My bachelor party wasn't one & I got a little insulted. Let it go or ?
June 4, 2018 5:41 PM   Subscribe

Should I let go being kind of pissed off after some no-show groomsmen, and unwanted/unnecessary criticism from the best man?

My brother (and best man at my upcoming wedding) visited for the weekend, for some quality time and a low-key bachelor party. Well, the 'party' ended up just being the two of us. The other 3-4 guys (including my groomsmen) were no-shows and most of them didn't bother to RSVP. I was hands-off doing any planning for the evening, as I wasn't looking to do much other than getting together for some dinner/drinks/laughs, but ultimately I ended up making all the plans anyway. My brother's attitude was "it's your weekend, we'll do whatever you want". He stayed at our place, therefore he was our guest, so I felt pressured to show him a good time. He suggested some activities, but they were nothing of great interest to me. We did some outdoor activities that were pretty cool/fun, then we both went to our dinner.

I thought about inviting a neighbor friend to join us, which I should have done in hindsight, but when I mentioned this, my brother gave off a vibe that he didn't approve, so the people-pleaser in me (that has caused me major trouble in the past) gave in, even as I'm typing this I'm realizing there's some baggage here between us for some reason. Blargh.

So at dinner there is small-talk, and one of the main subjects is about a hot-button topic (and a complex one) that apparently we don't see eye to eye on, and he kind of concedes the fact that this not an easy discussion and the topic has no real black or white solution. We get our bill and I offer to split it or leave the tip as he's already paid for everything we did earlier in the day (along with flying out to see me). He lost his day gig recently after his family had just moved into a new house, plus the buyer of their old house just backed out - so he had mentioned that they were 'broke' at dinner. I also implied to him that if he needed any help during this time that I was there for him, and I mentioned that I offered the same kind of help last year to a good friend of mine (who ultimately didn't need it). His reply was kind of dismissive, and at this point, he turned my offer into an inquisition about how I was going to protect myself from getting screwed over if or when I offered that kind of assistance to any of my friends again. Throwing hypothetical what-if's at me if my 'friend' decided to disappear, run off with my money, shoot my dog, burn my house down, etc. etc. It felt like I was being unduly berated. He's a city mouse. I am becoming a country mouse more and more.

This friend in question has never met my brother, but he is somebody I've known for many years, and if he was truly that kind of person, I would have figured that out on my own and he wouldn't be my friend. We've been there for each other in obvious ways, and in ways you almost can't put into words. This whole turning the tables thing felt like my brother being over-protective of me, but also patronizing, as if I was some rube that would easily fall for some kind of scam or grifter. This upset the crap out of me, and at that point I was pretty much done and ready to leave. We left after that and drove home mostly in silence. He gave some sort of vague apology that I can't remember, my reply was more or less 'I wasn't born yesterday, don't worry about me too much.' I was too ticked to say much of anything else to him for the rest of the night.

The next day his attitude was still "whatever you want to do, it's your day", so I had to come up with something else for us to do that afternoon. That day's activity went alright, but it wasn't anything to write home about. That night he took me and my fiancee to dinner, and I let them do most of the talking. The day after, he flew home and we parted cordially. I ended up chatting with my friend above, and I asked him about that sticky situation he was in. Papers would have been drawn up - which I had figured anyway - it would have been all on the up and up, and my money would have come back to me + interest within 1-2 months anyway. Because my friend is a solid person. Which I knew, my brother didn't (not his fault) but thinks I am unable to judge a person's content of character...? I felt my brother should have held back the vitriol during our bachelor dinner for two.

I am still feeling like this weekend could have gone a lot better, and feeling miffed at my brother for his kind of phone-it-in style and the whole shitty dinner conversation. I can't really put blame on the no-show groomsmen, but I feel miffed by those guys too....my future brother-in-laws. The wedding is in a month.

What do you suggest I do to handle, or not handle at all, these guys? Part of me thinks it's 1st world belly-aching and I should just get over myself.
posted by kilohertz to Human Relations (15 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
It sounds like your brother was maybe just embarrassed that you offered him help (well, that he might need it).

I would be way more miffed at your other friends who didn't bother to show up or RSVP. Your brother, even if he didn't make a really over the top super-heroic effort, did fly out and spend time with you and do some activities with you, even though it sounds like things aren't great for him right now.
posted by so fucking future at 5:46 PM on June 4, 2018 [27 favorites]


Why can't you blame the groomsmen who didn't bother rsvping or showing up for any of this? I'd start with them. At least your brother showed up.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 5:47 PM on June 4, 2018 [53 favorites]


It sounds like your brother was getting a bit defensive. Lots of people get weird around money/loans, especially family loans. He may have been embarrassed that you thought he was fishing for an loan (even if you didn't think he was fishing, I can see how it could come across that way) and reacted by taking it out on you.

