I 32(f) am engaged to the love of my 32(m). We are currently in process of planning a wedding in late 2026. When we started planning I named 4 friends to be my bridesmaids and he had 5 groomsmen. He asked me to find one more friend to have an even number. Understandable. I wanted one of my cousins to be in my wedding years ago, but now that we here planning I decided not to ask her because I felt like my family would have a lot to say about my cousin being in my wedding and not my sister. I AM NOT close to my sister at all. In the past few years we have become low contact due to her actions. We have never been close either. I've tried to be/get close to her but it always comes back to bite me. When I was young I wanted to be close because we were sister, but over time it became clear that I couldn't trust her with my secrets. If I told her things and said don't tell anyone she never would. Mostly things that I didn't want our mom to know, but If she got in trouble are if our mom got on her about something, she would do anything to take the attention off her. Example, our mom was talking to her about taking care of her hair which has always been an issue. We are African American with 4C hair. She is de-lulu thinking she doesn't need to comb or brush her natural hair. Mom was really upset because my sister hadn't gotten a perm in awhile and if you about or have 4C hair, you will understand when new growth comes in if you don't got a perm, it will look like you have a lifted helmet on your head. I know my sister is tired of having this conversation and my mom is tired of giving and then she is giving my sister a perm and a lot of her hair is knotted and there was a lot of breakage. During this time something was said like "you'er yelling at me, OP got a trap stamp a year ago and you aren't complaining about that". Now I did tell her and say don't tell anyone and no less than 2 weeks later she told our mom.

That may not seem like no big deal to most, but it is one of many, but other ones are very specific and I don't want people to figure out who I am. Long short she has never been a true sister to me. If she can use me she wold speak to me, but if not, she doesn't speak to me. We don't even call or send gifts on birthdays. We just send a text. I was the only one sending birthday for two years straight and received nothing in return. I honestly put an effort for a few years. Trying to create a sisterly bond but anything I did blew up in my face. And after some time I just got tired of trying to confide in her and trust her and her running and telling my business.

My sister is not a girls girl, or she's just not a girl's girl for me, her biological sister. Just like I mentioned there are other things that go way deeper than the one example I gave that one's probably the smallest compared to some of the other ones but I'm trying to give some type of context to why I feel as though she has no place in my wedding. Me and my fiance actually started talking about getting married early on when we first started dating and because of my relationship with my sister and my mother knowing the strain of our relationship I asked her if she would feel bad if my sister wasn't a bridesmaid in my wedding? She said "no it's your wedding". I thought that was the end of it. I was actually very much relieved because I just didn't want any blow back about people saying I can't believe your sisters in the wedding or assuming that she would be in the wedding.

Fast forward to today we're talking about the wedding and we're going over who's doing what or whose job is what during the wedding and she asked me, "so you're really not going to have your sister in your wedding"? And I said no. That I told her a while back when we had a conversation about it and I said she wasn't going to be in my wedding and you said that it was my wedding, my choice. And then my mother backtracks and says "yeah I know I said that but I really can't believe you're not going to have her do something in the wedding I mean I feel like there's something she can do." I could give her some type of pointless task in the wedding or I could just make up something but we're not close and I don't understand why no one else can understand that.

Conversations about this wedding that hasn't even happened, that's not even close, that's over a year away have already started to give me a headache. I'm attempting to plan a wedding based on the premise of when we look out into the audience we want to see all the people that we love and all the people that love us. I don't want to look at in the crowd and see people I don't like. Also, I really don't plan on inviting and paying to feed people i don't like. My sister is one of the fakest people I know. She has said a lot of messed up things to me and about me, she has been less than supportive she is never on time for anything and when I say anything I mean anything. It has been a running joke between me and my fiance that she will receive a special invitation with the time that's an hour earlier than everyone else's in the hopes that she will actually be on time for once.

