Slightly awkward? I may be awful...

To be honest, if you said " we might have to tell niece she is going to be a flower girl" then I would have interpreted this as she was going to be one. And yes I would have taken this as you had told the parents that is what is going to happen.

Under the circumstances yes, I would think she was going to be a flower girl. I think you just need to ask whether she's excited and wants to do it. If she is then it's dress buying time!

I don't think you'd need to ask again to confirm it. The fact that you hadn't mentioned it probably just meant they thought it was certain.

Mmm given that the original convo was 18 months ago and you are now only 3 months away I would have thought they would have mentioned it before now, or at least twigged that as you hadn't said anything more that it wasn't happening.

How old is the little girl? Often with little children it's more about the parents than the child. I think you need to be firm but fair and say you're really sorry if there has been crossed wires but you're not having any flower girls or page boys. If the little girl I question is very young then she won't have much of a clue what it's all about anyway and the parents can handle it by getting her a pretty dress and shoes as they would be doing anyway.

I agree with Charlinc, I think saying "oh we might have to let niece know she's going to be a flower girl" suggests that you were planning to ask her to be your flower girl.To you the "might" may have been important, but I think out of context with the rest of what you're saying it does kind of imply that you were going to ask her.

How old is the niece? Is she genuinely old enough to be excited about it, or could it be a case of parents speaking on her behalf?

Don't guilt yourselves about it, it's crossed wires. And to be honest, it only has to be a title. It doesn't mean that she actually has to do anything or be involved in any other way. If you're feeling super guilty and she was/is really excited, i'm sure just having a pretty dress will be enough ?

Ah damn it and damn OHs run away mouth, figured that run away comments a few hours after an announcement like that wouldn't count, isn't it like announcing we're definitely going to do it sky diving, or of course I'll let you make the cake and then changing your mind when you realise you're scared of flying or your friends cakes are teeth breakers? (Neither of these we did btw just exaggerated examples?) I wouldn't have took it as that, not unless afterwards it had been specifically mentioned/asked. Looks like that's just gonna be me though....hmmm, will wait and see how the conversation with his bro goes later and poss have to suck it up and buy her a dress. She's four, she'll just be five when we get married so I guess old enough to be excited which is it what makes it worse! We had no idea they thought that she's been properly asked

I think it'd probably be different if the comment had been made in passing about a child that you're not especially close to, or perhaps a non family child. In that situation i'd definitely expect to be asked properly as the parent. But with family, things can get a little blurry. I assume because it was a niece an informal comment was all that was needed and was maybe taken as a bit of a given (not saying that's right)

It doesn't sound like your OHs brother has been horrendous about it so far, so fingers crossed it'll all pan out ok.

I can see both sides & how its been misunderstood. Do you have other nieces your OH might have also been referring to in the initial coversation? Not just his brother's?

How the OH brother talks to his daughter it his business- he obviously told her she was a flower girl in the first place, but I can see why.

I was in a similar situation, where my god children had been practicing walking down the aisle with flowers/petals etc. I never asked them to be flowergirls etc so felt terrible when I didn't have any children at the wedding, including them. (I had various reasons for a no-kid wedding). I did think about it for ages, but stuck to my guns and 3yrs down the line, its never ever been mentioned by them or other relatives.

Do what you want to do, but don't be cohersed by feelings of guilt for something your OH said in his excitement.

I'm pretty sure that as it's family then saying something like that at all is understandable to be taken as a genuine thing. If you weren't close to her then maybe not, but otherwise weddings are a family thing so a lot of family members will be hoping to be involved.

I agree that the fact it's not been mentioned since should have rang alarm bells, but if we're talking "did we do wrong" then I think so... There's no way I'd say about someone having a role in my wedding and then decide against it and not say anything to them (or in this case the parents...).

I'm sure that you can work it out now, especially as the BIL doesn't seem too upset

I would think the fact your OH mentioned it in the first place to them would suggest she was gong to be too..they never asked you, and although its 18months down the line they propbably thought it was your place to bring it up and mention it again to them..if i was the little girls father i too would have mentioned it to her.. i hope you get it sorted

All a flower girl does is walk down the aisle! You can keep everyone happy without any fuss. They can buy her dress to match the colour scheme, then you buy her flowers and a bracelet as a thank you gift.

She walks in first, everyone says "aww" and then she sits down. Job done! Go with the flow. It sounds like your BIL is a nice bloke who's trying not to cause problems.

Thank you for the various opinions, seems like it's def out fault (or rather OHs!) d'oh! We're gonna speak to his bro later, if actually it turns out we've been worrying about nothing and she's not upset then we'll just leave it with our original plan. If we have a desperately heartbroken 4 year old on our hands (which I doubt) then we'll likely reconsider.!!

Ps Paula it's not just about getting them to buy her a pretty dress to avoid making a fuss, we'd buy it ourselves if we wanted a flowergirl, its just that we didn't want a flowergirl (annoyingly OH can't even remember mentioning it!) it's also then do we ask our even littler nephew to do a role, is it fair having one niece/nephew without the other..possibly upsetting his parents then cus he's not been asked isn't keeping everyone happy, it's just opening a potential can of worms....(thankfully I didn't even mention it in passing to them so there definitely no confusion there).

there'll be no fuss whichever way we work it I'm sure, just felt dead guilty last night/this morning about it but it'll be fine once we've spoken to them later one way or another. Thanks again ! Good to find out that's it's us been a pair of pillocks!! Just never would have thought about it like that!! :-S

It's not so bad! I picked three friends as my BM's and never thought about my husband's 5 sisters. I got a hand written card from his youngest sister asking if she could be a BM! So I ended up with 4!

Haha bless you! Would you have ended up with 8 if the rest had asked? ;-)