Woman Considers Skipping Family Wedding to Go on 30th Birthday Trip Instead, but Worries It Will Spark Tension

A woman took to Reddit looking for perspective after a family situation left her torn about attending a wedding scheduled the day before her 30th birthday.

In her post, the 29-year-old said she’d been invited to the ceremony of her brother’s girlfriend’s sister — a connection she described as fairly removed from her everyday life. The timing, though, is what really threw her. In her country, turning 30 is a major milestone, and she has always pictured celebrating it in a big, memorable way.

“I (29F) am invited to a wedding that’s on the day before my 30th birthday (which is celebrated big in my country),” she wrote.

The couple plan to get married about two hours from where she lives. That means she and her boyfriend would likely stay overnight, then drive back the next day — which happens to be her birthday. Normally, she said, wedding parties in her circle go late. “We usually party until 3 or 4 AM,” she explained, and she worried that rolling straight from a long night into a road trip would leave her drained on a day she’d hoped to enjoy fully.

The conflict stung more because she’d already been dreaming up a special trip. She originally wanted a two-week vacation for her 30th, but since the invitation came recently, she hadn’t booked anything yet.

She also shared that the broader “family” dynamic feels more performative than real. Her brother and his girlfriend spend a lot of time with the bride’s family, she said, and often travel together as a larger group — but she and her boyfriend are rarely included.

“My brother, his girlfriend, her sister, her fiancé and the sister’s parents pretend that we are one big happy family,” she wrote. “But we actually rarely do anything together unless it’s a family dinner or something like that.”

She added that while she doesn’t resent being left out, she finds the sisters’ vibe a bit staged. In her view, they like things to go their way and assume everyone will follow along. She pointed to a past group trip where tensions boiled over when not everyone wanted to stick to their expensive dining plans.

What bothered her most was that the bride recognized the birthday conflict immediately — and seemed to brush it off. According to the Redditor, the invitation was followed by a cheerful promise: they’d sing “happy birthday” for her at the wedding. To her, that sounded less like a thoughtful gesture and more like minimizing how meaningful the day is.

Friends she spoke to felt she wouldn’t be wrong to skip the wedding, but her parents pushed back. They suggested shifting the birthday trip to before or after, since she has the summer off, and said she could even fly out on her birthday. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that either choice would dull the celebration.

“Even if I do go to the wedding, I would either be exhausted on the next day and would have to drive home for 2 hours or would be on a plane on my birthday,” she wrote. Leaving early to be rested for her birthday also felt like a compromise she didn’t want to make.

She stressed that this wouldn’t normally be an issue. If the wedding landed near any other birthday, she’d go without hesitation — but 30 feels different. She wants the day to feel like hers, and the trip to feel like the centerpiece, not an afterthought.

At the end, she asked Reddit directly: should she prioritize her long-planned milestone vacation, or show up for a wedding tied to a family she doesn’t feel close to? The comments were mixed. Some encouraged her to attend but leave early; others said she isn’t obligated to rearrange a major life moment for a wedding that’s “three degrees removed.”