Sunday, August 14, 2011

weddings bring out the best in my family.

i come from a family of women on my dad's side of the family. we are all strong and highly opinionated. i guess a little background is in order here so you can understand the players and follow the drama that surrounds my family. 
on my dad's side, he has or had i guess is the correct term since he has passed away, a sister. his sister has 2 girls. my cousins are 15 and 10 years old than me. for the sake of privacy we can use the first letter of their names. my dad and his sister also have 2 younger cousins compliments of their father's younger brother. the younger one, m got, turned 59 in july. the older one, well i am not sure since i have not seen her since 1995-96??? maybe???
my older cousins, j and a (compliments of dad's sis) grew up and got married. j in 1980 and has 2 kids of her own. one is sort of my baby. l (first letters only, remember) is 15 years younger than me and in october will be getting married this october. my other cousin a, adopted a baby girl who is now 16 years old. cousin m, got married 11 years ago and got an instant family of 3 girls with her new husband. 2 of them were already college bond and the youngest was in high school. their mother had passed away some years before from ms. like all women who married a window with kids, the deceased spouse's things were still around the house. 
so you bloggers still there? bored yet? if not keep reading, if you are, keep reading because it gets better now that you have an idea of the players.
let's start with wedding number one. my cousin j's. she got married in 1980 and since she was the first in the family a big to-do was made. i think i was 9 at the time. well tempers went flying before the guest list was made. it started with her parents who were divorced. to this day they can't be in the same room together with out trying to kill each other. my aunt can hold a grudge forever!!! the fight was about who was paying, who was giving it, who's name was going to be on the invitation, why was the stepmother on it, why isn't the step father on it, and how in the hell did my grandparents get mixed up in this? to this day i am not sure how they got into this but they did and it sent my grandmother to the hospital. granted it was a short stay and more to bring everyone together but there really was nothing wrong with her. so days until the wedding and nothing has been resloved except that my family was invited, my grandparents, a couple thousand of their closest friends and their maid??!! don't ask. the only 2 who were not coming were the mother of the bride and her husband. at the 11th hour, they came to some kind of truce and showed up. 20 some odd years later, j was asking for a divorce and 2 days before it was to be signed, the future x died from a massive heart attack. thus making her a window who was already dating someone else and causing  the future bride, aka her daughter un-resloved issues of her own. 
in 1986 cousin  a gets married. this time instead of some big affair she got the small and not so silent wedding. it was small since my sister and i were not invited. ok it was a dig, sue me. you would do the same thing. silent, hell no! round 2 coming up this time minus grandpa. the man was smart to get out while the getting was good. 
parents of the bride fought, threaten, and who knows what else. this was also a marriage not made in heaven. the bride and her husband fought too. a wanted a baby very badly and tired for many years. after many years of fighting over not being able to have kids, her inlaws dying and her husband tried to end the marriage. in a's case that was not happening, so she adopted a baby much to her husband's dismay. the little girl was born and adopted into more problems than she could need and 16 yrs after the adoption, living with 2 people who did try and kill each other on a daily basis, watching their long and drawn out divorce,  will become the master manipulator like her darling adoptive father who did not want her but puts up a wonderful custody battle for her. 
fast forward to my sister's wedding. cousin j was in the middle of a messy divorce, my dad was slowing dying, my grandmother had been in and out of the hospital and any little stress would put her over the edge, my aunt well, i am sure she did something to tick my sister off, my sister and i fought at the end of her wedding (that is all i can say on that. sorry!), 
and cousin a was having issues because she was 40 something, divorced and not allowed a date for the wedding and said no date, not coming. 
well this didn't sit well with my grandmother who was already upset over j's divorce, my sister was getting married before me ( personally i was pretty cool with it. better her than me.) i had no date for the wedding (again was not upset over that either. like i want to babysit all night??) and a and her daughter were not coming unless she had a date. oh and let me say grandma would never have known any of this if a didn't go and tattle on us like a baby. so grandma appeals to my sister and asked her to let a bring a date. turns out grandma got a's x-husband to escort her. so now she has a date. 
next one, me. i fought with my mom over the location, fought over the fact that a priest was involved (hub is catholic, you had to know that was coming.), fought over the fact the church was first for the goys and opted for a 2nd one for the jews in the joint, fought over who was walking me down the aisle, fought over the guest list, and the best fight of all, the seating chart. i have 2 other cousins that my aunt does not speak with. no, don't worry we are not going there because that is a longer story. anyway, when seating time came my mom wanted to put the 2 other ones at another table, which would have totally unbalanced my O.C.D as we know it. in my mom's eyes she thought that if she put them somewhere else then no one would fight. personally at this point i was thinking that if they fought it would give the goys some much needed entertainment. so i made her sit them at the table. granted it was a tense evening but somehow they all got through it. i on the other hand, used a lot of champagne.
cousin m and her husband recently walked the youngest down the aisle. their youngest was a little bitch about the wedding. all m asked for was to be at the dress finding. not to much to ask for, right? well the little darling said ok and soon wedding preps were started. the night of the wedding looked like a fairy tale come true. however behind the scenes was a whole different story. the bride did not want m, her step mother, the woman who raised her, did her laundry, cared for her, in the wedding pictures. at least not in the family pictures. at the time our side of the family had no idea what was happening. everything looked great, food was wonderful, wedding cake was to die for, people were having a great time. except for m whose only happy memory of the wedding was when we were with her. when we were not with her, m would pop into the ladies room and cry, when she wasn't yelling at her husband for the way she was being treated. 
now we come to the next one in line for wedded bliss. the baby, l, is getting married. like all wedding that have come before her, this one is no exception to drama. 
the bridezilla has decided to have a destination wedding in a winery in the sanoma valley in california. she has decided only certain people are allowed to walk down the aisle, only certain people are allowed to be there and by certain people, i mean her mother's boyfriend (father died in 2005). her mother and her boyfriend have been together for 6 years or so and have never gotten along. why? beats me. bridezilla has issues. 
anyway the drama started with him not being invited, not being allowed near the state of california, not sharing the details of the wedding with her mother and the grandmother of the bride having issues of who she is walking down the aisle with. that conversation started at her bridal shower to which everyone ended up getting into the drama. what can i say, my family can't help but butt in at times. 
needless to say it was an interesting bridal shower. 
the show "bridezaillas" has nothing on my family. 

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