cabanafrau
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 10, 2006
Not necessarily. Our family is extremely close too but I don't see dd asking all of her cousins to be attendants. She may ask the one and she may ask none. She has a large group of friends so she may stick with the friends.
If her son is in agreement with her or knows how she feels, he would probably know ahead of time if his bride was close enough to his female cousin to ask her to be a bridesmaid. If not, then he can ask his friends to be his groomsmen. Or perhaps he will marry someone with 6 brothers and there you go, 6 groomsmen.
Basically it's better for mom's and other family members' feelings be appeased than it would be for a groom to decide who he wants to stand up there and support him during the biggest day of his life thus far?
What if the bride has six brothers, no sisters, no close female cousins, two good friends she wants to stand with her and she would gladly ask the groom's female cousin, except that only means X number of male cousins must be asked, further bloating the size of the bridal party and not helping balance the numbers? What if the bride's undemanding mother's hill is her six sons serving as groomsmen because of their exceptionally close family ties? Does the groom automatically have to acquiesce and accept that his best friend since third grade won't be up there like he'd always assumed?
I agree I would not ask four out of five close cousins of the same gender to stand up, excluding one for no real reason. I can see it if a cousin is left out because they are of a different gender and there would be no one else to pair them up with. That's not personal or excluding them maliciously or just disregarding them. Maybe they do a reading at the ceremony to acknowledge their significance to the couple.
IMO you let the couple start the planning and express concerns if it seems they're really overlooking some way they're hurting anybody they really love in a way they don't perceive.