My friends and family are sick of hearing me ask about this and I have gotten great advice here before. We have a very bad, toxic relationship with DH’s parents and sister. He takes D20 to visit her grandparents (4 hours away) once a year and his S always turns up unexpectedly (from 6.5 hours away) to monopolize the conversations along with her husband and son. The visits are uncomfortable and DH and DD have a miserable time. DH and his S do not communicate at all other than one sentence emails for birthdays so she is obviously informed by their parents.
D20 has said she needs to invite her grandparents to her HS graduation because it is the right thing to do. I have made one hotel reservation for the night of the ceremony. D20 flat out refuses to invite her aunt, uncle and cousin and says it is her special day and she gets to decide what she wants to do, choosing her guests and celebration plans. I agree with her 100%. DH does too, in principle, but hates confrontation. When do we let the grandparents know when the ceremony is and about the hotel reservation? Too little notice is rude especially since they are getting older and will need to plan the trip. Too much notice gives a heads up to the others who would have no issue getting in the car and showing up uninvited.
We had very limited tickets for HS graduation. The only ones who went were our immediate family (DH, me, and whichever sibling wasn’t graduating), and both sets of grandparents. We invited NO extended family to HS graduation…at all. We only got 6 or 7 tickets…so it wasn’t even a discussion to have.
Your post has me a little confused. Are you saying your husband has a son he doesn’t communicate with? Is the son invited to the graduation?
Yes, the S is his sister. Sorry for the confusion.
I suggested saying we only had 6 tickets but the event is at an outdoor performing arts center with 5,000 seats and the class has 300 kids. DH thought it was bad form to get caught lying.
Thank you for the input. I will have DH tell his folks at the end of May.
Most schools have a rain plan. If it’s sunny it can be in the stadium, but if it rains, it may move indoors to a smaller venue and you will get limited tickets. Nothing wrong with saying you have the 6 (or 4) tickets that you will be assigned for an indoor ceremony; you can only really count on that. If it turns out to be sunny and outdoors, that’s a bonus.
Separately, am I the only one who sees the sister showing up at the grandparents when her brother (your husband) is visiting as a nice thing; an olive branch if you will? She may not be trying to ruin your husband’s visit by monopolizing conversation; she may be trying to bond with her brother and niece. But regardless, I don’t think it’s necessary for an aunt to travel over six hours to a graduation; just grandparents is fine
@EmptyNestSoon2 In another family, perhaps it could be seen as extending an olive branch. Unfortunately, the dynamic is so dysfunctional that it really isn’t. DH’s nephew is 8 and doesn’t even know DH or DD by name even though we send him bday and holiday cards and gifts. He refers to them as “the guy in the green shirt” or whatever and “the girl with the curly hair”. When Grandma refers to them by their names, he stares blankly. DH and his sister don’t even talk to each other she just sits and gives him dirty looks and rolls her eyes whenever he says anything. Last time it was so awkward and uncomfortable, DH and DD came home half a day early.
I don’t know what is to discuss here. You don’t want the sister-in-law’s family at the graduation, so don’t invite them. Just tell her you guys want to keep it small. It’s nice your D wants her grandparents there.
When is the HS graduation? Most around here have happened by mid-June. If that is the case in your town, i would send the invitation by March so that the grandparents can plan.
I agree with @oldfort. Invite the grands and that’s that.
You folks are lucky! We get four tickets to graduation, even if the weather is cooperative. It’s a big school.
Anyway, it is perfectly fine to limit it to GPs only. We have never gone to any of our nieces and nephews graduations, although our family is on good terms. We are usually invited to a celebration party at the house, usually a different day than that of the ceremony. Similarly, when DD graduated 8th grade we had grandparents only to the ceremony and invited extended family to a dinner the next evening.
If DH is not on speaking terms with his sister, it would be extraordinarily rude of her to show up expecting seats at graduation and to be wined and dined at your expense in celebration. Is she really the clueless type who will risk embarrassment just to tick you guys off? If so, I would not think twice about emphasizing to grandparents that this is a ticketed event and students are very limited in their allotments. By the time they notice any empty seats at the venue (the location of which they do not need to be told in advance - tell them you’ll pick them up at the hotel), it will be too late.
What if it’s not ticketed? D19’s HS graduation wasn’t.
