’s pretty damn simple.

My biggest issue with all of this is that your brother is allowing such disrespect to happen on his wedding day. By him not standing up to his future wife over something so weird as controlling his family, this sets a pretty dangerous precedent as to how he will be expected to behave in their marriage. If he can’t call BS on the simple stuff and make sure he is fully supported on his day too, what is the point of this marriage?

No_Noise_5733 −  NTA but you can join the queue for communion , walk.up to the priest with arms crossed in front of you to indicate you want a blessing not communion. Also refer Emma to Matthew 7 if she is so religous.