Abby Connolly
One would think that if you were planning your wedding and had someone who would need handicap-accessible access to the ceremony and reception venues in your wedding party, you would only book accessible venues, right?
Well, that’s not the case for one woman who has been asked to be a bridesmaid in her brother’s wedding but might be unable to attend the reception because her future sister-in-law didn’t book an accessible venue.
She is 25 and has a 31-year-old brother who is getting ready to marry his fiancée. Her future sister-in-law asked her to be a bridesmaid in their wedding. She’s never been very close with her brother’s finacée and thinks she may have only been asked to be a bridesmaid because she’s a family member.
Either way, she’s been putting up with whatever her future sister-in-law wants for the wedding and has agreed to things like wearing a dress she thinks is ugly.
However, they recently ran into a pretty major issue – the venue for the reception. Her brother was responsible for planning the wedding ceremony, while his fiancée was responsible for planning the reception.
She uses a wheelchair every day. The wedding ceremony will be in their local church, which she knows is accessible. However, when she asked her brother’s fiancée if the separate reception venue was accessible, she never received a solid answer, so she had to look it up herself.
“I ended up looking up the building, and my heart sank,” she remembered. “It is an old building, not accessible at all for me, and no bathrooms I could feasibly use either.”
Her future sister-in-law was very upset and told her that her brother said to pick a place she loved, and she picked that one without even checking if it was accessible.
Then, her sister-in-law suggested that family members could carry her into the venue and help her go to the bathroom. The idea of that mortified her.
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