What Are the Rules Around Confronting My Future Sister-in-Law?
Esquire's editor-at-large and resident (unlicensed) therapist Dave Holmes answers a question from readers. Ask Dave your own question by emailing him at askdaveholmes@gmail.com. All answers are legally binding.
Dear Dave,
My oldest brother is getting married soon. It’s indoors, and as you’re probably aware, our species is living though a global pandemic. Our beloved grandpa won’t come to the wedding unless everyone is vaxxed, but a member of the bridal party is refusing. She's allegedly my soon-to-be sister-in-law’s “best friend.” My brother seems fine to let this just happen because he doesn’t want to fight with his fiancée. But what about our grandpa? Seems awful to me to deny him the ability to enjoy his grandson’s wedding safely so a bunch of anti-vaxxers in their 30s can party with their friends from college. Two questions: what do we do? Maybe more to the point: do I have to get involved? I hate this kind of thing but I also want someone to stand up for our grandpa! He's the best!
Thanks,
Name Withheld Due to Not Wanting to Upset Bridesmaid
Dear Nameless,
You are going to have to upset this bridesmaid, and the sooner the better. There is no way around it. The side of “frictionless brunches for your future sister-in-law” seems to be pretty well defended, but reason, fairness, and empathy all need an advocate here. If your brother is not going to step up, it has to be you.
The obvious blue-sky answer is to move the wedding outside, but that’s not always an option. The site might not have outdoor space, or the weather may be too beastly hot for both Gramps, without whom you would not exist, and Caitlyn, from junior year in Madrid. A move to an open-air venue is the best-case scenario, and other solutions might exist, but do you know what I’m not hearing from you? I’m not hearing that anyone else is helping to find and develop these solutions. Doesn’t sound like anybody else is workshopping a compromise beyond “Grandpa stays home, and everyone else has fun.” Sounds like your sister-in-law’s best friends' best idea is “put their best friend in a lousy situation with her fiancé’s family, then show up for the weekend, party without a care in the world, and complain about the dresses.” How much worse are your sister-in-law’s worst friends?
This is a thing I have noticed about the people who still refuse to get vaccinated as we sit in the endless middle of the third year of Covid: there is never any attempt to balance the ledger. They make a decision that puts other people at increased risk, and then do nothing to diminish that risk. It’s never “I will not get the vaccine, and for that reason, I cannot attend your indoor party.” It’s always “I will not get the vaccine, and in return, I will also do whatever else I goddamn please.” Heads they win, tails you lose.
I used to love to smoke cigarettes. Loved it. I was never one of those “I need to quit” people; from my first smoke to my last, I looked at a pack of Camel Lights and said “Yum.” My first job in New York City was down in Soho, right across from the Houston Street stop, but if I got off at West 4th, my walk to the office would be exactly two cigarettes in duration. So it was West 4th every day, rain or shine. At that job, I had a coworker who loved to rip a duke as much as I did, and one thing I quickly noticed was how conscious she would be about where the smoke was going. She’d angle her arm like a crooked tree branch if she was at a table with non-smokers, she’d wave a stray cloud away before it could be breathed in by someone who didn’t ask for it. Immediately, I began to do the same. How could I not? It’s common courtesy. It doesn’t eliminate secondhand smoke, but it helps. It’s the least a person can do, and I’m still embarrassed about not having done it sooner.
Anyway, I don’t smoke anymore because it is disgusting, and it is also much easier to quit than our late-stage capitalist culture has convinced us it is. Also, I just looked this co-worker up on Facebook and she’s a vaccine skeptic now. But for a moment in her life, she had the right idea: If you’re going to make a choice that puts other people’s health or comfort at risk, it is on you to mitigate that risk. Otherwise, you’re just making a selfish choice that the rest of us do not, in fact, have to respect.
“The family’s patriarch vs. McKenzie” seems to have been settled in McKenzie’s favor. Now the message has to be “it’s me or the bridesmaid.” A wedding is, of course, a time for a couple and their friends to abuse the open bar and dance to Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” But there will be other such opportunities for your sister-in-law. A wedding is also, much more importantly, a celebration of family. It puts a stamp of approval on a new family. It goes wide as it brings two different families together as in-laws, and it goes deep as it brings multiple generations of those families together under the same roof and at the mercy of the same DJ. The rest is gravy.
It’s more important for your Grandfather to be there. This bridesmaid needs to join the civilized world, or she needs to stay home. (Or at the very generous end, she needs to mask up—an N95 scarlet A for "Anti-vaxxer" in the wedding album for the rest of time.)
Nobody likes this kind of thing. But you didn’t cause this particular thing. It’s happening, you’ll wish you’d gotten involved, and I guarantee you won’t be the only one; I get the feeling everyone is waiting for someone to be the first. Stand up for Grandpa, and get her out on the dance floor for “Get Lucky.” It’s the right thing to do.
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