Outrage Over Why Bride Excluded 12-Year-Old Nephew From Wedding: 'Monster'

A bride has been branded a "monster" for excluding her brother's disabled son from her wedding.

In a Reddit post that has been upvoted over 58,000 times, a user claiming to be the bride's sibling, posting under the handle u/Disastrous_Bug_6354, described how he had been left "a mess" after discovering the cruel snub.

The decision to exclude children from a wedding is generally at the discretion of the bride and groom. Guests, for the most part, appear to have few qualms over the practice.

In 2021, a YouGov American poll of 1,295 U.S. adults found 41 percent approved of the idea of asking guests not to bring their children to the wedding, compared with 37 percent who opposed the practice.

The brother in this particular instance had no real issues about leaving his 12-year-old son at home either. However, upon arrival he quickly realized that what he had been told was, in fact, a lie. "It was not child free," he wrote. "There were probably 15 children there."

Eager not to "make a scene" he quietly approached his sister, the bride, to find out what was going on. "What she told me broke my heart and I don't know how I can look at her the same way again," he said. "She confessed that my son was excluded because he has an amputated leg."

According to the post, the bride justified the snub by explaining that she was concerned her nephew would "draw attention" away from her at the wedding."I almost lost it," he wrote. "I could understand if he was going to be disruptive or something, but because of that?"

Fearing he would be unable to control his emotions, the brother simply "walked out and went home" there and then. When his son asked why he was back so early, he made up an excuse and they spent the rest of the day together.

However, since then he's been inundated with messages from friends and family explaining how his actions caused his sister to "start crying" and the "whole wedding was ruined."

"I honestly don't care right now," he said. "I'm a mess. I'm a single dad so I don't have someone to help me right now."

Despite the brother's obvious upset, Ranesha Especto, a licensed professional counselor with mental health company Thriveworks, who specializes in family counseling, urged the sibling to try and see things from the bride's perspective.

"Family conflict is always tricky. While what the bride did was undoubtedly hurtful, particularly the deception surrounding why she was excluding her nephew, I can imagine that she was also under a lot of stress in the lead-up to the wedding," Especto told Newsweek. "She wanted all the attention on her (what bride doesn't) and didn't know how to address a difficult subject."

Even so, she felt her sibling made the right choice in leaving the wedding early. "Her brother leaving the wedding after both his trust and heart were broken is understandable," she said. "Staying could have potentially caused a scene, making the situation worse."

Especto felt both the bride and her sibling should consider family counseling "to look at the bigger, deeper picture as to why this was not addressed openly before the wedding and work a path forward to a place of peace for what took place and how the bride can accept her disabled nephew at family gatherings moving forward."

But while Especto was keen to promote reconciliation, many on Reddit felt the bride's actions had made that all but impossible.

"What was your sister even thinking?" one wrote. "Did she exclude every other person with visible disabilities because they might take attention away from her on her precious day? What she did was just plain cruel."

A second said: "There is NO reason on this earth that will be a good enough reason for what she did !!! I hope her wedding was ruined!!!" A third added: "I also hope that the sister's new spouse had a moment of serious pause to recognize what a monster they were marrying."

Elsewhere, a fourth declared: "If anyone comes to my wedding (which is in three months) and judges me for anyone's physical or mental differences they see there they can go to hell. My wedding guests are people I love and I don't give two s**** what people think of who I invite."

Newsweek reached out to u/Disastrous_Bug_6354 for comment. We could not verify the details of the case.

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