Family dynamics can be tough to navigate, but what happens when step-relatives are brought into the mix?

Are they owed the same courtesy as your biological relatives, even if the relationship is lacking?

Let’s see how one woman navigates all of this throughout her wedding in this Reddit post.

AITA for telling my dad’s wife she’s not included in any pre-wedding activities because her one-sided contest with my mom is pathetic?

My parents got divorced when my siblings and I were in middle school/high school. We’re now in our 20s.

Dad got married 2 years after the divorce. He met his wife and married her in 6 months because she was planning to move back to her home state and he didn’t want to do the long distance thing.

So we didn’t really know her when he told us they had eloped in Vegas.

She, however, thought we were all super close and was really disappointed when our reactions were pretty muted to their news.

But if they were all so close, why the elopement?

This started her off being jealous of my mom. She was jealous of the closeness we had with mom.

Then she was jealous of the fact we got along so well with our mom’s partner (and we’re still close) even though mom and him never got married.

Dad’s wife started showing up all glam to school functions and football games that we were involved in.

She looked like she was attending a wedding or a red carpet.

And she’d make snarky comments about dressing up to support “her kids” while looking right at my mom.

She would throw us these lavish birthday parties and invite both sides of our family and then attempt to dress us in matching outfits (the birthday kid and her).

I’m sorry, what? These are grown children, not newborn twins.

It always made her twitchy when we didn’t want to dress like her.

When my twin siblings turned 16 and my sister and mom had matching necklaces, my dad’s wife actually went home to change and wore the same color dress as my sister.

Oof, Internet, I know you can’t see it but — I am cringing big time.

She talks like mom is somehow less than her because she’s not remarried.

She gloats that she has a ring on her finger. That she shares the same last name as us (the kids). Just all kinds of petty things.

She’s someone we tolerate but we don’t like her and if we could exclude her from our lives without losing our dad we would.

I’m getting married and so is one of my brothers (the twin).

My dad’s wife has not been invited to any fittings, tastings, viewing, etc by either my fiancé and I or my brother and his fiancée.

Loving the boundary setting, but I imagine she’s definitely going to have an opinion on this.

But mom has been invited to stuff on both sides and my dad’s wife was so upset by it.

She asked my brother about being invited to something first, and he said no, just no, nothing else.

And she pestered him for a while before moving onto me, and she broke down over it and said she can’t understand not being included in pre-wedding activities.

I told her she’s not included because her one-sided contest with my mom is pathetic, and none of us want to deal with that.

I wonder if this woman wishes she had done an elopement, too…

She said it was such a mean thing to say and all she’s ever tried to do is earn that spot as our mom, but we treat our mom’s partner who isn’t even our stepdad like he’s more important than her.

She was crying harder while saying all this.

Families plus weddings can equal major drama if you’re not careful. This woman stood her ground and spoke her mind, but was she too blunt?

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about it all.

Right off the bat, Redditors noted the second wife’s toxic behavior.

One user even brought up that this woman’s goal of being their mother was already impossible.

Thankfully, commenters had this poster’s back and called out the second wife’s narcissistic tendencies.

Ultimately, this woman doesn’t owe anyone invites to any events leading up to her wedding.

This is supposed to be one of the most memorable and special times in her life.

She should get to enjoy it to its fullest extent.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.