Hi everyone. This is an update to my original post about photographing my sister’s last-minute Vegas wedding. A lot has happened since then, and I realized there was much more backstory and context that I didn’t originally include.
First, I want to clarify that the person who has been causing all the major issues is not my sister, but my sister-in-law, my sister’s now-wife. She was the fiancée in my original post. My sister has her moments and plays a role, but the verbal abuse, conflict, and disrespect almost always come directly from her wife.
When I posted last, the wedding was still upcoming. I did end up going to Vegas, and I brought my boyfriend along. We honestly had a great time together, that part of the trip was actually wonderful. But the wedding itself was extremely thrown together. They gave me barely any notice, never communicated what photos they wanted, never gave me a timeline, and didn’t even tell me when or where anyone would be getting ready. There was absolutely no plan at all. It wasn’t a situation where I was supposed to know the timeline, there literally wasn’t one.
We also weren’t anywhere near each other while getting ready. Anyone familiar with the Venetian in Las Vegas knows how massive it is. I was staying on the Palazzo side, and my sister-in-law was staying in the Venetian tower on the opposite end of the property. She never texted me or asked me to come take “getting ready” photos. There was no communication. Now she’s furious that I didn’t somehow show up automatically. She’s acting like it was common sense for me to wander a giant hotel hoping I’d magically know to come in to her room at the right time.
After the wedding, I sent her a sneak peek of about 60 edited photos a week later, because she requested them right away. When I sent them, she made me screen-share the entire gallery for almost two hours while she nitpicked every photo and told me exactly which ones she wanted edited “immediately.” I did it just to keep the peace.
Today at around 9 a.m., out of nowhere, she called me and completely erupted. She told me I “need to give her all the photos right now,” accused me of “pretending to be a professional,” and called me a “cunt” repeatedly. She said talking to me is “like talking to a wall,” then hung up on me. There was no discussion, just straight verbal abuse.
For context, I charged her $300 for the wedding, even though my normal wedding rate is $1,500 or more. There was no contract, no timeline, no deadlines discussed. She knows I am overloaded with school, an internship, my photography business, and my living situation. And she also knows I am barely holding on academically, I am close to failing classes, and I absolutely need to graduate in the spring because I don’t have health insurance. My priorities right now genuinely need to be my schoolwork. Despite all of that, she expects her photos to come before everything else.
Unfortunately, this kind of explosion from her isn’t new. A few weeks after we got back from Vegas, we all went out for Halloween. Both of us were running behind because of separate family events earlier in the evening. On the way to her house, I accidentally got bronzer on my white tights while doing makeup in the car. When I got there, I asked if I could use a makeup wipe, and she told me to wait while she looked for micellar water. She then disappeared outside for nearly an hour to smoke weed. The makeup wipes were sitting on the bathroom counter, and she owns hundreds of them. so since we were getting ready to leave and she never came back, I used one single wipe to get the stain off.
Later, in casual conversation, I mentioned how well it worked. She immediately flew into a rage, demanding to know why I “touched her stuff without asking,” calling me a “bitch,” and accusing me of violating her boundaries over one makeup wipe. I apologized and offered to buy more wipes, but she wouldn’t stop. I made an offhand joke that I sounded like my younger sister for a second, and she snapped back, “No, you sound like your mother.”
And that one cut so deeply I still feel sick thinking about it. My mother abused me and my sisters, was addicted to drugs, and I haven’t spoken to her in almost eight years. She knows all of this. She knows the trauma. There is no world where that comment was anything but deliberately cruel. I immediately went silent and locked myself in the bathroom until I could calm down. She has never apologized.
This wasn’t the first time she’s used extremely personal, painful things as ammunition. And part of why everything she does hits so hard is because of something that happened earlier this year that I haven’t fully explained until now.
Back in March, I was about to move into an apartment I had signed a lease for, before I realized it was in a dangerous neighborhood. Broken windows, bad street activity, the works. The very next day, I found a house listed in my dream neighborhood. A small two-bedroom home for $900 a month, absolutely unheard of where I live. I viewed it, the landlord loved me, and he picked me out of other applicants.
But I panicked because I thought I couldn’t break my lease. I didn’t know that was an option. So I immediately and stupidly called my sister-in-law and offered the house to them instead. They weren’t even looking to move, they still had months left on their lease, and I had to convince them to even consider it. Within an hour of hanging up, I realized I had made a huge mistake. I was crying, panicking, realizing this was the one place I could afford and my only shot at living alone. I begged them for days. I was sobbing and pleading on the phone, explaining that I would have nowhere to go when my current place ended in two weeks.
They ignored all of that and took the house anyway.
They make over $100k a year combined. They could afford dozens of other options. I make a fraction of that. This was the only house I could afford in that neighborhood. I did eventually break my original lease, but it didn’t matter, the house was gone. They signed it and moved into it while I moved into a tiny bedroom at my grandma’s house with a toddler she fosters. Every time I go to their house, I’m reminded it should have been mine. And to make it sting worse, they use the second bedroom, the room that would have been my office, as a weed-smoking storage room. They never acknowledged how badly they hurt me. Not once.
All of that has been sitting in the background of every interaction I have with them. So when my sister-in-law calls me names, insults my work, mocks my trauma, or explodes over something trivial, it isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s happening on top of the most painful housing experience of my life, my financial struggles, my academic stress, and my general mental health issues. I have so little family as it is, my grandma, my dad, and my two sisters, so losing the relationship with my sister feels terrifying, but being treated like this is becoming unbearable.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I feel like my sister-in-law has zero respect for me at all. I feel like everything I do is in service to their convenience, not out of genuine care. And now even the wedding photos, something I did out of love and for a fraction of my normal rate, have become another way for her to belittle and control me. I’m exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically. I don’t know if I should finish the photos and go low-contact, confront her, talk to my sister privately, or just step away entirely.
I don’t want to blow up my family, but I also don’t want to keep being the punching bag for someone who seems committed to hurting me.
TL;DR:
– My sister-in-law has repeatedly verbally abused me, including calling me a bitch and cunt and comparing me to my abusive mother.
– She stole the only affordable house I ever found, even after I begged and sobbed for it for days because I had nowhere to go.
– She nitpicked my wedding photography, demanded immediate edits, and then exploded and cursed me out this morning.
– I charged $300 for a wedding I normally charge $1,500+ for, with no timeline and no contract.
– I’m overwhelmed with school, work, an internship, and my living situation, and I don’t know how to move forward with this relationship without losing my sanity.