I would definitely be pissed at the no-show no-RSVP groomsmen -- your fiancée's brothers, I take it? No-show is standard for like, a movie night on Meetup.com, not a bachelor party. Are they going to no-show the wedding, too?

I'm sorry your bachelor party felt so unpartylike.
posted by basalganglia at 5:54 PM on June 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


Giving money to family can be intensely complicated in ways that don't make any sense. Picking your friends based on their ability to plan a good party would be a really odd choice; it's no surprise some of them are bad at it. One can be a good friend while still being shit at planning events.

Let it go. Have a fantastic wedding. (In the event you get married again, ask someone else plan the party.) If this is the most frustrating thing that happens at your wedding, you've won.
posted by eotvos at 5:55 PM on June 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think your brother is not a very good friend* from a making-an-effort standpoint, and if that's always been true then you probably could have predicted this was going to happen and either been explicit in your instructions or gone another route with someone who would do what you wanted.

*Or, possibly, just a dude who couldn't dump this off on someone else to plan because it's his "job" as best man but he didn't want to do it so this is what you get.

Your brothers-in-law are pretty crap too, BUT your brother may very well have strongly indicated to them he wasn't going to do any work and they shouldn't take it seriously.

You have to remember in this world that there are very few questions you are actually obligated to answer. You could have told your brother, "I'm comfortable with my choices, thanks," over and over again and not responded to his questions or let him do that to you. Chances are he was embarrassed not just about your offer but about his shitty bachelor party, and what better way to make himself feel better than to make someone else feel bad?

Men aren't really taught relationship-building skills and good adult relationships don't happen by default, so if you want a better relationship with your brother, that's going to take some appreciable effort from both of you. If he doesn't want to do that work, you can't do his part for him. But, on the upside, these life-change moments are a good place in families to use as jumping-off points for this stuff, so you may be able to make some lemonade out of these lemons.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:55 PM on June 4, 2018 [7 favorites]


I think your brother did make some effort since he flew in to see you. I agree that it was kinda bare minimum as regards to planning the evening, but if you didnt give him any indication of what you were hoping for (a party, bar hopping, fancy resteraunt etc.)before hand, maybe he honestly didn't know what he was meant to do. Anyway I would try to let it go, at least as regards to him. I agree with others, that I'd be a lot more unhappy with the two guys who were no shows. Thats really rude. Im sorry this was a dissapointing evening. I'd feel the same if I was you. The wedding is a month away though, theres no reason you cant do a "locals only" bachelors evening with some of your other friends. Yes, you might have to organize it yourself, but I think its important to have good memories from this time to look back on, and theres no reason you shouldnt ask for what you want.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 6:18 PM on June 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


I’d be pissed at the guys that didn’t show up but “didn’t bother to RSVP is also a bit of BS.” It’s 4 people. Your brother could have made 4 phone calls to find out what their availability was.

It sounds like your brother is pretty shitty at emotional labor and you bore the brunt of it. It sounds like you could also do a bunch of emotional and other labor by planning another bachelor party but expect even more emotional labor because it doesn’t sound like any of the groomsmen are the types to step up either.

I know it’s a horse of a different color but for reference, every bachelorette party I’ve attended has been a flurry of emails to coordinate, doodle polls to find out everyone’s availibity, custom gift bags and t shirts. I know women stereotypically do more of that kind of thing but it also isn’t that hard to organize a weekend, buy some beer and hamburger meet, grill and go to a strip club (or go rock climbing, or bar crawl, or fishing, or whatever the hell men do.)
posted by raccoon409 at 8:25 PM on June 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


About you & your brother, Nthing that money can bring on baggage/issues. Conversationally it can feel like, crap, I hit your button based on the emotion/energy in the response...how do I get back to solid ground for both of us.

Regarding your instinct for having a friend join you both-it’s a good one. With my own kids, I figured out if we brought a friend to an event, that pulls them out of family-level, and they socially kick it up a notch. Introduce your brother to your local people so he knows your invite was “more cool people” and not about him being not enough when your groomsmen were total wet blankets for getting the evening started.

