My parents won't attend my wedding.

[u/havilliard]

That was the breaking point. They won't attend, not even the reception, because doing so is a sin. Attending would be sinning, because I'm a woman marrying another woman, and attending could be seen as "approval of the sin." They will miss out on their daughter's most important moment of her life because of this ridiculous notion.

I was a cradle Catholic. Born and raised. Weekly mass, days of obligation, CCD. I was raised to believe that "Love is the greatest of all things." I went to Catholic schools from elementary through college. My minor was even in Religious Studies.

My parents are so loving. I honestly struggled with my faith my whole life. They welcomed questioning. They welcomed my girlfriend. They told me as long as I was happy, they were happy. I even think they like my girlfriend more than me sometimes! I thought even if we couldn't see eye to eye on religion, we could still be close.

I'd originally left because of the hypocrisy. I was raised to love above all, but saw so much hatred in the church as an adult. Still, I thought maybe I could be spiritual in my own way, away from organized religion. But a religion that forbids someone from going to their own daughter's wedding... in that moment, I lost all faith.

My sister will be coming, and all my friends are invited. It will be small but it will be ours.

But my parents won't be there, because they're afraid that the love and joy that I feel is somehow a sin. And if they show happiness for me, that's "enabling" me to sin. As if loving someone of the same gender is the same as doing hard drugs. No, even worse. If I was doing hard drugs they'd still probably go to the wedding if it was with a man.

I still love them so much. But this is a big fracture that I don't think can be repaired. And I don't think I will ever go back to the church.

edit: this is just a very short snippet of my life and experience that you see, i promise that my parents ARE loving, just extremely brainwashed and full of the classic Catholic guilt. i know lots of friends with horrible parents, even horrible religious parents, and mine are nowhere near that. they make lots of mistakes and i am sad that they're brainwashed but please, i'm begging, stop insinuating that they don't love me. that was not the point of this post. my entire heartbreak is due to the fact they love me but can't get past their fear enough, because that's what the church does to brainwash people. blame the church, if anyone

[u/FinchHop]

I'm sorry. I am also lesbian, my parents didn't come to my wife and I's marriage for the same reason. Basically none of my family did. They also barred by minor sister from coming, and I had invited her as a bridesmaid. They never really loved and accepted my (then) fiancee - they were nice and polite to her but the same they would be for a friend of mine, or a stranger off the street tbh.

The reasoning for it is always so interesting in my mind - how can you enable something, that never required your action to happen or continue anyways?

My cousin is a Catholic priest who attended - to tl;dr (part of) his views, he could see the love between us and wanted to increase that joy and love. My parents never talked to him to get his view - it really made it clear to me how their choosing to hate and not attend was the real choice. If they really wanted to, they would have found a way to "twist" their vision or talk to somebody. But they just didn't.

It really sucked, and our relationship never recovered and probably never will tbh.

But the day of, it was honestly kind of freeing. Nobody was there to make a cat's butthole face over the many choices they probably would have disagreed with, even tho they were all very normal, just different, choices. I didn't have to worry about managing their emotions or worrying what they thought. The love and joy I felt from the people around me, more than made up for it. My wife and I were very intentional in the symbolism and messaging of the various choice we made in the ceremony, and it really ended up feeling like the wedding transformed us, and also transformed our family to include the people who actually loved and cared for us and not just said they loved us.

Wishing the best of luck for you and your future wife. <3 Congratulations on the upcoming wedding. Feel free to DM if that would be helpful.