[Karisma]

I am getting married in July for the first time (groom’s second marriage). I’m not a bridezilla and have worked as an event planner so I’m familiar with wedding etiquette for the most part, but as a bride I’m finding it a different view.

My future husband has 3 kids (all have had a difficult time adapting to this relationship and their mother is still very much in their lives). I have one son who is ecstatic about our wedding – he is 11.

The wedding is going to be small (under 50 guests) and set to a rustic wooded scene at my family’s home. The one catch is I’m having a hard time with my future husband’s choice of best man – his 16 yr old autistic son that is prone to public and embarrassing meltdowns. I don’t want to be insensitive, but his son has not shown the support of our relationship or maturity to hold the role of best man in my opinion. I feel that his son is using the position as a way to manipulate his father. The son has screamed at him that we shouldn’t get married and told him he would never be his best man and threatened to run away. All of a sudden he has changed his mind and told his dad he is ready to be a man and looks at it as some sort of initiation to manhood.

I’m afraid this will ostracize my son, and he’ll see it as a reward as bad behavior for all the negative feelings have been made well known. Also, frankly, I don’t want someone that doesn’t support and love my future husband unconditionally standing at the front to witness our union. As a first time bride how should I address this? I’ve already told my beloved that I felt like he was being manipulated and he agreed and asked a man I respected and would have been able to offer the emotional support for him on that big day, but the man he asked declined due to family issues. Now he is back to wanting his son as best man.

Am I reasonable in wanting some say in his best man? After all, I did run my matron of honor by him. Also I had planned on not giving any of our children roles to keep things on equal footing because his two daughters are refusing to come. Please help. I want to be fair. I don’t care if the flowers aren’t perfect, but those that stand by the side of my husband and I matter a great deal.

[April Masini, your AskApril]

Your question is a good one, and it’s very common of blended family marriages. I can help you. 🙂

First of all, everything you want is reasonable — but when you blend families, what you think is reasonable becomes moot. It’s very easy to compare your son with his kids, but the reality is that teenagers are very different than 11 year olds or adults. They don’t act reasonable on a good day, let alone a bad day — and then you’ve got the autism spectrum tossed in. So, while you feel his 16 year old son hasn’t been supportive of your marriage, understand that that is normal. From the kids’ points of view there’s all kinds of betrayals going on here because their father is marrying someone who isn’t their mother and is going to co-parent a new sibling (your son), which creates sibling rivalry in a new way. I know that you probably haven’t seen it that way, but if you look at it from the kid’s’ points of view, you might have some insight into their disappointment that their father is remarrying. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the fact that their parents divorced. In other words, this type of behavior comes with the territory. I know you want your husband’s best man to be unconditionally supportive, but that’s asking too much of a teenager who’s parents divorced. It’s the parent’s job to be unconditionally supportive — not the child’s — even if the child is a teenager. If you lower your bar on what you can expect from his kids, you’ll be a lot less disappointed because you’ll expect less.

I know this is your first wedding, even though you have a child from a prior relationship, and you want it to be special, but if you’re including the kids, you have to relax your views of what the wedding will really be like. So here are some options: Since your fiancé’s other two children are boycotting the wedding, giving his son the best man position will better insure that at least one of his kids will show up. This is important to your fiancé, and if you can deal with it, I think this is one you should let go and breathe through. The small group of guests probably already know your future step-son’s temperament, so if he has an outburst, it will fall on sympathetic ears. After all, he’s part of the family now. As for your son getting the wrong message by this potential reward for bad behavior, you can turn it around and create a teaching moment. Explain the autistic component to your son, and explain how important it is for your fiancé to have his son participate in the wedding because his other two children will not be there. You can tell him that not all divorced families get along as well as others, and that that’s kind of normal. Your son is going to have to grow up a little faster and a little more differently than if he was not part of a blended family. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just a difference from what you’re used to. 🙂 If you want to give your son a special part in the wedding so things are more balanced, that’s fine, too. It sounds like not including children at all is going to create more drama, now that your fiancé and his son want his son to be in the wedding. Your question about wanting veto power over his best man, since you ran your maid of honor by him, is really just your way of wanting some control over the wedding, and instead of having him run things by you, it would be more productive to open conversations about this issue, rather than getting into power plays over it.

Remember that in blended family marriages, the divorce rate is higher than in first marriages where there are no kids to start off, because the dynamics between the children and the parents (even with adult children) is complicated. This is a perfect place for you to start off your marriage letting him know that you love him, and it’s not your first choice, but you want to do what he wants because it’s important to him. In other words, give him this gift of letting his difficult son be in the wedding, [i]because[/i] the son is a teenager and is conflicted.

Keep your eye on the ball, which is balancing the dynamics and not sweating the small stuff. I hope that helps.

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[Karisma]

April, you are amazing. I feel a little silly now, but thank-you for letting me be “reasonable”. I posted this question somewhere else before I found your site, and I was cast as the Wicked Witch for any plot requiring a villain. So, again thank-you for your kind and tactful and eye-opening response.

I love his children whole-heartedly and they are on equal footing with mine. So should his girls choose – they have a place at our wedding, his son is the best man, and my son can walk me down the aisle. I know the statistics for second marriages with kids are daunting, but if nothing in life is worth the risk then what value does the action of being committed hold?

My outlook has completely changed, and I am comfortable with it. Thanks for the breathtakingly fresh viewpoint!!!

[April Masini, your AskApril]

Thank you for your kind words.

I didn’t mean to imply that you can’t make this marriage work because it’s a second marriage. You can, and I’m sure you will — but just go into it with your eyes open. Knowing where the land mines may lie is half the battle. 🙂 Have a wonderful wedding!

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