Talk about your favorite times as a family & what you each remember, as age difference shifts perspective. Plan a part B with him for when the silver lining on his financial stress shows up, (house sale & new job?) even if it’s toasting each other via Skype.
posted by childofTethys at 9:08 PM on June 4, 2018


I think there’s this kind of changing thing with bachelors parties that is leaving a lot of guys in the lurch: like, it used to be super easy, bachelor party was crazy drinking and a strip club, and while that might have seemed like a Wild Extravaganza, it also took almost no effort for the groomsmen to arrange other than bringing a bunch of money to make sure the groom didn’t have to pay for drinks or dancers. They didn’t even have to convince people to attend, because it seemed like a fun time and so people would just come if they were told when and where it was.

And now people are both realizing that that’s not really a great thing to do, and also having far less disposable money than they did pre-recession. And the tradition of the bachelor party is really getting hit by it. When people are trying to host the traditional style bachelor parties, there are a lot of no shows as people can’t afford to have a knock down drag out time even if they do want that.

And no one really knows how to throw a new bachelor party and nobody wants to be wrong. Which it sounds like your brother did - he suggested activities that didn’t work for you and sounds like he panicked and then said “whatever you want”, but what you really wanted was to be taken out by a group of friends which was not a thing he was able to make happen.
posted by corb at 9:19 PM on June 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


One thing that's missing from the description is what kind of expectations you all set with respect to the weekend. Did you talk about it in terms of "a bachelor party" or more as a "not really a party, you know, something low key where we hang out" kind of thing? If the latter then one thing to learn from this is to try to figure out if something is important to you and to make sure that's evident in your communication about it. Your brother might just be a bad planner, or inconsiderate, but he might also have been operating with the idea that this would truly be a low-key event, which to him might mean by definition just hanging out with minimum planning.

I don't know what's up with your brothers in law, unless the communication was so very low key that they got the impression you didn't really care, or unless there are some cultural factors at play here. Otherwise, I think not bothering to mention that they weren't coming is kind of odd. What does your partner think?

(About the cultural part - if any of you grew up in a culture or subculture where the local mainstream wedding industry expectations aren't really ingrained, I think that does affect the picture considerably. I grew up like that and would probably take a "low-key hanging out" type of event for someone I knew grew up the same way to be exactly that and probably not even think of planning ahead beyond paying for things and maybe asking the person getting married if there was anything specific they wanted me to arrange.)
posted by trig at 9:19 PM on June 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


(Also: congratulations!!)
posted by trig at 9:24 PM on June 4, 2018


As someone who would also be very sad if this happened to me, I give you permission to be pissed off at both your brother AND your groomsmen.

How out of bounds would it be emotionally for you to call up your bro and say, "Hey, I appreciate you flying out to see me for my bachelor's party. I won't lie -- it wasn't what I thought it was going to be, what with the guys not showing up and us being out of our groove. Let's get together again before the wedding so we can have a do-over."

But like in your words, obvs.

As for your groomsmen, ask your partner about, but assume they probably weren't properly invited and there's no ill will on their end re: not attendng.
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:20 PM on June 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


This made me think of a recent episode of the podcast “Call Your Girlfriend” about being in weddings. It was mostly about brides/bridesmaids and bachelorette parties but there was a bit where they talked about how hellish bachelor parties often are because men are generally so poorly trained/skilled at social/emotional labor. So ... it’s not just you and your brother and your disappointing groomsmen.
posted by lunasol at 11:39 PM on June 4, 2018 [8 favorites]


It sounds like your brother went to some expense and effort to go to this. He gave up his weekend and paid for flights and events for something that none of your other friends even bothered to show up to. If I were him I would have been annoyed over the whole thing. You can't really plan an event like this when nobody else wants to go to it. He suggested activities anyway but they weren't what you wanted. What else was he supposed to do? He said it was your day and he'd do whatever you wanted because he'd already suggested things and you shot them down. If you don't want to do what someone else suggests, you need to provide an alternative. He might be annoyed about that. Also, the way you described offering him money probably annoyed him as well.
posted by Polychrome at 5:31 AM on June 5, 2018 [11 favorites]


So, there's still time, if you're up for it. You say the wedding is in a month -- aren't bachelor parties traditionally very close to the wedding day? I've never heard of one so far in advance. That way, all the people are already in town, and the focus is already on your wedding.

Maybe you can still make something happen after your rehearsal dinner, if you're having one? It could be as simple as "the afterparty is at X."

I agree that there was a lot of falling down on emotional labor going on here. Your best man should have been the one organizing this and making sure people showed up.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:11 PM on June 5, 2018


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