I’d agree with invite the grandparents and provide them with the hotel room, the sooner the better. And just don’t invite the sister. (Would they really drive all that way and pay for a hotel just to be annoying?) if the grandparents ask if the sister is invited/why not, you or your husband are just going to have to be frank with them. It occurs to me, if the family dynamic is as I understand it, that you may need to be prepared for the sister to get the grandparents to “side with her” and not come either if she’s not being invited.
“Mom, Dad, we want to invite you D20’s HS graduation on June XX. We have limited tickets so we cannot invite anyone else. In fact, i think it best that you not tell Sis because she tends to show up even if not invited. We have made arrangements for a place for you to stay and will send details later. We trust that you will do this…because if we can’t trust you to not tell sister then we won’t be able to invite you to future events.”
Part of the problem is that the parents tell the sister about the brother visiting. The parents need to put the sister on an information diet. I am not sure if the parents are toxic too or just the sister.
Say the ticket thing even if it is not the case…you have limited tickets because you are limiting them yourselves to people you want there.
The funny thing is that isn’t outside the realm of possibility for Sis to just show up, not that she would spring for lodging but she would arrive with sleeping bags. She did that exact thing (plus a list a mile long of her latest food restrictions and demands to not serve certain foods for dinner because they would contaminate her plate) without an invite on Thanksgiving Day 2008, which is the last time I saw her. It’s hard to detail 25 years of bad behavior in a forum like this but just know it causes angst just thinking of her stunts and the possible ways she can ruin this momentous occasion.
I like the suggestions of telling the grands not to tell sis and if we can’t trust them to honor our wishes they won’t be invited to anything else. They are toxic, too, mostly because of the vast amounts of alcohol they consume but I will share that MIL told me it was a good thing they made maternity wedding gowns because my her son wouldn’t marry me unless he had to (which wasn’t even the case but she is venomous). That was the second time I even saw her.
I don’t know if an ultimatum/threat is a good way to extend an invitation. And I have to disagree that inviting grandparents that are toxic and you see once a year is “the right thing to do”. Life is way to short to stress over a HS graduation.
I might start by asking the grandparents if they are even interested in attending - my own parents were not interested in attending S19’s graduation and there were no hard feelings.
Honesty is the best policy. Regardless of whether there are 5000 seats if there are tickets, I would mail them with the invite to grandparents. Let grandparents tell her that they have tickets. i would not put the grandparents in a position to keep my secret and if she showed up at my house I would be prepared with the information for the nearest hotel. My policy is if I wasn’t expecting you, you don’t get in,
I guess I don’t understand why the daughter even wants the grandparents to come. Why put everyone on pins and needles for a weekend that is supposed to be a celebration? Why make it uncomfortable for the OP and husband? Yes, it is daughter’s celebration but it’s clear she’s not close to her grandparents. Tell her to go spend a weekend with them in June to celebrate and THEY can take HER to dinner.
My sister invited my parents to her children’s hs graduation and college. IMO, it was a huge mistake. At the hs grad of her son (which was ticketed and very limited), my father fell going into the ceremony and had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital. A nice friend whose child wasn’t graduating (just happened to be there) left with him so sister could go to ceremony. For the college graduations, my father insisted on going and by then he was even less mobile so a lot of problems with parking and stairs and just slowed everything down. Once he was there he couldn’t hear anything anyway. Most of us, including my mother, didn’t see the point. The graduates just wanted to go to parties with their classmates.
If you invite them, just tell them THEY are invited and no one else. Be firm. They can then decide if they want to attend without the sister/nephew or if they want to decline. No ultimatums, no threats, no lies about tickets. I don’t think the relationship could get much worse so what are you worrying about?
My kids had 10 tickets to their graduation. EACH. I was very popular because I think we used 6 and had 14 to give away. Also, it wasn’t full so I don’t know why they made such a big deal about tickets.
The real issue is what happens when sister finds out. Even if the grands don’t mean to tell her, what if she asks what they are doing that weekend? Do you expect the grands to lie? What happens if she shows up. Not that hard to find out that xyz HS is graduating on a certain day by looking at the website. Do you then turn her away? Not invite her to dinner? It is likely that the grandparents would guilt you into including her or you would end with a scene!
I think you need to discuss this with your dd. If she doesn’t want her aunt there the options are to not invite the grandparents or to invite them and explicitly tell the sister you don’t want her to come for some made up reason. You dd may decide not to invite the grandparents to avoid the conflict. I don’t think it is required to invite grandparents that live 4 hours away to the actual graduation. Especially if, like here, there are a lot of graduates and they all go off to an all-night event.