Groom's Parents Cannot Attend The Wedding
We are the groom's parents and are feeling badly because the bride has chosen a wedding date that is just previous to Christmas which is the absolute busiest time at our family owned retail store in Canada. That time of the year, we both work around 70-80 hours per week and our son manages one dept. in our store, our daughter manages the office and all bookwork and a friend of our son looks after another area so if we were all to attend the wedding, that would mean 5 key full-time staff gone. We would only have left one full time staff and three part-time staff who could not run the store on their own for more than a couple of days. We specialize in many seasonal gifts for Christmas and cater too much corporate trade so the Christmas season is what has given us the "gravy" that has enabled our business to continue to operate for 21 years.
To top it off the wedding is not in our town because if that were the case, we could at least take the one day off work for the wedding and have enough staff to run the store for that one day. However the wedding is thousands of miles away in Grenada where the bride's parents have now moved and to attend the one wedding day there would entail 2 days in airports on both the way down and on the way back so 5 days away from the store to spend one day in Grenada. Our son is very close to us and we feel heartbroken that we cannot attend his wedding, but his bride-to-be has chosen the date based on the anniversary of their first date, and is not about to change her mind. We are also afraid that she will be very disappointed if friends decide at the last minute they can't afford the time and the money to make the trip as many friends are either still students or new to the work force, and they may end up with just her parents and a small handful of guests.