Honestly she's not on time for birthdays, she's not on time for funerals. But if the occasion is something that benefits her or something that she likes she'll be on time for that, but honestly when it comes to family or anybody else's needs or wants she could care less about being on time or respecting anyone's time. Another example would be us going out of town and her wanting to ride with me and I give her a specific time of when I'm trying to leave she doesn't wake up until 10 minutes before it's time to go and I'm thinking because this is a road trip you know she'll sleep most of the time no she wakes up 10 minutes before starts to take a shower and wash her face, and then she has to put on makeup, make up for a road trip? We ended up leaving over an hour later than I wanted to to avoid traffic. I just want to know if I'm wrong for not wanting her in my wedding and sticking to it. I feel like if I give any type of leeway as far as, oh I'll let her announce us as we're walking into the reception or I'll let her conduct the speeches I feel like those two rolls wouldn't be good enough. I feel like if I were to say I would give her one of those rolls my mother or someone else in the family will come back and ask "she's not a bridesmaids she should just be a bridesmaid" I'm not stupid. me and my sister look nothing alike I know she's always been considered the better looking one of the two of us I just want one day with the spotlight on me. I feel as though if she was a bridesmaid she would try to outshine me I feel like in a lot of scenarios she tries to one up me I don't understand why we both can't shine, but it's my wedding day and I want to shine all by myself. I want to be the bride and I want to be the center of attention and I feel like if she were to be a bridesmaids she would do something anything to be the center of attention. I'm not making her a bridesmaid because I don't even want to give her the opportunity. is there a way that I can nicely say that she's not going to be in the wedding without my family trying to Guilt Trip me into making her part of the wedding?

Also my sister is 4 years older than me she is not married. She hasn't been in a long-term relationship for a few years now and she hasn't mentioned dating anyone recently or if at all. Moreover I have a bunch of people in my family who could do certain roles for this wedding, but this is supposed to be a celebration for all of us not a day for them to work. I also want to make it clear it's not that I'm mad about not being the better looking sister I very much love the way that I look it's just that she was the skinnier one and she was more popular than me she's been in magazines and she's modeled before and I'm more of a techie artsy nerd, I draw I play video games I'm more arts and crafts, taking pictures in the dark room and on chill mode. I usually don't like being the center of attention I kind of like staying in the background hence the reason why I'm a photographer and not the person in the pictures. But on this day this one day of all days I just wanted to be all about me. The day hasn't even came yet and the only thing anybody can worry about is why she's not a part of it. I feel like my family knows and can see that we aren't that close, I don't talk to her on the regular basis. For the past two years text messages for Christmas and text messages for birthdays. The only other time that we actually speak is for our mother and that's for her birthday or Mother's Day. But this past Mother's Day my sister got her nothing she got neither one of us things for Christmas although we both sent her things past birthday probably like a year or two ago she came into town I took her out I had a gift for her and everything my birthday was a month prior to hers and she didn't get me anything. I know this is going on a little bit longer but I just want to make it clear I'm not mad. This is just the way it is. I do love her if she ever needed me I would drop everything to help her. But I just don't like my sister and I don't consider her to be my friend.

And I said she's the fakest person because we've argued before our last conversation that we had about some deep personal family issues, I never really got an answer out of her and the next time I saw her the family event she wanted to come up to me and hug me and smile in my face as if we haven't been going back and forth in an argument. She can argue with me over the phone and she can argue with me and text messages but around other people she acts as though she's the doting older sister, and she's not. I'm okay with us not being close and I have become okay with us not being friends so why can't everyone else?

Update: recently some family drama has surfaced with my fiance's side of the family and his brother and one other guy are no longer groomsmen. Now I have one more bridesmaid then he does so it kind of evens out. I know there's a chance that by the time this wedding comes around him and his brother will be back in each other's good graces and I most likely will need to find another Bridesmaids. But I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there. And for anyone wondering why the wedding is so far out it's because we're trying to do a lot of other things first and we don't have any family helping us with the cost of the wedding but we both have large families who are all excited about the first wedding of the family of the second generation the grandkids and everything so with no help but a whole bunch of people wanting to come we need time to save up to pay for that.